Dell PowerVault ME4024 Storage Array REVIEW | IT Creations

hi there doug stewart with it creations today we have a dell emc powervault me4024 storage enclosure this is an entry-level storage array system designed and optimized for storage area networks san and das or direct attached storage virtualized environments depending on how many and the type of units you attach it can scale up to four petabytes of data stored it's also designed for small to medium-sized businesses so those nodes just pop into the network and well work the me4 versions are the next iteration in powerball storage replacing or at least updating the md model line let's take a look [Music] when you buy into the power vault system there is a base configuration to get you started dell says it should only take 15 minutes to set up and another 15 to configure the dell powervault me4 lineup is designed to simplify deployment of new hardware and ease management for small to medium sized businesses with a set of standard software appliances that come with a system appliances include vmware integrations distributed raid encryption features and three level tiering among other things there are also three basic starter options the me4012 sand dash array which is a 2u unit with 12 3.5 inch drive bays the me4084 is a 5u chassis with 84 2.5 inch drive bays and then our me4024 unit we're looking at today also a 2u there are also three different expansion options and i'm sure dell thought they were being helpful by naming them real similar to the three controller enclosures note those names are the me412 me424 and me484 but that did kind of make it seem like it was a printing error but no the expansion units don't have the control units and only have i o modules instead of the controller units they also look exactly the same as the enclosure control units in fact you can configure the controller unit as an expansion enclosure too these systems are a fit for a number of different workloads including virtual desktop infrastructures nosql database applications enterprise san low latency high performance computing and more powervault appliances will fit in seamlessly with your existing dell poweredge products providing easily scalable data storage for your network that won't take days or weeks to set up if you need more storage are you interested in one of these dell powervault systems because not only do we have them but we can get more for a limited time you can save up to 500 off the price of a system listed on our site at 5 000 or more that's right just click that link and when you're ready to make a purchase just mention this video you'll be like why haven't i tried it creations before those guys are great okay back to the dell powervault me4024 the front of the system has one of dell's perforated bezels with a power vault logo once we remove that you can see the 24 hot swap drive bays in the 2u chassis the base can be outfitted with either hard disk drives or solid state ssds for tiered storage with three level storage tiering your hot data is stored on the faster ssd drives while colder data is stored on higher capacity hard disk drives with a lower cost per gigabyte both all flash and hybrid configurations are supported this me4024 storage vault can be configured for 10 gigabit iscsi 16 gigabit fiber channel and sas at 12 gigabits per second looking at the system from the back you can see two psu's to either side with two hot swappable controllers per me4024 chassis at least on this one two of them for redundancy you can just use a single controller in slot a but you will need a blank and slot b if you go with a sealed controller the ports on the back are all nicely color coded like paint by numbers the port in the blue area is for daisy chaining more of these power vault units together the black area has a standard rj45 port for management but in this case there is no integrated dell remote access controller or idrac like you would find on the poweredge servers the purple area indicates 10 gigabit ethernet or 8 over 16 gigabit fiber channel over sfp plus connections and that's where your network may add in some complexity with routers and switches for your various servers you may attach to the storage part of your network to connect to the storage modules the poweredge servers would then have a poweredge raid controller or perk like the h840 to connect all of that glorious storage to the rest of your network just like the psus offering one plus one redundancy those control units are hot-swappable and easily replaced if one fails so your data storage will not be impacted the powervault system uses me storage manager and an html5 interface so you can access the system remotely from a standard browser it has an intuitive user interface where you can set up the various options like the host port mode you can set the port connection mode for each fiber channel port for switched or direct attached servers using the me storage manager the system can be set up for all fiber channel iscsi or a combination of the two for a hybrid connection there's a lot more functionality with me storage manager but this is a hardware overview people we sell hardware not abstract constructs the controllers have a very basic dual core xeon broadwell de cpu with eight gigabytes of memory and no pci lanes there's no boss ids dcm perk or battery pack to power your memory while your system dies the controllers are tamper-proof sealed and do the job of connecting your network to the focus of the powerball system which is storage so you don't pay separately for the cpus nor the memory and no additional pci cards the controller supports 12 gigabit sas connections for performance but also because sas drives have dual port connections and the sata bus only supports a single port connection the controller acts like an hd controller that connects directly to the back plane or mid plane of the system drives just like the psus connect directly to the storage backplane to provide power for those drives and the controller modules optional expansion closures let you scale up but the me424 and the me412 can only be used with the me4024 and me4012 respectively the me484 can be used with any me4 base array all offer 12 gig sas back-end connectivity this is a very minimalistic system and like minimalistic art your storage has been reduced to the most basic of components in this case i'm thinking maybe kandinsky especially with that color-coded back panel but his later works definitely not mark rothko if you need to scale your data quickly fairly inexpensively and without introducing complexity then the dell powervault system fits the bill it's going to open one of those controller units but this little sticker on the back something about voiding the warranty held me back so much for an educational voyage of discovery we actually have an older power vault storage node in our network here at i.t creations anyways if you have any questions on the dell emc powervault me4024 or some other thing lurking in your network then leave a comment remember it creations carries this system plus many others and custom configuration well that's what we do not that this system requires any configuration until next time i'm doug stuman with it creations and thanks for watching oh and hit that subscribe button if you want to see more of what we're throwing down

Channel: IT Creations, Inc.

Views: 4,166

Keywords: Dell PowerVault ME4024 review, dell poweredge, me4024 review, review powervault me4024, dell powervault review, dell me 4012, dell me 4084, it creations reviews, doug stuman, powervault storage explained, review me4024, dell

Id: TzMpon6pTJk

Length: 6min 57sec (417 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021