Dell Technologies Midrange storage: Addressing the data deluge

 In an era dominated by digital transformation, medium-sized businesses find themselves grappling with the relentless influx of data, and are struggling to navigate the complexities imposed by burgeoning data volumes combined with an evolving technological landscape.

The data deluge, characterised by an unprecedented surge in the amount of information generated and processed, has presented unique challenges for mid-sized enterprises striving to harness the power of their data effectively.

Covered in this article

The sheer magnitude of data
 Lacking dedicated resources
Growing complexity
Conquering data chaos
New Midrange capabilities
Top efficiency, power
 Intelligence, security

The sheer magnitude of data

One of the primary challenges facing mid-sized businesses is the sheer magnitude of data generated on a daily basis. As technology advances, the volume, velocity, and variety of data continue to grow exponentially, placing a significant burden on organisations to manage, process, store, and derive valuable insights from this wealth of information.

 Moreover, the rapid expansion of data sources, such as customer interactions, transactional data, and operational logs, adds to the complexity, making it challenging for these entities to keep pace.

 Another contributing factor is the evolving regulatory landscape which adds to the struggles of mid-sized companies. With the implementation of stringent data protection regulations, such as South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information ACT, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the UK, businesses are under increased pressure to ensure compliance with data privacy and security standards.

Lacking dedicated resources

 However, mid-sized enterprises, often lack the dedicated resources enjoyed by their corporate counterparts, and find it challenging to establish robust data governance frameworks that align with regulatory requirements. This exposes them to potential legal and financial risks.

 Furthermore, the demand for real-time insights further compounds the challenges faced by these businesses. In an era where data-driven decision-making is a competitive advantage, the ability to extract timely and relevant information is paramount.

 Yet smaller entities often grapple with outdated infrastructure, limited resources, and budget constraints that hamper their capacity to implement advanced analytics tools and technologies. As a result, they may struggle to transform raw data into actionable intelligence rapidly.

Growing complexity

The complexity of data storage and management represents yet another obstacle for mid-sized companies when it comes to navigating the data deluge. As data volumes skyrocket, the need for scalable and efficient storage solutions becomes key.

 However, these firms, constrained by budget limitations, may find it challenging to invest in the infrastructure required to store and retrieve data seamlessly. As a result, the accessibility and availability of data may be compromised, hindering the organisation's ability to make informed decisions promptly.

 Over and above the host of technological and infrastructure constraints, mid-sized businesses often face human resource challenges. The paucity in terms of skilled data professionals, including data scientists and analysts, can impede the company’s ability to glean meaningful insights from their data. Also, the lack of a data-centric culture and awareness within the workforce may slow the adoption of data-driven practices, limiting the organisation's ability to leverage its data effectively.

Conquering data chaos

The question is then, how can the mid-size organisations in every sector manage to conquer data chaos and safely store, analyse, and use their data to harness the goldmine of insights it contains?

Regardless of size, all organisations aiming to maximise their data resources require powerful yet affordable solutions to simplify data management, reduce latency, ensure robust data protection, and make data available 24/7.

 There is a reason that, while there is a steady growth of the overall external storage market, the midrange storage segment is emerging as the fastest-growing. This is because more enterprises are opting for midrange storage solutions as they attempt to get their data under control.

 Many of the storage capabilities that historically distinguished high-end enterprise storage have found their way into midrange solutions, equipping these systems with greater performance, scalability, and availability. Concurrently, midrange systems retain their unique characteristics, such as a more affordable price tag and ease of use.

New Midrange capabilities

For instance, Dell PowerStore is data-centric to optimise every workload. It supports any on-premises or cloud workload (physical, virtual, block, file, vVols, apps, databases, and containers).

It also offers scale-up and scale-out compute and storage, supporting up to 2.8PB effective capacity on each appliance, and eight active-active nodes. High performance is enabled using end-to-end NVMe, dualport Intel Optane Storage Class Memory (SCM), as well as solid state drives, and always-on data reduction with a minimum of 4:1 efficiency guaranteed.

PowerStore features the intelligence to simplify tasks and relieve IT, and automates storage provisioning. It deploys in seconds, and integrates with VMware and leading DevOps frameworks, including plug-ins for vRealize Orchestrator, Kubernetes, and Ansible.

In this way PowerStore automatically discovers new cluster resources, and provides intelligent data placement and efficiency recommendations to improve system utilisation and performance. Its container-based microservices architecture delivers maximum flexibility, portability, and security too.

PowerStoreOS installs on the appliance or virtual machines with AppsON, and can run apps directly on the appliance. It features flexible consumption models, non-disruptive upgrade options at any time, and product credits.

In addition, Dell’s PowerStore is intelligent storage that adapts to any future. Users can simplify IT operations for the long term with a continuously modern platform that evolves with their needs, helping them stay ahead of the competition in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Top efficiency, power

This solution provides all-flash power, great efficiency, and complete simplicity in a small footprint. Engineered and optimised for all-flash, the Dell Technologies Unity XT is a unified storage solution that boasts with all-flash and hybrid arrays, a dual-active controller architecture and an enterprise-class data service, all in a modern NVMe ready design, with seamless expansion to the cloud to accelerate IT transformation.

 It delivers significantly more performance and far less latency than previous iterations, making it the ideal solution for running critical business applications regardless of their location. The Unity XT also helps businesses get control of their soaring data, as they were designed for performance and optimised for

efficiency.

 Built for today’s multi-cloud world, customers can easily leverage the new Dell Technologies Unity XT platforms when deploying a wide range of clouds. These arrays were designed from the ground up to meet the soaring market demand for all-flash performance, efficiency, and lifecycle simplicity. These storage arrays are NVMe-ready, feature a dual active architecture, and contain dual-socket Intel processors with up to 16 cores. They also boast more system memory.

 Intelligence, security

For instance, PowerStore features built-in intelligence, that helps users achieve business results faster with self-optimising automation that auto-tunes performance, efficiency and availability. 31% less staff time to deploy, 24% lower cost of operation.

 It also boasts breakthrough efficiency, as PowerStore helps mid-range companies accomplish more with every resource. It promises guaranteed 4:1 data reduction, 61% higher density, multiple Energy Star certifications, and a Dynamic Resiliency Engine.

 And because cybersecurity is a top concern for all businesses, PowerStore helps users accelerate Zero Trust adoption with multi-factor authentication, data-at-rest encryption, data protection integration and more. It also ensures that workloads are always running on the latest technology with Anytime Upgrade, the industry's most flexible controller upgrade program. 

 If you are looking for a new storage solution or have any storage systems coming up for a technology refresh, you need to look no further than Tarsus Distribution and Dell Technologies. For more information.