For traditional on-premises private cloud virtualization environments that have existed in three tier architectures, many of the native storage array benefits can be extended to VxRail, as outlined here.

Ability to utilize storage array features

Many organizations have been integrating array-based features into their application hierarchy for years. These provide valuable services for business continuity, cost savings, and application availability.

Replication

One key aspect of continuity for business-critical applications is making sure that application data is not only protected, but moved off-site to isolate against disasters effecting a geographical area.

Array-based replication is a mature technology that can take most any data stored on a block or file volume and transport it to another array in another data center at a safe distance away. The primary benefit to the application is that under most circumstances, the replication takes place seamlessly underneath the covers with very little interaction required.

In cases where it does make sense for the application to coordinate with the application to flush I/Os to disk before snapshots, built-in features or third-party software can coordinate the operations to create application consistent snapshots, providing the best probability of a successful recovery.

Data reduction

PowerStore has many different data reduction techniques that help to save on storage capacity usage. The PowerStore in-line data reduction engine works to process data through the deduplication and compression logic before being saved to the drives, guaranteeing a 4:1 data reduction ratio. In coordination with thin snapshots and thin provisioning, in many cases, efficiencies exceeding 4:1 is not uncommon. This provides applications performant storage at a cost-effective price.