Storage: Dell Expands PowerVault Storage Family With High-Performance Network File Servers - Dell Computer PowerVault 700 family - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, May 10, 1999

Dell Computer Corporation, the world's leading direct computer systems company, Monday announced a new line of PowerVault storage products designed to speed access to information on a computer network and help customers cost-effectively store and protect data in various file formats.

Dell's new network-attached storage (NAS) products enable information from Microsoft Windows NT or UNIX files to be stored and accessed through a single, dedicated file server, called a "storage appliance" or "filer." The new PowerVault 700 family of filer products attach directly to a computer network to offload file access from general purpose computer servers, freeing those systems to handle just the application data processing.

Dell, the No. 2 server vendor in the United States and No. 4 worldwide(a), will target the new products to customers with Windows NT, and mixed Windows NT and UNIX environments.

"IDC forecasts the NAS market to grow by more than 53 percent per year to reach $5 billion by 2003. Dell's NAS filer will participate in this rapid expansion of the network-attached storage market," said Robert Gray, research director for International Data Corporation, a leading industry analyst firm. "With this announcement, Dell becomes both a full-spectrum storage system supplier and an important provider of network-attached storage."

With PowerVault filers, customers can consolidate their various network servers into application servers and file servers, dividing the computing labor between the two types of systems. The filers are very efficient because they are designed for the single task of quickly and easily storing, managing and retrieving files. The Dell filers are also designed for simple set-up and administration so customers can easily integrate them into their network.

In addition, the PowerVault filer products have advanced high-availability features designed to reduce system downtime. Snapshot Copy is a feature that can take up to 20 "snapshots" of the file system, allowing information to be recovered with only minimal administrative support or reviewing of the backup tape. Dell PowerVault filers support remote mirroring, which enables users to copy their network data to a remote site for disaster protection. Additional storage capacity can also be added to the filers while the systems are running, without having to re-boot the servers or clients on the network.

"The introduction of network-attached storage products builds on our recent announcement of new PowerVault products for storage area networks and establishes a broader portfolio of storage options that Dell can offer its large enterprise business and institutional customers," said Michael Lambert, senior vice president of Dell's Enterprise Systems Group. "PowerVault filers are ideal for customers with applications that drive heavy network traffic, such as e-mail, Web hosting and online transaction processing."

The Dell filer products are the result of its alliance with Network Appliance Inc. Dell and Network Appliance announced their alliance and planned OEM relationship last November. The PowerVault 700 family includes the workgroup-level PowerVault 720N, which can support 450 gigabytes of data and 3,000 concurrent users; the departmental-class PowerVault 740N, which supports approximately one terabyte (TB) of data and 7,000 concurrent users; and the enterprise-class PowerVault 760N which supports 1.4TB of data and scales to accommodate 15,000 concurrent users. Dell expects to begin shipping the new PowerVault filers in June, with prices starting at $29,000.

Each PowerVault filer includes dedicated processors, memory, an integrated fibre-channel controller on the motherboard for connecting to fibre channel-disks, an integrated SCSI controller for tape backup, RAID capabilities for increased data protection, and an integrated 10/100 Base-T Ethernet controller that provides the ability to immediately integrate the system onto a network.

For data protection and management, the Dell PowerVault filers can be backed-up using Dell PowerVault digital linear tape drives and autoloaders, with software tools from industry-leading vendors. Network-based backups can be done using Computer Associates ARCserveIT or Seagate Backup Exec software. In addition, the PowerVault filers include a network data management protocol (NDMP) agent that allows any NDMP-compliant backup software from companies such as VERITAS and Legato to remotely manage the tape backup process.

All Dell systems can be managed with a range of hardware and software products available from the Dell OpenManage systems management portfolio. Dell OpenManage is a collection of tools, technologies and alliances that Dell has formed to provide a broad range of industry-standard systems management options for its products. Management of Dell PowerVault filers is simplified through a feature called FilerView, which enables administration of the filer through a Web browser interface.