Dell HCI Advancements for VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC Systems

Dell Technologies, Inc. was launching hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) advancements to further simplify customer IT transformations with powerful systems at Dell Technologies World, Las Vegas, NV.

VxRail appliance

VxRail appliances and VxRack SDDC systems extend the company’s HCI global systems sales leadership ⁽¹⁾ with adoption of advanced technologies and the latest innovations from the firm and VMware, Inc. The combined technologies can accelerate customers’ abilities to transform to multi-cloud environments.

VxRack SDDC system

“As HCI systems are increasingly being used for core data center applications, customers are adopting VxRail and VxRack SDDC as the foundation for deploying clouds of all types,” said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president and GM, server and infrastructure systems, Dell EMC. “These technologies, co-developed by Dell EMC and VMware, offer a simple and clearly defined path to private, hybrid and multi-clouds to help our customers transform their IT infrastructure to free up valuable staff time while enabling IT to be the enabler for faster, nimbler businesses.“

Results of ESG 2018 IT Transformation Maturity Study, sponsored by the company and released this month, demonstrate that:

• An overwhelming majority of transformed companies – 98% – use either converged infrastructure (CI) or HCI, and 86% report using both

• Transformed companies report running an average of more than 35% of their applications on CI/HCI, quantifying their operational expenditure savings at 25% on average

• Organizations running cloud-like IaaS are operating on-premises infrastructure more than two and a half times as cost-effectively as public cloud alternatives

According to IDC, global HCI system sales surpassed $3.7 billion in 2017 vendor revenue, up 64.3% from 2016, as the fastest growing segment of the overall converged systems market. The company led all vendors in global HCI systems sales in 2017, with a 27.1% revenue share while growing 145% year over year at a rate more than 2.25 times faster than the overall industry. ⁽¹⁾ Meanwhile, IDC predicts the HCI solutions market will reach $10.3 billion by 2022.

VxRail and VxRack SDDC adopt advanced technologies
as ideal foundation for multi-cloud strategies
VxRail, a company’s HCI solution portfolio, is more flexible and powerful with the addition of several technologies. VxRail continues to set the standard for simplifying and modernizing VMware environments, regardless of where an organization is on their IT transformation journey.

Continuing to be integrated with VMware vSAN and vSphere software,
VxRail advancements include the adoption of:

• NVMe cache drive options future-proof enhanced performance with lower latency and higher performance than existing SAS-based cache drives

• Xeon Scalable processors, supporting up to 1.5TB of RAM per CPU socket for 2x more memory (up to 3TB per node)

• NVIDIA Tesla P40 GPU accelerators providing 2x performance and 50% more users for high-end graphics use cases such as those needed by CAD developers and designers

• 25GbE networking provides the most aggregate bandwidth of any other HCI appliance and up to 50% more networking connectivity options than the previous generation⁽²⁾

• Support for the Dell EMC Networking S4112-ON half-width, 10 and 25GbE open networking switch, a space-saving top-of-rack switch, purpose-built for software-defined data center environments

• Simplified management experience with VxRail Manager Events consolidation and viewing in VMware vCenter

• VxRail STIG Compliance Guide and automated scripts harden the storage, virtualization and networking components to accelerate deployments of secure infrastructure

Additionally, for customers looking to build a complete software-defined data center using VxRail as a building block, they can use the guidance of the latest VMware Validated Designs (VVD). Using the guidance of VVD for SDDC 4.2 for VxRail, customers can more architect an SDDC with complete NSX and vRealize functionality with less risk.

VxRack SDDC is an infrastructure foundation for realizing a multi-cloud vision. It is a turnkey cloud platform, based on VxRail hardware, built on 14th generation PowerEdge servers, delivered with integrated networking, and powered by VMware Cloud Foundation and Dell EMC software. It delivers a simple path to a hybrid or multi-cloud approach with an automated elastic cloud infrastructure at rack scale. Updates to VxRack SDDC, an advanced VMware Cloud Foundation integrated system ⁽²⁾, meet a variety of customer cloud use cases with:

• Configurations built on VxRail hardware with the latest PowerEdge 14th generation server platforms, designed for HCI deployments, to accelerate IT services and application delivery

• Enhancements for VDI with support for NVIDIA graphics processing cards

• VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3 with integrated cloud management and automation for on-premises IT-as-a-Service (IaaS) and more flexibility to scale with heterogeneous server support

• SDDC automation and serviceability extensions integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation that extend the management experience and simplify cloud-ready operations

VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC Systems updates are available.

Russell Phillips, VP, facilities and development, Celtic Manor Resort, said: “Celtic Manor is experiencing a time of considerable expansion with the new International Convention Centre Wales opening in 2019 and further hotel plans in the pipeline. By implementing Dell EMC VxRail Appliances on latest 14th generation PowerEdge servers into our data centers, we have seen amazing performance with existing applications. Management and monitoring has become more streamlined with one console allowing the team to concentrate on new technologies to enhance our business. The support is superb with only one number to call, and we now have a clear simple path for future storage expansion and compute. VxRail has been a great asset to our business growth plane, removing many technology barriers in one fell swoop.”

Ryan Deppe, network operations supervisor, Cianbro Corporation, said: “Dell EMC VxRail, built on a set-it-and-forget-it model, has played a substantial role in our ability to transform our IT. VxRail appliances have allowed my team to be more focused on business driven IT projects, creating innovations that drive the business and responding quickly to any requirements from our executive team or board. We’ve moved away from a ‘keep the lights on’ mentality to devoting more energy into aligning IT with our strategic business operations.“

Eric Sheppard, research VP, enterprise servers and storage, IDC, said: “Hyper-converged systems continue to be the fastest growing segment of the converged systems market as enterprises and industries worldwide are bolstering adoption rates to simplify their IT infrastructures. The growth of HCI has key significance to the larger cloud ecosystem, creating possibilities of tighter integration between technologies. As the leading provider of HCI systems globally, Dell EMC’s latest advancements, in partnership with VMware, offer even greater benefits to businesses look to transform modern and multi-cloud environments.“

Yanbing Li, senior VP and GM, storage and availability business unit, VMware, said: “Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC, co-developed by Dell EMC and VMware, provide turnkey technologies that enable organizations to quickly and easily use their VMware vSAN and VMware Cloud Foundation deployments. Customers can use these advanced solutions to rapidly modernize their data centers.“

Resources:
VxRail appliances overview
VxRack SDDC systems overview
Whitepaper: VxRail Comprehensive Security by Design

⁽¹⁾ Source: Ranking based on revenue from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, 4Q17, April 3, 2018
⁽²⁾ Based on Dell EMC internal analysis using publically available competitor specs as of April 2018.