PowerScale OneFS 9.12

Dell PowerScale is already powering up the summer with the launch of the innovative OneFS 9.12 release, which shipped today (14th August 2025). This new 9.12 release has something for everyone, introducing PowerScale innovations in security, serviceability, reliability, protocols, and ease of use.

OneFS 9.12 represents the latest version of PowerScale’s common software platform for on-premises and cloud deployments. This can make it a excellent choice for traditional file shares and home directories, vertical workloads like M&E, healthcare, life sciences, financial services, plus generative and agentic AI, and other ML/DL and analytics applications.

PowerScale’s scale-out architecture can be deployed on-site, in co-lo facilities, or as customer-managed PowerScale for Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure deployments, providing core to edge to cloud flexibility, plus the scale and performance needed to run a variety of unstructured workflows on-prem or in the public cloud.

With data security, detection, and monitoring being paramount in this era of unprecedented cyber threats, OneFS 9.12 brings an array of new features and functionality to keep your unstructured data and workloads more available, manageable, and secure than ever.

Protocols

On the S3 object protocol front, OneFS 9.12 sees the debut of new security and immutability functionality. S3 Object Lock extends the standard AWS S3 Object Lock model with PowerScale’s own ‘Bucket-Lock’ protection mode semantics. Object Lock capabilities can operate on a per-zone basis and per-bucket, using the cluster’s compliance clock for the date and time evaluation of object’s retention. Additionally, S3 protocol access logging and bucket logging are also enhanced in this new 9.12 release.

Networking

As part of PowerScale’s seamless protocol failover experience for customers, OneFS 9.12 sees SmartConnect’s default IP allocation method for new pools move to ‘dynamic’. While SMB2 and SMB3 are the primary focus, all protocols benefit from this enhancement, including SMB, NFS, S3, and HDFS. Legacy pools will remain unchanged upon upgrade to 9.12, but any new pools will automatically be provisioned as dynamic (unless manually configured as ‘static’).

Security

In the interests of increased security and ransomware protection, OneFS 9.12 includes new Secure Snapshots functionality. Secure Snapshots provide true snapshot immutability, as well as protection for snapshot schedules, in order to protect against alteration or deletion, either accidentally or by a malicious actor.

Secure snapshots are built upon Multi-party Authorization (MPA), also introduced in OneFS 9.12. MPA prevents an individual administrator from executing privileged operations, such as configuration changes on snapshots and snapshot schedules, by requiring two or more trusted parties to sign off on a requested change for the privileged actions within a PowerScale cluster.

OneFS 9.12 also introduces support for common access cards (CAC) and personal identity verification (PIV) smart cards, providing physical multi-factor authentication (MFA), allowing users to SSH to a PowerScale cluster using the same security badge that grants them access into their office. In addition to US Federal mandates, CAC/PIV integration is a requirement for many security conscious organizations across the public and private sectors.

Upgrade

One-click upgrades in OneFS 9.12 allow a cluster to automatically display and download available  trusted upgrade packages from Dell Support, which can be easily applied via ‘one click installation’ from the OneFS WebUI or CLI. Upgrade package versions are automatically managed by Dell in accordance with a cluster’s telemetry data.

Support

OneFS 9.12 introduces an auto-healing capability, where the cluster detects problems using the HealthCheck framework and automatically executes a repair action for known issues and failures. This helps to increase cluster availability and durability, while reducing the time to resolution and the need for technical support engagements. Furthermore, additional repair-actions can be added at any point, outside of the general OneFS release cycle.

Hardware Innovation

On the platform hardware front, OneFS 9.12 also introduces an HDR Infiniband front-end connectivity option for the PowerScale PA110 performance and backup accelerator. Plus, 9.12 also brings a fast reboot enhancement to the high-memory PowerScale F-series nodes.

In summary, OneFS 9.12 brings the following new features and functionality to the Dell PowerScale ecosystem:

Area Feature
Networking ·         SmartConnect dynamic allocation as the default.
Platform ·         PowerScale PA110 accelerator front-end Infiniband support.

·         Conversion of front-end Ethernet to Infiniband support for F710 & F910.

·         F-series fast reboots.

Protocol ·         S3 Object Lock.

·         S3 Immutable SmartLock bucket for tamper-proof objects.

·         S3 protocol access logging.

·         S3 bucket logging.

Security ·         Multi-party authorization for privileged actions.

·         CAC/PIV smartcard SSH access.

·         Root lockdown mode.

·         Secure Snapshots with MPA override to protect data when retention period has not expired.

Support ·         Custer-level inventory request API.

·         In-field support for back-end NIC changes.

Reliability ·         Auto Remediation self-diagnosis and healing capability.
Upgrade ·         One-click upgrade.

We’ll be taking a deeper look at OneFS 9.12’s new features and functionality in future blog articles over the course of the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the new OneFS 9.12 code is available on the Dell Support site, as both an upgrade and reimage file, allowing both installation and upgrade of this new release.

For existing clusters running a prior OneFS release, the recommendation is to open a Service Request with to schedule an upgrade. To provide a consistent and positive upgrade experience, Dell is offering assisted upgrades to OneFS 9.12 at no cost to customers with a valid support contract. Please refer to Knowledge Base article KB544296 for additional information on how to initiate the upgrade process.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *