Dell NX4 NAS Now Available

Dell continues to listen to you, our customers, and work to address your needs. On the storage front, we heard your desire for a flexible and powerful file storage solution. As we discussed in December, Dell was expanding its Dell|EMC portfolio with the introduction of the Dell NX4.

Well, we did it — the Dell NX4 can meets your needs for a multi-protocol, feature-rich NAS solution offering storage benefits for both central and remote office implementations. Customers that want high performance NFS capability or consolidated protocols including iSCSI, NAS, and FC will benefit from the NX4 which builds upon Dell’s already strong storage portfolio that offers solutions from SMB to enterprise.

The Dell NX4 is optimized for file sharing in NFS and Windows environments, delivering great performance and availability, as well as many advanced features. This is key for organizations with mixed Windows, Linux and Unix file environments looking for higher availability and functionality than what can be accomplished with traditional file servers. Additionally, the Dell NX4 offers a number of advanced capabilities including:

Snapshot comes standard with the NX4 allowing for not only consistent backups but also providing a method for end users to restore their own deleted files, saving IT administrators time and money

— Celerra Replicator is an option for NX4 users to replicate to a local or remote system providing additional data protection capabilities and enabling multi-site data protection, decision support and content distribution

NDMP backup capability comes standard with the NX4 and offers the flexibility to fit easily into your existing back-up environment.

— File level data deduplication and compression also comes standard with the Dell NX4 and has shown to save up to 40 percent of your storage space.

Virtual provisioning helps enables seamless storage expansion and comes standard on the Dell NX4

— Optional file level retention (WORM) capabilities help ensure data preservation and integrity where compliance is a chief concern.

I’ve covered each of these at a very high level but if you’re highly-technical, click here for a whitepaper on the Advanced File Sharing and Management capabilities discussed above.

Because providing continuous access to data is one of the primary needs of any enterprise level storage device, the Dell NX4 is designed to deliver up to five nine availability. With hot-pluggable components and high-availability with transparent fail-over the NX4 brings no-compromise availability for your data.

Additionally, the Dell NX4 supports both file and application data via iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity, making this an ideal remote office solution for a Dell/EMC central office deployment. With a single, unified storage solution, you can optimize the administrative costs at the remote location, and because it’s Dell/EMC, the NX4 can communicate seamlessly with other Dell/EMC storage devices in the central office. This capability improves efficiency for backup and archiving and offers disaster recovery for your remote office environment.

Finally, the Dell NX4 provides a cost-effective solution during a time of economic challenges for many IT budgets by providing a compelling price/performance story when you are looking to get the most out of every IT dollar. So if you are looking for a cost effective, robust, multiprotocol file solution or a remote office option to complement your Dell/EMC central office architecture, consider the Dell NX4, and please keep telling us what we can do to help you meet your storage challenges.

If you’re more of a visual learner, my colleague Scott Sinclair outlines much of this in the video below.

About the Author: Greg White