You’d be hard pressed to find a computer company that does soup-to-nuts IT for small business better than Dell. Case in point: today Dell announced a portfolio of products and services aimed at small and medium businesses and designed to reduce cost, simplify network management, increase security and reduce server downtime.
The Dell reps we spoke with proudly pointed out that the four servers in this family are 11th generation of PowerEdge servers. Translation: peace of mind for small business owners investing precious funds.
The idea behind these products and services, according to Sally Stevens, Dell’s vice president of platform marketing, is to streamline IT server infrastructure. The four servers in the portfolio include:
PowerEdge T110: “This is an entry-level [T for tower] server designed for a small business that’s ready to take on its first server,” said Stevens. “It offers security, easy system monitoring, scalability and reliability at a good price point.”
PowerEdge R210: “This is just like the T110 but in a rack-mount design,” said Stevens. “The chassis is short — just 15.5 inches, which makes it very office-friendly. You can put it on a desk or a shelf. It fits in anywhere.” Both the T110 and the R210 feature e-SATA ports that let you connect external storage drives for added storage expansion.
PowerEdge T310: Aimed at the small or medium sized business, it offers software RAID (0, 1 and 5) for increased reliability and data-loss prevention. “It’s an excellent choice for remote offices or retail locations,” said Stevens. “It has more memory, more network interfaces and more hard drive space to manage growing data without the need for external storage.”
PowerEdge R510: “The R510 is a 2U rack server designed for medium-sized businesses and remote offices,” said Stevens. “It comes in three distinct configurations — the first has four hard drives, the second comes with eight drives and the third, which will be available soon, will accommodate up to 12 hard drives.”
All four servers include Dell LifeCycle Controller 1.2, which is designed to automate (and thereby simplify) installing the operating systems on both local and remote servers. It comes with the right software drivers for all the components on the PowerEdge servers, which helps save you time and money.
Pricing for the servers, which are available now at http://www.dell.com/PowerEdge, starts at $599.
Next up in the portfolio: Network Attached Storage, otherwise known as the Dell PowerVault NX300. This is an entry-level Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008 NAS box with a capacity of up to four terabytes of data. It’s a 1U rack-mount design, and you can connect additional NX300 devices as your company’s storage needs expand.
The NX300 also includes software-based RAID (0, 1 and 5) and Dell’s Single-Instant Storage deduplication technology, which is designed to reduce the amount of duplicate data, and by doing so save storage capacity (and money). Available starting in October at www.dell.com/PowerVault, the PowerVault NX300 pricing starts at $3,000.
To keep your new servers and NAS boxes fired up, Dell’s launched a family of 28 — count ‘em — uninterruptible power supply devices (UPS). The line features tool-less, rack-mounted, short-depth systems that include remote management capability through Dell’s OpenManage management console. According to Stevens, it’s the first line of UPS systems to achieve a 95 percent or greater energy efficiency rating.
You can purchase a Dell-branded UPS at www.dellups.com starting in October. Pricing starts at $269.
The portfolio also includes ProSupport Data Protection Services, which incorporates hard drive data recovery and certified data destruction to promote business continuity and improved business efficiency.
Dell also offers services for small businesses interested in the benefits of virtualization. “Virtualization can decrease server sprawl, increase server utilization and ease complexity,” said Stevens.
Dell’s ProConsult Remote Virtualization Readiness assessment is designed to help small businesses determine whether virtualization makes sense for their needs and it offers recommendations on choosing and implementing the right solution.
Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com
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