EqualLogic

EqualLogic is a company based in Nashua, New Hampshire. Formed in 2001 by Peter Hayden, Paul Koning, and Paula Long, it raised $52 million from investors between 2001 and 2004. The company was considering an initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock-exchange, but accepted an offer from Dell in 2008.[1] The all-cash take-over transaction of $1.4 billion was the highest price paid for a company financed by venture investors at the time. At the time of acquisition, the company was backed by three venture capital investors: TD Capital Ventures, Focus Ventures and Sigma.

EqualLogic systems use iSCSI via either Gigabit Ethernet or 10 Gigabit Ethernet controllers. The currently (June 2014) sold systems with 1 Gbit/s connections are the PS4100, PS6100 and PS6200 while the comparable systems with 10 Gbit/s Ethernet connections are PS4110, PS6110 and PS6210. There have been a number of previous generations, and as long as the software is updated on older systems they can work with the newer models. Within each series there are several options allowing for different types and sizes of hard disk drives or solid-state drives. EqualLogic options combine both in the same chassis and automatically migrate the most frequently accessed data to the SSDs. All PS series systems, except the PS-M4110 blade chassis system, are 19-inch rack systems in a 2 rack unit form factor or a 4 RU chassis for some of the PS61x0 models and the PS65x0 dense models.

EqualLogic Arrays can be combined with up to 16 arrays per group. Groups can mix different members, including multiple hardware generations, as well as different RAID types, in a group. By combining multiple arrays per group, very large storage groups can be created with maximum capacity in one group of over 1.5 PB. Arrays can be segmented into pools, and from pools, volumes. Volumes are exposed on a SAN network, and used by virtual machine hosts or other computers.

The flagship product of the EqualLogic line is the PS Series (formerly PeerStorage[6][7]). Its current primary models are the PS4100, PS6100 and PS6500 with 1Gb Ethernet and 10 Gb Ethernet model options. Within each "series" (i.e. 4100, 6100 and 6500) there are several sub models that include specific disk configurations. The last generation systems are the PS4100 and PS6100 series systems which continue to be sold.

Dell Fluid File System is available in combination with an EQLX array for the storage. FluidFS is also delivered in combination with Compellent and PowerVault SAN systems. Both the FS7500 and FS7600 NAS using EQLX SAN offers a maximum system site of 509 TB. The FS7600 is the 2nd generation system which is also available using 10G iSCSI speeds between the FS controller and the storage backbone[18]