Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/06/02/dell_planning_compellent_equallogic_unification/

Dell planning to blend Compellent and EqualLogic arrays

Compellingly logical or equally compelling?

By Chris Mellor

Posted in Storage, 2nd June 2014 10:44 GMT

Privately-owned Dell plans to unify its separate Compellent and EqualLogic storage array lines within the next twelve months.

This was revealed at a Dell analyst event attended by Stifel Nicolaus MD Aaron Rakers. Marius Haas, Dell’s chief commercial officer and Enterprise Solutions president reportedly said having both Compellent and EqualLogic solutions is sometimes confusing to customers and the company plans to release a new unified system in the next 12 months.

The Compellent arrays are Fibre Channel-attached arrays whereas the EqualLogic line comes from an iSCSI-attach base. They have separate operating systems, meaning a single operating system would need to be created.

Alternatively the thing could run under a single OS with two operating modes – but then it wouldn’t really be unified.

We're assuming it will offer both Fibre Channel and iSCSI attachment methods.

Haas didn’t say whether existing Compellent or EqualLogic users would get an upgrade path to the new unified system. Hopefully both will.

It is a move that is both compellingly logical and equally compelling. (groan) ®