Dell Offers New Servers, Storage Gear, Networking Equipment

Listen up, small businesses -- Dell's looking out for you as well. The company best known by consumers for their Inspiron line of notebooks has a biz-savvy side too, with new offerings in the server storage department being introduced today. The company's also revealed their First Server guide for entrepreneurs, as well as new server offerings, new storage offerings (which integrate Dell Scalable File System technology and bring Ethernet-based (10GbE) to small and medium businesses) and new offerings to help retire aging components via trade-in promotions. Phew, that's a mouthful!

The PowerEdge T110 II and R210 II are launching on the low- and medium-end today, each offered with a Xeon chip or a Core i3 CPU. You'll also get four DIMM slots and the full Dell OpenManage suite of systems management for ease of maintenance. If it's storage you need, the PowerVault NX3500 / MD3600i might be just what the doctor ordered, with each offering tons of scalable storage in rack-mount rigs. The full spate of newcomers, including a raft of networking gear, is detailed below.

All products are currently available in the United States. The PowerEdge T110 II and R210 II start at $625 and $925 USD, respectively. The NX3500 is available with a starting price of $15,620 USD, and the MD3600i starts at $11,353 USD. The PowerConnect 5500 and 7000 series are currently available at starting price of $1,297.00 USD and $3,704.00 USD, respectively.

To receive real-time advice on how, why and when to invest in a server-based network, customers are invited to join Dell for a Tweet Chat on Monday, April 25, at Noon ET. The Tweet Chat will offer a unique opportunity to Tweet with Dell enterprise expert Antonio Julio and other businesses on this topic. Interested customers can participate by using hashtag #firstserver.

Storage Within Reach - The PowerVault NX3500 / MD3600i
According to IDC, the capacity of storage systems shipped in the fourth quarter of 2010 grew more than 55 percent from a year earlier.1 With this data explosion in mind, Dell today unveiled two new storage offerings that help customers reduce complexity and increase the availability of their data to help their businesses run smarter.

The PowerVault NX3500, featuring the Dell Scalable File System, provides affordable scale-up Network Attached Storage (NAS) functionality for smaller scale, high availability deployments. The system works with PowerVault MD32x0i and MD36x0i storage arrays to help provide affordable unified storage with iSCSI, CIFS and NFS access to block and file data. With no architectural limits to file-system size, it is designed to give customers more flexibility than traditional unified storage. Integrating next-generation high performance, highly optimized file system technology from Exanet, Dell Scalable File System, delivers the first unified storage solution in Dell’s PowerVault iSCSI storage array product series. The NX3500 also offers affordable data protection features, including snapshots, replication and NDMP backup support.

The PowerVault MD3600i is an Ethernet-based (10GbE) storage device that is designed to deliver exceptional storage capacity to small and midsize businesses without sacrificing performance or flexibility. With an intuitive multi-generational management interface the MD3600i can be installed in under 30 minutes. Growing businesses with limited technical and financial resources can keep up with data growth, Web and media demands while reducing server sprawl by virtualizing infrastructure applications. The system also provides medium-sized businesses with remote offices a cost-effective way to support virtualized infrastructures leveraging 10GbE Ethernet to improve limited or slow data migration between home and remote office locations. Lastly, the MD3600i continues to maintain the uncompromising value of being able to share common components with our PowerEdge server line (i.e. hard drives) expediting installation and deployments for our SMB customers.

Networking
To help supplement Dell’s new server and storage offerings, the company recently launched new 5500 and 7000 PowerConnect switch families to enable technology infrastructures where scalability, flexibility and value are key requirements. Both families implement innovative technology features to streamline deployment, simplify management and help reduce operating costs with power-saving Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) design and Power-over-Ethernet operation.

The PowerConnect 7000 family is designed to deliver scalable performance and enhanced functionality for midsized business deployments, distributed offices and large server farms. Businesses benefit from high availability wire-speed performance and simplified management of multiple switches with a single IP address, enabling them to power business applications while maintaining flexibility and control of the network. The 7000 series delivers the connectivity to support the new PowerEdge R210 servers in addition to seamless, automated provisioning and iSCSI operation with Dell’s EqualLogic storage arrays.

The PowerConnect 5500 series enables a superb solution to basic, non-managed Gigabit Ethernet switches deployed in small-to-medium offices and remote locations, which require rapid wire-speed deployment with flexible features. Efficient energy operation and simplified switch configuration can reduce operating costs while providing customers cost-effective performance they need to scale with their growing business needs.

ProSupport Services and Financing Options
To help avoid downtime and maintain a high level of productivity customers can choose Dell ProSupport for immediate 24/7 phone access to advanced technical support agents with two and four hour On-Site Mission Critical Service options after Remote Diagnosis2. For more, read why ProSupport makes sense for your business. In addition, Dell offers a wide range of financing options for small and medium businesses on PowerVault and PowerEdge products. For more information visit Dell Financial Services or call 1-866-413-3355.