Dell PowerStore 4.1 is now Available – What’s New

Dell PowerStore is the flagship storage solution from the industry’s #1 storage provider for a reason – and I’m excited to share how it can help your business adapt to challenges, reduce costs, and simplify infrastructure for the long term.

First and foremost, PowerStore is a Future-proof platform designed to ensure you never outgrow your storage, no matter how your business evolves. Think of it as the last array you’ll need – ending the expensive and disruptive cycle of platform upgrades. Future-readiness has been PowerStore’s defining principle since Day 1, and it drives everything we’ll discuss today.

• It starts with a high-performance unified architecture that supports block, file, vVols, and containers – all in one appliance. This flexibility gives you headroom to handle changing demands
• Scale-up and scale-out expansion means you can add performance or capacity seamlessly and independently, with easy load balancing between arrays
• Unlike some competitors, you can scale one drive at a time to manage growth economically. No need to purchase expensive drive packs!
• All PowerStore models scale equally, so you’ll never need to upgrade models just to get more storage space.

Future-readiness also means resiliency – the ability to recover quickly from data loss or disruptions. With PowerStore, no matter how you grow, your data stays safe and protected. Key features include

• Secure & immutable snapshots, that can’t be deleted, even by an administrator
• Synchronous and asynchronous replication, including native metro sync with auto-failover — so your workloads never stop running, even during an outage.
• Intuitive Protection Policies, that let you customize and combine multiple kinds of local, remote, or cloud-based protection into reusable policies you can apply with just a few clicks

You can even control backup and recovery directly from PowerStore, thanks to PowerStore’s Storage Direct integration with Dell PowerProtect Data Domain – the industry’s #1 backup solution. It’s a great “better together” solution you can have up and running in just 90 seconds.

PowerStore also delivers advanced security to combat today’s AI-accelerated threats. From Hardware Root of Trust to multi-factor authentication, encryption and more, PowerStore is designed to meet the toughest compliance standards. It’s even listed on the US Department of Defense Approved Products List—unlike competitors like Pure Storage.

But the real game-changer is Lifecycle Extension with ProSupport. This industry-leading program leverages PowerStore’s modular hardware and all-inclusive software to put modernization on autopilot. You get seamless technology transitions, cost-saving capacity refresh credits, an appointed technical advisor and more.

Lifecycle Extension simplifies every aspect of storage ownership – ensuring your workloads are always running on the latest technology for the lowest cost – so your business stays ready for anything.

Now, let’s talk Efficiency – another of PowerStore’s core strengths. Storage efficiency is primarily about cost savings, but it’s also about optimizing performance and management so you get the most from every resource.

It’s important to realize there are fundamental differences among storage solutions – and this is an area where architecture really matters.

• Traditional storage often requires constant manual tuning…but PowerStore’s built to work smarter.
• Its unique “Autonomous Active/Active” architecture drives incredible efficiency without any intervention on your part.

Let’s explore two software-driven ways this happens.

First, Dynamic Node Affinity auto-tunes performance by dynamically switching host paths between controllers.

• When you create a volume on PowerStore, it’s NOT pinned to one controller.
• PowerStore selects a preferred path initially, but from a host perspective, both controllers have an active multipath connection.
• This makes it easy to swap paths in software – no HA failover is required, it’s just a simple multipathing cutover.

PowerStore distributes paths among volumes automatically – and reassigns them as performance and capacity needs change over time.

• Unlike other arrays, there’s absolutely nothing you have to do to load balance or reconfigure complex failover scenarios.
• You simply create your volume, and PowerStore works in the background to keep the system optimized.

Next, our Dynamic Resiliency Engine extends this simplicity to drive redundancy, eliminating the need to manage RAID groups.

• Again, nothing is pinned – both controllers have access to ALL the drives in a single virtualized pool.
• You can add drives one at a time, and even mix-and-match drive sizes.
• Each new resource is simply absorbed into the pool, with all services (including sparing) configured and rebuilt automatically.

PowerStore also drives HUGE cost savings with advanced data reduction – and again, this flows directly from the architecture.

Unlike basic software-only approaches that can degrade performance, PowerStore data reduction combines smart software and hardware to deliver predictable efficiency with zero impact on workloads.

• Intel QuickAssist Technology built directly into the system, not an add-on module, offloads compression processing.
• Variable block compression and granular global deduplication leverage the single pool architecture to maximize utilization.

PowerStore data reduction is “always-on.” There’s nothing to manage, configure, or decide – it just works. And the results are well-documented. Independent testing has shown PowerStore delivers up to 2x better data efficiency and 54% lower energy use compared to leading competitors.

