VMworld: Dell EMC Enhanced Cloud-Enabled Platforms, Infrastructure and Services Portfolio

Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies is announcing several enhancements to its cloud-enabled infrastructure solutions portfolio to help customers maximize the value of their IT ecosystem and multi-cloud environments.

Coupled with innovation from across Dell Technologies, the company is delivering a portfolio of cloud solutions that caters to all types of applications and creates a consistent experience across cloud platforms.

The increasing amount of data brought about by mobility, AI, analytics, IoT, edge computing, along with traditional workloads, is driving demand for all types of clouds, including public, managed and on-premises.

In a survey conducted by Forrester Research, Inc., commissioned by Pivotal, a Dell Technologies business, and Microsoft Corp., 100% of respondents are using multiple cloud infrastructure and/or cloud application platforms. Additionally, 99% believe a consistent, unified approach to deployment, operation and use of combined infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service platforms enables better IT service to business. ⁽²⁾ Cloud decision-makers in this study also said they look for integrated PaaS and IaaS with consistent identity and access controls, development experience, runtime environments and migration services.

“As more applications and traditional workloads move into various clouds, the proliferation of cloud siloes will become inevitable, inhibiting organizations’ ability to fully exploit business differentiators like data analytics and burgeoning AI initiatives,” said Sam Grocott, SVP, Dell EMC. “Dell EMC’s focused innovation across its cloud-enabled portfolio of platforms, infrastructure, consumption models and services helps organizations evolve more quickly to a cloud operating model for the modern data center.“

Accelerate IT and business transformation with Dell EMC cloud platforms
Organizations increasingly are adopting a sophisticated mix of cloud platforms and are seeking a consistent user experience to balance their needs, costs, risks and preferences. The company offers pre-engineered solutions to provide multi-cloud platforms and reference architectures. This includes IaaS with VMware for traditional applications; platform-as-a-service (PaaS) architecture and containers with Pivotal for cloud-native applications; an enterprise public cloud platform with Virtustream; and, Azure services on-premises with Microsoft Azure Stack. With hardware, software integration, tooling and documentation combined, organizations can accelerate time to results, simplify daily operations and achieve greater levels of efficiency and transparency.

Now the company and VMware, Inc. are simplifying and accelerating paths to the software-defined data center (SDDC) and multi-cloud with VxRail and VxRack SDDC hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions. VxRack SDDC, pre-integrated and constructed to deliver the latest technology from VMware Cloud Foundation, offers the infrastructure foundation for realizing a VMware multi-cloud. With new capabilities to match the needs of customers’ own workloads, VxRack SDDC features the VMware SDDC software suite pre-integrated on a range of VxRail hardware. It also features automation and serviceability extensions in SDDC Manager, with extensibility to a choice of public cloud providers.

With VxRail as a pre-engineered and pre-validated IaaS platform and infrastructure foundation for PaaS, customers can more easily and quickly architect, implement and operate a complete SDDC, including VMware NSX and the vRealize Suite, with less risk. New options of the VMware Validated Designs for VxRail support distributed multi-availability zones architecture and multi-site deployments with DR. This enables customers to reduce risk and simplify operations and maintenance with a validated, standardized SDDC design based on VMware’s best practices.

Additionally, VMware Cloud Assembly, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) based cloud management solution component of VMware Cloud Services, will feature integration with VxRail to speed time-to-value. Once available, VxRail will have a synchronized release and be the only HCI appliance jointly developed to provide integrations that seamlessly work with VMware Cloud Services.

Create consistent operations and flexible deployment options
with Dell EMC cloud-enabled infrastructure
Today’s businesses demand that infrastructure support higher-value IT capabilities, such as AI or IoT, to produce better business outcomes. As a result, the company makes cloud-enablement infrastructure a critical element of its investments.

To support customers’ IT and cloud operations consistently across on and off-premises cloud models, the company provides the following capabilities:

• Cloud Data Mobility enables organizations to move data to and from cloud storage seamlessly, providing the flexibility to augment on-premises storage with cloud-based storage. Updates to the Data Domain Cloud Tier for long-term retention help further reduce transactional overhead by increasing the object size written to the cloud. The firm also has improved storage utilization by way of tight integration with Virtustream Storage Cloud and Elastic Cloud Storage.

