Dell EMC DSS 9000 Open and Agile Rack Scale Infrastructure

Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies, is helping carriers and service providers accelerate the shift to software-defined data centers and cloud computing initiatives with the DSS 9000, an open and agile rack scale infrastructure.

CenturyLink, Inc. and Telefonica are among the first customers using the hyperscale-inspired DSS 9000 to address workload demands economically and efficiently.

“Carriers and service providers need hyperscale-inspired infrastructure to balance the need to innovate at the speed of business while spending less,” said James Mouton, SVP, extreme scale infrastructure, Dell EMC. “With the DSS 9000, we are leveraging our ten years of experience working with industry titans to make it easier to purchase, optimize, deploy, manage and service infrastructure at scale.“

To increase competitiveness and enable rapid innovation for modern technologies including 5th generation wireless (5G) networks, IoT and big data, many carriers and service providers are moving toward software-defined infrastructure, similar to what the largest hyperscale cloud companies employ. With a flexible design and open architecture, the DSS 9000 can reduce TCO by up to 27% over five years ⁽¹⁾.

The DSS 9000 provides compute, storage, networking, power, cooling and open management in a pre-integrated rack scalable up to 96 nodes with Xeon Scalable processors and built to customers’ requirements. Carriers and service providers can move toward a future of composable infrastructure and provision and manage at the rack level – as well as across the entire infrastructure – with a single interface.

DSS 9000 in action
CenturyLink, a global communications and IT services company, offers a portfolio of flexible cloud solutions to help customers create, run and scale their applications. The company selected the DSS 9000 as a building block for its public and private cloud offerings.

“Our cloud infrastructure offerings are designed to help customers maintain control, increase visibility and be more agile so they can run both cloud-native and traditional applications more efficiently,” said David Shacochis, VP, hybrid IT product management, CenturyLink. “We chose the DSS 9000 to be a key component of our CenturyLink Private Node offering because of its flexible design and ability to give our customers a build-to-order private cloud solution. Our public cloud offerings are also offered on the DSS 9000, providing a consistent and reliable experience for customers who have both public and private cloud needs.“

Sprint Corporation has been investigating ways to make its traditional mobility architectures more streamlined, efficient and scalable as it moves to a virtualized environment. Sprint recently selected the DSS 9000 to test its C3PO (Clean CUPS Core for Packet Optimization – CUPS: Control and User Plane Separation), an open source network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN)-based mobile core reference solution designed to improve performance of the network.

Through its UNICA program, Telefonica is building a more automated, software-based global network that will reduce costs, increase service development and fuel innovation. One of the solutions that is being tested in Telefónica NFV labs for supporting future networks based on NFV/SDN technologies is the DSS 9000.

“UNICA is one of the industry’s most ambitious virtualization projects. It’s designed to meet the stringent requirements of the network environment, including carrier-grade, performance and operational capabilities – while being as open as possible,” said Antonio Elizondo, senior manager, network virtualization, Telefonica systems and network global direction. “We became interested in testing the DSS 9000 because it’s built on open principles and aligns with our mission to make the project as future-proof as possible. Leveraging the DSS 9000’s flexible design and management capabilities, we are able to prove the automation of network services across multiple NFV and SDN infrastructures.“

DSS 9000 benefits
To keep pace with growing digital workloads and the influx of data, carriers and service providers need open and agile infrastructure that can quickly respond to rapid growth, while providing a consistent and scalable platform from the edge to the core.

The DSS 9000 helps:

Accelerate delivery of new services by provisioning, deploying and managing at the rack level to speed time to value and deliver better TCO.
Simplify large scale operations with management based on the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Redfish specification that ensures interoperability with heterogeneous systems.
Provide greater business agility by disaggregating hardware resources and creating composable systems with Redfish and Intel Rack Scale Design (RSD).
Future-proof infrastructure with open principles; for example, DSS 9000 is recognized by the Open Compute Project as OCP-INSPIRED and designed with an open networking approach to support NFV and SDN initiatives.
Deploy workload-optimized configurations with a variety of rack heights that accommodates full, half and third-width compute and storage sleds as well as other standard server, storage and networking options.
“Intel Rack Scale Design enables composable, disaggregated infrastructure solutions, which enables service providers to cost-effectively accelerate data center innovations,” said Figen Ulgen, GM, rack scale design, Intel Corp. “We have been working alongside Dell EMC on Intel RSD since its inception and are thrilled to see the traction the Intel RSD architecture and software is driving in digital transformation.“

“Dell EMC is focused on partnering with service providers to help architect, design, and deploy rack scale infrastructure and on delivering solutions that target the transformation of the data center, from edge to core, helping accelerate the pace at which service providers can adapt,” said Kevin Shatzkamer, VP, service provider solutions, Dell EMC. “With the rapid advances in network, compute, and storage virtualization, it is important to have a common underlying infrastructure platform that spans both currently-accepted virtualization principles and incorporates a path toward more advanced tooling and operations such as containers, micro-services, automation, and DevOps.“

The DSS 9000 with Xeon Scalable processors will be available to carriers and service providers in the Americas in October, and in other regions worldwide in Dell EMC’s fiscal fourth quarter.

Resources:
DSS 9000 webpage
DSS 9000 blog posts: overview and product detail
Videos: DSS 9000 overview, DSS 9000 management, Inside look at DSS 9000 (1), Inside look at DSS 9000 (2), CenturyLink customer video