back to article Dell bundles data mgmt AND flash into 1.2m IOPS flashy array

Dell has produced an all-flash array within the EqualLogic environment, thinking customers need existing data management capabilities on top of flash speeds, and not a binary either-or choice. It has revved up its mid-range iSCSI SAN array with the PS6210, following on from the PS6110, a 64-bit version of the EqualLogic …

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  1. M. B.

    Neat

    Dell also has an all-flash Compellent option that was GA as of Storage Center 6.4. And there was always an all-flash EqualLogic in the PS6xx0s, but it certainly wasn't this capable. It would be interesting to see how they obtained that 1.2m IOPS result. Some people buy flash expecting sub-millisecond access times from their apps, but some of us could live quite happily at 2ms especially if it's reasonably consistent and means expanding in cheaper increments.

    I wonder how it would compete as far as features and $/IOPS vs. the rest of the flash market? I suspect some folks will need to either spread FUD (15MB page size, how does Dell sleep at night!) or cut costs significantly.

    Add in the Force 10 switching providing low latency 10GbE with DCB for lossless Ethernet and you've got a pretty stout storage backend/fabric that shouldn't break the bank (although I'm looking at 300k for a flashy CML, so it's still steep even with the Dell price points).

    Not a bad story for Dell tbh, especially existing EQL customers looking at a flash requirement. Now to pull a multi-controller Compellent out of the hat for Enterprise Tier 1 customers.

    1. M. B.

      Re: Neat

      And by PS6xx0s, I mean the 61x0s and 60x0s models.

      Also, it looks like the result was obtained from using 8 of the PS6210s models together, 100% read workload (on their web site) so "tuned for success".

      Still, some good steps forward for this product line. I'm interested as well in the performance improvement on the spinning disk models where cache is hit frequently as well, 16GB is a big jump.

  2. jcrb
    WTF?

    The all-flash version “can achieve ......

    only 150K IOPs in other words its a dog.

    They think they are so clever pretending they can hit a measly 1M IOPs, And that it only deserves a footnote that it took 8 units to get there.

    This habit of referring to the performance of a half a rack or more worth of equipment as if it were a single product is actually just pathetic.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lipstick On The Pig

    This all sounds great! Moving from Broadcom MIPS to Intel CPUs and going to 16GB RAM is a much needed move.

    What hasn't been mentioned at all is a fix to the worst possible problem of their hideously large 15MB block size, which kills performance over time (and introduces massive latency) but also makes snapshots/replication features painful to implement and manage anything more than a day or two at best.

    It's all very well having sexy new CPUs and RAM, but if the actual filesystem is a pig... does it really matter?

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