No enterprise storage solution is perfect, but Dell’s newest Compellent release is heading in the right direction. Compellent Storage Center is Dell’s enterprise storage solution unifying Fibre Channel, IP SAN (storage area network) and NAS (network attached storage) infrastructure. The system is designed to be as modular as enterprise storage solutions get – so extensibility, scalability, and cost savings are some of the benefits – but what truly sets the newest Compellent tech apart is dynamically automated storage provisioning and allocation.
Dynamic storage
The Compellent system automatically adjusts to your organization’s needs. Administrators no longer have to manually locate and expand storage space, or even tell the system how to provision space (as with Unisphere). If data isn’t being utilized daily, Compellent moves it from high performance, lower capacity (read: more expensive) top tiers to lower tiers automatically (and the opposite for more heavily used data and functions.) Systems Engineers and administrators: delete your storage tracking spreadsheets. The future is self-maintaining storage solutions like the newest Compellent.
Cost savings
Combine the effect of automated data migration on your organization’s hardware utilization and the ability of system admins to focus their energy elsewhere and the result is large potential savings.
According to InfoWord Test Center contributing editor Matt Prigge, a Compellent configuration can deliver “three times the transactional performance (using a TPC-C benchmark), 85 percent less latency, and 15 percent more capacity while consuming 50 percent less power and rack space than its disk-based counterpart. In other words, if you have the right balance of performance and capacity requirements to effectively leverage it, this innovation could save you a wad of cash, deliver a huge performance windfall, or both. ”
The takeaway
The newest Compellent release is a powerhouse tool, capable of high level integration with your virtualization platforms and heavy reduction in storage administration overheads because of slick automation from a central GUI. Kalles Group’s system engineers are excited about this new technology. Here’s why:
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Efficiency
IT staff no longer have to spend their time on basic storage management issues. Load balancing, application optimization, and disk maintenance are managed automatically
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Improved performance
Hands-free data migration and extended storage array lifecycles mean less organization downtime and enhanced disaster recovery. A study by Dell shows organizations using Compellent (and its cousin EqualLogic) saw “a 99% improvement in end-user downtime saving an average of $25,000 per 100 users per year.” The benefits to automated redundancy are self-evident
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Scalability
Unlike frame-based chassis systems, there’s no set limit to the number of disks a Compellent system is capable of integrating and managing, and installation is essentially plug-and-play. Combined with automatic load balancing, this system is capable of growing alongside an organization seamlessly with minimal oversight
Sources:
http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/business/solutions/whitepapers/en/Documents/idc-tco-dell-storage-web.pdf