PowerStore Sustainability

Dell Technologies commitment to sustainability is a core focus whether it is consumer / end user solutions (laptops and monitors, etc.) or core IT data center infrastructure like enterprise data storage, severs, and networking. In fact, it is "At the core of everything we do."

Dell PowerStore is a critical part of the enterprise storage business at Dell Technologies and the entirety of the product and engineering staff are aligned with Chairman and CEO Michael Dell 's goal - "Together, we’re harnessing the power of technology to drive human progress farther and faster than ever before."

Being a mission critical component of backend IT infrastructure is a privilege that we take very seriously. Maintaining enterprise availability and feature standards is just part of the modern day equation and sustainability is another component of that same equation.

Data Center Impact Factors

Governmental Regulation

Governmental regulations are being put into place around our planet to drive down power consumption. For example, in the European Union (EU), there is a declaration known as Lot 9 that places efficiency and life cycle management requirements around enterprise-server products.

Customer Demand

Individual companies are now defining their own efficiency and sustainability goals. While this is a very positive thing, these customers need effective ways of reporting on and detailing their sustainability goals and journey.

Technology Advances

Industry CPU's are growing more powerful with each release. Pushing performance and adding cores can drive infrastructure systems to demand more power.

Rising Energy Costs

施耐德电气 has an online calculator that can aid in determining power usage effectiveness or PUE. Based on calculations using Schneider Electric's Data Center PUE Calculator and assuming a range of 1.4-1.6 PUE, it can be determined that 40-60% of data center costs are a direct result of energy consumption.

How is PowerStore driving sustainability?

Throughout the decades, Dell Technologies has been a leader in promoting energy efficiency and sustainability. In fact, in 1992, when the U.S. launched the ENERGY STAR program, Dell became the first major PC manufacturer to offer an ENERGY STAR compliant computer in 1993. In the years since, this has translated directly into the data center portfolio.

To date, Dell has 23 storage products that have been ENERGY STAR certified and PowerStore is in the mix!

Here is an example of the latest Dell PowerStore 1200T certification from the ENERGY STAR website:

With Dell PowerStore, there are three key areas of focus that bring sustainability value.

1. Dense Storage Design
2. Power Efficient
3. Optimized Performance

Dense Storage Design

Part of the data-path engine that drives PowerStore's dense storage design is something called Dynamic Resiliency Engine (DRE). DRE is a next generation data protection methodology that is more distributed, automated, and efficient than traditional RAID. DRE also meets both dual and single parity requirements while providing greater resiliency, performance, efficiency, and lower costs.

DRE can "automatically consumes the drives within an appliance and creates appropriate redundancy using all the drives. This process improves overall performance and allows performance to scale as more drives are added to the appliance. Data written to a volume can be spread across any number of drives within an appliance. As new drives are added, the data is automatically rebalanced."

DRE provides a hands-off, simplistic way of management - there is literally nothing to manage. Once the PowerStore array is initialized, DRE handles the rest behind the scenes.

DRE Advantages:

• Single storage pool per array - This means global storage performance and global data reduction per appliance. There is no need to create multiple pools, isolate data or workloads, or manage RAID groups.
• Single drive scalability - Perhaps one of the coolest features of DRE is the ability to scale-up the array in single drive increments. This means cost-efficiency goes through the roof. There is no need to purchase large capacity packs or entire RAID sets. DRE will even accommodate the mixing and matching of drive sizes so you can start small and grow REALLY big in a cost-effective manner.
• Increased performance and efficiency - Having all of those drives in a single pool means that every drive is working together for both capacity and performance, even during a reallocation process in the event of a drive failure. There are no dedicated spare drives sitting in wait. DRE calculates spare space across every drive in the configuration, allocates that space as needed, and uses every drive during a reallocate / rebuild process.

Unified Solution

• Unified architecture supporting block and file workloads from the same global storage pool.
• A single system to support all workloads (block/file/vVol) reducing power, cooling, and rack space. All PowerStore Gen1 and Gen2 appliances start with a 2U form factor and scale-up in 2U increments.

Guaranteed 4:1 Data Reduction Ratio (DRR)

• Robust, simple data reduction guarantee with clear terms and conditions publicly available.
• Data reduction is always on and with integrated Intel QAT technology you never have to worry about a compromise in performance - I discuss PowerStore’s use of Intel QAT in this episode of?Talking Tech With?Dell’s SVP of products?Travis Vigil.
• Minimize space, reduce power consumption, reduce cooling efforts.

Power Efficient

• ENERGY STAR - PowerStore currently has 3 models ENERGY STAR certified and we are not stopping there.
• Adaptable architecture - single drive scalability, clustering / mixing and matching systems.
• Hardware efficiency - Technologies like adaptive cooling can control system fan speeds and Titanium power supplies help PowerStore achieve up to 97% efficiency while reducing power consumption up to 50%

Optimized Performance

• End-to-End NVMe - PowerStore is an all-flash array that was architected for performance, simplicity, and efficiency. While the array is internally NVMe connected, Dell PowerStore has also been leading the industry with host-based NVMe connectivity options. PowerStore supports technologies like NVMe-oF-FC, NVMe/TCP, and NVMe/vVols (both FC and TCP).
• IOPs per Watt - All of the tech packed into a PowerStore appliance is performance per watt focused. Remember we are dealing with a form factor of 2U for the base enclosure (appliance).
• Self-Optimizations - Intelligent automation is something I wrote about in the past. Technologies like automated data placement, volume mobility, and Dynamic Node Affinity (DNA) keep your PowerStore environment optimized with simplicity.

PowerStore customers are seeing the benefit

One customer put it this way:

“PowerStore eliminated the power and maintenance costs associated with an entire server room that we shut down.”

Another customer stated:

“I know our business and Dell knows technology. Together, we create impressive solutions that save time and energy — and help customers do the same.”

In March of 2023, 国际数据公司 published an executive level business value paper specific to PowerStore. There is some very impressive data in this paper.

In the paper, authors Megan Szurley and Carol Sliwa breakdown the stats but here are three that jumped out at me:

1. 468% three-year ROI
2. 11-Month payback
3. 24% decrease in three-year operation costs

Prowess Consulting also authored an independent study of PowerStore efficiencies.

Testing by Prowess Consulting demonstrates that the Dell? PowerStore? 1200T can help enterprises use fewer drives to store the same dataset and reduce drive energy use by up to 41 percent.

Conclusion

Dell Technologies PowerStore is moving the storage market into the future with both technology advances and efficiency commitments. It has been said that actions speak louder than words... PowerStore is acting.

More Performance? CHECK

More Efficient? CHECK

More Scalability? CHECK

Lower TCO? CHECK

Sustainability is becoming more important with every passing day. How do you consume less energy? How do you achieve our sustainability goals? Know that partnering with Dell Technologies will help you achieve both and deliver on these goals.