• Cloud Data Protection protects data residing on various cloud platforms. Data Domain Cloud DR has been enhanced for application-consistent cloud DR in AWS, as well as recovery to VMware Cloud on AWS. The company’s Cloud Snapshot Manager provides backup and recovery for public cloud workloads, and now offers protection for Microsoft Azure. VMware vCloud Director features a new data protection extension that enables cloud service providers to offer an integrated VMware and Data Protection self-service solution to customers. Additionally, the firm’s Protection Suite was named an Advanced Technology Partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner network and a Microsoft partner Gold competency in cloud platforms.

• Cloud Control allows environments to be managed from anywhere. Powered by machine learning, CloudIQ, a free cloud-based application that allows users to proactively track storage health, predict capacity shortages and detect performance anomalies, is now introducing support for PowerMax, VMAX, and XtremIO. This support is in addition to Unity and SC Series. VMware integration provides VM-level performance and capacity insights, and new mobile apps provide access to CloudIQ from anywhere.

• Cloud Data Services feature comprehensive data services spanning all file types for applications running in the cloud, including Isilon Cloud for Google Cloud Platform, Elastic Cloud Storage and Virtustream Storage Cloud. Unity Cloud Edition is the latest addition to this family, offering a fully-featured software-defined unified storage deployed in the cloud. These capabilities enable users to deploy unity block and file storage with VMware Cloud on AWS. Additionally, users can leverage the flexibility of cloud deployment to support DR and as-needed operational demands, including test and development, and data analytics.

Realize public cloud-like flexibility with Dell’s cloud consumption models
With flexible cloud consumption solutions through Dell Financial Services (DFS), Dell EMC makes it easy for customers to acquire cloud-enabled infrastructure and achieve transformational goals. ⁽³⁾ For example, customers may choose to leverage cost and flexibility benefits of consumption solutions to accommodate unpredictable usage of new applications and seasonal spikes that drive buffer capacity requirements.

Cloud Flex for HCI minimizes the risk of moving to VxRail appliances or Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack. It requires no up-front investment and has declining payments over time with no obligation after the first twelve months. The company offers Ready Capacity, which provides on-demand storage and buffer capacity that scales to match usage needs, and Flex on Demand, which allows customers to deploy base capacity now and pay for buffer capacity as it is used. With the flexibility to consume only what is needed as an operating expense, customers can improve efficiency and reallocate resources to innovation.

Make most of cloud investments with Dell’s cloud consulting and technology services
To help customers more quickly realize the value of multi-cloud environments, The company also offers a range of expert cloud consulting and technology services. Dell EMC Services consultants help customers create roadmaps, profile applications, implement cloud management and automation platforms and transition to a cloud operating model. Experts are available to help deploy, transition to, and optimize cloud technologies and provide comprehensive hardware and software support 24×7 to help ensure system performance and minimize downtime. With the firm’s Managed Services, customers can gain greater efficiencies while expert advisors manage the cloud infrastructure for them. Education Services can also provide the multi-cloud skills and validation customers need to plan, design and manage successful cloud infrastructures.

Empower customer choice in one-stop with Dell EMC Cloud Marketplace
The Dell EMC Cloud Marketplace brings the power of the company’s family together in one place. The marketplace offers customers a choice of cloud platforms, enhanced cloud-enabled infrastructure capabilities, as well as consulting and technology services, and consumption models in a self-service portal.

Additional resources:
Blog Post – Seeing Through the Multi-Clouds: Navigating Your Public and Private Cloud Strategy
Blog Post – It’s Now Possible to Run Unified Storage in the Cloud with Dell EMC Unity VSA Cloud Edition
Blog Post – New to CloudIQ: PowerMax, VMAX, SC Series and XtremIO; Instantly View Your Dell EMC Storage Health – From Anywhere
Blog Post – The Future is Bright in a Multi-Cloud World
Blog Post – Dell EMC Multi-Cloud and VMware Data Protection Enhancements Improve Customer Experience and Cost Efficiencies
Blog Post – Introducing the ECS EX-Series
Blog Post – Advancing Infrastructure-as-a-Service for Multi-Cloud with HCI
Blog Post – Four Straightforward Steps to a Cloud Model

⁽¹⁾ See Dell Inc. within IDC WW Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, Q1 2018, June 2018. Based on vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT.
⁽²⁾ Forrester: Hybrid Cloud Demands Consistency
⁽³⁾ 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, applicable law, credit approval, documentation provided by and acceptable to DFS and may be subject to minimum transaction household use. Restrictions and additional requirements may apply to transactions with governmental or public entities.