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JANUARY 2008 8
DELL PS SERIES ARCHITECTURE
8
DIRECT-ATTACHED
STORAGE (DAS)
TRADITIONAL STORAGE
AREA NETWORKS (SAN)
EQUALLOGIC PS
SERIES SOLUTION
Budget
• Must plan for both initial and
future growth
• Low acquisition and
management cost (for a
single server)
• Scaling results in repeated
purchases and higher
management costs
• Must plan for both initial and
future growth
• High acquisition and management
(people and tools) costs
• Scaling results in expensive
infrastructure upgrades.
• Buy only what you need now.
Can easily expand at any time
• Low acquisition and
management costs
• Low scaling costs
Resources
• Each storage component
separately deployed; not a
shared storage solution
• Dedicated
• Upgrades and maintenance cause
server and application downtime
• Poor utilization of capacity and
performance
• Shared storage solution; separate
storage network infrastructure
and tools
• Many interoperability issues
• Upgrades and maintenance cause
server and application downtime
• Good capacity utilization and
performance
• Shared storage solution; utilizes
familiar network infrastructure
and easy-to-use tools
• Complete Ethernet networking
interoperability
• Deploy storage on demand and
easily change configuration
online; upgrade and perform
maintenance online
• Automated capacity utilization
and performance optimization
People
• Each storage element is
managed individually
• Repetitive, manual management
tasks in dissimilar locations
• No specialized knowledge and
experience required
• Managed as single storage system
• Repetitive, manual
management tasks
• Highly specialized knowledge
and experience required
• Each storage element is managed
individually on a network,
regardless of scale
• Automation dramatically reduces
management time and costs
• No specialized knowledge and
experience required
Time
• Management effort grows as
number of servers grows
• Short training time
• Management effort grows slowly
as number of servers grows
• Long initial training time
• Management effort remains the
same as number of servers grows
• 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.