Dell EMC Expands Midrange SC All-Flash Array Lineup

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Dell EMC today announced the addition of two new arrays to its SC Series all-flash storage portfolio, the SC5020F and SC7020F.

Both storage appliances are aimed at midmarket customers but borrow features from their upmarket cousins. The 3U systems feature a dual active/active controller design, using eight-core Xeon processors from Intel and up to 256GB of RAM to power storage operations and workloads.

“These new and intelligent storage systems feature: self-optimizing performance, including best-in-class data reduction; federated data mobility is also automatic; and all-inclusive software value means every SC feature is included, which makes purchasing and maintaining even easier. These arrays represent a premium performance offering, with enhanced pricing, program and software licensing advantages,” wrote Scott Millard, vice president of Global Channel Specialty Sales at Dell EMC in a Nov. 7 announcement.

“Customers get huge performance, up to 399,000 IOPS per array, and 3.9 million aggregate IOPS per multi-array federated cluster, all in an easy-to-use package,” Millard added.

The SC5020F and SC7020F supports federated multi-array cluster configurations right out of the box, enabling seamless load balancing and workload migration, according to the company. Built-in efficiency-enhancing and cost-savings features include intelligent thin provisioning, data deduplication, compression and RAID tiering.

Dell EMC’s newest all-flash arrays are joined by an update to the company’s Dell EMC Unity storage system software.

Version 4.3 now features inline deduplication to help organizations get the most out of their all-flash storage capacity. The software also now supports online data-in-place storage controller upgrades, stated Dell EMC, along with a synchronous file replication feature that enables business continuity with zero data loss.

Finally, there’s a new way to buy Dell EMC Unity and SC Series solutions and safeguard those investments.

Since the performance delivered by flash storage comes at a premium—relative to traditional disk-based systems—the new Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program offers customers a 4:1 storage efficiency guarantee. Flash storage vendors often use ratios to illustrate how much raw data can be stuffed into their arrays after deduplication and other storage-efficiency functionality are taken into account.

Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program also ensures non-disruptive data migrations when upgrading to new Dell EMC storage and provides the storage management and data protection software required to operate the arrays at no extra cost. To sweeten the deal, the company is throwing in a free year of Virtustream Storage Cloud storage for hybrid-cloud tiering scenarios, along with a three-year guarantee on a system’s published performance figures and capabilities.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Storage Forum. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Pedro Hernandez
Pedro Hernandez
Pedro Hernandez is a contributor to Datamation, eWEEK, and the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Previously, he served as a managing editor for the Internet.com network of IT-related websites and as the Green IT curator for GigaOM Pro.

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