PowerStore AI/ML Innovation

Embracing change

Executive leaders from all over the IT and data industry are well noted for calling on consumers and employees to "embrace change." This idea is primarily targeted at embracing the change needed to modernize strategies and accelerate business growth.

With the entrance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), embracing change is rapidly taking on a new concept. A few weeks back, Robin Ren posted a statement regarding Elon Musk's mindset. Robin posted on X , "Elon is often way ahead. He sees the need for change in speed or, in another word, the acceleration of change, and exerts a force to make things happen." I fully agree with Robin and his description of Elon.

This is key! Just think of change from a historical perspective.

If we use communications as an example, historically speaking, it has taken centuries for humanity to evolve our communication technologies. We have transitioned from horseback riders, mailing letters, inventing the telegraph / telephone, to using the internet in modern day. Where it once took months to deliver a single word, modern communication now delivers volumes of information instantaneously.

Enter the era of AI. We are now entering an age where society must start considering the acceleration of change with the same emphasis that it has embraced the reality of change. Yes, all things must change and we have to learn to embrace that change. However, change has traditionally been slow. It no longer takes hundreds of years to evolve technology methods, we are now talking about months, days, or even hours.

Forces are being exerted in the world of IT that are accelerating change at an incredible pace. These forces are primarily centered around AI based technology, a technology that is accelerating change faster than any time in prior history. Think about it. Creating code, modeling data, mapping genomes, and creating content (like the images in this article) now happens in seconds not months or years.

AI/ML in PowerStore DNA

Dell Technologies #PowerStore has been experiencing record breaking growth over the past four years. As Michael Dell and other Dell executive leaders have stated, "PowerStore is the fastest-growing new architecture in Dell history."

What is driving such explosive growth and adoption of PowerStore? Well, there is the all-flash, end-to-end NVMe connectivity. There is also the slim profile providing greater than 1PBe capacity in two rack units (2U) at 5:1 (guaranteed ) reducibility. The fact is that there are MANY features that have caused this explosive adoption of PowerStore.

But what about the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities? Perhaps one of the little known and less advertised capabilities of PowerStore is the integrated AI/ML benefits.

At the launch of PowerStore (2020) the platform included machine learning capabilities like automated data placement within a cluster, intelligent recommendations for cluster balancing, and open REST API's for external programmability.

This is marketed as programable infrastructure and emphasizes the use of programable automation tools like Ansible , and container integration with Kubernetes , Tanzu , and OpenShift .

Details about these as well as other programmability tools and options can be found on https://developer.dell.com/ .

If you want to read more, I addressed these early features in the article PowerStore Autonomous Operations.

Well, we are no longer in 2020. It is now 2024, and the AI/ML integration engine has not stopped. With AI/ML technology being part of PowerStore's DNA, it affords customers the opportunity to get more capabilities at a faster pace.

It is no secret that Dell Technologies is an industry leader when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. Dell AI Solutions provide a range of offerings from the datacenter to AI enabled laptops.

But specific to AI/ML being in PowerStore's DNA:

• Dynamic Node Affinity (DNA) - enables seamless, autonomous balancing of IO between the array nodes (controllers). This capability uses machine learning and intelligence to make decisions about data paths to ensure that block storage workloads are always optimized for the best performance and latency response time. This means that admins never have to worry or make decisions about workload placement or balancing within a PowerStore array. DNA does the work for you always ensuring you will get the best performance and lowest latency.
• Automated Data Placement - allows storage administrators to rapidly create volumes / LUNs and allow them to be balanced across a PowerStore cluster without manual decision making and/or time consuming thought processes.
• Automated / Assisted Migrations - While the above mentioned automated data placement capability is more about initial volume creation, PowerStore is constantly monitoring all appliances in a PowerStore cluster. Take capacity for example - Let's say that an appliance starts running low on physical capacity, PowerStore can make real-time migration recommendations. These recommendations are generated based on factors such as drive wear, appliance capacity, and health but the process itself is autonomous.
• RxDefinitions - In PowerStore OS 4.0, Dell introduced a new underlying capability that further enhances the machine learning aspects of the platform called RxDefinitions. Per engineering leader Shai Dror , "This technology enables PowerStore to be able to continuously monitor its health and self-protect when needed. It will be able to get updates from Dell that will teach it how to better identify issues without needing to update the OS." The chief architect of this technology, Ophir Buchman , has put a lot of effort into this capability that will create a differentiated framework for real-time health assessments in modern storage architectures. Personally, I like to put it this way: Learn... Identify... Apply... all without human intervention.

From an executive leadership lens, Vice President of Product Management Drew Schulke , put it this way, "The ability to de-couple updates to the storage OS from updates that improve the overall health and resilience of a storage system is a game changer for our enterprise customers. No more upgrade trade-off discussions."?

• APEX AIOps - While not directly inside of PowerStore, array telemetry data is sent to APEX AIOps Infrastructure Observability. APEX AIOps helps optimize the integrity of Dell core, edge and multi-cloud infrastructure by providing AI-driven health, cybersecurity and sustainability insights, forecasts and recommendations. Its comprehensive, proactive observability enables: 10X faster time to resolution of infrastructure issues, 1 workday of system administration saved per week on average, and 3 minutes to automate cybersecurity checking for 1,000 systems.

Conclusion

These AI/ML capabilities (and so much more) are what has helped propel PowerStore into 90% of the Fortune 500 in less than four years. By integrating AI/ML capabilities from the beginning (and moving forward), the Dell PowerStore user experience gets better and better at an unrivaled, accelerated pace - the speed of change. To date, PowerStore OS has received seven major non-disruptive updates in four years of product life. This is only the beginning.

Dell Technologies understands the necessity of an accelerated pace of change. The power of technology to drive human progress means that people not only embrace change, but also use technology to create technology at a pace that the world has never known.

I for one, am looking forward to what this new AI era has to offer in the world of data storage! Get ready for storage that is able to Learn... Identify... Apply... all without human intervention.