Dell With Complete Blade Solution

At its second annual U.S. Dell Storage Forum customer and partner event, Dell Inc. announced solutions and services designed to help customers benefit from the convergence of storage, servers, networking and IT management for improved data centre simplicity and performance.

These offerings advance the Dell Fluid Data architecture and support Dell’s approach to deliver customer-inspired, end-to-end solutions that simplify IT management and deliver efficient results.

According to analyst firm IDC, while virtualization has reduced data centre costs by 25%, IT organisations still spend 80% of their annual budget on maintaining and managing existing systems and only 20% on value-added activities and initiatives (Source: IDC White Paper, The Evolution of the Datacenter and the Need for a Converged Infrastructure, doc #228536, June 2011.)

A converged infrastructure can provide a singleintegrated system that reduces the complexity of running IT systems and enables a shared service model of computing that maximises hardware utilisation, improves availability, contains management costs, and reduces time to deployment.

"Dell is redrawing the lines among servers, storage, networking and management to offer customers technology convergence that provides simplicity and improved performance while reducing the operational costs associated with running todays data centres," said Brad Anderson, president of Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. "Our holistic approach helps customers cost-effectively manage the physical, virtual and cloud environments that deliver flexible IT services to support their business goals."

EqualLogic Blade Arrays
Enable Blade Data Centre Convergence
The scalable EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Arrays provide customers the functionality and enterprise features of traditional EqualLogic arrays inside a Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis. The new blade arrays combine with Dell 11th or 12th generation PowerEdge blade servers and Dell Force10 or PowerConnect networking switches, enabling customers to run an entire data centre within a single compact blade enclosure that helps streamline IT management and operations.

Dell’s first storage blade arrays, like all EqualLogic solutions, are virtualized, scale performance along with capacity, and provide automated load balancing to optimise performance and reduce costs associated with running storage systems. They are designed to support virtualized environments, data centre infrastructure convergence, and the general storage needs of small and medium-sized deployments.

Multiple EqualLogic Blade Arrays can be configured in less than an hour with a fraction of the set-up time required by other available blade storage solutions. The new arrays also can provide nearly double the usable capacity – 96% more – than competitive arrays (Source: Principled Technologies, Inc. Data Center in a Box Performance Test: Comparing Dell and HP Blade Solutions, an August 2012 report commissioned by Dell.)

In addition to leveraging the ease-of-use and all-inclusive software model native to EqualLogic, users can benefit from:

• Four different EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Array configurations and the ability to store up to 14TB per array, up to 28TB per group inside a blade chassis, and up to 56TB with two groups inside one blade chassis
• Peer-scaling architecture that allows for simultaneous scalability of performance and capacity within and outside the blade chassis
• The ability to scale outside the server chassis to more than 2PB of storage in a single group and provide approximately double the usable capacity of a competitive solution inside the chassis
• EqualLogic set-up and deployment capabilities integrated with the blade chassis management console
• Flexibility with blade arrays that fit into any slot within the blade chassis
• Centralised monitoring and reporting tools that gather and provide information on performance, capacity and alerts across multiple groups of arrays, enabling performance and effective allocation of group resources
• Data protection, such as snapshots, clones and replicas, and integration with Microsoft, VMware and Linux platforms wrapped into every solution
• Support for multi-generational EqualLogic systems, allowing existing SAN arrays to receive continuous advancements and capabilities as storage and business requirements grow.

Combining the new EqualLogic blade arrays with the Dell PowerEdge 12th generation M420 blade servers and Force10 MXL switches, Dell also announced a pre-tested and certified Converged Blade Data Centre solution, a simplified and dense, end-to-end, 10GbE data centre contained within a single PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis.

With the convergence of Dell technologies, customers can support up to 48% more Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint users and up to 42 more users per watt of power compared to a competitive blade server and storage offering.3 Additionally, Dells converged solution is notably easier to deploy, with 55% fewer major configuration steps, to set-up storage alone.

