Dell announced global delivery of the first products resulting from its acquisition of EqualLogic Monday, with the release of Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series storage-area network arrays.

Dell announced plans to buy IP SAN vendor EqualLogic for US$1.4 billion in November, and completed the acquisition January 28.

EqualLogic was founded in 2001 and make iCSIS storage appliances.

"Based on iSCSI, the architecture provides the flexibility needed for volume virtualization, scalability, remote replication, data movement, and interoperability within any IP-based data center," Dell said in a press release.

PS5000 has built-in virtualization in the storage array; management capabilities including remote replication and thin provisioning; and ability to create multiple tiers of storage in a single SAN while optimizing each tier for the application it serves, according to Dell.

The PS5000 Series is available through Dell channel partners and Dell's own sales force worldwide, the company said. Dell is hosting an event Monday at EqualLogic's headquarters in Nashua, N.H., to discuss the product launch and company strategy.

"The world is on pace to generate more than 1 billion gigabytes of data by 2011, and our customers will manage the bulk of that data," said Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell, in a press release. "By delivering EqualLogic technology on the global scale of Dell, we can dramatically help our customers with their data center challenges."