Dell EqualLogic FS series of DWH

2012: EqualLogic FS7600/FS7610

On September 11, 2012 provided to Dell the updated line of the DWH available for having ordered in Russia, it was declared to journalists at a press conference by the corporate products manager Anton Banchukov.

In particular the EqualLogic FS7610 and FS7600 system was submitted.

According to Banchukov, the main objective of these two systems - unification of storage by means of a single platform of Dell Fluid File System. "The single platform allows the company is more unified to approach storage of the data. Also in critical situations the single platform will allow to reveal quicker fault and to eliminate it, but not to remember that in one system and that in another", - Banchukov told. Basic functions of EqualLogic FS7610/FS7600 are:

• CIFS (SMB 1.0) и NFS v3
• High availability
• File a sphere up to 0.5 PB
• High-speed scaling
• Instant pictures available to users
• Support of NDMP (v4)
• Active-Active controllers
• The battery for data protection
• Replication

Also, the updated systems are followed by innovations and in the hardware, so FS7610 needs to connect only 8 cables, instead of 26 in FS7500. And FS7600 requires 16 cables instead of 26 in the previous generation of FS7500.

In the version of FS7610 support to 10 Gbytes of information is also available.

2011: Dell EqualLogic FS7500

Dell EqualLogic FS7500 is the unified horizontally scalable network system of data storage ideally optimized for the virtualized server framework.

The solution portfolio of Dell Fluid Data created in recent years integrates different hardware platforms, the software and services. The solutions Dell Fluid Data help customers to increase significantly efficiency of IT due to automation of labor-consuming transactions, resource optimization, high scalability and ensuring permanent data availability. Implementation of server virtualization does especially relevant these advantages of Dell Fluid Data.

The translation of server applications cardinally transformed IT due to consolidation of several applications on one physical server to virtual environment that gives significant economy on purchases of the server hardware, and considerably accelerates deployment of new applications. Using hypervisors from VMware, Microsoft or Citrix it is possible to start the applications which were earlier requiring a dedicated server on virtual machines which work in one physical server.

For maintenance of infrastructure of virtual machines in most the companies network systems of storage without which it is impossible to apply "advanced" opportunities of server virtualization completely are used. For example, for movement of virtual machines between physical servers without stopping of access to them their images should be on one storage system to which both fizichesiky servers have access. This function provides high fault tolerance of applications and flexibility of use of resources of the server hardware.

Images of virtual machines can be stored on network systems of storage of two types – devices of network of storage of SAN with block data access using iSCSI, Fibre Channel or Fibre Channel over Ethernet technologies (FCoE), or NAS devices with file access using protocols of file access of CIFS and NFS.

What type of the device will be optimal for the specific virtualized environment? When choosing storage system it is necessary to consider two factors – scalability and a possibility of the unified storage. If the storage system has high scalability, then she will be able easily to cope with constantly growing loadings of virtual environment caused by start of additional virtual machines at deployment and start of new applications without complete or partial updating of a hardware platform. An opportunity online of scaling and scaling not only capacity, but also performance that not only will ensure continuous operation of applications will be an optimal variant, but also will prevent falling of speed of their work on a measure of growth of volumes of the stored data. The system of the unified storage which supports the SANI NAS protocols allows the system administrator to manage from one console storage of images of virtual machines irrespective of the fact which the protocol of network storage is used. The unified storage removes a choice problem between SAN and NAS upon purchase of new storage system and guarantees that it will be always possible to use that protocol of network storage which is optimal for the specific application.

Virtual server environment gives notable economy of expenses on acquisition and operation of servers, but the consolidated pool of resources of storage is necessary for its effective implementation. The storage system of Dell EqualLogic FS7500 provides a flexible solution for the virtualized applications, consolidating storage of SAN and NAS in one unified horizontally scalable architecture.

Released summer of 2011 of Dell EqualLogic FS7500 is the unified horizontally scalable gateway NAS for iSCSI of EqualLogic PS Series disk arrays allowing to combine NAS and SAN technologies in one flexible architecture. At many traditional storage systems performance begins to decrease sharply when the capacity of the disks set in them exceeds some maximum indicator, however at FS7500 the scalability in process of growth of capacity has almost linear character and when adding pair of controllers in EqualLogic PS arrays also FS7500 performance almost in proportion increases. This extremely important advantage of this storage system as consolidation of applications can lead to sharp increase in requirements not only to capacity, but also performance.

The NAS gateway FS7500 can be added easily to already deployed group of arrays EqualLogic to implement NAS service. In the virtualized server framework constantly there are some changes therefore an opportunity to quickly add or move a resource of storage of NAS or SAN without violation of normal operation of virtual machines significantly increases efficiency of virtualization.

When using FS7500 scaling and tanks, and productivities happens in without stopping works of a system there are new controllers and arrays are automatically detected and added to a pool of resources of storage. If there is not enough capacity or the speed of input-output, then it is enough to set one more array of Dell EqualLogic PS and after adding a part of data will be automatically moved to a pool on this new array. If it is required to increase performance of NAS, then it is necessary to install additional FS7500 controllers and performance of NFS or CIFS will increase almost in proportion to increase in number of controllers.

Unlike architecture of file systems of traditional NAS, Dell Scalable File System which is applied in EqualLogic FS7500 has high scalability of capacity and performance therefore FS7500 can be scaled to the maximum capacity of Dell EqualLogic PS (the configuration with a formatted capacity of NAS of 509 Tbyte is tested now).

The unified architecture of FS7500 improves productivity and optimizes storage infrastructure management. Solutions of the EqualLogic series provide storage using the protocols iSCSI, CIFS and NFS now that allows to configure and manage using one console storage for applications which use both block data access, and file. EqualLogic Group Manager can be used for setup of a pool and volumes of storage, for creation and expansion of amount CIFSI NFS of volumes and also setup of authentication, quotas, instant pictures and backup of NDMP. Automation of settings, including for balancing of loading between disks, RAIDs, network interfaces, a cache memory and controllers, helps to reduce to a minimum manual transactions at service of SAN and NAS.

As well as in other products of the Dell EqualLogic series, in EqualLogic FS7500 such functions as setup and configuring using the program master, "native" support for directories Active Directory, LDAP both NIS, and additional opportunities of balancing of loading are included in the price of a basic configuration. Instant pictures of files allow end users to recover independently accidentally deleted or damaged files. At last, owners of EqualLogic FS7500 who have a contract for support of Dell will be able to load new versions of a microcode of EqualLogic free of charge.