Dell Technologies World 2023 : Dell PowerStore 3.5 – Overview
There is no question that we live in an ever-changing world – especially for you in IT. According to Dell’s own research [The Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) Snapshot a […]
Dell Storage, PowerStore, PowerFlex PowerMax & PowerScale, Virtualization & Containers Technologies
There is no question that we live in an ever-changing world – especially for you in IT. According to Dell’s own research [The Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) Snapshot a […]
There is no question that we live in an ever-changing world – especially for you in IT.
According to Dell’s own research [The Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) Snapshot a survey of 1000 IT decision makers from organizations around the world], almost half (48%) of organizations have suffered a cyber attack in the last 12 months.
Click to access global-data-protection-index-key-findings.pdf
And ESG research further confirms that of the companies they surveyed that had suffered an attack, 50% paid a ransom, but only 40% of them were able to cover more than 75% of their data.
Then there’s sustainability. IDC reports that 83% agree that sustainability is one of the most important criteria for IT buying decisions.
And finally, ESG has found that 9 out of 10 IT organizations must now move faster than three years ago, and nearly half of them more than 50% faster.
We know that there is innovative power in data – in fact, 81% of ESG survey respondents expect that DATA will “be their business” within next two years. But acting on it is the challenge.
That’s because organizations are faced with technology barriers like cyber threats, energy costs, operational silos and of course cloud costs and complexity.
The Dell Technologies Innovation Index bears this out.
This global benchmark assesses organizations’ innovation maturity by surveying more than 6,600 business decision makers.
According to the Dell Technologies Innovation Index, Innovation leaders (those with mature innovation approaches) are purposely investing in innovation – to drive outcomes for their business – especially in times of uncertainly.
The study reveals that these outcomes are significant. We found that Innovation Leaders (as compared to Innovation Laggards) are:
The reality, though, is that these challenges are real barriers holding many organizations back from achieving their innovation priorities and becoming a leader.
So how do you overcome those technology barriers?
So how do you overcome those technology barriers? With software-driven storage innovations from Dell Technologies – so you can strengthen IT security and supercharge efficiency.
When it comes to powering your innovation, we believe today’s
Only Dell provides the unique combination of immutability to protect against deletion, a cyber vault for air-gapped isolation, and AI and machine learning to speed data recovery. These innovations accelerate Zero Trust adoption, to protect an organization’s data from the threat of cyberattacks.
And for efficiency, our software innovations continue to push intelligence and automation to new levels. From eliminating time-consuming tasks with ML, to making our technology more energy efficient with each new generation. For example, we certify that our systems use industry standard benchmarks including ENERGY STAR and EPEAT. And Dell guarantees up to 4:1 data reduction across our broad storage portfolio.
This year, we’ll be announcing a parade of product releases across the greater Dell Storage portfolio, all designed to help customers strengthen their cyber resiliency and supercharge their efficiency. First up is PowerStore…
So let’s talk about PowerStore!
Again, the next-gen PowerStore release (PowerStoreOS 3.5) is the first of multiple announcements you’ll see over the next few quarters across the total Dell Storage portfolio – ALL designed to help customers strengthen their cyber resiliency and supercharge their efficiency.
We’ll discuss new capabilities of the PowerStore platform itself – as well as some exciting new ways PowerStore is integrated with the surrounding Dell ecosystem.
But first…let’s take a quick look at where PowerStore’s been recently.
As you may know, PowerStore has been experiencing incredible momentum in the marketplace.
That value has been recently quantified by independent third-party analysis (IDC) which found PowerStore returned an incredible 468% 3-year ROI for customers, on average. That’s a payback in less than 11 months!
Other stats from the same report show
The differentiator is intelligence and automation.
Customers recognize this too, and they’re voting with their wallets.
It’s important to note 24% of PowerStore customers are net new to Dell Storage – in other words, PowerStore is convincing customers to change storage vendors! There must be something very compelling here…
And best of all… customers who invest in PowerStore are extremely satisfied.
