It’s been a heady two years for PowerStore. Since the platform launched in 2020, we’ve sustained an incredible pace of innovation, with matching sales success. Three feature-packed major releases, three Product of the Year awards, 12,000 successful deployments in 90+ countries, 50 million customer run hours and multiple exabytes of effective capacity installed. Within a year of launch, PowerStore became the fastest-ramping new storage architecture in Dell history.

Simply put, PowerStore is winning because we’re helping our customers win – again and again. They understand and trust the platform’s key design promise to remain continuously modern, evolving with business needs to radically simplify IT for the long term. In the past two years, we’ve backed this promise with extraordinary “software first” capabilities like AppsON, intelligent scale-out, Dynamic Resiliency Engine (DRE) and a growing diversity of storage automation tools for DevOps and Containers.

One big reason we selected PowerStore was for the Anytime Upgrade program. We’re planning on taking advantage of that in the future as we grow.” – Richard Semple, CIO, Williamson County, TX

Welcome to the Next Phase of Continuously Modern

But we’re not standing still, as we’re now shipping the largest release in PowerStore history. There are two main aspects:

• • PowerStoreOS 3.0 – First, we’ve released a comprehensive software upgrade that delivers over 120 new features, more new capabilities even than the original 2020 launch. As always, we’re passing this innovation directly to current customers via a no-cost, non-disruptive upgrade that significantly increases solution flexibility and elevates the overall PowerStore experience.
  • Gen 2 platform refresh – We’re also launching an end-to-end hardware refresh that can likewise be experienced as a non-disruptive, data-in-place upgrade. Existing customers will soon have the option to upgrade their appliance with faster Intel processors, expand with high-capacity NVMe enclosures and enable state-of-the-art networking with 100GbE IO – all while preserving existing chassis and drive investments.

Whether the release is consumed as a value-packed upgrade or the baseline for a new PowerStore purchase, it will help you do three essential things to maintain your competitive edge in a rapidly changing world.

Boost Workload Performance

• • Go faster – PowerStore has always been known for speed and sub-millisecond latency. We’re now raising the bar with up to 50% more IOPS for mixed workloads¹, up to 70% faster writes², and up to a 10X improvement in copy operations.³
  • Scale higher – We’re also increasing maximum capacity 66%⁴ to over 18 PBe per cluster, with support for up to 8x more volumes per appliance.⁵ The software update even transforms our affordable PowerStore 500 entry solution, which now scales up and out to the same max capacity as the other models.
  • Deploy an NVMe ecosystem – PowerStore again pushes the envelope of NVMe adoption, simplifying both NVMe capacity expansion and networking. New 100Gb NVMe/TCP deployment is fast and easy, thanks to Dell’s SmartFabric Storage Software. Organizations without Fibre Channel infrastructure can now connect PowerStore to blazing-fast NVMe/TCP networks offering up to 73% better performance at 50% lower cost per port.⁶

Innovate Without Limits

But it’s much more than performance. This release dramatically expands the platform’s lineup of advanced enterprise capabilities, offering more flexibility to build your next breakthrough on PowerStore.

• • More data mobility and protection – We’re adding native file, vVols and metro area synchronous replication to our existing asynchronous block replication. Now you can protect ANY workload (block, vVols or file) entirely within the PowerStore environment. Ulrich Betzler, Storage Architect with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, describes PowerStore as a very fast-evolving, future-proof platform. “The new native Metro Volume replication setup was perfect. I wish I could have the same UI for other products,” he said.
    
  • More enterprise file – PowerStoreOS 3.0’s file enhancements will make PowerStore the overwhelming favorite for unified file and block solutions. In addition to replication, we’re increasing file performance, adding VMware file support and implementing new security features like File Level Retention/WORM and third-party monitoring. As an added bonus, Datadobi file migration software is now included with every new PowerStore purchase, at no extra cost. Why keep that antiquated filer any longer? This release gives you more reasons than ever to move to PowerStore – and makes it EASY to move at the same time.

We found traditional NAS appliances didn’t give us adequate performance. PowerStore is the unified data foundation for ‘Eureka’ moments…empowering our genome scientists to do things they’d previously only dreamed of.” – James Lowey, TGEN

• • VMware integrations – We’re taking PowerStore’s well-known VMware affinity to a new level with end-to-end VMware visibility within the PowerStore Manager GUI, plus the ability to provision VM-level PowerStore services like snapshots and replication directly from vSphere. No matter which management perspective you prefer, this two-way integration simplifies and streamlines VMware storage solutions. This can now include NFS file datastores, native vVols replication and vVols-over-NVMe support. “The VMware integrations are a huge win; the array auto-tunes itself for running VMs on NFS and offers native VMware metro capabilities,”  according to John Lochausen, Solutions Architect for World Wide Technology (WWT).
  • Deeper cybersecurity – Security has always been fundamental to the PowerStore DNA, starting with NIST-aligned development focused on minimizing risk and addressing vulnerabilities. This release adds Hardware Root of Trust and Secure Boot for immutable silicon-based protection against malware tampering, third-party key manager support, end-to-end FIPS 140-2 compliance (now including all appliance models, expansion enclosures, NVRAM and data drives) and CEPA-enabled ransomware detection.

Stay Continuously Modern

The backdrop to all this good news is PowerStore’s overarching principle. Not only is the revolutionary architecture packed with flexibility and headroom at the time of purchase – PowerStore also streamlines the acquisition of new capabilities as time goes by, so you know your workloads are always running on the latest technology.

I’m especially excited to show our Gen 1 customers who enrolled in our Anytime Upgrade program the benefit they’re about to receive. These customers will get the 3.0 software, Gen 2 hardware upgrade AND ProDeploy deployment services – all at zero additional cost. They’ll simply choose when to redeem the benefit, and we’ll handle the rest, while their workloads continue to run. It’s the closest you can get to a cloud experience with on-prem storage.

No matter how you purchased your original PowerStore, traditional CAPEX or APEX Flex on Demand, do take advantage of the modernization options provided by the 3.0 release. They’ve been part of the plan all along. If you haven’t yet purchased, contact your Dell rep to learn why IT professionals around the world are turning to PowerStore.

Either way, with PowerStore, you’ll find what starts simple, stays simple – and this adaptable, constantly-innovating platform will give you a truly long-term business advantage.

¹ Based on internal tests comparing PowerStore 1200T peak IOPS with PowerStore OS 3.0 vs. PowerStore 1000T with PowerStoreOS 2.1, running 70/30 read/write mix, 8k block size. March, 2022. Actual results may vary.

² Based on internal tests comparing PowerStore 1200T peak IOPS with PowerStore OS 3.0 vs. PowerStore 1000T with PowerStoreOS 2.1, running 100% writes, 8k block size. March 2022. Actual results may vary.

³ Based on internal tests comparing XCOPY performance copying 1000 36GB VMs running on PowerStore 5000 with PowerStoreOS 3.0 vs. PowerStoreOS 2.0. Actual results will vary.

⁴ Maximum effective capacity for largest PowerStore cluster with PowerStoreOS 3.0 vs. PowerStoreOS 2.0. Assumes average 4:1 data reduction. Actual results vary.

⁵ Maximum supported volumes for largest PowerStore model (PS9000) with PowerStoreOS 3.0 vs. PowerStore OS 2.0.

⁶ Based on internal analysis of typical network cost for switch and host, March 2022. Max IOPS comparison based on 4k block size. Actual performance may vary.