Dell Compellent Technical Features

Advanced Storage Virtualization

Compellent virtualizes storage at the disk level, which accelerates data access by spreading read/ write operations across all drives so multiple requests are processed in parallel. Create high performance, highly efficient virtual volumes quickly without allocating drives to individual servers, without complicated capacity planning or performance tuning. Remove the limitations of physical drives and scale your virtualized pool without downtime or disruption.

  • Create a centralized pool of storage shared by all servers
  • Present disk capacity regardless of tier, RAID leel or server connectivity

Advanced Thin Provisioning

Thin Provisioning delivers the highest possible storage utilization. The Compellent advanced thing provisioning software, Dynamic Capacity, separates storage allocation from utilization, allowing users to distribute any size volume upfront and only consume physical capacity when data is written. Reclaim capacity that is no longer in use, automatically reduce the space needed for virtual OS volumes, and convert traditional volumes on existing storage to thin-provisioned capacity.

  • Expand capacity on demand without downtime
  • Automatically allocate space on write according to incoming payload

Thin Replication

Remote Instant Replay leverages space-efficient Replays between local and remote sites to deliver Thin Replication at a fraction of the cost of traditional disaster recovery solutions. After initial site synchronization, only incremental changes in data are replicated on an ongoing basis, cutting hardware, bandwidth and administration costs. You can replicate over Fibre Channel or native IP, which brings disaster recovery within reach of every budget.

  • Replicate data with less bandwidth and disk capacity
  • Use Portable Volume to synce sites in days instead of months

Modular Hardware

Compellent’s standards-based hardware architecture reduces technology risk by providing the capability to mix and match server interface or drive technology, and easily adopt new technologies as they become available. With the Compellent Persistent Hardware Architecture, you can choose the technologies that make sense for your IT infrastructure today with the fl exibility to change technologies as your business needs change over time. Scale capacity, connectivity and performance on a single, modular platform.

  • Scale from 2 TB to over 1,000 TB within one system
  • Upgrade to new hardware and software without downtime

Dynamic Storage Migration

Live Volume enables organizations to move storage on demand between Compellent arrays to deliver high availability and continuous access to data. All migration occurs transparently while applications remain online. And the functionality is fully integrated, eliminating the need for additional hardware or server-side agents. Live Volume supports any virtualized server environment and complements leading virtual machine (VM) movement engines.

  • Balance I/O workload between arrays on the fly
  • Deliver zero-downtime maintenance and disaster avoidance

Automated Tiered Storage

Compellent disk drive enclosures offer extensive flexibility and scalability so organizations can easily adapt to changing business needs. Compellent is built on a technology independent architecture, allowing users to mix and match SSD, Fibre Channel (FC), SAS and SATA drives in the same system. And any blend of drives can be housed in the same system at any location – with configurations changed at any time.

  • Move the most active data to the fastest, out edges of each drive
  • Add disk drives to any tier of storage on the fly