Simplify your storage management by leveraging a universal storage layer

In today’s IT landscape, organizations are confronted with the daunting task of managing complex and isolated multicloud infrastructures while being mindful of budget constraints and the need for rapid deployment—all against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and skills shortages.

To optimize such environments, IT leaders should consider a multipronged approach, comprising common sets of software-defined infrastructure services, integrated cloud platforms, and modern as-a-service subscriptions that have been designed to address exactly these issues. This approach enhances the agility of cloud computing across private and public locations—and gives organizations greater control over their applications and data.

Cloud complexity creates unexpected risks

Many organizations use both public and private cloud environments. Public and private cloud infrastructure is often fundamentally incompatible, isolating islands of data and applications, increasing workload friction, and decreasing IT agility. Varying management interfaces create silos of operation, skills gaps, decreased visibility, and increased costs. Fractured policy frameworks compromise security and compliance initiatives, increase risk, and decrease service levels.

In a 2023 survey by Enterprise Strategy Group, IT professionals identified their top application deployment issues:

• 81% face challenges with data and application mobility across on-premises data centers, public clouds, and edge.
• 82% have difficulty sizing workloads for the optimal on- or off-premises environment.
• 86% routinely migrate workloads from on-premises locations to the public cloud.

Many organizations spin up infrastructure in different locations, such as private and public clouds, without first creating a comprehensive architecture. There are myriad reasons why this occurs, but it is often driven by disparate product teams or organizational dynamics when trying to meet aggressive IT service goals. Business and IT leaders are often surprised by how quickly operations in these incompatible environments can become overwhelming, with security and compliance issues, suboptimal performance, and unexpected costs.

A universal storage layer can help tame IT complexity

One way to resolve this complexity is by architecting a consistent environment on a foundation of software-defined storage services that provide the same capabilities and management interfaces regardless of where a customer’s data resides. Adopting the same software-defined storage across multiple locations creates a universal storage layer. This enables customers with all the advantages of AWS, and a common set of storage features that enables streamlined management and seamless data mobility capabilities across locations.

Dell has responded to this challenge with a family of storage offerings engineered to simplify operations. This, in turn, eases the IT management burden, accelerates technology deployment, enhances security and compliance, and optimizes cost.

Dell’s offerings, available in AWS Marketplace, enrich the AWS cloud storage experience with the same enterprise-grade functionality, performance, and resiliency that organizations already trust in their private clouds.

• Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS: Provides the best of both worlds with Dell’s enterprise-class storage performance, scalability, and resiliency combined with economics, compute, and advanced services from AWS.
• Dell APEX File Storage for AWS: Delivers enterprise-class file capabilities and high performance powered by trusted PowerScale OneFS software.
• Dell APEX Protection Storage for AWS: Simplifies the protection and security of workloads and data with increased efficiency, reliability, and lower TCO, leveraging the software-defined version of PowerProtect Data Domain.
• Dell APEX Backup as a Service: For customers who prefer to move to a SaaS-based model for their data resiliency strategy, Dell offers a comprehensive solution to protect their hybrid, SaaS, and endpoint workloads.
• Dell APEX Navigator for Multicloud Storage: Streamlines management and operations for Dell APEX Storage for AWS. Reduces the amount of time spent on configuring cloud infrastructure by up to 95%¹ and orchestrates data mobility between private and public locations.

The bottom line

Dell Technologies offers a comprehensive family of software-defined storage solutions that enhance the AWS storage experience by providing Dell’s storage innovations on AWS. When combined with Dell’s on-premises storage solutions, they form a universal storage layer, enabling organizations to achieve a consistent and comprehensive customer experience and address the challenges of incompatible infrastructure. This unified approach simplifies storage management to reduce costs; enhances agility to accelerate innovation with applications and data; and strengthens control to improve data protection, security, compliance, and service levels.

Learn how you can get a more unified multicloud experience with technology you trust and elevate your multicloud experience.

¹Based on internal testing, January 2024, when comparing the manual configuration of cloud components vs Navigator-driven cloud component orchestration and automated deployment of APEX Block Storage for AWS.