Dell Technologies Inc. today introduced enhancements across its server, storage and data protection portfolios aimed at advancing customers’ data center modernization initiatives.

The announcements advance Dell’s strategy of promoting what it calls “disaggregated infrastructure.”

“We believe it is the new paradigm for how organizations are thinking about their traditional and modern workloads,” said Varun Chhabra, senior vice president of infrastructure and telecom marketing. “This aggregated infrastructure offers shared resource pools where compute, storage and networking can be applied.”

New PowerEdge R470, R570, R670 and R770 servers (pictured) feature Intel Corp. Xeon 6 Processors with P-cores in single- and double-socket configurations designed to handle high-performance computing,  virtualization, analytics and artificial intelligence inferencing.

Dell said they save up to half of the energy costs of previous server generations while supporting up to 50% more cores per processors and 67% better performance. They feature the Dell Modular Hardware System architecture, which is based on Open Compute Project standards. Dell OpenManage enhancements and Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller updates provide real-time monitoring, while the Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller for PCIe Gen 5 hardware reduces write latency up to 33-fold.

“They provide over 2.5 times the number of cores per processor, which allows customers to scale to meet the needs of their traditional as well as modern workloads,” Chhabra said.

DOD-grade security

New PowerStore software includes AI-powered analytics that deliver alerts and remediation advice, performance headroom analytics and carbon footprint forecasting. Security has been improved with Department of Defense-compliant smart card authentication, automated certificate renewal and enhanced Storage Direct Protection integrations that deliver up to four times faster restore times.

“We obtained approved product status from the U.S. Department of Defense last year, and we will continue to make progress on that front with smart card support for multi-factor authentication,” said Drew Schulke, vice president in Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. “This is going to meet the most stringent requirements from both federal agencies and our most security-sensitive customers.”

System performance has been enhanced with better file management capabilities, secure file snapshots, capacity analysis for storage planning and streamlined migration from Dell Unity systems. PowerEdge and PowerStore products and enhancements are now available.

Enhancements to the Dell ObjectScale object storage management system expand capacity to support eight times greater density on the ObjectScale XF960 appliance compared to previous all-flash systems. Enhanced efficiency and resiliency features include multisite federation, copy-to-cloud features, geo-replication global namespace and data governance capabilities developed in collaboration with Wasabi Technologies Inc. The appliances will be available beginning in September.

Improvements to the PowerScale scale-out flash storage portfolio target AI data management, featuring 122-terabyte solid-state drives that provide up to 6 petabytes of high-speed data access in a single 2U node configuration. Hybrid and archival storage nodes now feature updated computing modules, improving latency and performance on extensive AI datasets. The enhancements will be available this month.

VM backup and archiving

In the area of data protection, the new PowerProtect DD6410 appliance for small businesses and remote offices features faster restore speeds and better data deduplication. The All-Flash Ready Node, which Dell described as “the first step in Dell’s all-flash data protection journey,” now offered 61% faster restores, reduced power consumption and an 80% smaller physical footprint.

Updates to the PowerProtect Data Manager improve security monitoring through anomaly detection, virtualization support for Microsoft Corp. Hyper-V and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization virtual machine backups and easy archiving to Dell ObjectScale for long-term retention.

“Users have made it very clear that they’re looking for alternatives to VMware in light of recent events,” said David Noy, vice president of product management, unstructured data solutions and data protection, referring to price increases imposed by Broadcom Inc. on its VMware Inc. product line. “So we’ve added the capability to back up Hyper-V virtual machines and OpenShift virtualization. We have a number of other virtualization technologies in the works for easier long-term data archiving.”

Photo: Dell