Dell VRTX Now Scales Up to 50TB of Shared Storage

A few weeks ago Dell added a 2TB 2.5″ 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS  drive to the list of supported drives.  This new addition not only increases the shared storage capacity of the Dell VRTX chassis from 48TB to 50TB but it also offers better performance. 

PowerEdge-VRTX-Front-View-with-3.5-Drives_thumb.pngPreviously the VRTX had a maximum shared storage capacity of 48TB which was achieved by using 12 x 4TB 3.5″ 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS drives.  This required the use of the 12 bay 3.5″ drive model of the PowerEdge VRTX.  Use of 3.5″ drives provides a lot of capacity ideal for archiving or file storage, but for performance it’s not ideal.  Below is the list of current 3.5″ drive options.

3.5” Drive Options (as of March 25, 2015):

  • 300GB 15K RPM SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug
  • 600GB 15K RPM SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug
  • 1TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug
  • 1.8TB 10K RPM SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug
  • 2TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug
  • 3TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug
  • 4TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug

PowerEdge-VRTX-Front-View-with-2.5-Drives_thumb.pngThe Dell PowerEdge VRTX also comes in a 25 bay 2.5″ drive model.  As you’ll see in the chart below, the 2.5″ drive model provides many more options, including the ability to hold the largest drive capacity.   The newly announced 2.5″ 2TB drive used with the 25 drive bays will give you 50TB raw shared storage.  In addition, the 2.5″ chassis model provides many more spindles compared to the 3.5″ drive model so you can expect much better application performance.  Also, the 2.5″ drive model is where you’ll find SSD options for those performance hungry applications.

2.5” Drive Options (as of March 25, 2015):

  • 146GB 15K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 300GB 10K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 300GB 15K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 500GB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 600GB 10K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 600GB 15K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 900GB 10K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 1TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 1.2TB 10K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 1.8TB10K RPM SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug
  • 2TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug

2.5” SSD Drive Options (as of March 25, 2015):

  • 200GB SSD SAS Mix Use 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 200GB SSD SAS Write Intensive 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 400GB SSD SAS Mix Use 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 400GB SSD SAS Write Intensive 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 800GB SSD SAS Mix Use 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 800GB SSD SAS Write Intensive 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 1.6TB SSD SAS Mix Use 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug
  • 1.6TB SSD SAS Write Intensive 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-Plug

A couple of observations about the VRTX shared storage:

  • You can have a mix of drive types (SAS, NL-SAS, SSD) in the shared bays within VRTX but you can’t mix and match when creating virtual disks.
  • If you view the VRTX storage as Direct Attached Storage (DAS) you’ll recognize that you won’t find advance storage features like snapshots, replication, compression, deduplication, etc.

 

 

Kevin Houston - Founder, BladesMadeSimple.comKevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 18 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.  Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market.

 

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