Preferred by more IT decision makers than Pure, HPE and NetApp
—————-
Vs. Pure, the survey also found customers were
PowerStore is the ONLY storage system with a Bain-certified NPS score
Again, this simply validates what we’ve been hearing from customers, and what our sales figures have been showing for almost three years.
What do customers love about PowerStore? It’s the non-stop innovation – and that already includes Cyber Resiliency and Efficiency, which are integral to the platform’s DNA.
It’s important to understand the enhancements we’ll discuss today are built on a solid foundation of innovation that’s already been laid.
With respect to Cyber Security, we’re not just bolting on features to respond to trends.
PowerStore’s development process has always been aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) cybersecurity framework of industry standards and best practices. Within the framework’s key criteria (Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover), we’ve implemented a broad multi-layer security approach with foundational Zero Trust technologies such as:
And with respect to Efficiency…this has been PowerStore’s bread and butter since it first launched in 2020!
It’s one of the things customers love most about the platform. PowerStore’s adaptable, intelligent, continuously modern design optimizes both operational and energy efficiency to help them get the most out of every resource, even as requirements change unpredictably.
These capabilities reduce management overhead to boost operational efficiency
…and the same built-in intelligence also makes the platform itself more efficient
So let’s look at what’s coming next…
Again, based on PowerStore’s powerful existing foundation, we’re adding even more Cyber Resiliency and more Efficiency.
We’ll look at these things in detail shortly, but just to summarize
Lets look at a few of these things in detail.
PowerStoreOS 3.5 is a major security milestone for PowerStore. With our latest software, the platform now meets the stringent security requirements of the US Federal Government and DoD – and also accelerates the adoption of Zero Trust business solutions.
First, on the government side, we’ve achieved the critical STIG technology compliance
STIG mode, highly requested by many users in the federal space, changes several elements of PowerStore to comply with Federal requirements, including
Obviously, STIG compliance is of primary interest to our US federal customers
(other organizations should not activate it) but it also sends a strong message to our enterprise business customers.
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFO
“Federal customers are the Most Recession Proof industry with 72% saying spending will increase or stay the same
in 2023.” (IDC 2022 Industry IT and Communications Survey)
The Dell PowerStore Security Configuration Guide
contains more information on this feature.
What is STIG Hardening?
Who uses STIG mode?
What does it do?
Why is STIG mode important for PowerStore?
What is the Federal Approved Product List (APL)?
When will PowerStore be listed on the APL?
PowerStore also meets the toughest Zero Trust security framework requirements for today’s leading businesses, with new capabilities to protect, prevent and respond to threats more quickly and easily than ever.
With PowerStoreOS 3.5 and higher, you can enhance the security of your PowerStore system with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) using RSA SecurID. Also known as “advanced” or “two-factor authentication,” MFA offers numerous advantages, including improving the security of accounts and data against hackers, reducing the risk of poor password practices, and ensuring compliance with government regulations.
[Note SecurID is currently the only MFA product integrated with PowerStore.]
Prior to PowerStoreOS 3.5, PowerStore Snapshots were already immutable, meaning they can not be modified.
With 3.5 we add a new layer of security for block data snapshots, also preventing them from being deleted until the designated retention period expires.
When secure snapshots are enabled, you’ve basically created an impenetrable “Vault”
Management is very simple from either PowerStore Manager, CLI or REST API
Secure snapshots are your cost-effective first line of defense against ransomware and other cyber-resiliency threats.
PowerStore has been on a great trajectory with enterprise file services.
PowerStoreOS 3.5 continues the trend by enhancing file resiliency in several key ways.
The release increases key NAS limits for PowerStore, including
These increases give administrators
Streamlined access control
3.5 allows admins to manage SMB share permissions (ACLs) directly from PowerStore Manager or REST API.
Fail-Safe Networking
The 3.5 update adds Fail-Safe Networking (FSN) support for file interfaces.
Together, these latest enhancements provide more reasons for customers to deploy PowerStore unified file/block solutions for enterprise environments!
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND
With 3.5, we’ve added a native integration with PowerProtect DD appliances
With this integration, PowerStore customers have a very cost-effective way to take advantage of PowerProtect, the industry’s #1 data protection appliance.
