Dell EMC XTREMIO X2 All-Flash Array

Realising new levels of efficiency

Dell EMC XtremIO is a market-leading purpose-built all-flash array that offers consistently high performance with low latency; unmatched storage efficiency with inline, all-the-time data services; rich application integrated copy services; and unprecented management simplicity.

The next-generation platform, XtremIO X2, builds upon unique features of XtremIO to provide even more agility and simplicity for your data centre and business. Content-aware, in-memory metadata and inline, all-the-time data services have made XtremIO the ultimate platform for virtual server and desktop environments and workloads that benefit from efficient copy data management.

XtremIO X2 includes many enhancements and new features. Highlights include:

• Enhanced Integrated Copy Data Management (iCDM)
• Multi-dimensional scaling
• Elegant software driven performance improvements
• Dramatically lower TCO with efficiency guarantees

Dell EMC XtremIO X2: Differentiated Architecture

X2 hardware and XIOS 6.0 innovative software greatly improve performance including up to 80 percent faster response times and support for up to 40 percent more concurrent users for VDI than the previous generation. The architecture offers two times faster VMWare storage operations with a single X2 X-Brick offering up to 40 GB/s bandwidth.

X2 includes inline, all-the-time data services: thin provisioning, deduplication, compression, D@RE, XtremIO virtual copies (XVC), and double SSD failure protection with zero performance impact. Only XtremIO's unique in-memory metadata architecture can accomplish this feat.

Volumes are always thin-provisioned. XtremIO's in-memory deduplication is global - across the entire XtremIO cluster irrespective of the number of X-Bricks in a cluster. This means that XtremIO only writes unique data - data that the entire cluster didn't see in it's I/O history - to the SSD's. This inline deduplication not only saves significant capacity but can also improve performance. Inline compression also adds to XtremIO's data reduction efficiencies.

XtremIO Virtual Copies helps provision and deploy space-efficient, instant virtual data copies without impacting system performance. Compared to legacy arrays, X2 enables average savings of 4 to 20 times of the amount of physical capacity needed thanks to all of these data reduction methods.

XtremIO has developed a flash-based data protection algorithm that offers better than RAID 1 performance with better than RAID 5 capacity savings and protection comparable to RAID 6. It provides dual parity with as little as 10 percent capacity overhead. In addition, all of the inline, always-on data services are included with the platform at no additional charge.

X2 provides consistent performance for all block sizes and all read/write mixes throughout the lifecycle of the array. And iCDM capabilities enable you to create, refresh, and restore thousands of production copies, and run workloads on them, without performance impact or any storage overhead - accelerating business agility.

Integrated Copy Data Management

XtremIO pioneered the concept of iCDM - the ability to consolidate both primary data and its associated copies on a scalable all-flash array for unprecedented agility and efficiency. iCDM offers application integration, orchestration, and self-service for all copies. iCDM offers application integration, orchestration, and self-service for all copies. With XVC, you can provision that are immediately usable by the application integration, orchestration, and self-service for all copies. With XVC, you can provision copies that are immediately usable by the application, enabling fast deployments and ensuring those deployed copies are fully functional.

X2 now delivers up to two times as many XVC per cluster. This enables you to take XVC more frequently and retain them longer periods of time than the previous generation. This is important for organisations that are using iCDM for data protection because it will allow them to set even shorter RPOs and retain more restoration point-in-times.

XtremIO exposes its agile and efficient copy services to application teams via Dell EMC AppSync software. AppSync provides application integration and orchestration services for XVC. It simplifies and automates the process of creating and consuming XVC for iCDM use cases. AppSync also provides local and remote recovery using XVC and replication technologies. Its deep application integration enables application owners or DBAs to satisfy copy demand for operational recovery and data repurposing. An AppSync iCDM Starter Bundle is included with evey XtremIO purchase.

Organisations have received tremendous value from XtremIO iCDM and are aggresively using space efficient and high performance XtremIO Virtual Copies to empower their internal stakeholders such as application development and analytics teams. Today more than 55 percent of XVC in the existing XtremIO customer base are writable copies and used for active repurposing, not just static, data protection copies.