Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO

At VMworld 2014, Dell Inc. unveiled a range of solutions across its enterprise portfolio that optimize and simplify management and productivity within customers’ VMware virtualization environments.

The new offerings showcase Dell and VMware, Inc.‘s long-standing partnership to build product and service solutions, which help customers achieve more from their IT investments.

Industry forces such as cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, mobility, and software-defined IT are companies to think differently about traditional IT – services based on transactional system-of-records – and compelling businesses to reexamine their approach to creating, storing, moving and analyzing information. Many are moving toward an approach that more closely mirrors new IT – business models and processes that are subscriber or relationship-oriented and require support for high-volume and high-velocity data processing.

Taking a customer approach, Dell supports businesses wherever they are on their journey, from traditional IT to new IT, by adding to its portfolio of hyper-converged and software-defined offerings with new solutions for VMware environments:

Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL bridge the capital and operational cost savings of new IT solutions while maintaining compatibility with traditional IT workloads. The appliances help customers streamline the deployment and scale-out of their virtual infrastructure and workloads.
A VDI reference architecture and new Dell Storage and VMware integrations help customers simplify traditional IT solutions including management and access of data and applications for traditional VMware environments.

Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL

Dell introduced the Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL, designed specifically for VMware environments, to help customers reduce common challenges associated with infrastructure and workload delivery. The new hyper-converged appliances, the latest additions to Dell’s broad engineered systems portfolio, deliver a transformative end-to-end user experience aimed at virtual infrastructure, VDI, private cloud and general-purpose workloads running in virtual environments. Using Dell servers with VMware EVO: RAIL software, the new systems are scalable, manageable and offer fast time-to-value, along with a simplified management experience that makes the appliances easy to use for customers of all sizes.

Dell is delivering two editions
of its Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL:

Dell Engineered Solution for VMware EVO: RAIL, Virtual Infrastructure Edition – A solution for general purpose workloads which enables customer rapidly deploy and scale VMware based virtual infrastructure.
Dell Engineered Solution for VMware EVO: RAIL, VMware Horizon 6 – VDI specific solution that allows customers to quickly roll and scale infrastructure for virtual desktops to end users based on business demand.

Each appliance will be sold as a single item with hardware, software and support bundled together. Both editions are built leveraging Dell’s deep heritage and expertise with dense datacenter and server designs. The appliances includes four server nodes within a 2U server.

Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL are an addition to growing engineered solutions portfolio. Dell brings to bear its expertise in x86 server architecture, hardware systems management, web scale deployments and expertise with VMware environments to help develop and co-engineer the appliance. The result is an integrated hardware and software stack that delivers business agility while reducing TCO.

“Dell has been a trusted partner of Oakland USD for many years. The company embodies the start-up mentality while being a stable industry leader with long-term vision,” said John Krull, information technology officer, Oakland Unified School District. “The Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL offer ease-of-use, simplicity of deployment, and pay-as-you-go scalability that is ideal for our VDI (VDI) initiatives.”

Engineered Solution for VMware EVO: RAIL, Virtual Infrastructure Edition will be available in September 2014, and Engineered Solution for VMware EVO: RAIL, VMware Horizon 6, will be available later this year.

New Dell Storage for VMware
Dell announced a series of new storage and VMware integrations to help customers simplify management and access of data and applications for traditional VMware environments:

Dell Storage PS and SC Series now offer support for VMware vCenter Operations Manager (vC Ops), for greater visibility into the performance, capacity and health of their virtualized IT infrastructure.
Dell will offer Virtual Volumes (VVols) support with Dell Storage PS Series at launch of Virtual Volumes and SC Series to follow, enabling VM level storage management and data services for streamlined management, monitoring and data protection in virtualized environments.
Dell FS8600 NAS appliances will offer vSphere Storage APIs – Array Integration (VAAI), in Q1 2015, to speed up VMware operations with Dell’s file system solutions.

Additionally, to support and help optimize traditional IT in VMware environments, Dell also announced a VDI reference architecture based on its servers, networking, and the new Dell Storage SC4020, which begin shipping. The reference architecture offers customers a jump start on an example 1,800-user VDI hosting environment with detailed performance characteristics of a single 2U Dell Storage SC4020 all-flash array.

