Dell EMC Continues Relentless Innovation in Dell EMC Unity and SC Series Midrange Storage Arrays

HOPKINTON, Mass., July 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --                                                     

News Summary:

• Dell EMC is rolling out significant software operating system updates across its market-leading midrange storage portfolio
• New Dell EMC Unity Operating Environment (OE 4.4) boosts file-based replication and data mobility and security capabilities for block and file workloads
• New SC Series Operating System update (SCOS 7.3) delivers significantly higher performance and capacity gains, new Unisphere HTML5 interface and data-in-place upgrade capabilities
• Dell EMC Unity reaches milestone of 1 Exabyte of raw flash storage capacity shipped since May 2016 debutⁱ

Full Story:

Building on its commitment of continued investment and innovation in its midrange storage solutions, Dell EMC announced major software operating system updates to Dell EMC Unity and SC Series, giving customers powerful new features designed to extend the performance, functionality and longevity of their product investments.

As part of the software built into both Dell EMC Unity and SC Series All-flash and Hybrid storage arrays, customers can upgrade their operating system non-disruptively and at no cost (for customers with active ProSupport agreements) to improve workload performance, storage capacity and data protection and availability.

"We brought together the best engineers in the industry to accelerate our innovation in storage and have delivered major updates and significant new features to our midrange portfolio, demonstrating the power of what we can do together to delight our customers," said Jeff Boudreau, President, Dell EMC Storage. "With this release, we're continuing our relentless innovation in Dell EMC Unity and SC Series by delivering huge performance improvements, easier management, better security and greater efficiencies. We're helping our customers modernize their data centers and solve their top business challenges."

New Dell EMC Unity OE features

With more than 1 Exabyte (1,000 PBs) of raw flash storage capacity shipped since its debut just over two years agoⁱⁱ, Dell EMC Unity has become the benchmark midrange storage solution. It is designed to deliver the ultimate in simplicity and value, enabling organizations to speed deployment, streamline management and seamlessly tier unified storage workloads to the cloud.

The new Dell EMC Unity operating environment gains the following new replication, data mobility and security features to ensure uninterrupted operations of applications that support the business:

Array-based file replication

• New Metrosync array-based file replication protects transactional file applications with rapid recovery and automated failover to a secondary data center
• 2-Way NDMP improves performance for better NAS backup times while reducing WAN/LAN network congestion

Data Mobility

• Built-in data mobility capabilities to migrate block data from third-party storage arrays directly to Dell EMC Unity

Security Enhancements

• LDAP/AD enhancements for performance, availability, and search flexibility for Microsoft environments

The addition of Metrosync for file delivers a complete complement of array-based replication, with synchronous and asynchronous block and file replication options now included with every Dell EMC Unity Hybrid and All-Flash configuration. These replication options combine to improve transactional application data RPO and RTO, long distance disaster recovery, and data aggregation and distribution.

SC Series gains performance, capacity and new HTML5 UI

For the past several quarters, Dell EMC engineers have embarked on a top-to-bottom code optimization of SCOS to extract higher performance and efficiency from SC Series hybrid and all-flash arrays, while also improving management, analytics and monitoring.

New SCOS 7.3 features include:

Major IOPS performance boost

• Now up to 2.2M max IOPS per array, over 20M in federated multi-array environmentsⁱⁱⁱ
• 2X increase in maximum IOPS across every current SC array model^iv
• 50,000-100,000 more mixed-workload IOPS across every SC array^v

Improved management for single and multi-array environments

• New Unisphere for SC HTML5 Web UI simplifies and automates common storage management tasks; shares common look and feel with Unisphere for Dell EMC Unity

Easier, more cost-effective upgrades and expansion

• Up to 2X increase in maximum capacity per array^vi
• Data-in-place upgrades for the popular SC4020 offers cost-effective option for customers to migrate data to newer SC models
• SCv2000 can now federate/replicate with other SC Series arrays

More enterprise-class efficiency and availability

• Support for 100Gb and 25Gb iSCSI network hardware offers customers future-proof solutions and buying assurance
• Distributed sparing, for greater I/O efficiency and up to 500% faster rebuilds^vii
• Live Volume enhancements designed to deliver lower latency and reduced network traffic in high availability environments

By upgrading to the new SCOS 7.3, SC Series customers can gain an overnight boost in workload performance. Three SC array models now provide over 1 million IOPS^viii.  Dell EMC tests show real-world applications such as VDI and SQL OLTP can perform 33%^ix to 54%^x faster with SCOS 7.3.

Availability:

Dell EMC Unity OE 4.4 and SC Series SCOS 7.3 are available now as no-cost software upgrades for customers with an active Dell ProSupport agreement.

Additional Resources:

• Read the Blog: "New Software Update to Dell EMC Unity Blends Midrange Vision with Innovative Enterprise Features"
• Read the Blog: "Boost Performance and Capacity of SC Series Storage with Free SCOS Upgrade"
• IDC white paper: "Midrange Customers Demand High-End Functionality at Affordable Prices"
• Learn more about Dell EMC Unity
• Learn more about Dell EMC SC Series
• Connect with Dell EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and ECN.

About Dell EMC

Dell EMC, a part of Dell Technologies, enables organizations to modernize, automate and transform their data center using industry-leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage and data protection technologies.  This provides a trusted foundation for businesses to transform IT, through the creation of a hybrid cloud, and transform their business through the creation of cloud-native applications and big data solutions.  Dell EMC services customers across 180 countries – including 98 percent of the Fortune 500 – with the industry's most comprehensive and innovative portfolio from edge to core to cloud.

Copyright © 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell, EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. 

ⁱ Based on Dell internal sales data May 2016-April 2018

ⁱⁱ Based on internal tests performed in February, 2018 comparing SC9000 running 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware on 100% sequential reads with 4K sector transfer size. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

ⁱⁱⁱ Based on internal tests performed in February, 2018 on SC9000, SC7020, SC5020 and SCv3020 arrays running 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware on 100% sequential reads with 4K sector transfer size. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

^iv Based on internal tests performed in February, 2018 on SC9000, SC7020, SC5020 and SCv3020 arrays comparing 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware running 70% reads, 30% writes with 4K sector transfer size. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

^v Based on internal tests performed in February, 2018 on SC9000, SC7020 and SC5020 arrays running 7.3 vs. 72 firmware.

^vi Based on internal tests performed by Dell EMC on SCv3000 array with and without distributed sparing mode active. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

^vii Based on internal tests performed in February, 2018 on SC9000, SC7020 and SC5020 arrays running 100% sequential reads with 4K sector transfer size.  Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

^viii Based on internal tests performed by Dell EMC on an SC9000 with 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware.  Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

^ix Based on internal tests performed by Dell EMC on an SC9000 with 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

^x Based on internal tests performed by Dell EMC in February 2018 running TPC-E like workloads (95% reads, 8K sector transfer size) on an SC9000 with 7.3 vs 7.2 firmware. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

SOURCE Dell EMC