Podcast #149: Dell PowerStore Elite: Hands-on Deep Dive From the Hopkinton Lab

The Storage Review team visited the Dell campus in Hopkinton to go hands-on with the latest advancements in enterprise storage. This podcast takes place in one of our favorite places, the Hopkinton Dell Lab. Brian connects with Scott Delandy, an Engineering Technologist at Dell, for this interaction to go in-depth on the PowerStore Elite. This discussion covers the transition from PowerStore Gen 2 to the new PowerStore Elite, exploring the hardware architectural shifts and the software-driven intelligence defined by PowerStore OS 5.0.

While in the Hopkinton lab, we filmed a deep dive with Dell’s Technical Marketing Engineer, Stephen Granger, where Kevin and Steve tear down the 9500 controller and compare it to the 1500 controller. It gets technical with details around PCIe lanes, drive connectivity, battery backup architecture, serviceability, and new IO module form factor. It’s worth a look as a companion to the podcast video.

This short podcast and the Hardware Deep Dive videos literally tear down the PowerStore Gen Elite to give you an in-depth view of the internals. Brian and the team cover the upgrades from Gen 2 to Gen 3, providing the information you need to understand how the PowerStore Elite fits your environment. If you don’t have 30 minutes to spend, we’ve broken the segments down into five-minute increments so you can hop around to the sections that apply to your environment and interests.

[00:00-05:00] Introduction

The conversation opens with a transition from lab testing to the platform’s official rebranding and the key components of the new release.

• Official rebranding of PowerStore Gen 3 to PowerStore Elite.
• Integration of PowerStore OS 5.0 with the new Gen 3 hardware platform.
• Backward compatibility of OS 5.0 features for existing PowerStore installations.
• Hardware architecture leap featuring PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 memory.
• Shift to E3.S and E3.L flash media modules for high-density storage.
• Standardization on OCP IO modules to streamline the component ecosystem.

[05:00-10:00] Hardware Standardization and Strategy

The dialogue focuses on the strategic decision to leverage common components across the Dell ISG portfolio and the benefits for supply chain resiliency.

• Supply chain advantages gained by using standardized PowerEdge server components.
• Reduced lead times for systems through a consolidated parts bucket strategy.
• Distinction between off-the-shelf server hardware and purpose-engineered storage controllers.
• Internal bus and memory access optimizations specifically for storage workloads.
• The interaction between hardware and software in autonomous operations drives significant performance gains.

[10:00-15:00] Cybersecurity and Ransomware Resiliency

As security becomes a primary objective for storage administrators, the discussion highlights the platform’s new detection and recovery capabilities.

• Enhancing cyber resiliency within primary storage rather than relying solely on secondary backup.
• Native ransomware detection using anomaly patterns and signature monitoring.
• Reducing Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) through faster detection.
• Granular telemetry monitoring at the individual IO level for application security.
• Maintaining peak storage performance while running background analysis for security threats.

[15:00-20:00] AIOps and the Shift Toward Automation

The speakers explore the cultural shift in storage administration from Manual “knob-turning” to trusting machine-driven automation and intelligence.

• Evolution of storage administrator roles from specialists to infrastructure generalists.
• Automating routine tasks like software updates and security patches to reduce admin effort.
• Building trust in infrastructure to perform prescriptive remediations automatically.
• The impact of cloud-native experiences on user expectations for on-premises management.
• Future roadmap for AIOps to provide increasingly actionable intelligence and fewer manual approvals.

[20:00-2500] Enterprise Data Services and Legacy Integration

The segment looks back at the foundational technologies of the past 32-bit and 64-bit file systems while defining modern enterprise requirements.

• The architectural heritage of modern file code is rooted in legacy platforms like VNXe.
• Challenging the “midrange” label by focusing on enterprise-grade resiliency and data services.
• Advanced replication topologies and active-active failover capabilities.
• Integration with modern orchestration layers, including Kubernetes through CSI and CSM.
• Empowering failover and failback operations at the orchestrated level without manual storage intervention.

[25:00-30:00] Segment 6: Infrastructure Flexibility and Modern Ecosystems

A discussion on how storage must now fit into a complex ecosystem of diverse hypervisors, containers, and multi-cloud environments.

• Shifting from evaluating storage in isolation to assessing its fit within the entire infrastructure stack.
• Simplifying deployment through pre-built playbooks for Ansible and Terraform.
• Managing the complexity of modern environments involving Nutanix, Azure, and Kubernetes.
• Prioritizing product roadmaps based on user pain points and market telemetry.
• The move toward a faster software release cadence is to stay aligned with evolving tech trends.

[30:00-35:00] Maintenance, Migration, and Life Cycle Management

The podcast concludes with a focus on ease of serviceability and the simplified path for migrating data to the latest generation of hardware.

• Serviceability improvements, including intuitive latches and accessible boot drives to minimize downtime.
• Zero-impact migration paths through inter-cluster migration tools.
• Preserving path management at the cluster level during hardware refreshes.
• Economic strategies for utilizing older gear as Tier 2 or Tier 3 storage.
• Future-proofing the architecture to support subsequent controller upgrades and technology generations.