Dell Release updates to DSM and Storage Firmware

Dell has officially announced the release of some new features and developments on their Storage Roadmap.

Post Author: Bob Holroyde, Senior Technical Consultant, Krome Technologies

Dell Storage Manager

As a Dell Premier Partner, highly regarded by Dell and selected as a stand out partner amongst the Premier partners in the area of Dell Storage; Krome were invited to Dell’s Solution Centre in Limerick prior to the release to get a preview of these exciting new features including demonstrations of the new Dell Storage Manager tool.

Dell Storage Manager – Unified User Interface

Dell has released a new tool called DSM (Dell Storage Manager). DSM will be available as a virtual Appliance or a standard application that can be run on any modern windows OS. This is really significant because it allows management of SC and PS (formally EqualLogic) SAN’s from a single HTML 5 web interface. Not only can you manage all of your Dell Storage from single pane of glass, but it will also do away with any annoying Java issues.

Compellent SC OS7 and EgualLogic PS Firmware 9

There has been a new release of Compellent SC OS7 firmware, with the new EqualLogic (PS) firmware version 9 due to follow shortly, offering users a host of new features. The most significant of these new Dell Storage features will be for customers who currently have either Compellent (SC) or PS Storage and are looking to mix their environment, or who already have both. With Dell Storage Manager they will now be able to replicate from SC to PS and back. This will for example allow PS customers to upgrade to SC storage and redeploy their PS for disaster recovery or branch office thus allowing their storage assets to be fully utilised.

With regard to other significant features, the next version of SC Storage firmware will provide Nearline Deduplication and Compression for new and existing SC4020 upwards, additionally for larger customers SC Storage will provide Live Volume failover for Microsoft and VMware offering a DR capability with ZERO downtime.

Krome’s View

As a highly experienced PS and SC partner, even prior to the product’s acquisition by Dell, we as a business are continuing to focus on both the PS and SC products as we always have, we are excited to see that both products are now able to be managed together with a unified user interface using DSM.

It’s early days for the new Dell DSM and firmware updates, but they come with the promise of a really positive set of new features. Krome have been selected as an early adopter of DSM and the new firmware for full testing and evaluation at our headquarters in Surrey so we can keep our customers up to date with any progress.

If you’re interested in learning more about Dell’s storage roadmap, DSM or the new firmware upgrades please do get in touch, we’re happy to share our experience and opinions on these changes.

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