Leading computer marketer Dell has announced a new generation storage solutions and supporting software to address data management requirements of virtualised data centres, a company official said on Thursday.

"The new storage arrays and virtualization tools can help our customers run highly optimised and efficient data centres by automating configuration and improving performance without forcing forklift upgrades," Dell Enterprise Storage Vice President & General Manager Darren Thomas said in a release.

It has introduced the EqualLogic PS6100 and PS4100 family of virtualised, IP-based storage offerings. Together with its new EqualLogic firmware version 5.1, its storage solutions will seamlessly integrate into existing environments without downtime or a major overhaul, Thomas said.

"With our newly launched next generation EqualLogic Arrays PS4100, PS6100 and FS7500, we are increasingly committed to focused leadership in storage. We are also offering proactive support that helps all our segments of enterprise customers optimise and automate the management and protection of their data," Dell India Marketing Director S Sridhar said.

It also released details of new integration across its storage portfolio with the forthcoming VMware's vSphere 5, virtualisation and cloud infrastructure platform.

"Our joint engineering efforts to integrate Dell storage solutions with the VMware platform will continue to help customers grow their environments, and manage business requirements without adding complexity or cost," VMware Vice-President for Product Management, Storage, Narayan Venkat said.