Dell Compellent Storage Center - Product Analysis

Evaluator Series Research - October 26, 2015

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Dell Compellent Storage Center

The Dell Compellent Storage Center is a block storage system aimed at the mid-tier enterprise market. The
largest models are the SC9000 and the earlier SC8000. A scaled down version is offered as the SC4000, targeted
at more cost competitive markets and the SCv2000 has three models in the family as economical entry level
systems. Dell calls their design Fluid Data Architecture. The concept of Fluid Data that is embodied with the
architecture of the Compellent systems is that data can be automatically stored, moved, exported, or imported
based on the intelligence in the Compellent system. The advanced features of the Compellent system are
centered on managing and moving data to optimize the storage. In addition to block storage, the Compellent
system can have a NAS controller element added for file-based access.
As a midrange storage system, Compellent competes with EMC VNX and VNXe, HDS VSP G-Series, IBM Storwize
V7000, V5000, and V3700, NetApp FAS series, and the NetApp Engenio-based (E-Series) storage systems.

Highlights

Virtualization of the attached disk storage

Wide-striping of data blocks across all physical disks
RAID protection levels 0, 10, 5, 6
Data prioritization control of service level assignment to prioritize data access
Automated tiered storage
Add-on NAS controller the FS8600
Portable volumes to populate other Compellent storage systems
Snapshots with consistency groups
Additional element to provide file access using NAS protocols
Live Volume storage hypervisor to present storage volume to two storage arrays for workload
migration and failover Active-active stretched cluster support
Perpetual license purchase of Storage Controller software once; continued on through multiple
generations of hardware
Two tiers of SSDs
SSD 3D NAND flash at 3.8TB supported
84 3.5 drives in 5U package
Encryption with Self-Encrypting Drives
Federation of multiple systems for management and volume migration

Evaluator Group Comment: The Dell Compellent Storage Center systems are targeted for a range of
customers from the higher end of the mid-tier market which is both price sensitive and has the
expectation for features originally resident in high-end systems to the most economical entry-level
market. There are many of the desired features in the Compellent system. The system is a very
popular choice by customers for its economics and the basic features. Additional features will help
expand the opportunity for Dell Compellent.

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Dell Compellent Storage Center - Product Analysis

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Overview
The Dell Compellent Storage Center offers multiple models with usage as midrange storage and entrylevel systems providing block storage. In addition to the block storage offered with the Compellent
system, another component may be added to the system to provide file-based storage as well. The
block storage system is a dual controller system where both controllers are active and support high
availability with failover from one controller to the other.
The dual controller system has implemented virtualization of the physical disks attached which has
enabled many advanced features including thin provisioning and wide striping. Highly valued advanced
features such as snapshots and remote replication are included with the system.
The add-on file-based capability is accomplished with the FS8600 Fluid File System which is a separate
appliance. The add-on NAS capability can scale from one appliance with two controllers to four
applicance with eight controllers. Prior to the availability of the FS8600, NAS attachment for Compellent
was done with a server running the ZFS file system or the NX3000 NAS system (Windows Storage Serverbased) attached to the dual controller system. With this added element, both block and file-based
access can be supported.

Figure 1: Dell Compellent Storage Center Family (source: Dell)

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Dell Compellent Storage Center - Product Analysis

Evaluator Series Research - October 26, 2015

Figure 2: Dell Compellent Controller and SAS Drive Enclosures

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Dell Compellent Storage Center - Product Analysis

