Earlier I’ve discucced a bit on Software defined storage and how this is an growing market with new vendors appearing all the time. Some of the concept behind SDS is the ability to move features that have previously only been available to the hardware solutions into the software stack. http://msandbu.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/software-defined-storage-and-delivering-performance/
Now as I mentioned there are a lot of different vendors here, some focus on delivering high performance, some on delivering adequate I/O on commodity hardware, some on flexibility, and many in between.
So what do we choose ? Since there are so many different vendors here it might be a hard choice to choose one over the other. The big question is what do I need ? Do I need to run big OLTP databases running on an average 200,000 IOPS, do I need to have a hyper-v cluster setup using commodity hardware in order to have a low cost on my Storage? Do I have existing Vmware infrastructure that I want to improve my IOPS on ? Looking to buy new hardware to have next generation VDI platform ? Do I have a bunch of different backend NAS / DAS and SAN I want to pool into a large unit of storage?
So the question is what do I have, what do I want and where do I need to go
And as the title mentiones, when you are looking for a new solution/ platform for software-defined storage, well then Dell’s got you covered.
Dell is one of the few hardware vendors who is certified for most of the different SDS solutions such as.
VSAN: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsan
EVO: RAIL http://www.vmware.com/products/evorail
Dell also has a strategic partnership with Nutanix (which is going to be Dell hardware shipping with Nutanix Software) called the XC-series
Also Dell has partnership with both Nexenta and Atlantis
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/dell-nexenta-storage
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/mediagallery/20439148/download
Dell has also included a partnership with SanDisk in 13th generation servers which allows for simple SSD tiering on servers –> http://www.sandisk.com/about-sandisk/press-room/press-releases/2014/sandisk-das-cache-software-now-available-for-next-generation-dell-poweredge-servers/
So Dell has many different SDS options on their solutions, and also their SC-series, Equallogic, Compellent for running traditional workloads.