A new approach to storage infrastructure is needed to meet modern data center challenges
In the new data age, the combination of massive amounts of data and remarkable technology innovations gives businesses of all sizes the opportunity to become disruptive, powerful digital organizations. But despite this potential, many businesses know that digital transformation can be complex and challenging. Data is more diverse than ever before—it is now created, processed and stored everywhere, from the edge to the cloud. Most organizations have found that no single infrastructure can meet all of their data needs, so they leverage disparate architectures, which creates silos of IT resources that are managed and used separately.

At the same time, IT is under increasing pressure to deliver new levels of simplicity and agility to the business. Enterprise-grade on-premises storage must now deliver the same operational flexibility as the cloud, making it more adaptable, more automated and easier to integrate with existing management frameworks.

To meet these conflicting demands, a new storage architecture and approach is needed. Technologies introduces PowerStore, a modern storage appliance designed for the data age. This disruptive new platform unlocks the value of data regardless of its structure or location, helping you adapt and transform IT without disrupting current operations.

Purpose-built storage arrays have evolved over the years to play a vital role in the data center, delivering ever-expanding performance, capacity, and resiliency for mission-critical workloads. PowerStore starts with the best of modern storage technology, delivering a new class of storage appliances with advanced services to complement and extend existing on-premises environments.

PowerStore provides a single architecture for block, file and VMware VVols, leveraging new technologies to support a wide range of enterprise-class traditional and modern workloads—from relational databases to ERP and EMR applications, cloud-native applications, and file-based workloads such as content repositories and home directories. The ability to accommodate applications, multi-protocol networking, and multi-format storage diversity (physical and virtual volumes, containers, traditional files) in a single 2U appliance provides the flexibility to support business growth and helps IT departments simplify and consolidate their infrastructure.

PowerStore features next-generation innovations such as end-to-end NVMe and Intel Optane storage-class memory (SCM) to deliver up to 7x more IOPs for real-world workloads and 3x lower latency than previous generations of midrange storage, giving you all the headroom you need to ensure long-term value across multiple solution lifecycles.

The ability to scale your initial PowerStore configuration is simple and highly efficient, as capacity and performance can be scaled independently. Each active-active PowerStore appliance can scale to over 2.8PB of effective capacity, and multiple appliances can be clustered together for even higher performance.

No matter how you grow, PowerStore keeps costs low. Deduplication and compression are 100% inline and “always on” thanks to Intel QuickAssist hardware acceleration technology. PowerStore systems deliver an average 4:1 data reduction ratio without compromising performance.

In addition to outstanding performance and scalability, PowerStore provides exceptional levels of intelligence and automation to eliminate complexity and accelerate the delivery of new applications and services with up to 99% fewer management interactions.

PowerStore simplifies application development and automates storage workflows through integration with VMware and a broad ecosystem of leading management and orchestration frameworks. You can provision PowerStore services directly from your favorite application toolsets. For example, IT and DevOps users can leverage VMware plug-ins (vRO plug-in), Kubernetes plug-ins (CSI Driver), and Ansible plug-ins (Ansible Module), reducing deployment time from days to seconds.

PowerStore includes built-in intelligence that eliminates many time-consuming tasks and decision points. PowerStore’s onboard machine learning (ML) engine optimizes performance and reduces costs by fine-tuning single and clustered appliances to automate manually intensive processes such as initial volume placement, migration, load balancing, and problem resolution, even as your environment evolves.

Included in PowerStore, CloudIQ provides administrators with all the Intel technologies they need to quickly execute operations and more efficiently manage their storage environments. By combining machine learning, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, cloud-based applications can reduce risk, detect anomalies before they become failures, and help IT professionals plan for future storage needs with powerful predictive capabilities. CloudIQ helps simplify storage management tasks so you can focus back on your business goals.

These benefits alone make PowerStore a highly advanced midrange storage solution. But PowerStore goes beyond that with game-changing new capabilities that not only support current needs, transforming the way you run your data center today, but also allow you to adapt your infrastructure as your business evolves—no matter how unpredictably.

PowerStore’s container-based software architecture, called PowerStoreOS, isolates individual operating system components into microservices, improving performance, fault tolerance, and security. It also enables functional portability and rapid delivery of new or enhanced services over time.

Administrators can choose to deploy PowerStoreOS directly on PowerStore hardware in a bare-metal configuration or in a virtual machine (VM) running on PowerStore’s optional built-in VMware hypervisor, providing another layer of isolation, intelligence, and abstraction. When PowerStoreOS runs on a VM, administrators can also access the hypervisor to deploy their own applications directly on the appliance using the same VMware tools and methods used for external hosts. This capability, called AppsON, is ideal for data-intensive workloads that require infrastructure simplicity and density, either in the core or at the edge, as well as “infrastructure apps” such as antivirus or monitoring software.

More importantly, because VMware ESXi is the underlying foundation, administrators can seamlessly switch between these services. PowerStore cluster management combined with VMware tools, including vMotion and Storage vMotion, makes it easy to move applications into or out of PowerStore to other VMware targets. Using a single storage instance, applications can be deployed on networked servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, or directly on PowerStore appliances and transparently moved between any of the appliances, enabling IT and application owners to rapidly deploy and reallocate workloads to more efficient environments based on current needs and available resources.

PowerStore’s compact footprint and adaptable design are ideal for:

Leveraging Cloud Validated Designs, PowerStore provides an ideal landing zone for data-intensive workloads on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). PowerStore is also supported by Cloud Storage Services, which connects PowerStore directly to the cloud of your choice as a managed service. Cloud Storage Services delivers DRaaS to VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and full operational consistency with VMware. In any of these scenarios, PowerStore can be deployed as a standalone appliance to complement existing infrastructure, or as a storage option in Power One, an all-in-one, automated infrastructure cloud platform.

PowerStore is part of the Future-Proof program, which has been enhanced to include new Anytime Upgrade options. The Anytime Upgrades program allows you to modernize your PowerStore over time, enhancing system capabilities with quick and easy in-place upgrades. Unlike other programs, the Anytime Upgrades program offers three options:

All three options are completely non-disruptive, preserving existing investments in drives and expansion enclosures. With the Anytime Upgrades program, there are no additional purchases or licenses, and upgrades can be performed at any time within your contract. In addition, you do not have to renew your maintenance contract to receive upgrades. The adaptable architecture of PowerStore combined with the Anytime Upgrades program truly eliminates the traditional disruptive cycle of platform migration and generational upgrades. Finally, Technologies On Demand provides a range of options to purchase storage and scale it as you grow, consume it, or as a service. These flexible consumption models combine flexible payment solutions and value-added services to align spending with usage and optimize financial and technical outcomes. For environments with cyclical or variable capacity needs, usage-based consumption models can provide clear cost savings and business advantages.

PowerStore complements and improves your current infrastructure. This new, adaptable platform is built from the ground up to deliver superior capabilities that leverage next-generation technologies while providing a familiar environment and mature, comprehensive ecosystem support. Whether your current environment consists of a traditional 3-tier solution (servers, networking, arrays), a hyperconverged infrastructure, a hybrid or public cloud, or a mix of everything, PowerStore helps you simplify and modernize without adding more management silos, allowing your IT staff to leverage current skill sets while confidently investing in the future.