Compellent Storage Center 5.4 provides comprehensive new hardware choices

Incremental release numbering understates a dramatic expansion of capabilities

By James E. Bagley
Senior Analyst
Deni Connor
Principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW
November 2010

Persistant hardware is a promise made by many storage systems, but Compellent has delivered a best case scenario in its latest hardware release – a truly refreshing alternative to the typical forklift upgrade that is the industry norm. Compellent customers have the advantage of being able to run the latest software on their existing systems, and the Storage Center 5.4 software release maintains this compatibility, while the new hardware provides scalability, performance, improved drive density and converged network support. In addition, the 5.4 release integrates Live Volume for virtualized migration and continuous optimization in high availability and cloud environments.

Scale up, out and beyond

Scalability is the ease with which increases in capacity and performance can be obtained. The fourth-generation Compellent Series 40 controllers support Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) II technology and provide a substantial performance improvement, with a 90% improvement in overall scale, all with half the footprint and with a 3X improvement in total IOs per second (IOPs). A single enterprise management console can support scale out configurations of many petabytes over many diverse locations. Rapid virtual migration is a necessity in these environments, and the integration of Live Volume with the management console provides unlimited scale, hence, ‘scale beyond.’

Series 40 Controller

Designed for continuous availability and future proofing the interface availability, the new controllers allow customers to incrementally adopt new technology without incurring new license fees. The controller provides 6GB of cache space, using non-volatile RAM (NVRAM), a technology which provides data security during power failure without the need for batteries. Six PCIe slots provide scale and choice of interfaces. Online hot code updates keep the system operational during upgrades when controllers are paired. Coupled with Live Volume, migrations become painless.

Fluid Data

Compellent pioneered in the area of automated management of different storage types and speeds within a single environment. Their systems automatically take advantage of high speed solid state drives, Fibre Channel and SAS tiers, while maintaining the ability to keep large data sets on low cost Serial ATA (SATA) storage. The capabilities are a match for any performance requirements demanded by virtualization, regardless of platform, with support for VMware and Microsoft HyperV platforms, and the ability to use new Cisco and Brocade switches for converged network support that includes 8Gbit Fibre Channel, 10Gb iSCSI, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), 1GbE and 10GbE.

IO Cards

New with the release are PCIe options for SAS II and FCoE, which add to the existing 10GbE and Fibre Channel capabilities. This provides full unified fabric support and the ability to move to the new generation of SAS drives without impacting existing infrastructure.

New enclosures and drives

Three new enclosures provide support for both 2.5” and 3.5” SAS II (or SATA) drives. The 3.5” enclosures provide 12 bays, while the 2.5” enclosure provides 24 bays. Taking advantage of the SAS II interface, new 2.5” high speed drives provide double the capacity of the 3.5” drives in a 6U array. More spindles mean more IOPs, and the new interface takes advantage of 6Gb/sec. 146GB 15K RPM SAS II drives. Other new drive models supported include 6Gb/sec. 2.5” 10K RPM SAS II drives in both 450GB and 600GB capacities. New 6Gb/sec. 3.5” 7K RPM drives support 1TB or 2TB, while 15K RPM 3.5” drives support 450GB or 600GB. These are in addition to Compellent’s Fibre Channel, SATA and SSD offerings.

Improvements in drive density

Providing 2.5” drive form factor more than doubles the number of drives available in a 6U footprint, while reducing power consumption by 30% to 40% per drive.

Persistent Software

This architecture, which allows users to mix and match controllers, enclosures, drives and interfaces eliminates the need for fork-lift upgrades. Live Volume has a further advantage of being capable of mitigating planned outage events and even providing a migration from older hardware product versions to the latest without downtime. Customers are buying new controllers and enclosures, and using this feature to migrate without any service interruption. This migration can be local or to an entire new facility. Compare this to the horrors of shutting down entire data centers because data sets must be fully migrated before they can be used. Rather than charging for individual feature licensing, customers merely buy the new hardware components without regard to upgrading feature licenses. High availability is guaranteed with on-line updates and paired controllers.

Enhanced switch compatibility

New product offerings include the Cisco MDS 9148 an 8Gbit Fibre Channel switch with 16, 32, or 48 active ports, the Cisco Nexus 5010 and 5020 a 10Gb iSCSI and FCoE switches with 20 or 40 ports, the Cisco MDS 95xx Directors,  new chassis and switching modules support 8 Gb Fibre Channel. In addition, Compellent has completed interoperability testing with the Brocade TurboIron-24x, a10GbE switch with 1GbE capability (dual speed ports) and the Cisco Catalyst 3560-X and 3750-E  switches with 10GbE uplinks.

SSG-NOW Assessment

While modestly referring to this substantial new capability as an incremental release, Compellent continues its long term policy of over-delivering on promises and providing a consistent scaling environment. Customers can take advantage of the new features without revisiting software license and cost models. As virtualization and increases storage demands continue to force infrastructure growth, Compellent’s Storage Center provides a predictable, reliable approach to long-term requirements in both the data center and the cloud.

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