Dell PowerVault MD3 Dense Arrays Announced

Dell has announced the new PowerVault MD3 dense array, their most dense storage array ever, housing up to 180TB in a 60-drive 4U rack enclosure. Dell bills the PowerVault MD3 as a flexible mainline storage array for SMBs up to enterprises that need bulk storage that’s flexible enough to grow with data storage demands over time. With a pair of expansion shelves the MD3 dense array can scale to 180 hard drives, storing up to 540TB in 12U of rack space, there’s certainly plenty of room to grow for most businesses.

Dell has announced the new PowerVault MD3 dense array, their most dense storage array ever, housing up to 180TB in a 60-drive 4U rack enclosure. Dell bills the PowerVault MD3 as a flexible mainline storage array for SMBs up to enterprises that need bulk storage that’s flexible enough to grow with data storage demands over time. With a pair of expansion shelves the MD3 dense array can scale to 180 hard drives, storing up to 540TB in 12U of rack space, there’s certainly plenty of room to grow for most businesses.

The MD3 supports Fibre Channel, SAS and iSCSI protocols and for those who need a little more performance, the system has built in high performance tiering. With the dense enclosure Dell includes a pair of new features. Dynamic Disk Pools (DDP) improves storage efficiency with self-healing dynamic disk rebalancing, which is easier to manage than standard RAID configurations. The second new feature is the integration of VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration, which provides hardware acceleration functionality for virtualized environments.

Like the rest of the PowerVault MD3 series, the MD3 dense array uses the same software, firmware and management tools. MD3 arrays are managed by MD Storage Manager software, a client-based Java application. Designed with the IT generalist in mind, the software can manage all administrative tasks including system configuration, expansion, maintenance and performance tuning, without taking the storage array offline.

Dell DR4000 Backup Appliance Updates
The DR4000 disk-based backup and recovery appliance have received a few updates as well. First, the DR4000 adds support for Symantec OpenStorage (OST). This enables Symantec backup software to become aware of the properties and capabilities of the DR4000, netting better control of backup images. The DR4000 with DR Rapid Data Access can also increase performance with Symantec OST, backing up 4TB per hour. Lastly, the DR4000 adds the ability to replicate from multiple backup appliances to one. Users with remote/branch offices can now replicate to a centralized location, offering a more simplified disaster recovery plan for admins responsible for an expansive set of locations.

Pricing and Availability
The MD3 dense array and DR4000 updates are both available globally this month.

Dell PowerVault MD3

Dell DR4000

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