Public Preview of Azure Native Dell PowerScale

Dell and Microsoft are extending their partnership by bringing Dell's flagship unstructured data product, OneFS, to Azure as a new fully managed offering – now in Public Preview. Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure packs all the well-known benefits from OneFS in an Azure Native ISV service. This is a result of a co-development effort to create an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage filesystem-as-a-service.

Power of choice

Microsoft customers can now choose between two flavors of Dell PowerScale. One is the existing customer managed version, and the other is the newly released Dell managed PowerScale for Microsoft Azure. Both solutions allow customers to run OneFS in Azure, an enterprise-grade software-defined solution that integrates scale-out PowerScale and Microsoft's public cloud platform. PowerScale offers an end-to-end data solution for many AI, HPC and enterprise use cases with keeping simplicity top of mind.

Both solutions offer efficiency, performance, resiliency, multi-petabyte scalability and feature set expected from an enterprise storage solution like PowerScale to Azure. You can replicate your data estate between on-premises and Azure-based deployments and optimize your hybrid data estate with data reduction through compression, deduplication and file tiering to scalable, cost-effective Azure Blob Storage with Cloud Pools. Rich Azure ecosystems for AI and Analytics services, cloud-based disaster recovery, or application bursting are now easily accessible for existing and new PowerScale customers. The only difference is the way you deploy and manage your storage solution. In a customer managed Dell PowerScale for Azure solution, customers deploy and manage the entire software and infrastructure stack. All the compute, networking and storage resources are in a customer’s tenant. If this is the preferred option, you can start with the deployment guide and provision a standalone PowerScale cluster now. However, if you are looking for a fully managed solution, Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure is the right choice. As a managed service, Dell implements and manages the underlying infrastructure stack, and is responsible for support activities, including platform upgrades and maintenance tasks.

What is Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure, An Azure Native ISV Service

Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure is a fully managed service, implemented as an Azure Native ISV service (LINK). It is deployed and managed through the Azure Portal and transactable through Azure Marketplace. This allows all Microsoft customers to use their existing Azure commitments and contracts to easily pay for and use this new offering. Unlike existing customer managed Dell PowerScale for Azure, this implementation runs in a Dell managed environment. The responsibility for service deployment and maintenance belongs to Dell while the customers consume the service in a cloud-native manner. The same ease-of-use typically tied to SaaS services, now applies to a traditional, enterprise grade storage system, like PowerScale. Customers can simply deploy the resource with the familiar Azure portal experience and start consuming a new petabyte scale OneFS cluster.

Dell PowerScale Azure Native Architecture Diagram

As an Azure Native ISV service, Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure allows customers to manage their solution with a well-known Azure user interface. Customers can choose between Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or PowerShell.

Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure user interface in the Azure Portal

“Two industry leaders, one powerful solution raising the bar for enterprise cloud storage. Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure offers seamless scalability up to 8.4PB in a single namespace, versatile multi-protocol support, robust security, and is fully managed by Dell. This integration simplifies hybrid cloud operations while maintaining consistent high performance for data-intensive workloads like AI/ML, and EDA, helping you stay ahead to unlock your next breakthrough." Travis Vigil, SVP, Infrastructure Storage Group, Product Management at Dell Technologies.

Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure provides up to 8.4PB in a single namespace and is available in 9 Azure regions.

Supported regions:

• US East
• US South Central
• US West 2
• West Europe
• North Europe
• UK South
• Germany West Central
• Australia East
• Southeast Asia

How to take the next step

Azure Marketplace Listing

Request a Dell Reference Number for Public Preview

Dell Documentation