In this storage supplier profile, we look at Dell storage, which is part of the infrastructure solutions group of the Texas-based giant Dell Technologies.
Since the last profile we did on Dell, its acquisition of EMC, which formed such an important part of its storage portfolio, has been eclipsed as the tech world’s largest ever. But only just, and by the sale of former EMC subsidiary VMware to Broadcom in 2023 for $69bn.
What has been eclipsed, however, is any trace of EMC branding in Dell storage. And, while under the hood, and in the spread and scale of its storage products, EMC’s legacy remains, you wouldn’t know unless intimately familiar with it.
Here, we look at Dell’s storage offer, which sees upgraded storage for artificial intelligence (AI) use cases and includes the ability to extend on-premise to cloud storage, manage containers and take advantage of as-a-service methods of storage procurement.
What are the origins of Dell storage?
Dell made its first foray into storage in 2008 when it bought iSCSI storage area network (SAN) player EqualLogic. It then added tiered storage SAN specialist Compellent in 2011.
Its big move came in 2015 when it bought enterprise SAN giant EMC for $67bn in a deal that closed in 2016. That also brought virtualisation pioneer VMware, which was sold to Broadcom for $69bn in 2023.
Dell was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell in Texas, where he started to sell IBM-compatible PCs. The company made big gains from the early consumer PC market and saw off competitors, but by the early 2000s it started to expand beyond PCs while sales growth slowed.
How does Dell EMC rank against other storage players?
In 2023, IDC ranked Dell EMC top of the storage array makers with market share of 26%. That was quite a long way ahead of Huawei (9.7%), HPE (8.3%), Lenovo/Lenovo-NetApp (7.7%), NetApp (7%), Pure Storage (6.1%), and Hitachi and IBM (both just under 5%).
Dell Technologies was ranked 48th in 2024’s Fortune 500. That’s a little down on the last time we wrote about it in 2023, when it was 34th.
In 1996, Dell revenues were $5.3bn. That increased to around $60bn between 2008 and 2012. After that, revenues declined to a low of $51bn in 2016, only to begin recovery following absorption of EMC to stand at $102bn in 2023. That dropped away to near $88.5bn in 2024.
What are Dell EMC’s key storage products?
PowerMax SAN and network-attached storage (NAS) arrays – formerly EMC’s VMAX – are non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash-equipped products aimed at critical databases, big virtual machine (VM) clusters and mainframes. PowerMax comes in two series, the 2500 and 8500, both powered by Intel Xeon processors, NVMe flash drives and Nvidia BlueField DPUs. The 8500 can scale from two nodes to 16 nodes and is aimed at demanding mixed workloads, with advanced cyber resiliency features like the Cyber Recovery Service for PowerMax.
In the mid-range, PowerStore is the successor to the EMC VNX and Unity lines. The latest version of the platform’s operating system is PowerStore 4.0, while array products run from the 500T to the 9200T, with incremental models between, and the recently launched 3200Q, which offers high-density quad-level cell (QLC) flash storage capacity.
All hold 90-plus all-NVMe flash drives in 2U enclosures, with maximum capacity per appliance in the 5.9PB (petabyte) region, or near 24PB for a cluster. The SAN and NAS arrays have automated high availability storage failover to a secondary site, hot swapping of storage nodes, and NVMe-over-TCP and Fibre Channel connectivity.
The former EMC Isilon scale-out NAS is now called PowerScale, with a model range that includes F-series (high performance, low latency), H-series (balanced performance and capacity), and A-series (long-term bulk storage and archives). The Isilon heritage still persists in the form of the OneFS operating system, or PowerScale OneFS as it is now called.
F-series arrays range from F2XX to F9XX with all-flash and QLC and triple-level cell (TLC) high-density options and scaling from a few hundred terabytes to near 8PB. Meanwhile, H-series arrays offer hard disk drive (HDD)-based capacity with a solid-state drive (SSD) cache with cluster capacity up past 100PB possible, when the maximum 250-plus nodes are deployed. A-series PowerScale arrays are also HDD-equipped with maximum cluster capacities similar to the H-series.
The flagship F900 is aimed at AI, machine learning (ML) and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, media and entertainment 8K processing, genomics, algorithmic trading, and so on.
The former EMC ScaleIO software-defined storage is now PowerFlex, which it dubs “software-first” as it is available in pre-configured rack, appliance and software-only modes. It offers file and block storage and can scale to 16PB raw capacity. PowerFlex aims at data/analytics, AI/ML, and enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).
ECS is Dell’s S3-compatible object storage hardware family, which is aimed at unstructured data storage. ECS appliances come as the EX500, EX5000 and EXF900 product lines. Only the latter is all-flash, with the EX500 and 5000 taking SATA HDDs. Capacities range from the low tens of terabytes to 7.6PB, 14PB and just under 24PB in a rack.
PowerVault ME5 is low-cost, scalable block storage aimed at small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and remote office deployments. Suggested use cases vary hugely, from backup and archive, through virtualisation/virtual desktop infrastructure, to database operations, as well as edge deployments such as CCTV.
Basic options are ME5012, which comes in a 2U chassis with up to 12 drives and 288TB; ME5024, which can take up to 24 drives and 184TB, configurable with flash or as all-flash; and ME5084, which comes in 5U form factor and 84 drives for the more data-heavy end of target workloads and maximum capacity of just over 2PB.
What markets and workloads do Dell EMC target?
Dell EMC storage covers all bases, from the most performance-hungry AI and HPC use cases, through database and transactional workloads, to all general workloads, including entry-level and SME storage. Block, file and object storage, and mainframe use cases can be handled by product families in the Dell EMC range.
How does the cloud fit Dell EMC’s strategy?
Dell EMC has long had public and private cloud connectivity from its storage hardware. This includes MultiCloud Data Services, which delivers hosting, cloud connectivity, and storage and data protection as fully managed services.
Meanwhile, PowerMax, PowerStore and PowerScale storage arrays, and PowerProtect (formerly EMC Data Domain) backup appliances can access multiple public clouds. Use cases targeted here include multicloud disaster recovery, test and development, and distributed high-performance computing.
Also, last year, cloud storage provider Wasabi Technologies announced a collaboration with Dell to provide customers with hybrid cloud solutions. Dell PowerProtect appliances can natively tier data to Wasabi.
What is the Dell EMC container strategy?
In 2023, Dell launched its Apex Red Hat OpenShift service to allow customers to use open source container management software in enterprise deployments.
Red Hat OpenShift is the IBM-owned company’s container orchestration service that’s based on Kubernetes and works with Ceph open source storage.
Prior to that, Dell made Container Storage Modules (CSMs) generally available in 2021. CSMs are plug-ins that provide Kubernetes storage and data protection management that go beyond basic container storage interface (CSI) functionality.
CSI drivers typically help in provisioning, deleting, mapping and unmapping volumes of data. CSMs are for enterprise customers that want more automation and control via a relatively simple user interface.
CSI plug-ins are available for all Dell storage hardware products.
What consumption models of purchasing does Dell EMC offer?
Dell EMC’s consumption model of purchasing is Apex, which allows customers to select from block, file and object storage hardware, plus data protection appliances.
Dell has committed to offer customers the ability to extend the Dell experience to public cloud services (“ground to cloud”), bring the cloud experience to on-premise environments (“cloud to ground”), and provide an “air traffic control layer” to help monitor and manage it.
Apex customers work with Dell to determine a “committed capacity” and “buffer capacity” that is likely to be required in the future. Raw and usable capacity data is measured at component level, daily averages are calculated and a monthly average then derived from that.
Dell also has a partnership with Equinix that offers data colocation in the UK for customers.
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