With Converged Blade Data Centre solution,
customers additionally can benefit from:

• A compact, shared footprint that reduces the need for excessive licenses, space, cable configuration and power and cooling costs
• Flexible Force10 MXL networking switches, scalable for 1GbE, 10GbE or 40GbE using interchangeable FlexIO modules
• The PowerEdge M420, a quarter height 2-socket blade server, offering computational density, performance and efficiency
• End-to-end 10GbE Data Centre Bridging (DCB) that enables fabric convergence to help reduce costs as well as enhance quality of service through Ethernet
• An integrated approach to infrastructure management that allows administrators to manage the underlying Dell server and storage hardware from their VMware or Microsoft management consoles.

The EqualLogic Blade Arrays and Converged Blade Data Centre solution are complemented by new releases of EqualLogic software that tightly integrate SANs with hosts and applications. With an all-inclusive software licensing model, EqualLogic storage systems include all supporting software applications and tools without additional fees.
New software releases include:

• EqualLogic Array Software 6.0 – provides real-time data protection with synchronous replication, improved data security, and increased efficiency with snapshot borrowing, volume unmap, and volume undelete features
• EqualLogic SAN Headquarters 2.5 – monitoring and analysis tool introduces the Dell Integrated Support feature for automatic diagnostic data collection and transmission to Dell for improved customer experience
• EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for Microsoft 4.5 – offers reliability and availability for Microsoft SharePoint deployments with new Auto-Snapshot Manager for Microsoft SharePoint.

New Dell vStart 1000
for Dell Private Cloud Speeds Application
and IT Service Delivery
As customers virtualization needs grow, an integrated system can simplify virtualization infrastructure. vStart systems include the servers, storage, networking and management tools to help customers create or enhance a virtualized IT environment. With vStart 1000 for Dell Private Cloud, customers can focus on delivering IT services by taking advantage of the ability to provide a pre-integrated, virtualization and private cloud infrastructure while lowering risk from a tried, tested and certified configuration.

The vStart 1000 for Dell Private Cloud includes the first Dell Compellent storage and Dell Force10 networking-based vStart solution, providing the latest example of Dell technology integration from recent acquisitions into its end-to-end solutions portfolio. The new vStart systems include Dells VIS Creator cloud automation software that improves IT responsiveness through personalised private, public and desktop cloud services by leveraging existing systems and processes. vStart 1000 also is Microsoft Fast Track Private Cloud validated with Microsoft System Center 2012.

By leveraging the new PowerEdge M620, Dell Force10 networking and Compellent FC storage, vStart 1000 provides a mission critical application and private cloud platform with scalability, resiliency and performance.

New Migration Planning
and Data Migration Services
Dell Global Services also announced new Data Migration Planning and Data Migration Services to assist customers with a transition to the new EqualLogic blade array as well as Dell’ss broad storage portfolio. To streamline the data movement and validation process, the new migration services can help customers affordably mitigate risk, reduce data migration time and increase overall savings of moving to Dell storage solutions.

Using Dell IP gleaned from thousands of storage services engagements, Dell Global Services experts apply an understanding of the risks and complexities of the entire IT environment to plan and execute migrations.

This set of services, available worldwide, enables Dell to address a range of data migration opportunities from small projects to large, complex custom engagements.

"Dell continues to execute very well, first with strategic additions to its enterprise portfolio and then with timely integration of acquired technologies with these offerings. The company’s ability to seamlessly converge servers, storage and networking provides the substantial value of data centre simplicity for IT organisations and their businesses," said, Laura DuBois, program VP at IDC. "Dell’s growing end-to-end capabilities put the company in a compelling position to truly help customers reduce the complexity of IT and provide bottom line savings through reduction in space, power and operational management."

"The Dell EqualLogic Blade Array is extremely easy to use. The way it integrates with the Dell Chassis Management Console makes the initial set-up and deployment of the array very quick and easy," said Sean Barnes, IT operations manager for Forum Energy Technologies, a Dell customer. "Dealing with multiple blade chassis, multiple arrays, iSCSI networks, LAN networks, and all of the cabling can be tedious. I like that I dont have to contend with excess cabling or a separate external network with the blade array. Having this entire converged solution in one box is great."

Availability:

• The EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Arrays, Dell Converged Blade Center solution, EqualLogic Array Software 6.0 and SAN Headquarters 2.5 will become available in Dell’s third quarter.
• EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for Microsoft 4.5 is planned for availability this year.
• vStart 1000 solutions will be available in the U.S. in July and worldwide this year.
• Data Migration Planning and Data Migration Services are available worldwide.