Compellent Technologies, Inc., was an American manufacturer of enterprise

computer data storage Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The cent ...

systems that provided block-level storage resources to small and medium sized IT infrastructures. The company was founded in 2002 and headquartered in

Eden Prairie, Minnesota Eden Prairie is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. It had a population of 64,198 at the 2020 census, making it the 16th-largest city in Minnesota. The city is adjacent to the north bank of the Minnesota River, upstream fro ...

. Compellent's flagship product, Storage Center, is a

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block device, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access Computer data storage, data storage devices, such as disk ...

(SAN) system that combines a standards-based hardware platform and a suite of virtualized storage management applications, including automated tiered storage through a proprietary process called "DataProgression", thin provisioning and replication. The company developed software and products aimed at mid-size enterprises and sold through a channel network of independent providers and resellers.

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

acquired the company in February 2011, after which it was briefly a subsidiary known as Dell Compellent.

History

Compellent Technologies was founded in 2002 by Phil Soran, John Guider, and Larry Aszmann. The three had network storage and

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

backgrounds. The company had its initial public offering on October 15, 2007, became profitable for the first time in Q3 2008 and was profitable in consecutive quarters since. On February 11, 2010, it announced Q4 2009 revenues had increased 35 percent over Q4 2008, the company’s 17th consecutive quarter of revenue growth, with full year revenue of $125.3 million. On December 13, 2010, Compellent announced it agreed to be acquired by

for approximately $960 million. The purchase was completed in February 2011 and the product line sold as Dell Compellent. In the following years, Dell slowly phased out the Compellent brand name, naming the products simply Dell SCxxxx (for example, Dell SC9000).

Products

Storage Center

Compellent’s

(SAN) system, called "Storage Center", combines several virtualized storage-management applications with hardware. The product tracks

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

, information about each block of data stored on the Compellent system, including the date and time written, frequency of access, associated volume, type of disk drive used, type of data stored and RAID level. Large amounts of data are stored and managed on a granular level and assigned automatically to high-performance drives or large-capacity drives. Compellent said this method of data management can lower hardware, power and cooling costs." The base configuration of Storage Center includes a dual, redundant

disk array controller A disk array controller is a device that manages the physical disk drives and presents them to the computer as logical units. It often implements hardware RAID, thus it is sometimes referred to as RAID controller. It also often provides additio ...

, disk enclosure, disk drives, connectivity hardware, and software modules. For high availability purposes, I/O ports and power supplies are also redundant. The operating system, called SCOS (Storage Center Operating System), is regularly updated. Software modules include: *

Storage virtualization In computer science, storage virtualization is "the process of presenting a logical view of the physical storage resources to" a host computer system, "treating all storage media (hard disk, optical disk, tape, etc.) in the enterprise as a sing ...

* Thin provisioning * Automated tiered storage *Continuous snapshots *Remote replication and live volumes *Boot from SAN Compellent’s hardware supports different server/host interfaces (such as

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

and

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

) and drive technologies (such as

solid state drives A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non-v ...

, Fibre Channel,

Serial Attached SCSI In computing, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a point-to-point serial Communications protocol, protocol that moves data to and from Computer storage, computer-storage devices such as hard disk drives, solid-state drives and tape drives. SAS replac ...

and

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...

disk drives). To expand the hardware, users add new drives or I/O cards to the existing system.

Support and services

Compellent provides technical support and professional

managed services Managed services is the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating need for, a range of processes and functions, ostensibly for the purpose of improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures through the ...

through its Copilot team, housed at its Minnesota headquarters. Copilot technical support and service representatives provide maintenance, managed services, consultative services and training. SupportAssist (formerly: Phone Home) is an automated problem-detection service that remotely monitors each customer’s SAN and provides proactive alerting on issues.

Environmental initiative

The company headquarters occupies the first commercial facility in Minnesota's Twin Cities region to receive a

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a Green building certification systems, green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating ...

(LEED) designation, now Gold-certified, from the United States Green Building Council. Compellent’s Eden Prairie campus has sustainable design elements such as waterless urinals and drip irrigation systems for landscaping that cut water consumption by 40 percent, energy-efficient HVAC equipment with carbon dioxide monitors, and low emission paints and adhesives. In addition, 75 percent of the building’s construction waste was recycled. In 2009, Computerworld magazine honored Compellent as a top green IT vendor for its corporate and technology efforts to reduce power consumption and lower carbon emissions.

Awards and recognition

*2005 - Storage Magazine Bronze Product of the Year - Disk and Disk Subsystems *2006 - CRN Emerging Vendors - No. 1 Storage Standout * 2006 - TechWorld UK Recommends - Compellent Storage Centre *2006 - InfoWorld Technology of the Year - Best SAN *2007 - CRN 50 Emerging Vendors You Should Know * 2008 - Gold "Best of VMWorld 2008" in Hardware for Virtualization *2008 - Microsoft Partner of the Year for Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Storage Solutions *2008 - InfoWorld Technology of the Year - Best SAN *2008 - Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of the Year - Upper Midwest Region *2008 - Diogenes Labs - Storage Magazine Quality Awards for Midrange Arrays * 2009 - Network Computing UK Technology Project of the Year - London Borough of Hillingdon *2009 - CRN Channel Chiefs *2009 - ComputerWorld Top 12 Green IT Vendors *2010 - InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award *2010 - Business Solutions Best Channel Vendor ListBusiness Solutions. "Best Channel Vendors 2010."
4 January 2010.

References

External links

Dell Compellent
{{Dell 2002 establishments in Minnesota 2011 disestablishments in Minnesota 2011 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 2002 American companies disestablished in 2011 Dell acquisitions Computer companies established in 2002 Computer companies disestablished in 2011 Computer storage companies Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Storage Area Network companies