Dell PowerStore Elite adds AI tuning, up to 3x faster

Dell Technologies introduced PowerStore Elite, a refreshed family of storage appliances that includes on-board AI tuning, three new models and planned global availability in July 2026. The models are named PowerStore 1500, 5500 and 9500.

Dell reported that internal tests show as much as three times the performance compared with the PowerStore 1200T model and up to three times the throughput versus the 9200T systems. The company described the release as a full hardware and software refresh following PowerStore Prime, which launched two years earlier. Dell noted that independent and customer benchmarks are likely once shipments begin.

PowerStore Elite uses Intel Xeon Scalable processors and supports DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen5. Dell said the new appliances deliver up to 50% more CPU cores compared with earlier PowerStore 3200T systems. The platform supports a 200Gb RDMA node interconnect to improve load balancing and failover.

Each appliance can be configured with up to 40 drives in a single 3U chassis and offers up to 5.8 petabytes of effective capacity. Dell highlighted increased density on low-profile E3 NVMe flash and the option for up to 40 network ports per appliance, with native 64Gb Fibre Channel and 200/400Gb Ethernet-ready connectivity. The company is offering a guaranteed 6:1 data compression ratio.

AI-driven management is a central feature. Dell says built-in intelligence continuously balances workloads, tunes performance and optimizes resource use. The company estimates that these features reduce manual array management effort by about 95% compared with traditional storage management. PowerStore Elite also integrates with Dell Private Cloud for customers that combine on-premises arrays with private cloud services.

Varun Chhabra, senior vice president of infrastructure and telecom marketing at Dell Technologies, called the update “the most substantial update for the [PowerStore] platform in the last two years” and added that it is “designed for what customers are facing next,” noting that infrastructure planning has become less predictable.

Dell said the Elite release is intended to address demand for higher throughput, denser flash deployments and tighter integration of software automation and AI into storage operations. Shipments and customer deployments are expected to begin after the July 2026 launch.