Today Dell EMC announced updates to its popular Unity OS Operating Environment, updating to 4.5. The updates feature new data reduction, protection, and management functions. The company is also announcing UnityVSA Cloud Edition now runs on AWS Cloud and that Unity has been validated with VMware Cloud Foundation.
Today Dell EMC announced updates to its popular Unity OS Operating Environment, updating to 4.5. The updates feature new data reduction, protection, and management functions. The company is also announcing UnityVSA Cloud Edition now runs on AWS Cloud and that Unity has been validated with VMware Cloud Foundation.
Dell EMC Unity continues to be a popular midrange solution wining CRN 2018 product of the year award, for Midrange Storage subcategory, as well as our Editor’s Choice award for its 450F array. Not wanting to rest on their laurels, Dell EMC is continuing to refine the product for its channel partners and customers. 4.5 adds expanded software features such as advanced data reduction, data protection, and management functions as well as an expanded cloud footprint.
New capabilities and benefits:
- Advanced Inline Deduplication – Advanced In-line Dynamic Pattern Detection that considers all data patterns enabling users to see increased efficiency over OE 4.4 with up to 2.7:1 data reduction savings applicable to both file and block data.
- File management improvements – Metrosync for Unity synchronous file replication that came with OE 4.4 is now enhanced with the addition of Metrosync Manager. Metrosync Manager will enhance orchestration, replication granularity and failover capabilities for your synchronous file replication.
- New software to prevent file data loss – New file-level retention capabilities will protect files from modification or deletion until a specified retention date. This is especially useful, for example, when companies are bound by new regulations and compliance requirements for data that has extended life cycles and require longer maintenance and retention periods
- Software-defined storage with HA – With Dell EMC Unity OE 4.5, the company has added native high availability (HA) for its software-defined Dell EMC UnityVSA Professional Edition with 2-node, 2-core, and Tie Breaker Node for 10, 25, and 50TB capacity offerings. The Dell EMC UnityVSA Tie Breaker Node or witness node is a lightweight third member of the cluster to arbitrate in the unlikely event all communication is lost between the two nodes to avoid data corruption.
Not necessarily specific to the update, Dell EMC is taking Unity and expanded its hybrid cloud footprint. Dell EMC Unity now runs in AWS cloud. Benefits include:
- The new Dell EMC Unity Cloud Edition, allows users to deploy fully-functional Dell EMC Unity storage as a VM in a VMware Cloud environment with initial qualification for VMware Cloud on AWS. In this version, users can deploy:
- Comprehensive UFS64 file services for VM Cloud
- Cloud-based DR capabilities with native asynchronous replication
- Scalable test and development environments without additional Dell EMC Unity hardware
Dell EMC Unity has also been validated with VMware Cloud Foundation (the first NFS-based external storage array to be validated on VMware Cloud Foundation). This allows users DIY Cloud Building Blocks enabling a custom cloud platform using best-of-breed cloud-enabled infrastructure.
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