Today, Dell is expanding the EqualLogic iSCSI SAN line with new PS4000 Series storage arrays. The PS4000 arrays share nearly all of the same great attributes of the enterprise-class PS6000 line and previous EqualLogic generations, including the virtualized peer storage or ‘scale-out’ architecture and the all-inclusive feature set. However, the PS4000 Series is a more affordable option for a number of customer use cases where high-end performance or massive scalability aren’t required, such as remote offices or some small- or medium–sized businesses (SMBs).
Notably, the customers and channel partners I’ve spoken to immediately seized upon the product’s value proposition as remote site storage and as a replication partner to help improve data protection.
For instance, a regional amusement park chain is evaluating the EqualLogic PS4000 and saw how the product could help in their evolving disaster recovery scheme. The use case, which I think will be commonplace, is to deploy PS4000 arrays in smaller remote sites to provide affordable, highly available SAN storage for local point-of-sale and business applications, and also replicate key data back to headquarter operations that run higher-end EqualLogic arrays.
James Honey in our product marketing team explains a bit more about the benefits of this new product in this video.