Best of all, Dell backs this superior technology with the industry’s best guarantee – 5:1 on reducible data. Your 5:1 results will continue through your entire pre-paid maintenance term, or we’ll ship you actual free drives (up to 50% of your purchased capacity) – not just a “discount toward future purchase.”

• NO assessment required
• Valid for up to 6 years
• We even give you industry-leading data reduction visibility and analytics so you can confirm your guarantee status.

It all adds up to an unprecedented ability to lock in long term savings for simplified planning and purchasing. And it makes owning the world’s best storage platform much more affordable than you might think.

In today’s IT environment, organizations continue to face mounting pressures—managing inefficiencies, responding to growing cyber threats, and meeting sustainability and compliance demands, all while keeping costs under control. Last year, PowerStoreOS 4.0 helped customers tackle these challenges with more performance, efficiency, resiliency and multicloud capabilities than ever before.

Building on that foundation, we’re further enhancing PowerStore’s robust platform the latest release, PowerStoreOS 4.1! This release introduces powerful new features to help you optimize performance and efficiency, stronger security with more ways to control access and boost availability, and improving operational simplicity for file workloads to all new and existing PowerStore customers.

• First, we’re using the advanced power of machine learning and AI to help you make smarter decisions in the datacenter. We’re introducing energy and CO2e forecasting to help assess and manage your environmental impact while offering performance headroom analytics to optimize your workloads for peak efficiency. Plus, machine learning-based proactive support remediation keeps your environment up and running by proactively resolving predicted issues before they disrupt operations.
• To strengthen security, we’ve added DoD smart card support for MFA, along with automated certificate alerts and renewal to simplify maintaining secure environments. Enhanced web security tools provide even greater compliance and protection.
• And with several improvements to file management, including secure snapshots and quality of service, we’re making it easier than ever to ensure your file workloads are secure and performant. And for our Unity customers, the new streamlined file migration with support for Unity Cloud Tiering Appliance makes transitioning to PowerStore faster and more efficient than ever.

These innovations are designed to help you meet today’s challenges while preparing for tomorrow.

Now, let’s explore these exciting new features in more depth

Achieving operational efficiency while staying on track with sustainability goals has never been more important, especially in an environment with rising energy costs. PowerStore’s ongoing advancements have helped make it more energy efficient over time, with improvements including up to 60% performance and capacity per watt as well as ENERGY STAR certification across the entire family of products.

With PowerStoreOS 4.1, we’re introducing powerful new carbon footprint analytics/forecasting in APEX AIOps to help organizations monitor, manage, and optimize energy consumption.

This feature provides detailed energy usage and carbon footprint forecasting, showcasing metrics at both global and system levels in an intuitive graphical interface. By tracking key data points such as power (watts) and inlet temperature (Celsius) every 5 minutes, the system sends data directly to APEX AIOps.

With simplified visual displays of historical, current, and forecasted metrics for energy consumption and CO2e emissions, administrators can work to maximize efficiency and reduce costs. And, by aggregating data across Dell products within APEX AIOps’ Carbon Footprint page, you gain a complete, data center-level view of your environmental impact.

NOTE: Carbon footprint visibility in APEX AIOps is slated for wider availability in 1H 2025.

Understanding and optimizing application performance is critical for IT administrators.  With PowerStoreOS 4.1, we’ve introduced enhanced performance analytics, providing a deeper understanding of system utilization and resource consumption.

Through the PowerStore UI, administrators now have access to more detailed system utilization metrics, summarizing the utilization of several categories into a single, easily understandable metric, Appliance Utilization. By consolidating these metrics, administrators can simplify workload planning and intelligently plan when they will need to upgrade, scale-out, or migrate workloads too other appliances in the cluste.r

PowerStoreOS 4.1 also enhances insight into IOPS performance with clear information on the appliance’s max sustainable IOPS, providing the data needed to understand the available performance that they can expect.

Additionally, a new capability provides visibility into the impact of host offload commands like XCOPY, UNMAP, and WRITE_SAME, enabling administrators to better identify bottlenecks and assess performance implications.

These enhancements build upon PowerStore’s existing performance data, elevating the capabilities for monitoring IOPS, bandwidth, CPU utilization, queue depth, and latency to a whole new level. This means better visibility, smarter decision-making, and the tools you need to optimize operations effectively.

