Dell updates PowerMax OS with security, energy-efficiency features

Dell Technologies has issued a significant update to its PowerMax operating system, which runs its high-density storage for mission-critical workloads.

The PowerMaxOS 10.1 update is aimed at organizations that want to improve energy efficiency to cut operating costs and lower the environmental impact of their storage infrastructure. Gains in performance, efficiency and cybersecurity are also part of the upgrade.

On the energy-efficiency front, new features include real-time power and environmental monitoring and alerting based on usage. Power for all components in a rack is monitored for voltage, current, and frequency, for example, along with temperature and humidity of the rack.

This new version introduces dynamic data mobility, which lets enterprises migrate workloads to different arrays to maximize resources. It also has new data deduplication and compression technology that promises a 5:1 data reduction for open systems.

PowerMaxOS 10.1 delivers up to 2.8 times more performance per watt, which Dell claims can provide up to $207,000 in electricity cost savings and up to an 82% reduction in greenhouse gases.

In addition to energy and performance improvements, PowerMaxOS 10.1 adds support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.3 for stronger encryption algorithms.

Also new is Cyber Intrusion Detection for z Systems (zCID), which Dell says is the industry’s first mainframe storage-based intrusion detection capability. It monitors z/OS workloads to identify normal variations and lets users build customizable rules to issue alerts if an intrusion is detected.

Other security enhancements in PowerMaxOS 10.1 include: 

• Advanced anomaly detection of I/O patterns for improved ransomware and malware monitoring, detection, and alerting.
• Ignition key support, a new data-at-rest capability that uses external key managers to protect against physical theft of the array.
• Data sanitizer, which uses a NIST-compliant process that erases all data prior to decommissioning an array.

PowerMaxOS 10.1 is available for PowerMax customers now.