Dell Technologies Inc. today is updating its software-defined storage offering Dell EMC PowerFlex with new automation capabilities, extended features for software containers and improvements to security and compliance.

Dell EMC PowerFlex is a software-defined storage layer that pools storage resources across multiple nodes. It also allows customers to aggregate storage resources across a large set of industry-standard nodes to build a high-performance, scalable, highly-resilient storage pool.

Dell says PowerFlex is used by companies to better implement containers that host the components of modern applications. It also enables higher performing analytics and database optimizations.

In a blog post, Dell EMC Chief Strategy Architect Michael Richtberg said the Dell EMC PowerFlex 3.6 release brings more use cases into the equation.

“The release is designed to help you execute flawlessly with extensive automation capabilities and superior execution of resource-intensive workloads,” he said. “It also enables you to comply effortlessly with regulatory, compliance and corporate requirements while enabling you to operate your large-scale infrastructure confidently and predictably.”

Some of the new use cases for PowerFlex include artificial intelligence and graphics-intensive virtual desktop infrastructure, Richtberg said. PowerFlex 3.6 now supports a wide array of Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing units, including the Nvidia T4, RTX 6000 and RTX 8000, plus the newer A40 and A100 processors.

There’s more support for a range of new GPUs from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Thus, organizations can now set up VSAN infrastructure to support AI workloads such as natural language processing, image recognition, video analytics and decision-support applications.

“The past year highlighted the importance of supporting remote workers serviced by virtual desktops,” Richtberg added. “High-end designers collaborating on projects requires robust GPU support. For these use cases, the extended GPU support enables sophisticated Citrix and VMware virtualized desktop implementations.”

Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Steve McDowell told SiliconANGLE that Dell has been very aggressive this year with updates to its storage systems, and that the new version of PowerFlex is targeted at the shifting needs of information technology teams.

“COVID taught us all how to work from home, but it also highlighted weaknesses in the Remote Desktop model, where support for shared GPUs is critical,” McDowell said. “The updated support for a broader range of Nvidia and AMD GPUs plays directly to the remote-worker model.”

Today’s release also adds support for Container Storage Interface driver 1.5. In turn, this adds broader support for a wide range of Kubernetes distributions, including OpenShift v4.6 with CoreOS. Kubernetes is open-source orchestration software that’s used to manage large clusters of containers. The release also adds support for Dell EMC Container Storage Modules for observability, authorization and resiliency, currently in tech preview.

McDowell said Dell has been putting lots of effort into supporting containerized, cloud-native workloads and ease of manageability across its entire product line, not only storage, and that these updates are in keeping with that trend. “The updated CSI drivers and OpenShift support keep PowerFlex very current with what’s happening in the cloud-native container world,” he said. “It’s critical to stay current with this rapidly evolving market and Dell is doing a good job of doing just that.”

On the automation side, Richtberg said PowerFlex 3.6 adds PowerFlex Ansible modules that will help DevOps teams to unify administration and resource provisioning.

There’s much broader support for hypervisors as well. With today’s release, PowerFlex now plays nicely with the Oracle Enterprise Linux kernel-based virtual machine that supports Oracle databases, and VMware Inc.’s NSX-T.

No new release is complete without the requisite updates around security, resiliency and manageability, and Richtberg had plenty to talk about there too. For instance, PowerFlex 3.6 improves configurable replication recovery point objectives to as little as 15 seconds, and extends this replication to hyperconverged infrastructure.

The software also gains support for Dell EMC AppSync, which is a data protection and copy data management tool. Support for CloudIQ, meanwhile, provides visibility and insights that can help teams to combine monitoring, machine learning and predictive analytics, enabling them to simplify operations and take actions to remedy any problems faster, Richtberg said.

“Cloud IQ support is another really nice update,” McDowell said. “IT administrators want AI-driven predictive analytics. Dell has a nice solution with Cloud IQ, and I’m happy to see them bringing that to PowerFlex.”

Image: Dell