Dell Cloud Client-Computing Solutions Enhance Customers’ VDI Experience
New additions and updates to the Dell Cloud Client-Computing portfolio will improve and simplify customers’ IT environments and VDI through significant performance, flexibility, security and manageability enhancements.

The new Dell Wyse 3000 dual core thin client with Windows Embedded 7, Dell’s first Intel-based thin client, sets a new standard for performance and flexibility in a cost-effective and extremely compact thin client.

Highlights include:

Flexibility with support for various selectable factory-installed high-speed and legacy interfaces. This device can connect to almost anything, from cutting-edge high-speed network connections to legacy peripherals.
A cost-effective price point for the performance and connectivity of a mid to high-end thin client.
Simplified management for various use cases, on premise with Wyse Device Manager, or cloud-based with Wyse Cloud Client Manager, and scalable administration for just a few to tens of thousands of thin clients.
Performance and graphics capabilities powered by the dual core Intel BayTrail processor in a sleek, compact form factor.

Dell also announced new PCoIP capabilities for the Wyse 5000 series all-in-one thin client. Since its debut as the most secure all-in-one on the market, this end point offers optimal reliability and performance in a sleek form factor.

With the addition of VMware-based PCoIP it now offers:

A responsive virtual desktop experience, with rich 3D modeling and HD video multi-streaming capabilities for power users.
More flexible connectivity and interface options, making it an end point for almost any virtual desktop need.

Additionally, Dell Cloud Client-Computing introduced updates to its quad core D class 5000 and Z class 7000 thin clients, now featuring support for Wyse-enhanced SUSE Linux. Leveraging the benefits of the SUSE Linux OS, this update enhances powerful processing and rich graphics capabilities, security against malware and viruses, and deployment and management simplicity.

Dell has also updated its portfolio of end-to-end desktop virtualization solutions for VMware. To address customer concerns around the costs, storage, security and graphics capabilities of desktop virtualization, Wyse Datacenter for VMware Horizon 6 now delivers VMware’s Virtual SAN, increased user densities and provides 3D graphic capabilities within a secure, scalable and certified environment. Additionally, the new Wyse Datacenter for VMware Horizon DaaS offers enterprises of all types and sizes the capability to deploy Desktop-as-a-Service within their environment in a the public cloud, private cloud or a hybrid of these, with 3D graphics and all with the option of having Dell Managed VDI Services manage and monitor the end-to-end environment.

New Dell Software offerings simplify virtualization management
Dell Software will preview the new edition of its virtualization management product offering Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise 8.0 that delivers integrated virtual infrastructure change analytics, intelligent capacity planning and advanced customer dashboards to optimize performance, workflow and plan for growth across heterogeneous environments. It offers IT administrator’s insight and control to change tracking across the virtual environment with granularity. This release comes on the heels of availability of Foglight for Virtualization 7.2 with vSwitch virtual Ethernet network management support that delivers packet level analysis with netflow technology. Foglight for Virtualization addresses the operational challenges of IT teams who need deep visibility across virtual and physical resources to identify and fix performance problems in virtual environments across all hypervisors, and plan for rapidly growing organizational needs.

Dell Services simplified DR with the introduction of its DR as a service with Dell Cloud Dedicated Service bundle. Built on Dell’s hosted private-cloud service and using VMware Site Recovery Manager replication technology, DRaaS helps customers replicate their production sites and streamline recovery. Available, Dell it offers cloud hosting with enterprise features and Dell SecureWorks protection for less than $4,000 per month.

“The collaboration between Dell and VMware continues to deliver innovative, industry-leading products and service solutions designed to help customers increase productivity and run their business more effectively,” said Samuel Greenblatt, VP of engineered solutions and technology, enterprise solutions group, Dell. “With the introduction of the Dell Engineered Solution for VMware EVO: RAIL and other new solutions announced, we are making it easier for customers to deploy and manage their IT environments including virtual infrastructure, VDI (VDI), and private clouds.“

“Dell and VMware are closely aligned in our shared commitment to solving customer’s needs, and that is never more apparent than with the introduction of Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO: RAIL,” said Raghu Raghuram, EVP, software-defined data center division, VMware. “This announcements demonstrate how Dell and VMware are partnering and co-engineering to build tightly integrated joint solutions that customers can use to help them reach their potential within a software-defined data center.”