Heightened security is a critical requirement for Federal and Department of Defense (DoD) environments. PowerStore meets the most stringent requirements with STIG certification and presence on the Federal Approved Prodcut List (APL). With PowerStoreOS 4.1, we’re improving security for the most sensitive environments by introducing support for Smart Card multi-factor authentication (MFA)  designed specifically to meet the demands of DoD and federal customers.

By supporting government-issued smart cards, including Common Access Cards (CAC) used by DoD employees and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Cards used across Federal agencies, PowerStore helps deliver both convenience and robust security, ensuring compliance and protecting critical data in even the most sensitive environments. Users simply swipe their issued card, and authentication is conducted via the card’s certificate—eliminating the need for traditional password entry.

Managing this feature with PowerStore MFA is easy with direct integration with Windows Single Sign-On via Active Directory.

This feature is essential for zero-trust security principles that require continuous identity verification. It safeguards access to any interface an administrator can use to manage the array (PowerStore Manager, PSTCLI, and REST API), ensuring control is restricted only to authorized personnel.

Ensuring uptime is crucial in any IT environment and preventing issues before they cause disruptive and costly downtime is paramount for every IT department. With that in mind we’ve introduced a new machine-learning-based proactive support feature, designed to predict and prevent issues before they impact your operations.

By analyzing data from tens of thousands of PowerStore arrays deployed worldwide, PowerStore can proactively resolve up to 79% of predicted issues such as hardware failures or software configuration issues with automatic case creation for remediation. Customers are notified directly via PowerStore Manager alerts, which can include support case creation or step-by-step troubleshooting guidance through knowledge base articles.

Like everything related to PowerStore, it gets smarter over time. This approach not only reduces risks but also ensures your system stays ahead of potential problems with proactive and intelligent support you can count on.

PowerStore’s unified architecture makes consolidating workloads simple by seamlessly supporting block, file, and vVols on a single appliance.

PowerStoreOS 4.1 improves the way you deliver file storage by introducing powerful new ways to protect, prioritize, and optimize resources that enhance performance, security, and capacity management.

• First, Quality of Service for File allows you to set bandwidth limits on file systems and NAS servers. Especially useful for service providers that offer customized SLAs, this feature prevents ‘noisy neighbor’ scenarios where resource contention during busy periods can degrade performance on critical applications. By using QoS, you can maintain performance levels and prioritize important workloads during especially
• Second, Secure Snapshots for File enable you to protect entire file systems by preventing unauthorized deletion or modification of file snapshots until designated retention dates. Applied via PowerStore’s easy-to-use protection policy workflow, administrators can maintain government and legal compliance requirements while also providing a reliable recovery tool for ransomware or malware attacks.
• Lastly, Capacity Accounting for File delivers PowerStore’s industry-leading visibility into data reduction efficiency for file resources. Administrators can now monitor trends and space savings for both block and file workloads, helping you better plan, optimize, and reduce capacity costs.

PowerStore is #1 in ease of use for a reason, using automation and intelligence to help administrators simplify operations so they can be proactive in solving other business challenges. With PowerStoreOS 4.1, we’re making it even easier to maintain secure, compliant operations protected without unnecessary complexity through automated certificate renewals and alerts.

Tracking and renewing certificates is a necessary but draining chore for anyone in IT. Certificates that expire without renewal can lead to serious issues, like data unavailability or the inability to access the management interface. By keeping your certificates up to date, these risks are minimized.

PowerStore relieves administrators of yet another headache of storage administrators with the new Certificate Management Engine which automatically tracks all certificates and proactively notifies administrators of upcoming expirations, with alerts at 90, 60, and 30-day intervals before renewal is needed.

For PowerStore certificates, you can enable auto-renewal, which acts for you 90 days before expiration, eliminating risk and time-consuming manual tasks.

With notification and auto-renewal options, you don’t have to worry about managing certificates manually. Avoid disruptions, simplify administration, and ensure up-to-date protection against security threats caused by unverified network communications.

For customers migrating from Unity appliances, PowerStoreOS 4.1 offers enhanced file migration capabilities, making the transition smoother and enabling customers to retain the usage of their cloud tiering appliance! .

The native file migration tool now supports importing dual and multi-protocol file systems, making it easy to migrate from Unity if file systems utilize both NFS and SMB protocols, whether on the same or separate file systems. Even better, if you’ve tiered data using Unity’s Cloud Tiering Appliance (CTA), PowerStore now supports importing stub-files which enables migration of file systems without rehydrating the data from the cloud back to on-premises storage.

