Dell upgrades PowerStore hardware, software

Dell is detailing hardware and software updates to its midrange unified file and block PowerStore storage architecture.

The upgrades come two years after Dell launched the PowerStore platform, which it claims has seen 12,000 deployments in that time. That’s a pretty good showing considering it competes with NetApp, HPE, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, and Pure Storage in the block storage market.

Shannon Champion, product marketing lead for Dell Technologies in converged infrastructure and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), detailed the upgrades in a blog post. 

The Gen 2 platform refresh is quite an upgrade over the older hardware. Now using Cascade Lake-era Intel processors, the new PowerStore systems come with up to 50% more IOPS for mixed workloads, up to 70% faster writes, and up to 10 times improvement in copy operations. Maximum capacity is up 66% to more than 18 PBe per cluster, thanks to a 24-bay, 2U rack NVMe expansion chassis, with support for up to eight times more volumes per appliance.

Also, PowerStore supports 100Gb NVMe/TCP deployment through Dell’s SmartFabric Storage Software, which automates deployment and connectivity of SAN fabrics. Organizations without Fibre Channel infrastructure can now connect PowerStore to NVMe/TCP networks, which Dell says can deliver up to 73% better performance at 50% lower cost per port.

On the software front, PowerStoreOS 3.0 delivers more than 120 new features and more new capabilities than the original 2020 launch, according to Champion. It adds native file, VMware virtual volumes (vVols), and metro area synchronous replication to the existing asynchronous block replication to protect any workload (block, vVols or file) within the PowerStore environment. (Metro volume synchronous replication allows enterprises to create a shared storage environment across a metro area distance, according to Dell.) 

PowerStoreOS 3.0 also significantly updates VMware integration with end-to-end VMware visibility within the PowerStore Manager GUI, plus the ability to provision VM-level PowerStore services, such as snapshots and replication, directly from vSphere.

On the security front, PowerStore 3.0 adds Hardware Root of Trust and Secure Boot, thanks to the new Xeon chips, for silicon-based protection against malware tampering. It also enables third-party key manager support, end-to-end FIPS 140-2 compliance, and CEPA-enabled ransomware detection.

Dell says PowerStore Gen 1 customers who enrolled in Dell’s Anytime Upgrade program will get the Gen 2 hardware upgrade, 3.0 software, and the ProDeploy deployment services – which offers rapid deployment and configuration of client systems – at no additional cost.