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Product Architecture
The Dell Compellent Storage Center is a dual controller design with redundant components that allow
for failover in the case of failure of a controller and continued operation in the case of failure of other
components. The dual controller system uses communication through switches to detect failure in the
paired controller and handle the failover.
Physical disks are virtualized with blocks to be stored or retrieved managed across the disks in virtual
volumes. Using the indirection with the block locations not tied to specific disks prior to storing allows
for the features such as automated tiering, use of all physical resources, and redistribution of data to
avoid hotspots to be implemented.
The virtualized architecture with blocks being handled
independently also gives flexibility in handling of the RAID protection and the ability to do wide striping
allowing for more simultaneous disk access.
Dell supports multiple types of SSDs as separate tiers of storage with migration between the tiers
handled by the standard Data Progression software.
Multiple RAID levels are supported with dynamic hot sparing. Any number of hot spares may be utilized
and the failover and rebuild are automatic.
The cache management allows for multiple threads to access cache with read-ahead algorithm for read
caching of data in system memory and a separate write cache mirrored across the controllers. The write
cache is battery backed to maintain data in the case of a failure or power loss.
I/O operations are monitored and optimized for performance by merging contiguous block requests into
a single request to minimize physical disk revolutions, sorting I/O request to minimize seek operations,
and deep tagged command queuing for multiple outstanding I/O requests to disks.
Another built-in unique feature is the ability to export and import volumes to a portable USB-attached
disk drive.
The controller has internal SSD disks used for operating system boot and for offloading battery-backed
cache in the case of a power failure. The operating system is a 64 bit OS beginning with SC 6.1.
The SC9000, SC8000, SC4000, and SCv2000 also support the Dell Fresh Air initiative and can operate at
elevated temperatures to reduce the need for air conditioning and associated power consumption. The
operating temperature can be up to 115 degrees F.
The file-based access is a NAS controller is the FS8600 Fluid File System (described in a separate
Evaluator Group document). The FS8600 is an appliance with two controllers. From one to four
appliances may be attached and provide a global namespace. Prior to the availability of the FS8600, NAS
was provided by either a server running a Linux operating system with the ZFS file system or the Dell
NX3000 NAS system. The NAS controller attaches to the Dell Compellent Storage Center for its block
storage while managing the file access using CIFS, NFS, and HTTP protocols. The block storage system
features such as thin provisioning and snapshots can be exploited with the NAS system.
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Evaluator Group Comments: Using dual controller architecture brings the high availability
characteristics expected in mid-tier systems to a broader market because of the economics of the
Compellent system. Probably the most important element of the architecture is that it abstracts the
physical disks and allows blocks to be moved and managed so that resources are optimized. This was
accomplished by a design that from the start targeted this abstraction and did not graft it on to an
existing design like some competing midrange storage systems.

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System Software
Disk Virtualization
All disks are arranged as a pool and logical volumes are created from the pool and presented to attached
servers for usage. The volumes created from the pool can be of any size and are thinly provisioned.

Copy-Mirror-Migrate
A local clone (copy) or mirror of a volume may be made using the same mechanism as the data
migration feature.

Disk Optimizer
When additional disks are added to the pool, data is restriped across the disks as a background activity
to spread the performance (disk access) across the disks in the pool

System Management
Enterprise Manager
The system management includes a web-based GUI for administration and resource management with
monitoring and reporting function built-in. The Enterprise Manager software contains monitoring and
reporting capabilities in addition to configuration and management. Enterprise Manager functions
include:
Monitoring and management of multiple local and remote Compellent systems
Configuration and control of remote replication
Monitoring and reporting on capacity and disk utilization
Generate reports on storage utilization and performance
Manage alert notifications
Configure phone home support
Chargeback configuration (associating volumes to groups) and reporting
Dashboard display of status
CLI for manual interaction or scripting
Consolidated management with the FS8600 NAS
Enterprise Manager is a suite of individual elements with groupings into three levels. The Foundation
level is basic and is included with the product. The Reporter and Chargeback levels are optional and
additional charge.
Enterprise Manager Foundation Discovery, replication management, VMware SRM adapter, event
management, free space recovery
Enterprise Manager Reporter Performance management, capacity management, threshold alerting

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Enterprise Manager Chargeback Storage-based chargeback, power savings, and economic savings
(called Hero by Compellent)
Evaluator Group Comment: For a system targeted as a mid-range storage system, there are
system management features that are typically only seen in high-end enterprise systems.

