Unlock mission-critical performance, security and deep ecosystem integration
By Marc Layne, Sales Director, Dell Technologies South Africa
Dell Technologies launches PowerMaxOS 10.4, delivering up to 25% faster performance, advanced ransomware detection, VMware and OpenShift integration, and future-ready infrastructure – empowering enterprises to modernise, secure, and scale confidently.
The pace of innovation in the enterprise world never slows down. Organisations today face a dual challenge: maintaining the stability and performance of mission-critical workloads while modernising infrastructure to seize new opportunities. IT leaders know that the technology choices they make today will shape their ability to innovate tomorrow.
At Dell Technologies, we believe that technology should empower teams to move faster, work smarter, and achieve more. That’s why we’re excited to announce PowerMaxOS 10.4, a major milestone on our journey of delivering industry-leading mission-critical storage. This latest release introduces faster performance, enhanced cyber resilience and deeper ecosystem integration, ensuring your business stays ahead of the curve.
Unlocking new levels of performance and efficiency
PowerMax is trusted by organisations – in South Africa and around the globe – to handle the most demanding workloads like large-scale Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Epic deployments. PowerMaxOS 10.4 takes this performance to the next level, delivering up to 25% faster read response times for SRDF-protected workloads1. Real-time decision-making and high-performance applications now have the speed they need to excel at leading cyber resilience.
Efficiency is equally critical, especially when balancing innovation with budget constraints. PowerMaxOS 10.4 accelerates performance while lowering the total cost of ownership for the new PowerMax 2500 and 8500 arrays. This allows organisations to achieve outstanding IOPs performance with reduced costs thanks to the newest PowerMax node-pair configuration.
Fortifying cyber resilience
Cybersecurity is essential in today’s threat landscape. PowerMaxOS 10.4 introduces Advanced Ransomware Detection to identify risks early and protect your business before attacks occur. With Single Sign-in (SSO) support for Okta, PingFederate and Entra ID, access management is simple, while private-key support for SSO OIDC strengthens security. Together, these features help customers accelerate Zero Trust deployments that safeguard vital data without disrupting productivity.
Second, Dell elevates PowerMax mission-critical resilience with a unique 4-site SRDF, dual-region replication solution. Combining SRDF/Metro for active-active metro replication within a region, and SRDF/A for cross-region failover, it ensures availability and data consistency across four sites. Originally released late last year, the solution is enhanced with SRDF/S as an option for synchronous replication within a region.
Supporting automated failover, load balancing and full-scale recovery, PowerMax uses secure snapshots and flexible data protection to keep your business running through any challenge. Optional white-glove professional service from Dell offers end-to-end site planning and workflow orchestration.
Bridging the gap to modern applications
Modernising applications is a top priority for large enterprises, but the shift from virtual machines to container platforms can be complex. PowerMaxOS 10.4 simplifies this journey through seamless integrations with both VMware and Red Hat OpenShift. Customers can now migrate VMware virtual machines up to 10 times faster2 through array-based XCOPY and the Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualisation (MTV). Additionally, enhanced REST API support enables up to 7 times faster storage cluster provisioning for OpenShift Container Platforms3 (OCP). These advancements help South African IT professionals and developers focus on creating value rather than waiting for resources.
Future-proofing your infrastructure
Long-term infrastructure investments must address today’s needs while paving the way for future demands. With PowerMaxOS 10.4, you gain compatibility with Connectrix 128Gb Fibre Channel (FC) switches and directors, equipping your SAN infrastructure to support increasing bandwidth requirements. Built on Broadcom’s Gen 8 128Gb SAN technology, these advanced switches and directors deliver robust bandwidth and scalable port expansion, making them ideal for rapidly growing data centres. At the same time, PowerMaxOS 10.4, when paired with Connectrix B‑Series Gen 8 SANs, benefits from a secure, high‑performance fabric that brings always‑on AES‑256 encryption, advanced cryptographic capabilities, and AI‑driven autonomy to your mission‑critical environment – helping ensure that PowerMax remains both future‑ready and cyber‑resilient.
And with FIPS 140-3 Level 2 certification for TLC flash drives, this release meets stringent compliance standards such as the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) for regulated industries, offering peace of mind for finance, healthcare, government and beyond.
Experience the PowerMax difference
PowerMaxOS 10.4 represents the future of mission-critical storage, combining performance, security and deep ecosystem integration to help your business thrive. Whether you’re modernising applications, boosting performance or fortifying your data against cyber threats, this release has the tools you need to succeed.
Ready to take your infrastructure to the next level? Go to Dell PowerMax to learn more.
The Dell PowerMaxOS 10.4 release is available for shipment today.
Footnotes
1 Based on Dell’s internal testing for the Random Read Miss response time benchmark comparing PowerMax 2500/8500 SRDF storage groups running PowerMaxOS 10.4 to SRDF storage groups running PowerMaxOS 10.3, March 2026. Actual response times may vary.
2 Based on Dell’s internal testing comparing PowerMaxOS 10.4 VMware to OpenShift array-based migrations to using host-based VMware to OpenShift migrations. Actual migration times may vary, March 2026.
3 Based on Dell’s internal testing comparing PowerMaxOS 10.4 and CSI 1.16 storage cluster provisioning to PowerMaxOS 10.3 and CSI 1.15 storage provisioning. Actual provisioning times may vary, March 2026.
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