What are you looking for ?
Infinidat
Articles_top

Dell EMC World: New Dell EMC Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Advancements and Cloud-Like Consumption Model

Updates to HCI portfolio including VxRail appliances, VxRack systems and XC series, and flexible consumption models making IT simpler to acquire, deploy and manage

Highlights:

  • Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) portfolio updates include VxRail Appliances 4.5, which offers expanded enterprise software and hardware options for the industry’s fastest growing HCI appliances (1)

  • Dell Financial Services Cloud Flex for HCI offers cloud-like consumption model for on-premises HCI with simple monthly payments and no upfront costs or obligation after the first year (2)

  • VDI complete solutions reduce barriers to desktop and application virtualization on HCI with substantial simplification, predictable pricing and TCO


Dell EMC
, part of Dell Technologies, announces it is eliminating barriers to  HCI adoption with several updates to its portfolio, including VxRail appliances, VxRack systems and XC series, and flexible consumption models aimed at making IT simpler to acquire, deploy and manage.

HCI is the fastest-growing part of the IT infrastructure market because customers want radical infrastructure simplification, and Dell EMC is the fastest-growing vendor in this segment with the strongest HCI portfolio, bar none,” said Chad Sakac, president, converged platforms and solutions division, Dell EMC. “We’re making the move to HCI even easier for customers with innovative payment solutions that eliminate the burden of upfront costs and long-term commitments, backed by HCI’s ability to easily scale up and down.

According to IDC, the worldwide hyper-converged system market continued its trajectory as the fastest growing subset of the broader converged infrastructure market in 2016, surpassing $2.2 billion in global revenue, a substantial increase of 110% compared to 2015. Dell Technologies was a fastest growing hyper-converged system market vendor, growing revenue 206% in 4Q 2016 year over year, based on the success of VxRail appliances, VxRack systems and the XC series. (1)

 

Customers to gain more from enhanced company’s HCI portfolio
The
VxRail appliance family is a HCI appliances powered by VMware, Inc.vSAN and jointly engineered with VMware. According to IDC, sequential revenue growth from VxRail appliances was four times higher than the entire HCI market during the fourth quarter of 2016, demonstrating more than 70% quarter over quarter growth. (1) In response to VxRail appliances being deployed increasingly for core data center applications, VxRail Appliances 4.5 delivers several new enterprise features available on the company’s PowerEdge 14th generation servers in the coming months:

  • Enhanced enterprise deployment features – Streamlined installation and implementation experience designed to help enterprise customers manage VxRail appliances at scale. It deployment experience, which is optimized to deploy a single appliance in 20 minutes (3), can be applied to larger cluster sizes, allowing customers to add and manage 10 or more appliances as easily as a single appliance.

  • Additional hardware flexibility lowers TCO – New single processor options, priced at $25,000 for a three-node cluster, (4) reduce the cost of deploying processor-based licensed software for scaling up to 64 nodes. New network options, including up to twelve additional ports, allow VxRail appliances to be deployed in environments requiring physical network segmentation of workloads.

  • Support for latest VMware technologiesvSphere 6.5 and vSAN 6.6 support adds optimized data service algorithms to accelerate flash performance, software-defined data-at-rest encryption to protect against unwanted access to data, and enhanced protection for stretched clusters.

  • Improved interoperability with the company’s technologies – Customers deploying VxRail appliances now can leverage a centralized Dell EMC Secure Remote Services (ESRS) gateway to provide a single point of secure, two-way remote support for their entire Dell EMC infrastructure.

The VxRack Systems, rack-scale hyper-converged systems with integrated top-of-rack Spine-Leaf networking and SDN options, are the choice for customers embracing software-defined technology across the data center and ready for HCI with pre-integrated physical and software-defined networking. Updates to the VxRack portfolio of VxRack FLEX powered by ScaleIO and VxRack SDDC powered by VMware Cloud Foundation include:

  • Support for more data-demanding applications – VxRack FLEX expands configurations with support for PowerEdge R930, enabling the most data-demanding applications such as OLTP, in-memory databases, OLAP, CRM and ERP.

  • Performance networking architecture for modern data centers – VxRack FLEX now incorporates the next-generation Cisco Systems, Inc.’ Nexus 93180YC-EX switches that increase scale, improve performance and natively support software-defined networking.

  • Enhanced hardware flexibility – VxRack SDDC offers six additional PowerEdge R630-based server nodes for both expanded high performance and entry level options in cores, memory and CPUs.

XC430 Xpress


The
XC Series hyper-converged appliances combine compute, storage and virtualization resources in 1U and 2U appliances configured to-order. XC Series appliances are suited for customers requiring hypervisor choice, which may include Hyper-V, and support a variety of specific use cases, ranging from typical enterprise business applications to VDI environments.

Updates to the portfolio include:

  • XC430 Xpress – This appliance offers SMBs an all-in-one infrastructure solution with three-node configurations starting at $25,000. (5) Optimized for the smallest environments up to four nodes, the XC430 Xpress consolidates servers and storage in 3U of rack space to simplify on-site infrastructure.

  • XC Series with company’s Data Protection – Avamar Virtual Edition, Data Domain and Data Domain Virtual Edition with XC series offer efficient, enterprise data protection and simplified backup and DR, offering capabilities not previously available with the XC Series.