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Dell Compellent Storage Center - Product Analysis

Evaluator Series Research - October 26, 2015

Feature / Function

SC9000

Form Factor

SC8000

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SC4020

Rack Mount

Number of Controllers

2 with two 3.2 GHz 8core Xeon processors

RAID Levels

2 with two 2.5 GHz 6core Xeon processors

1 or 2 with single 2.5 GHz

quad-core Xeon
processors

0, 5, 6, 10

Maximum Disk Drives

Drive Sizes Supported

SAS 960 - 12, 24 and

84 drives per enclosure

SAS 960 - 12, 24 and

84 drives per enclosure

120 (24 internal plus 96

external)

SSD: 400 GB, 1.6 TB / 3.8 TB SAS

SAS 3.5: 450, 600 GB 15,000 RPM, 1, 2, 3, 4 TB 7,200 RPM
SAS 2.5: 146 GB 15,000 RPM, 450, 600, 900 GB 10,000 RPM
NL-SAS: 1 TB 7,200 RPM

Maximum Raw
Capacity

3PB

3PB

500 TB

Device Interface Speed

SAS: 12 Gb/s

SAS: 6 Gb/s

SAS: 6 Gb/s

Maximum backend
ports

SAS 40

SAS 20

System Memory

256 GB per controller

32 128 GB

32 GB

NVRAM Capacity

512 MB

512 MB

N/A

Drive intermix

Yes

Yes

Yes

Drive spin-down

No

No

No

Max iSCSI ports

20 @ 10 Gb/s

10 @ 10 Gb/s

4 @ 10 Gb/s

Max Fibre channel

ports

20 @ 16 Gb/s, 40 @
8Gb/s

16 @ 16 Gb/s

8 @ 16 Gb/s

Max FCoE ports

12 @ 10 Gb/s

10 @ 10 Gb/s

N/A

Table 1: Dell Compellent Model SC9000, SC8000 and SC4000 Comparison

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Dell Compellent Storage Center - Product Analysis

Evaluator Series Research - October 26, 2015

Feature / Function

Model SCv2080

Form Factor
Number of Controllers

Drive Sizes Supported

Maximum Raw Capacity

9 of 15

SCv2020

SCv2000

1 or 2 with quad-core Xeon

processors

1 or 2 with quad-core
Xeon processors

Rack Mount
2 with quad-core Xeon
processors

RAID Levels
Maximum Disk Drives

Page

0, 5, 6, 10
168

168

168

SSD: 400 GB, 1.6 TB SAS

SAS 3.5: 450, 600 GB 15,000 RPM, 1, 2, 3, 4 TB 7,200 RPM
SAS 2.5: 450, 600, 900 GB 10,000 RPM
NL-SAS: 1 TB 7,200 RPM

504 TB

Maximum backend ports

504 TB

504 TB

2 @ 6 Gb/s

System Memory

8 GB per controller

8 GB per controller

NVRAM Capacity

512 MB

N/A

Drive intermix

Yes

Yes

Drive spin-down

No

No

iSCSI ports

2 @ 10 Gb/s, 4 @ 1Gb/s

2 @ 10 Gb/s, 4 @ 1Gb/s

2 @ 10 Gb/s, 4 @ 1Gb/s

Fibre channel ports

2 @ 16 Gb/s, 4 @ 8 Gb/s

2 @ 16 Gb/s, 4 @ 8 Gb/s

2 @ 16 Gb/s, 4 @ 8 Gb/s

4 @ 12 Gb/s

4 @ 12 Gb/s

4 @ 12 Gb/s

SAS ports

8 GB per controller

Table 2: Dell SCv2000 Models Comparison

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Host Operating System Support

Microsoft Windows Server, Hyper-V
Sun Solaris
HP-UX
Linux
IBM AIX
Novell Netware
Apple MacOS
Tru64
VMware ESX
Citrix XenServer
Microsoft Cluster Server Support
Table 3: Host OS Support

Multipath I/O failover is supported for the Windows MPIO driver. Microsofts Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS) is also supported for backup processes.
SMI-S is not specified as being supported.
Evaluator Group Comment: The specifications bring out the fact that the amount of cache in the
controllers is less than some competing products. Additional cache would allow for more cache hits
and write data for performance optimization.
The NAS controller for the Compellent Storage Center is the Dell FS8600 Fluid File System. This product
is described in the NAS section of the Evaluator Group Research. Prior to the availability of the FS8600,
there were two NAS controllers that were used to provide file access to Compellent.

