First Impressions with Dell PowerStore Prime

WWT is an active participant in Dell's beta programs and gets to test pre-release technology. John Lochausen, Technical Solution Architect at WWT, has worked closely with Dell engineers on all pre-release PowerStore systems since its introduction in 2020. 

First impressions highlights

Dell PowerStore Prime is an enhancement to an already great storage system. Dell PowerStore Prime brings several key features that organizations have been asking for, including: 

• Metro replication, which allows for sustained site failure without any disruption to applications
• Online controller upgrades for Gen2 to Gen2 Plus hardware allow for non-disruptive upgrades to higher-level models with no application downtime.
• A new model, the Dell Edge Gateway 3200 Q, utilizes quad-level cell (QLC) flash drives for its persistent storage, helping to improve organizations' cost to serve while still providing the performance of flash drives
• Increased functionality with just a simple code update

In 2022, when PowerStore 3.0 launched, it added many enterprise features. Dell PowerStore Prime further enhances those by putting a very potent storage system in a very small form factor. The feature set is highly competitive and is a performing array capable of handling anything organizations throw at it, from enterprise applications to containerized workloads. 

Addressing organizations' biggest storage challenges

Today, Lochausen is finding that organizations are increasingly diversifying their platforms, which helps with cost optimization. Dell PowerStore Prime supports this by providing great performance for all use cases and a small form factor that can be deployed at edge sites as well as core data centers.

Lochausen has also seen an increased adoption of IP-based storage fabrics. Organizations are looking to diversify away from Fibre Channel and technologies like NVME over TCP are slowly gaining adoption - and Dell PowerStore Prime is leading the way in this area. Additionally, WWT has been independently testing NVME over TCP since 2022, and its Advanced Technology Center (ATC) offers helpful articles and other resources for organizations to explore.

Conclusion

Dell PowerStore Prime can help companies with lower cost to drive, offer better replication technology creating 100% uptime and no data loss and give infrastructure teams options when their company approaches them with new needs and growing power consumption.