Dell PS Series Direct-Attached, Traditional Storage, EqualLogic PS, Storage DAS, Series Solution

DELL PS Series architecture

	Direct-Attached	Traditional Storage	EqualLogic PS
	Storage (DAS)	Area Networks (SAN)	Series Solution
	• Must plan for both initial and
	future growth	• Must plan for both initial and	• Buy only what you need now.
	• Low acquisition and	future growth
			Can easily expand at any time
	management cost (for a	• High acquisition and management
Budget			• Low acquisition and
	single server)	(people and tools) costs
			management costs
	• Scaling results in repeated	• Scaling results in expensive
			• Low scaling costs
	purchases and higher	infrastructure upgrades.
	management costs
			• Shared storage solution; utilizes
	• Each storage component	• Shared storage solution; separate	familiar network infrastructure
			and easy-to-use tools
	separately deployed; not a	storage network infrastructure
			• Complete Ethernet networking
	shared storage solution	and tools
			interoperability
	• Dedicated	• Many interoperability issues
Resources			• Deploy storage on demand and
	• Upgrades and maintenance cause	• Upgrades and maintenance cause
			easily change configuration
	server and application downtime	server and application downtime
			online; upgrade and perform
	• Poor utilization of capacity and	• Good capacity utilization and
			maintenance online
	performance	performance
			• Automated capacity utilization
			and performance optimization
	• Each storage element is		• Each storage element is managed
		• Managed as single storage system	individually on a network,
	managed individually
		• Repetitive, manual	regardless of scale
People	• Repetitive, manual management
		management tasks	• Automation dramatically reduces
	tasks in dissimilar locations
		• Highly specialized knowledge	management time and costs
	• No specialized knowledge and
		and experience required	• No specialized knowledge and
	experience required
			experience required
	• Management effort grows as	• Management effort grows slowly	• Management effort remains the
Time	number of servers grows	as number of servers grows	same as number of servers grows
	• Short training time	• Long initial training time	• Short training time

Table 2: PS Series Architecture Solves Business Problems Facing IT Managers

All Inclusive Business Model

Another unique characteristic of PS Series storage arrays is the all-inclusive features. A key reason for consolidating storage is to make storage management easier. Other SAN vendors separately license features — working from the assumption that SAN management capabilities are somehow optional. PS Series arrays provide all features standard.

Conclusion – Self-Managing, Affordable Storage

By allowing arrays to work collaboratively in PS Series groups and by automating time-consuming manual tasks, PS Series Architecture offers a fundamental change in SAN implementation and operation. The highly virtualized PS Series Architecture is designed to significantly lower the cost of consolidated storage without a loss of capabilities. The result is a full-featured, self-managing SAN that includes dynamic load balancing, hot swapping, hardware redundancy, snapshots, and volume replication.

Storage acquisitions are driven by current application needs, not a prediction of future needs. The PS Series Architecture represents a dramatic advancement in storage economics, from purchase and set up through operation and upgrades. By eliminating the barriers to adopting consolidated storage — that is, non-standard and expensive hardware, complex technology, and high staff skill requirements — the PS Series Architecture provides storage solutions that can quickly grow from terabytes to hundreds of terabytes, using existing resources and familiar skills.

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