Entry Storage is the PowerVault ME4 Series
Simple. Fast. Affordable.
Dell EMC introduced the PowerVault ME4 Storage Series about eighteen months ago. The ME4 Series is optimized for SAN/DAS environments and is highly integrated with Dell PowerEdge Servers for any DAS workload. PowerVault delivers simplicity, performance, scale and affordability combined with a depth of all-inclusive features (no hidden costs) that are common in enterprise storage products. PowerVault has significantly simplified our entry storage portfolio from four platforms down to ONE offering, removing confusion from the purchase decision.
In the past eighteen months, the PowerVault Series has demonstrated consistent growth with 23,000+ systems shipped worldwide (2500+ AFAs) serving 11,000+ customers and representative of 2,850 PB+ of raw capacity (85PB+ Flash). And, in just the past eight months, it’s joined Dell EMC’s storage and networking portfolio with support for CloudIQ – a cloud-based application to provide actionable insights on infrastructure health anywhere, anytime.
PowerVault ME4 Storage
The PowerVault ME4 Series is a family of multi-protocol (SAS, iSCSI, FC) storage arrays (ME4012, ME4024, ME4084), expansion enclosures (ME412, ME424, ME484) and JBOD enclosures optimized with PowerEdge Servers (ME484, MD1400, MD1420). These arrays are designed to meet the needs of the entry storage market considered in the sub-$25K price band. The PowerVault ME4 Series is exceedingly flexible and can be deployed in an all HDD configuration with starting pricing below $10K, or it can be configured in hybrid or as all-flash to meet more demanding needs of a growing business. In any case, ME4 provides incredible value in a highly scalable, dense system.
PowerVault Streamlines and Simplifies SMB Workloads
Regardless of how it’s deployed, PowerVault provides a “pay as you grow” model (buy a drive; use a drive) with ease-of-deployment and management supported by rich set of data services to meet a variety of different use cases, including:
-
High Performance Computing (Parallel File Systems)
- You’ll get powerful capabilities when you attach PowerEdge Servers to PowerVault ME4 storage for the ultimate High-Performance Computing experience. ME4 supports HPC parallel file systems like PixStor and BeeGFS with modular building blocks in small, medium, and large configurations combined with best practices and reference architectures. With PowerVault, you can flexibly scale throughput and capacity for optimum performance and throughput.
- You’ll get powerful capabilities when you attach PowerEdge Servers to PowerVault ME4 storage for the ultimate High-Performance Computing experience. ME4 supports HPC parallel file systems like PixStor and BeeGFS with modular building blocks in small, medium, and large configurations combined with best practices and reference architectures. With PowerVault, you can flexibly scale throughput and capacity for optimum performance and throughput.
-
Safety and Security Solutions
- The rise of global safety and security concerns has created demands for reliable, available and flexible storage infrastructure solutions to keep pace with advances in video technology and capacity growth. PowerVault storage provides a solid foundation as a video archive and capacity expansion solution or a small VMS implementation that will keep pace with your security needs. With PowerVault, you’ll get high throughput and scalability to support video from hundreds of cameras at any bit rate.
- The rise of global safety and security concerns has created demands for reliable, available and flexible storage infrastructure solutions to keep pace with advances in video technology and capacity growth. PowerVault storage provides a solid foundation as a video archive and capacity expansion solution or a small VMS implementation that will keep pace with your security needs. With PowerVault, you’ll get high throughput and scalability to support video from hundreds of cameras at any bit rate.
-
Virtual Desktops
- PowerVault storage with PowerEdge Servers is the ideal combination to ensure a quality end user VDI experience and maximize the cost of running persistent virtual desktops. Using this combination, you’ll be able to centrally manage a VDI environment and launch up to 1,300 virtual desktops in just under 22 minutes.
- PowerVault storage with PowerEdge Servers is the ideal combination to ensure a quality end user VDI experience and maximize the cost of running persistent virtual desktops. Using this combination, you’ll be able to centrally manage a VDI environment and launch up to 1,300 virtual desktops in just under 22 minutes.
-
Virtualization
- PowerVault ME4 and PowerEdge Servers again combine to optimize your VMware and Microsoft virtualization (VMs) environments. The ME4 Series has been tested and validated with PowerEdge Servers running different host operating systems along with vSphere and Hyper-V. Directly attaching ME4 to PowerEdge Servers simplifies the challenges of server capacity expansion and business applications get high-speed access to data.
- PowerVault ME4 and PowerEdge Servers again combine to optimize your VMware and Microsoft virtualization (VMs) environments. The ME4 Series has been tested and validated with PowerEdge Servers running different host operating systems along with vSphere and Hyper-V. Directly attaching ME4 to PowerEdge Servers simplifies the challenges of server capacity expansion and business applications get high-speed access to data.
-
Backup/Recovery
- When our SMB customers need reliable, low cost backup and recovery storage, they turn to PowerVault ME4. We’ve simplified block-based data protection for SMBs and even have Veeam certification for PowerVault. Now, you’ll be able to easily and affordably connect PowerVault with either Dell EMC or 3rd party backup solutions.
- When our SMB customers need reliable, low cost backup and recovery storage, they turn to PowerVault ME4. We’ve simplified block-based data protection for SMBs and even have Veeam certification for PowerVault. Now, you’ll be able to easily and affordably connect PowerVault with either Dell EMC or 3rd party backup solutions.
Operational Value
PowerVault ME4 arrays are easy to set up, configure and provision workloads within 15 minutes and deliver the performance you need – up to 320,000 IOPS. The ME4 is built for reliability as well, with five-9’s availability and if scale concerns you, then ME4 will support up to 4PB raw capacity in only 15RU via a 12Gb SAS backend.
PowerVault’s all-inclusive software model represents a deep set of block-level features including SSD Read Cache, Auto-Tiering, Asynchronous Replication (iSCSI, FC), Snapshots, SED drives, Volume Copy, SupportAssist, Integrations with VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, Thin Provisioning and others. And should a drive failure occur, PowerVault implements ADAPT Software (Distributed RAID) that uses all the drives in the array to rebuild the failed drive faster and with high performance I/O.
Finally, PowerVault ME4 storage is configured and managed with its own PowerVault Manager (CLI is also supported), an HTML5 interface, that uses common tasks to manage profiles, network connections, alerts and more. From this interface, you can easily connect to SupportAssist and onboard CloudIQ. Additionally, ME4’s extended management ecosystem includes support in Dell OpenManage Enterprise (OME) and in the open OME Plug-in for Nagios 3.1.
Summary
As an innovation leader, Dell EMC implicitly understands the entry storage market needs. Our design model remains steadfast on providing the highest levels of reliability, simplicity, features and affordability. As a result, PowerVault ME4 has experienced a 20+ point climb in pNPS (an industry tool that gauges the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships) from 2HFY20 to 1HFY21. And, PowerVault ME4 was fully reviewed by StorageReview and named their 2019 Editor’s Choice and it won CRN’s 2019 Tech Innovator Award.
PowerVault ME4 Series sets the standard for entry level SAN and DAS storage simplicity, reliability and quality so you can stay focused on your business. Engineered from the ground-up to tackle your data storage challenges, these arrays come in scalable and flash optimized models to flexibly fit your budget. Whether you are looking to start small or grow to hundreds of terabytes, PowerVault ME4 Series has you covered.
We hope you’ll see for yourself at www.dellemc.com/powervault and watch a short video about PowerVault ME4.
[1] IDC WW Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, 2019Q2, September 5, 2019 – Vendor Revenue.