The Dell EqualLogic PS6100 is a storage area network (SAN) solution designed for mid-sized organizations. It provides high-performance and scalable storage with advanced data management features.
What are the key features of Dell EqualLogic PS6100?
Some of the key features of the Dell EqualLogic PS6100 include:
- High performance with up to 720,000 IOPS and 6GBps throughput per array
- Scalability up to 336TB raw capacity in a single array
- Intelligent caching to optimize performance
- Comprehensive data management with snapshots, clones, replication, and more
- Thin provisioning to improve storage utilization
- SSD and SAS drive support for tiered storage
- Automated load balancing to optimize resources
- Self-optimizing with automatic RAID configuration
- Multi-protocol support including Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and SMB/CIFS
What are the technical specifications of Dell EqualLogic PS6100?
Here are some of the key technical specifications of the Dell EqualLogic PS6100 SAN array:
| Raw Capacity | Up to 336TB per array |
| Effective Capacity | Up to 504TB with data compression |
| Drive Types Supported | SAS, Nearline SAS, SSD |
| Number of Drives | Up to 56 drives per array |
| RAID Support | RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 50 |
| Cache | Up to 96GB RAM and 3.2TB flash cache per array |
| CPU | Dual Intel Xeon quad-core |
| Host Interface | 16Gbps Fibre Channel, 10Gbps iSCSI, 1Gbps iSCSI |
| Throughput | Up to 6GBps per array |
| IOPS | Over 720,000 IOPS per array |
What are the key benefits of Dell EqualLogic PS6100?
The Dell EqualLogic PS6100 provides several advantages for organizations, including:
- Performance: Delivers excellent throughput and IOPS to support demanding workloads.
- Scalability: Scale-out architecture allows seamless capacity and performance expansion.
- Data protection: Provides comprehensive snapshot, replication, and backup capabilities.
- Automated management: Simplifies administration with automatic configuration and optimization.
- Efficiency: Thin provisioning and data compression improve storage utilization.
- Flexibility: Supports multiple protocols, drive types, RAID levels, and tiering.
- Reliability: Redundant components ensure maximum uptime and availability.
- Cost-effectiveness: Modular architecture provides great value for performance and capacity.
What are the use cases for Dell EqualLogic PS6100?
The PS6100 is ideal for these environments and applications:
- Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): Provides low latency and high IOPS for optimal VDI performance.
- Server virtualization: Scales seamlessly to support large server farms and mixed workloads.
- Databases: Delivers throughput, IOPS, and consistency for transactional databases.
- Email and messaging: Manages demanding Microsoft Exchange and other messaging workloads.
- High-performance analytics: Fast caching optimizes analytical and business intelligence applications.
- Business-critical applications: Ensures maximum uptime and rapid failover for Tier-1 applications.
- Backup and disaster recovery: Snapshot, replication, and cloning provide point-in-time recovery.
How does the architecture of Dell EqualLogic PS6100 work?
The Dell EqualLogic PS6100 utilizes a scale-out modular architecture. The basic building blocks are:
- Storage arrays: Multiple PS6100 arrays can be deployed together over 10GbE. Each array contains compute, networking, and up to 56 drives.
- Storage pools: Disks from multiple arrays are pooled into a single virtual storage pool with capacities up to 16PB.
- Networking: Arrays are connected using 10Gbps Ethernet, with multiple NIC ports per array for performance and redundancy.
- Management: All arrays are managed through the EqualLogic Group Manager using a simple GUI and CLI.
The modular design allows organizations to start small and scale both capacity and performance non-disruptively. The system is self-managing and load balancing, distributing data across arrays automatically.
What are the networking requirements for Dell EqualLogic PS6100?
The Dell EqualLogic PS6100 supports both 10GbE iSCSI and 16Gbps Fibre Channel host connectivity. The networking requirements are:
- For iSCSI connectivity, support for 10GbE switches and adapters is required. CAT6 or CAT6a cabling is recommended.