  • XC Series with Pivotal Cloud Foundry – To develop and deploy applications to Pivotal Cloud Foundry, XC Series and Pivotal Software, Inc. engineering teams have collaborated to create al configuration and deployment guide, which reduces risk and accelerates a customer’s ability to increase developer productivity and reduce IT operation costs.

PowerEdge 14th generation servers

PowerEdge 14th generation servers to offer HCI portfolio boost
The PowerEdge 14th generation server portfolio will serve as the compute foundation across the company’s HCI portfolio. Through testing and validation, fully engineered, turnkey HCI solutions will benefit from the scale and performance of the new server portfolio to accelerate customers’ journeys to modernize their data centers. The company will begin incorporating PowerEdge 14th generation server capabilities into its HCI portfolio in the coming months.

Innovative payment solutions for cloud-like consumption offer HCI with minimal financial risk
While organizations are increasingly adopting HCI solutions to simplify their IT infrastructure, barriers include upfront costs and perceived risk of a new IT operating model. The
Cloud Flex for HCI by Dell Financial Services (DFS) brings a cloud-like consumption model to the company’s HCI portfolio by offering a flexible, financing solution that eliminates upfront capital costs with declining payments over time. This is offered, through the firm and channel partners, with no obligation after the first year and allows customers to return any or all HCI appliances.

Cloud Flex for HCI is available with VxRail appliances and XC Series and has planned availability in 3Q17 for VxRack Systems.

Additionally, the company is reducing the barriers to entry for desktop and application virtualization with VDI Complete Solutions powered by VMware Horizon. These end-to-end solutions encompass the infrastructure, software and the option of endpoints and services all from a single vendor. VDI Complete is based on VxRail appliances or Ready Nodes for vSAN, and provides straightforward, predictable pricing and TCO with a single number for support. Customers can choose to either build their own VDI solution or buy a pre-configured end-to-end solution from $8 per seat, per month (1).

Availability:

  • VxRail Appliances 4.5 has planned global availability in September 2017, with several features available to existing VxRail Appliances 4.0 customers in June 2017.

  • VxRack FLEX updates have planned global availability in July 2017.

  • VxRack SDDC updates are available.

  • XC430 Xpress has planned global availability in June 2017.

  • The first phase of XC Series Dell Data Protection support is available as a reference architecture.

  • XC Series with Pivotal Cloud Foundry is available as a reference architecture.

  • DFS Cloud Flex for HCI and VDI Complete Solutions are available in select countries.


Amiras Savani, manager, infrastructure,
Jenner and Block, said: “We chose Dell EMC VxRail Appliances for our law firm’s virtual desktops infrastructure platform and for hosting core functions including our email and database applications in our UK data center. The appliances have greatly reduced time needed for IT management, and Dell EMC support has been excellent, helping us get the solution up and running in only two hours. Our IT team endeavors to stay at the forefront of trusted, new technologies that enable us to be more efficient, and we’ve found that with Dell EMC VxRail.

Jason Bray, SVP, engineering, cardlytics, said: “The Dell EMC XC Series is helping to increase our speed-to-market, which is a big thing for us. Our bank partners love a solution that allows them to get up and running fast, and ahead of the competition. We love its scalability. Instead of adding a whole stack of servers to set up a new bank partner in the system, we can actually add one or two servers and horizontally scale solutions faster and more economically.
:
Stu Miniman, senior analyst, Wikibon, said: “
Simplification is one of the primary drivers for rapid IT adoption of converged infrastructure solutions. Hyper-converged infrastructure is a multi-billion dollar market segment that is seeing rapid growth, and Dell EMC is well positioned as a leader with multiple leading offerings. The pairing of cloud-like consumption models, like Dell EMC’s Cloud Flex for HCI, with flexible pools of on-premises infrastructure, makes it even easier for companies to make the move to this model with reduced risk and less upfront cost required.

(1) Based on IDC Worldwide Converged Systems Tracker, Q4 2016, March 23, 2017.
(2) Payment solutions provided and serviced by Dell Financial Services L.L.C. or its affiliate or designee (‘DFS’) for qualified customers. Offers may not be available or may vary in certain countries. Where available, offers may be changed without notice and are subject to product availability, credit approval, execution of documentation provided by and acceptable to DFS, and may be subject to minimum transaction size. Offers not available for personal, family or household use. Restrictions and additional requirements may apply to transactions with governmental or public entities.
(3) Based on ESG Lab Validation report commissioned by EMC, EMC Converged Platforms: VxRail Appliance, June 2016.

(4) $25,000 street price includes VxRail Appliance hardware, software and Dell EMC Enhanced Support.
(5)
$25,000 street price includes XC Series hardware, software and Dell EMC ProSupport.

Resources:
Video: Say Hello to Dell EMC VxRail Appliances
Video: neXgen Group Success with Dell EMC VxRack Systems
Video: XC Series Architecture Overview
Video: Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions
Blog: Dell EMC World Perspectives & Announcements: Time to Put an End the TCO versus TCA Debate Once and For All
Blog: The Year that Dell EMC Changes Hyper-Converged
White Paper: Hyper-converged Infrastructure as a Stepping Stone to True Hybrid Cloud
Blog: Introducing Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions

Articles_bottom
AIC
ATTO
OPEN-E