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Reliability, Availability and Serviceability

The Compellent storage systems maintain data integrity and provide data availability via the
following mechanisms:

Dual controllers with failover for high availability

Redundant, how-swappable components:
- Controllers
- Fans
- Power supplies
Dual loop, switched connections to storage devices
Automatic drive failover
Automatic drive rebuild to spare drive
Configurable number of hot spare disks
RAID protection across storage devices
Remote reporting of status and automatic trigger of service actions
Mirrored, battery backed cache

Advanced Features
Dynamic Capacity (Thin Provisioning) Dynamic Capacity is Compellents name for thin
provisioning. With the architecture to abstract the physical disks and deal with blocks individually, as
capacity is required to store blocks of data, it is allocated dynamically and the space assigned to the
required volume. With the abstraction or virtualization of storage, all physical storage can be assigned
to a common pool to allow for better utilization. The allocation is done on a page basis where the page
size is 2 MB. For Windows environments only, there is a reclaim deleted or unused space back into the
common storage pool.
Automated Tiered Storage (Data Progression) Based on policy settings, the Compellent Storage
Center will automatically migrate data between tiers. The tiers that can be defined are for Solid State
Disk, high performance disk, or lower performance disk. In addition to the tiering function, additional
drives may be added to any tier and immediately utilized.
Data Instant Replay (Snapshot) Snapshots or Replays can be created at any time interval. The
Snapshots are copy on write with incremental changes captured to the read/write snapshot volume.
With the management interface, a snapshot (or replay) can be restored to any point in time. There is no
logical limit on the number of snapshots that can be made.
Remote Instant Replay (Replication) Remote Instant Replay does an initial asynchronous
replication of a volume and then incremental changes are replicated asynchronously. Either Fibre
Channel or native IP interfaces may be used for the replication. One usage may be to use Portable
Volumes for the initial synchronization with changes only after the volume has been introduced at the
remote site. Synchronous replication of Live Volumes is supported over Fibre Channel networks.
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Dynamic Controllers (Clustering) Storage controllers may be run in clustering mode to provide for
high availability and additional performance. Multi-path software such as Microsoft MPIO is used to
failover access from servers. Cache is mirrored between the controllers.
Portable Volumes Portable Volumes are USB attached removable disks where a volume may be
copied and then introduced on another Compellent system. The Portable Volume can be used for
populated a remote system, seeding the replication volume in a remote replication solution, or for
creating a removable copy of a volume. Currently the Portable Volumes are 2 TB and have a 128-bit AES
encryption capability for the drive. The connection is USB 2.0.
Live Volume
Live Volume is a software-based function that introduces the concept of a storage hypervisor into the
Compellent system and provide Active-Active Stretched Cluster functionality. With Live Volume, storage
volumes can be presented to two Compellent storage systems at the same time. This allows
administrators to shift volumes between systems for application movement or high availability
requirements in case a system is being made unavailable for some reason. There is no limit to the
number of volumes or the number of transfers that may be done.
Live Volume is built upon Dell Compellent asynchronous replication where a volume it initially
synchronized to another Compellent system and then periodic snapshots are done with the changed
data replicated. Before a controlled swap is done, another snapshot is taken and the changed data
replicated. The switch of server access to a volume on the companion Compellent system involves
spoofing of the World Wide Name for the original access. The Live Volume can be switched back to the
original system with the same replication mechanisms. The configuration for the Live Volume is set up
through Enterprise Manager GUI and the swap can be initiated through the interface as well.
Live Volume works with vMotion and Microsoft Live Migration to allow the storage volume to move
when the virtual machines are moved. With the integration with the virtual machine software, when a
virtual machine is moved, the Live Volume can automatically be moved as well. Live Volumes have the
same capabilities of thin provisioning and tiering as other storage volumes.
VMware VAAI Support
The Dell Compellent system supports the VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) which is in
vSphere 4.1. VAAI is a set of mechanisms that allow processing for certain data-related services
copying data when creating a new VM, for exampleto be offloaded from the ESX host to a storage
array. The intent of these APIs is to streamline the functioning of the ESX server and speed-up delivery of
storage-supported services.