Backs up volumes and volume groups (VGs) via an incremental-forever methodology
As we’ll discuss on next slide, you get multiple restore/recovery options:
Backups can be orchestrated from either PowerProtect Data Manager, which is aimed at Data Protection Admins – OR PowerStore Manager, which is primarily targeted for use by Storage Administrators.
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND
Why use PPDM? There are a few features only available via PPDM.
In addition to the “direct to PowerStore” benefit… (no backup server required, no host impact, etc.), …we’re also adding ability to set up and manage PowerProtect DD backups directly from the PowerStore Manager UI.
Recovery is also simplified, thanks to new “Instant Access” feature
You get multiple restore/recovery options:
What does this mean for PowerStore customers?
Harnessing tight integrations with PowerProtect can enable more efficient datacenter operations. A backup and storage solution from a single vendor can reduce data protection administration costs by up to 22% and backing up data to a PowerProtect appliance can save up to 41% in power and cooling per petabyte, enabling you to reduce your carbon footprint and further your organization’s sustainability goals.
Hashicorp’s Terraform and Red Hat’s Ansible are two automation platforms that have been adopted with the most success in the IT infrastructure automation space. Common benefits of these independent solutions are reduced costs, deployment speed, error reduction, reduced risks, and increased business agility. For example, these platforms allow organizations to treat their infrastructure as a version-controlled, repeatable, and testable resource, making detecting and resolving issues easier. All these benefits enable seamless IT operations, continuously driving up application development cycles, and allowing easier addressing compliance at a large scale.
ServiceNow remains the #1 ITSM and ITOM platform used by customers for creating a self-service portal. From there, customers can set up integration with different management stacks – vCenter, MSFT SCCM, Cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure), automation (ansible, terraform) – and accordingly create the service catalogs for self-service management.
Our consultants have services dedicated to Automation from Day 0 to Day 2 operations
Released in Q1 of 2023, Terraform Providers for PowerStore were introduced and made available. In addition, through our agile engineering processes, incremental updates to the Ansible modules have been released mainly for supporting vVols, vCenter and VMFS support.
CSM App Mobility allows Kubernetes administrators to clone stateful application workloads and metadata to other Kubernetes clusters using a single command. It leverages native storage array capabilities and open source technologies to copy both application data and metadata to the desired object storage.
CSM App Mobility can be utilized in private and public cloud environments, helping enterprises streamline projects such as bug triage, blue-green deployments, new platform migration, dev/test environment set-up, and more.
You’ve been hearing about Dynamic AppsON since last fall’s VMware Explore – well with VxRail’s “Pipton” release coming out in May 2023, it’s finally here!
A true Dell “better together” solution, Dynamic AppsON combines the advantages of PowerStore with VxRail, the industry’s #1 hyperconverged solution. The two platforms were designed for synergy from the start, and are frequently deployed in the same environments – largely thanks to their common VMware DNA. But now the approach goes to another level.
Dynamic AppsON combines compute-only VxRail dynamic nodes
with PowerStore T model appliances in a tightly integrated solution that allows users to scale compute or storage independently.
Dynamic AppsON helps customers seamlessly adjust performance and resource utilization for the changing needs of their workloads, saving cost and management effort over time.
Ideal for a wide range of workloads
No matter what the requirement – Dynamic AppsON lets you scale and evolve YOUR way.
The new recycle bin for PowerStore is exactly what it sounds like and let’s face it, accidents happen.
When an object is deleted from the PowerStore management interface, including the CLI, REST or GUI, the storage resource and associated snapshots can now be placed in a recycle bin The storage admin will now be able to easily retrieve items from the recycle bin without needing to restore from backups.
The key benefit of this feature is that it will allow the user to save time while retrieve storage resources if they were accidentally deleted and will prevent a Data Loss (DL) situation at the customer site.
A Recycle Bin within a is not new in the industry and this feature will fill the competitive gap from other storage companies like Pure and NetApp
Review the release notes, below