Small and Medium businesses (SMBs) can now take advantage of consolidated, next-generation storage, thanks to the flexible and easy to use Dell PowerVault MD3600i and MD3600f Storage Area Network (SAN) offerings, available from distributors Drive Control Corporation (DCC).
“Data is growing at rapidly increasing rates and organisations of all sizes need to gear up to enable their businesses to function and cater for future growth. The MD3600 series provides high levels of storage with an excellent price to performance ratio. This appeals to the SMB market, offering high levels of data throughput and block level access, in a quality product that comes standard with Dell’s renowned and superior after sales service,’ says Jaco Erasmus, Enterprise Specialist at DCC.
Consolidated SAN storage enables organisations to deliver a single solution to cater for all data requirements across the board. This allows for higher utilisation, which in the long term enables higher return on investment. This is achieved by negating the need to waste budget on disks in local servers which may be under-utilised.
“With SAN storage from the Dell PowerVault range, SMBs can centralise data from local servers for easier sharing and restore capabilities. This delivers high performance and high availability along with complete failover and redundancy to protect from downtime caused by server related failure,’ he adds.
The PowerVault MD3600f features include 8Gb/s throughput, up to 64 Hosts, 2GB cache per controller, single or dual controllers, improved performance over other generations of MD and up to 96 drives. The PowerVault 3600i is a 10G Ethernet iSCSI SAN solution that is ideal for virtualised environments. Both models support a range of drive types, enclosures, and RAID levels all within a single array.
Both unit types are supported by the advanced MD Storage Manager software, an intuitive client-based Java application that has been designed for easy user interaction with the system. This software allows all administrative tasks to be easily managed without causing system downtime or interrupting performance. The units are also easily scalable, expandable up to a total of 96 hard drives, and enable a mix and match of drive types to create the optimum in tiered data environments.
“Using these next-generation SAN solutions from Dell, SMBs can maximise rack space thanks to denser arrays and save on energy costs with a more energy efficient solution. Deploying the PowerVault MD3600i or MD3600f arrays, along with other Dell branded products, can help organisations reduce power budgets and trim storage resources, enabling operating costs to be dramatically reduced and allowing businesses to more efficiently scale data storage,’ Erasmus concludes.
