Dell adds unified SAN-NAS to Compellent line

First major upgrade since takeover.

Dell has significantly enhanced its flagship Compellent storage family with the addition of unified SAN-NAS storage technology and a new controller based on the company's latest server technology.

The enhancements mark the first significant upgrades to the Compellent storage family since the company's acquisition of Compellent last year.

Dell introduced two primary additions to its Compellent storage line.

The first was the unveiling of a new version of the Compellent controller, the SC8000, which is based on the 64-bit Compellent Storage Center 6.0 operating system Dell introduced earlier this year.

The controller is also the first in the Compellent line to be designed using Dell's twelfth-generation server technology.

The new SC8000 array includes new 2U, 6-Gbit-per-second SAS enclosures with room for up to 12 3.5-inch or 24 2.5-inch disk drives per enclosure.

The SC8000 is a unified storage systems which provides both file data (NAS) and block data (SAN) capabilities, all with a 99.999-percent availability.

The NAS capability is provided by the Dell Compellent FS8600, a high-performance, scale-out NAS module which enables SAN and NAS data to coexist within the Compellent solution. It is based on technology Dell received with its 2010 acquisition of Exanet, a developer of scale-out NAS technology.

Dell last year used the Exanet technology to add NAS capabilities to its EqualLogic SAN arrays.

The FS8600 support 8-Gbit-per-second Fibre Channel connections, and provides a choice of 1GbE or 10GbE connectivity to the network.

This article originally appeared at crn.com