Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Analysts discuss new Dell Fluid File System
Date: Jun 21, 2012Pretty much every company in the world has files for images, video and audio. Unified storage offers users the choice between file- or block-based storage in a single system, and most major vendors offer this technology as part of their storage portfolios. Dell Inc. has now integrated its Dell Fluid File System -- a scale-out, clustered file system inherited from its Exanet acquisition -- into its block-based Compellent array.
The company had built the Dell Fluid File System into an appliance that brought clustered NAS capabilities to its midrange EqualLogic iSCSI SAN and PowerVault storage line, but the new Compellent SC8000 and FS8600 offer a virtualized, scalable pool of disks for block and file data for the enterprise. The new array is based on the 64-bit Compellent Storage Center 6.0 operating system, and customers can build out their storage needs based on either block or file.
During Dell Storage Forum 2012, industry experts Howard Marks, Terri McClure and Andrew Reichman explained that this is a point of integration Dell has needed, particularly for "big data" and next-generation 64-bit architectures. Customers have been clamoring for more powerful file systems for their Windows Storage Server, and this final step gives Dell a complete NAS offering across its Compellent, EqualLogic and PowerVault family lines. This latest integration of the file system also gives Dell Compellent high-performance, massive scale-out capacity for hundreds of users under a single namespace.