- For Fibre Channel, support for 16Gbps FC switches and HBAs is required. Multi-mode fiber cabling is used.
- Each array contains four 10GbE ports and two 16Gbps FC ports. LAGs can be configured for network redundancy.
- Jumbo frames (MTU 9000) are supported and recommended for iSCSI connectivity.
- Enterprise-class switches from Cisco, Dell, and others are recommended for reliability and performance.
How is the Dell EqualLogic PS6100 managed?
The PS6100 utilizes Dell’s EqualLogic SAN Headquarters (SAN HQ) management software. Key capabilities include:
- Group Manager: Provides centralized management for multiple arrays through an intuitive GUI and CLI.
- Auto-Stat Disk Monitoring: Automatic monitoring and alerts for disk health and utilization.
- Performance Manager: Monitors and reports on detailed storage performance metrics.
- Capacity Manager: Provides insight into capacity utilization and trends across storage pools.
- Event Publishing: Forwards SYSTEM event logs to external monitoring tools such as OpenManage.
SAN HQ simplifies storage administration by providing complete configuration, monitoring, and reporting capabilities from a single interface.
How does Dell EqualLogic PS6100 ensure high availability?
The PS6100 offers complete redundancy to ensure maximum uptime. High availability features include:
- Dual hot-swappable controllers for no single point of failure.
- Dual power supplies and cooling fans.
- RAID protection against disk failures.
- NIC teaming and multipathing for network redundancy.
- Snapshot and replication for disaster recovery.
- Automated failover of controllers.
- Call home notification in case of failures.
- Proactive monitoring detects potential issues before they cause outages.
With built-in redundancy at the hardware and software levels, the PS6100 achieves six-nines (99.9999%) availability even during component failures and maintenance.
How does Dell EqualLogic PS6100 handle disaster recovery?
The PS6100 provides disaster recovery (DR) capabilities through SAN HQ including:
- Snapshots: Point-in-time virtual copies of volumes and LUNs for backup and fast recovery.
- Clones: Full writeable snapshots of data sets for backup or testing purposes.
- Volume replication: Sync and async volume replication to remote arrays for DR.
- Group replication: Replicate snapshots across groups for centralized offsite DR.
- Vault offload: Offloads snapshots to a central backup appliance.
These features allow regular backups for fast local recovery as well as replication of critical data to remote DR sites to minimize downtime in a disaster scenario.
What support and maintenance options are available for PS6100?
Dell offers comprehensive support plans for the EqualLogic product line. Options include:
- Basic: Mon-Fri 8am-6pm phone support, software upgrades, next business day parts replacement.
- ProSupport Plus: 24×7 support, rapid onsite parts replacement, proactive monitoring, assigned technical advisor.
- ProSupport for Software: Software-only support for SAN HQ management software.
- Installation: Installation and configuration services delivered by Dell engineers.
Customizable support packages allow matching the right services levels to business needs. All support plans include software updates and global services are available for multinational businesses.
What training options are available for the Dell EqualLogic PS6100?
Dell offers both online and instructor-led training programs for the PS6100, including:
- Online training: Self-paced online courses for Architecting EqualLogic SANs, Deploying and Managing EqualLogic SANs, and EqualLogic Host and SAN Connectivity.
- Classroom training: In-depth courses on topics like Scaling and Optimizing your EqualLogic SAN and Data Protection with EqualLogic.
- Certification: Official Dell Certified EqualLogic Associate (DCEA) certification.
Dell training helps IT administrators, architects, and support teams gain the expertise to properly design, implement, manage, and support EqualLogic SAN solutions.
Conclusion
The Dell EqualLogic PS6100 is an enterprise-class iSCSI SAN array that delivers high performance, scalability, reliability, and ease of management. With comprehensive data management capabilities and redundant components, it meets the needs of today’s mid-sized organizations for consolidated storage to support virtualization, databases, and other demanding workloads. The PS6100 offers exceptional value with a flexible, modular architecture that can cost-effectively scale on demand.