Full copy Enables the storage system to make full copies of data within the storage system
without having the ESX host read and write the data.

Block zeroing Enables storage systems to zero out a large number of blocks to speed
provisioning of virtual machines.

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Hardware-assisted locking The system uses an atomic test and set implementation rather
than a SCSI lock/reservation to protect the metadata for VMFS cluster file systems, thereby
improving the scalability of large ESX host farms sharing a Datastore.

Encryption
Encryption of data at rest is supported through the use of Self-Encrypting Drives. FIPS 140-2 certification
is included in the support. Storage Pools may be selected for encryption such that the entire system
does not require having all data encrypted.
Evaluator Group Comment: There are some very valuable features that can be exploited by
customers. The snapshot and asynchronous remote replication are very useful to operations.
An interesting feature is the Portable Volume. This feature has some unique usages and some
potential protection opportunities for customers. There are probably some unique cases that
customers have that will be very interesting to understand.
The Live Volume feature can be a very useful capability both for the movement of virtual machines
and to handle site failovers / switchovers. The granularity of one Compellent system to a second one
is a per-volume basis which means there could be multiple sites involving Compellent systems linked
together. Operationally, there can be advantages to being able to seamlessly direct the switchovers
as needed.

Performance
No SPC-1 performance information is available on the Storage Performance Council website at this time

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Evaluator Group Comments

The Dell Compellent Storage Center continues a very big success. It is offered through the reseller
channel and is a popular offering because of the price and the basic capabilities it provides for the
target market of mid-size enterprises. The new controller will allow for greater performance and
scaling up market.

Positives:
Probably the most important thing to realize is that the Compellent system was designed from the
ground up as a system that virtualized the attached storage devices. This allowed for a design that
could build upon that without the constraints of other systems that evolved from fixed type device
mapping. The capabilities of thin provisioning and wide striping as well as the flexibility in handling
RAID protection were part of the initial design of virtualization.
The advanced features currently available are valued by customers most specifically the snapshot
and the asynchronous remote replication. Unique to the Compellent system is the Portable Volume
feature. This feature can be exploited in a number of ways and probably will lead competition to add
a similar capability at some point but after Compellent has already proved it to be a success.
The Live Volume feature has great operational value for customers in that it can be used to provide
access to volumes that are dynamically replicated between two Storage Center systems by servers in
case of failure or movement of the application to another server. The flexibility of providing access to
a volume through on Storage Center system or another that is transparent and can be seamlessly
switched is a feature that is usually only found on much more expensive systems. The simplicity of
switching makes this capability more likely to be used by IT personnel.

Potential Concerns:
As the Compellent system is considered by customers who have had midrange systems with additional
advanced features, some of those features will be determining factors in purchases. Compellent will
need to continue to add more features such as a larger caching area and deduplication. These will be
competitive issues at some point in time to expand the market opportunity. The current product is still
very applicable for customers in the target market with excellent features and capabilities.
There is confusion sometimes with the Dell EqualLogic systems, which creates problems with
customers in making a selection. The potential acquisition by EMC also adds to some confusion.
More detailed information is available at http://evaluatorgroup.com
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products described herein. In no event shall Evaluator Group be liable for any indirect, special, inconsequential or incidental damages
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