At Dell Technologies World 2018, the Dell EMC XtremIO X2 all-flash array platform got some needed upgrades. The two biggest announcements are a new, lower cost system and WAN replication capabilities. As you can see from the title photo, this is still a Dell EMC platform that runs on another vendor’s servers, in this case, Intel servers per our Editor-in-Chief Patrick.

Dell EMC XtremIO X2 Updates

Perhaps the big news here is that the company launched a new Dell EMC XtremIO X2 entry-level platform that has the features of XtremIO X2 but is at a lower starting configuration and cost. Dell EMC realizes that there is a market for the XtremIO X2 all-flash array platform below the current offerings. To expand the addressable market, the company is announcing a lower cost configuration that still utilizes the same software stack so customers get benefits of the XtremIO X2 feature set, just at a lower price.

With its XIOS 6.1 operating system, the solution gets new replication across a wide area network (WAN) capabilities. The XtremIO X2 metadata-aware native replication provides

an added level of data protection for application workloads. Dell EMC XtremIO replication sends only unique data to the remote site to minimize bandwidth requirements by 75% or

more, enabling potential network cost savings. XtremIO replication requires up to 38%

less storage space at disaster recovery sites and operates with predictable performance to achieve recovery point objectives of 30 seconds.

The world is going all-flash so these are moves that Dell EMC needed to make to remain competitive in the market. Whereas a few years ago, all-flash for a performance-focused array was still a unique feature, today even hyper-converged storage architectures are assuming all-flash architectures. From a business perspective, this is a shrewd move as it allows the company to expand its base of addressable customers with lower cost options then up-sell additional capacity and systems throughout the customer lifecycle.