Dell introduces next-generation storage area network

Dell South Africa has announced its fourth-generation SAN, comprising of new storage systems and software and designed to provide critical data protection and storage management features at a competitive price.

Dell`s next-generation SAN integrates a new Fibre Channel array with enhanced software for managing storage resources. "By linking multiple storage arrays, customers can integrate up to 20 servers and manage up to 70 Terrabytes of storage on one SAN," notes Sean Wainer, enterprise product manager at Dell SA. "This SAN provides a comprehensive solution to organisations deploying business-critical applications requiring large amounts of data storage."

At the centre of this SAN is the Dell PowerVault 660F, a new rack-optimised storage array. Wainer says the new system will co-exist with the current Dell PowerVault 650F to offer new SAN customers price-per-megabyte value. With over seven Terrabytes of storage capacity in one standard rack, the PowerVault 660F enables improved application performance across networks, uninterrupted access to data, fast backup with advanced disaster protection, and data management capabilities.

The PowerVault 660F is composed of 14 Fibre Channel disk drives in their own rack-optimised enclosure. "Combined with Dell`s PowerVault 530F SAN appliance launched last September, customers can start small and grow their SAN with additional data protection features as their business needs change," suggests Wainer.

These features include storage virtualisation for more efficient allocation and management of storage assets, remote and three-way mirroring, and the ability to boot from the SAN for easy replacement of failed servers.

Dell has also incorporated storage management software designed to improve management and availability of SAN resources, says Wainer. Its Open Manage Array Manager simplifies storage subsystem set-up and management by integrating RAID configuration and volume management features into a single application. And Dell`s OpenManage Storage Consolidation software allows external storage subsystems to be safely shared by multiple Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers.

The SAN offers data protection through Dell PowerSuites, a software tool packaged into functional suites to target the needs of SAN administrators. It provides backup, restore and data recovery features in Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Novell NetWare environments.

According to Wainer, the PowerVault SAN supports multiple clusters that can share a single PowerVault 660F, providing overall system availability, performance and capacity.

The new SAN is part of Dell`s focus on the storage environment.

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the disk array portion of the SAN market will grow to more than $19.8 billion in annual sales by 2004. Dell achieved 73 percent growth in year-over-year sales of external storage products in the third quarter of this year and reported overall storage sales approaching $1 billion annually.