Solution Brief

Efficient Storage Consolidation with Dell Compellent

Historically, IT departments have responded to growing business demands by deploying servers, storage and networking dedicated to specic applications or functions. In many cases, this resulted in a complex infrastructure that is difficult to manage and costly to maintain. Meanwhile, the explosive growth of data continues while the operating costs in the data center keep on increasing: 80% of the IT budget is spent just to keep the data center running1, and the volume of global data is expected to grow nine fold in the next 5 years, with 90% of it being the most challenging, unstructured data2. Consolidation of IT infrastructure through virtualization has become a key priority for IT decision makers looking for solutions to these challenges. The benets of a consolidated data center can be signicant, including a better system utilization, improved IT agility, simplied management and improved data availability and protection. Many organizations have already experienced some benets of consolidation by virtualizing servers. But by taking it one step further and combining server virtualization with storage consolidation, enterprises can more fully realize the advantages of a modern, efficient data center. While the choice of the storage platform is key to realizing these benets, many traditional storage systems dont meet some basic requirements. The right storage architecture adapts to change, transforms a rigid platform into a exible and scalable system, and helps to shift from operation to innovation. With its modular, scalable and highly efficient platform, the Dell Compellent multi-protocol enterprise storage addresses many of the storage consolidation requirements.

Dell Compellent delivers unmatched levels of efficiency, agility and resiliency in the consolidated storage environments with:
Seamless upgrades and system expansion: Easy scalability across block and le without disruption, downtime or forklift upgrades. Hyper-efficient use of disk space and intelligent data movement: Optimized cost and data placement for block and le with industry-leading automated storage tiering. Continuous data protection against downtime and disaster: Application availability and instant restore of data with the space-efficient, applicationaware continuous snapshots. Reduced licensing costs: Future-proof storage investment with an innovative licensing model. Easy integration across leading technologies with open architecture: Simplication and automation of VM management with dozens of points of engineering integration. Simplied and streamlined management: Centralized multi-site management, monitoring and reporting. World-class support and services: Enterprise-class Copilot support.

Figure 1. When combined with server virtualization, Dell Compellent can help drive new levels of efficiency and agility into data consolidation initiatives.

Siloed, fragmented storage hinders IT agility and efficiency

IT departments that have deployed server virtualization without storage consolidation continue to deal with complex management, limited scalability and suboptimal TCO. Consolidating direct-attached storage (DAS), legacy storage area networks (SANs) or a sprawl of le servers can deliver the most immediate results. In DAS, storage is accessible only to a single server, limiting scalability and creating inefficiencies in support and management. In the traditional legacy SANs, scalability is still limited, and the SANs require frequent disruptive forklift upgrades to add capacity or new features. Finally, the sprawl of le servers used to store the rapidly growing unstructured le-based data poses an opportunity for storage consolidation. The scalability of le servers is often conned to a single device with no scale-out capacity, manual upgrades are disruptive and time-consuming, and support is fractured and cumbersome. These are some of the environments that can realize immediate operational efficiencies and cost reductions from storage consolidation projects.

Support greater IT agility on a virtualized storage platform: Organizations with legacy storage systems are often subjected to forklift upgrades and high licensing costs. The Dell Compellent agile and persistent hardware architecture allows organizations to scale easily across block and le storage without disruption and rip-and-replace. With a perpetual software licensing model, customers never need to re-purchase the same software again. With these agility features, Dell Compellent becomes a future-proof platform which not only supports the near term objectives but can also evolve and respond to change that drives business growth over time. This agility is a key requirement in consolidated environments which may need to serve the needs of many groups and must be exible and nimble to achieve many diverse goals. Guarantee business continuity and reduce risk: When data is destroyed whether by human error or environmental factors organizations nd that data recovery is a difficult and slow process. On many legacy storage platforms, replication is costly and complex. Dell Compellent protects its data against downtime and disaster, ensuring that information is always available to applications and users without sacricing. Space-efficient snapshots provide continuous data protection but only consume space that is needed. Snapshots are leveraged in remote replication for high availability across multiple sites, enabling administrators to recover most volumes to a server in less than 10 seconds using a simple point-and-click interface. The snapshot software ensures time-consistent snapshots of Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server and Hyper-V data. And for any support issues, Compellent is backed by the Copilot team which provides around-the-clock phone support and proactive remote monitoring.

Dell Compellent unifying architecture delivers unmatched levels of efficiency, agility and resiliency
Dell Compellent is a virtualized, self-optimized storage system with built-in intelligence and automation to optimize data throughout its lifecycle. Based on a modular architecture that unies block and le data, it brings unrivaled levels of IT efficiency, agility and resiliency to storage consolidation initiatives. These capabilities are crucial in consolidated environments which need to stay nimble to quickly respond to shifting business requirements in a cost-effective way. Maximize operational efficiencies in consolidated environments: Legacy storage systems may waste up to 60% of capacity on empty disk space, and keep as much as 80% of inactive data on high-cost drives. Dell Compellent thin provisioning technology, a key efficiency driver, allows storage to be allocated real time when data is written to disk, eliminating the need to pre-allocate capacity. The automated tiered storage technology tracks data usage and optimizes cost and data placement for block and le by moving the data to the best storage tier based on how often its accessed. Together, these Dell Compellent features automate data movement throughout the data lifecycle, making the most efficient use of disk space while maintaining required performance levels. These efficiencies allow Dell Compellent customers to reduce the cost of purchasing and managing storage by up to 80%3.

End to end data optimization drives business results

Designed to help enterprises realize immediate and tangible results and reduce total storage costs, Dell Compellent is a fully virtualized storage which efficiently unies block and le data. With Dell Compellent, operational efficiencies lead to a better utilized storage capacity and simplied IT infrastructure; greater agility with non-disruptive scalability allow enterprises to stay responsive to the constantly shifting business requirements; and dynamic business resiliency helps to maximize data availability and protection. With a complete portfolio of primary, archive and backup products, Dell offers a broad choice of storage solutions for various enterprise needs. Based on the Fluid Data architecture, Dells storage portfolio is designed to help organizations more effectively manage valuable business information in virtualized data centers.

Dell Power Solutions Special Edition, Efficient Enterprise, Q1 2010, Its Time to Kick Business Innovation into High Gear IDC, Digital Universe Study, sponsored by EMC, June 2011 3 Based on Dell Compellent customer testimonials
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For more information, visit dellstorage.com/compellent

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