Post-migration, PowerStore can continue to use CTA functionality with any file systems on the array. This means you can continue archiving and recalling files, managing existing policies, and even create new ones! By maintaining your tiered data structure, PowerStore reduces on-premises storage costs by seamlessly tiering cold data to cost-effective, cloud-based storage.

These enhancements make migrating to PowerStore from Unity a clear choice—streamlining your move to a modern, intelligent platform while preserving and enhancing file management capabilities.

NOTE: This applies to file data only.

What are dual and multiprotocol file systems?

Customers can use multiple protocols for file systems on their Unity arrays. PowerStore now supports the abiltiy to import file systems that are using both NFS and SMB on either the same or separate file systems.

What are ‘stub files’ and what does it mean for PowerStore migration to be ‘stub-aware’?

Stub files are small placeholder files used to represent tiered data that has been moved to the cloud by Unity’s Coud Tiering Appliance. They act as pointers to the tiered data which reduces on-premise storage requirements while retaining access to data in the cloud.

In PowerStoreOS 4.1, native file migration from Unity is ‘stub-aware’, meaning that data that is tiered to the cloud will not have to be rehydrated back on-premises prior to migration. This dramatically simplifies the migration process, reduces cloud egress costs, and retains the use of cost-effective cloud storage for cold data.

What is the Unity Cloud Tiering Appliance (CTA)?

The CTA is a software-defined solution that enables seamless data tiering to the cloud. It identifies cold or inactive data and automatically tiers it to cloud storage based on user-defined policies. When tiered to the cloud, the CTA provides access to tiered data while reducing the load on primary storage. You can read more about the Unity CTA here.

What happens with CTA after the file migration?

After updating to PowerStoreOS 4.1 and migrating data from their Unity array, customers can continue using the Unity CTA with their PowerStore system. There are some additional details and restrictions, however:

• Full CTA functionality (tiering, recalling) continues only on imported NAS servers.
• The CTA retains the preexisting policies for imported NAS servers on the new PowerStore system.
• After the migration, CTA policies can be added, modified, and deleted to the imported NAS servers.
• In CTA, the array will continue to display ‘Unity’ as the server type even when the NAS server exists on PowerStore.

PowerStoreOS 4.1 also introduces several networking-specific features designed to enhance visibility, reduce complexity, and strengthen security.

• First, PowerStore now supports Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) discovery information, providing detailed insights into the network connections of your PowerStore appliance. Available through REST and CLI commands, LLDP delivers descriptions, capabilities, and details about connected devices and switches. This added visibility enables faster troubleshooting and helps you resolve issues with greater efficiency.
• Next, improved volume mapping streamlines host group management by allowing you to map volumes to individual hosts within a group. It also enhances boot from SAN capabilities, reducing complexity and eliminating configuration errors, making deployment and management easier than ever.
• Finally, PowerStoreOS 4.1 introduces web security enhancements that comply with modern standards. Support for Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) ensures secure access to PowerStore Manager, while authentication with trusted NTP servers bolsters system integrity. These enhancements provide peace of mind, keeping your infrastructure secure and compliant.

With these advancements, PowerStore empowers you to operate with improved network transparency, reduced administrative overhead, and enhanced protection—further cementing its position as a reliable, and easy-to-use storage solution

PowerStore’s Storage Direct Protection feature, introduced in PowerStoreOS 3.5, connected two of Dell’s leading portfolio products together in a tightly integrated package. With a simple 90 second setup time, data protection is simple, efficient, and secure with no need for a dedicated backup server since PowerStore can back up data directly to industry-leading PowerProtect appliances—physical, virtual, or even in the cloud—with zero impact on application hosts. The process is highly efficient, sending only changed data over the network and leveraging PowerProtect’s typical 65:1 data reduction for cost savings.

Now in PowerStoreOS 4.1, we’re taking this game-changing capability even further. New PowerProtect appliances engineered to work seamlessly with PowerStore provide more options to choose from including a new all-flash ready node and the latest DD model, the DD6410. Additionally, improvements to the integration available in 4.1 offer up to 4x faster restore performance, empowering organizations to restore critical data and operations with greater speed and efficiency.

These updates enhance Storage Direct Protection, a unique offering in the market made possible by Dell’s robust portfolio. Streamline backups, get faster recoveries, and make the best choice for safeguarding your organization’s most valuable asset—its data.

You can view the release notes, below

https://dl.dell.com/content/manual25269339-dell-powerstore-release-notes-for-powerstoreos-version-4-1-0-0.pdf?language=en-us

You can download the new update package from Support for PowerStore 9200T | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US