Dell’s storage products are set to receive significant updates, including DevOps integrations with Ansible and Terraform tools, compliance with the latest US government security standards, and zero-trust readiness. In a statement released on Wednesday, the tech giant revealed that PowerStore, its flash-based storage array line, would be receiving the lion’s share of these upcoming enhancements. Dell noted that PowerStore now provides STIG hardening, making it compliant with the US government’s standards for its own networks. Additionally, PowerStore now has secure and immutable snapshot technology that will help ensure more reliable recoveries that are harder to compromise.

PowerStore will also receive a wide range of other enhancements, including:

Multifactor authentication

Streamlined file resiliency

Direct management of file permissions from within PowerStore

Native integration into Dell’s PowerProtect data management system

Integration with open source frameworks Ansible and Terraform

Overall, the changes will provide DevOps workers with the ability to use the PowerStore system natively, which means they can design automated processes for storage provisioning without low-level coding. Dell also added Ansible support for its Unity XT hybrid storage offering.

Dell’s storage portfolio, including PowerMax mission-critical storage, PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure, and ObjectScale, will also receive enhancements. These will include native air gap support for the PowerMax storage system, enhanced NVMe and TCP for the PowerFlex platform, and improved S3 object storage performance in ObjectScale.

In addition, the company’s ClouIdIQ AIOps software will receive VMware integration.

Gartner senior director analyst Jeff Vogel stated that the enhancements to PowerStore are fulfilling requirements for business-critical applications for midsize enterprise customers. As for PowerFlex, it is an important, modern cloud-like architecture for software-defined, elastic, and scalable hybrid infrastructure platform storage that can take advantage of the benefits of an end-end NVMe fabric-based infrastructure using TCP. This new architecture bridges enterprise storage with standard Ethernet-based networking, lowering infrastructure costs and simplifying the environment.

A spokesperson for Dell confirmed that the enhancements announced on Wednesday will be free to all existing customers and that no other pricing changes are associated with the launch. New features in PowerMax, CloudIQ, and Unity XT are already available. PowerStore and ObjectScale updates will be available from June, while the new features in PowerFlex will go live in the third quarter of this year.

Overall, Dell’s storage product lineup is set to receive substantial updates that should improve functionality, performance, and security. The integration with DevOps tools like Ansible and Terraform, improved compliance with government security standards, and zero-trust readiness should help ensure that the company’s storage solutions remain competitive and secure over the long term.

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