Rick Gouin

Category: Storage

PowerStore 3.5 Gets Real Immutable Snapshots and More

· Rick Gouin

The latest code update for the Dell PowerStore (Dell’s Flagship Midrange Storage Array) adds a few cool new features that I think provide some additional value for people who are already using it.  Most of the details were released at Dell World 2023 in Las Vegas.  Several of the new features are focused around cyber security, so I want to take a moment to look at those features in particular. Immutable Snapshots I’m going to start with my favorite one.  Truly immutable snapshots.  Dell has long maintained that PowerStore snapshots were already immutable, such as in this article.  If that […]

Perform Data Conversions in Windows Calculator

· Rick Gouin
calculator

I don’t know about you, but in my line of work, we frequently have to convert between various data measurements.  Whether this is storage capacity or network throughput, we convert between TB, TiB, GB, GiB, and others every day.  If you visit my calculators page, you’ll even find a converter I wrote available there.  Believe it or not, I actually used that converter sometimes… until today, when I was shown this tip: Windows Calculator can do these conversions right out of the box! First, what are we talking about? Ever notice how if you buy a 1 TB hard drive, […]

PowerStore 3.0 Updated!

· Rick Gouin

At Dell Tech World 2022 this week Dell announced the upcoming release of PowerStore 3.0 which includes new controller and expansion shelf hardware as well as some serious software updates.  We were part of the PowerStore OS 3.0 Beta Program and installed the beta software in our lab.     Hardware It seems like yesterday, but PowerStore was released over 2 years ago in May of 2020.  You can read all about the hardware specs for that release here.  The exception to this is the PowerStore 500T, which was only released about a year ago.  That leaves us with a […]

Dell SC End of Life

· Rick Gouin

Dell SC, perhaps better known as Compellent, has finally had its end of life formally announced.  I feel like many people have been watching for this since the acquisition of EMC was announced in 2015.  At that time, Dell suddenly found itself with numerous overlapping storage platforms and product teams.  Jeff Clarke, COO at Dell, explained it well here: “It was to the point where you had fierce supporters of a brand or a product inside the organization and we were not necessarily stepping back and looking at market needs, customer needs and technology trends. My view 15 months ago, […]

Hardening Dell Storage Center (SC) – Compellent

· Rick Gouin

Over the last year or so, I’ve helped multiple companies recover from ransomware events utilizing snapshots on their storage arrays.  In several of these instances, the customer’s backups were compromised along with their production environment.  A storage array can be a nice part of a recovery strategy, as they seem to be targeted less frequently than other parts of your data-center. If you want to help make sure that your storage array is there for you when you need it, however, you need to make sure it is as secure as possible.  Most of these steps are applicable to any […]

New Dell PowerStore OS 2.0 Really is Future Ready

· Rick Gouin
PowerStore OS Version 2 Updates List

Dell just announced PowerStore OS version 2.0.  It will be available for download on 6/10/2021. If you are new to PowerStore, check out this intro post here.  As you can see, the platform launched a year ago was a little  lean from a feature set perspective.  Dell is rapidly filling out those capabilities, and is doing so in a very forward looking way.  PowerStore, particularly with version 2, is thinking ahead, and has several capabilities that many customers aren’t sure they need… yet.  Lets walk through some of the major new features in PowerStore OS version 2. Whats in PowerStore […]

New PowerStore in the Lab!

· Rick Gouin

As I mentioned here, we were beta testers for the Dell PowerStore all-flash storage array.  We tested everything from initial imaging of the array as either a Model T or Model X all the way to importing external storage arrays.  We really enjoyed having the opportunity to get our hands on the gear early, and appreciated getting ahead of the release so we were ready to answer customer questions on day 1.  Eventually, they made us give that beta array back to them (the nerve!)  and we were all sad to see it go. The empty rack space was taunting […]

Dell PowerStore Part 2!

· Rick Gouin

In the last segment, we went over PowerStore hardware. This time, we are going to dig into some more of the features, functionality, and capabilities of this newest midrange all flash storage array from Dell. The Basics: RAIDPowerStore supports RAID 5, and you can choose from one of two different stripe widths. 4+1 or 8+1. Thats it! Hope you weren’t thinking about using double parity on those 15TB flash drives. This old school RAID underpinning will have an impact on how you scale the system going forward, so its an important point. These RAID groups are managed as a pool […]

Dell PowerStore Released!

· Rick Gouin

Dell officially announces, releases, and launches their new midrange storage product today. You may have heard rumors about this platform under its code name midrange.next. Today, the product is released as PowerStore, so lets take a minute and talk details! I was happy to participate in the beta program several months ago, so I’ve already gotten up close and personal with the array. Lets start at the top, because there is a lot to unpack here. First, there are 2 distinct versions, the PowerStore X and the PowerStore T. Within each of these are separate models. I’ll get into what […]

Dell EMC SC Series Veeam Plugin Now Available!

· Rick Gouin
veeam logo

This has to be one of the most commonly requested integrations for SC. It seems like every time I talk about SC with a customer, they ask about Veeam integration. After what seems like a very long wait, the SC Storage Integration for Veeam is finally available! What this plugin does is orchestrate the SC snapshot engine so you can leverage the space efficient snapshots built into SC as part of your backup strategy. This enables the direct-SAN backup method within Veeam, essentially offloading some of your storage tasks to the SC array itself. There are some requirements:– SCOS 7.4.2 […]