Dell EMC PowerStore: Bringing enterprise capabilities to mid-range storage

As enterprises continue to undergo digital transformation, they are looking to improve their storage performance, scalability, manageability, and agility. They are also looking to enhance their IT infrastructure efficiency, which has implications for how IT requirements are met in core, edge, and cloud-based environments.

Concurrently, they need to move to far more data-centric business models if they hope to leverage the vast amounts of data available to help them make more informed business decisions. After all, while going digital impacts every functional organisation within a business, it affects IT in particular.

Covered in this article

A balancing act
Overcoming challenges
Looking to mid-range solutions
Doing more with less
Innovative design

A balancing act

This is because when undergoing any modernisation or transformation initiative, CIOs are faced with the need to service legacy workloads to keep the business ticking over while deploying next-generation applications that leverage modern technologies such as mobile computing, big data, analytics, and the cloud to turn their data into a strategic business asset.

In fact, harnessing their data effectively is crucial for business operations today, as it fuels revenue growth, stimulates innovation, and elevates the quality of customer interactions for enterprises in every sector.

Similarly, the cloud has set the standard for agility due to its operational model that enables businesses and developers to build and deploy new applications, services, and projects far more rapidly than ever before.

For these and other reasons, mid-sized businesses are looking to jump on the bandwagon and reap the benefits of the cloud operational experience wherever their apps and data live, from the edge to on-premise, or even colocation facilities.

Overcoming challenges

However, while the pursuit of modernisation and digital transformation remain key objectives, these also entail overcoming a wide range of hurdles in terms of data storage. These challenges include complex management processes, fragmented data storage solutions, the need for specialised tools, the relentless need for troubleshooting, and the constraints of stagnant or dwindling IT budgets.

Also, in order to truly modernise, it is crucial for businesses to move beyond the idea of simply acquiring a faster and more powerful data storage solution. Instead, they need to rid themselves of their cumbersome, legacy infrastructure and boost their data storage capabilities.

They can do this by adopting a platform that streamlines and automates operations, guarantees seamless and high-speed application performance, and fosters flexibility by delivering a cloud-like experience across all facets of their IT environment.

Looking to mid-range solutions

Forward-thinking entities are looking to midrange storage solutions, as these systems are increasingly extending the benefits of high-end storage, such as the performance, availability, scalability, and functionality, to their solutions.

Moreover, for those companies looking to streamline costs as well as storage infrastructure, systems at midrange price points today address a broader set of requirements than either of the other two storage classes are able to.

For example, access to new technologies such as nonvolatile memory express (NVMe), scale-out designs, as well as management that is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is also high on the storage wish list. This is because businesses that are on a transformation journey need these technologies to meet increasing performance, availability, scalability, ease of use, and agility requirements.

Doing more with less

For companies looking to do more with less, infrastructure adaptability is non-negotiable, and when it comes to storage, this has seen renewed interest in platforms that support unified storage, physical or virtual deployment, and a range of deployment modes and can scale both up and out without disrupting the business.

Fortunately, Tarsus Distribution and Dell EMC offer the PowerStore family of clustered storage systems which provide high-end performance, availability, scalability, and functionality starting at midrange price points.

These solutions also incorporate highly desirable new technologies such as native NVMe, scale-out architecture, software-defined infrastructure, AI- and ML-driven system self-management, as well as a microservices-based storage operating system (OS) design.

PowerStore is a compelling and highly capable unified storage system that has the ability to be scalable to over 4M inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) and boasts almost 11PB of storage capacity that can be deployed in either a disaggregated or a hypervisor mode.

Innovative design

PowerStore leverages an innovative container-based software design, which isolates storage operating system components into individual microservices. This approach empowers Dell's engineers to swiftly expand and enhance the platform with rapid feature updates.

This microservices architecture, in conjunction with advanced storage technologies and integrated machine learning, empowers users to harness the full potential of their data.

PowerStore is a versatile platform designed for top-tier performance, offering multi-dimensional scalability, continuous data reduction, and support for cutting-edge media. It brings the simplicity of the public cloud to on-premises infrastructure, streamlining operations through an integrated machine-learning engine and seamless automation.

PowerStore also introduces predictive analytics for effortless monitoring, analysis, and troubleshooting of the environment in which it is deployed. Its high adaptability makes it ideal for hosting specialised workloads across various industries.

However, the most significant advantage of PowerStore is its ability to reduce an organisation's data centre footprint while maintaining exceptional performance. Its user-friendly interface allows administrators to focus on more valuable business tasks, enabling IT staff to operate with greater efficiency and productivity thanks to an enhanced working environment and increased automation capabilities.