Dell EMC: Hybrid Cloud and Modern Data Center Operations for VMware Environments

Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies, announces portfolio enhancements and integrations with VMware, Inc. designed to help customers further automate operations of their modern data center and hybrid cloud environments.

VxRail appliance

These capabilities allow businesses to accelerate innovation, simplify operations and speed overall IT Transformation initiatives.

The increasing amount of data being driven by both traditional and modern application workloads is pushing demand for automation and bandwidth both inside and outside the data center. Through collaboration and joint engineering, the company and VMware are enabling organizations to derive more value from their IT investments.

“Organizations that digitally transform with a software-defined and cloud-ready modern data center infrastructure are able to execute a powerful hybrid cloud strategy that provides optimal control, simplicity and cost tolerance to match their own unique preferences” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, products and operations, Dell Inc. “Working together, Dell EMC and VMware continue to enhance VxRail and VxBlock System 1000, to automate the operations of integrated cloud platforms, so our customers can use them to maximize what’s possible with their data – resulting in better processes, innovative outcomes and operating efficiencies.“

“Dell EMC’s VxRail HCI and VxBlock CI engineered systems are among the most simple and powerful means for customers to modernize IT and rapidly scale their VMware environments to support a hybrid cloud operating model,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, COO, products and cloud services, VMware. “Both VMware and Dell EMC are making cloud adoption even easier for customers by introducing VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail and VMware vRealize Suite integration with VxBlock – both integrated cloud platforms that automate deployment and simplify hybrid cloud operations.“

VxRail simplifies networking, management and access to latest VMware innovations
Organizations globally are choosing highly automated, scale-out VxRail HCI appliances, powered by VMware vSAN to support their digital transformation objectives and need to scale operations rapidly and efficiently. Applications and data are increasingly distributed across edge locations, core data centers, and hybrid cloud environments. Customers turn to Dell Technologies as a partner to provide a simplified experience through a jointly engineered digital foundation between VxRail and VMware. Through this collaboration and co-engineering, VxRail is becoming simpler to adopt, deploy and manage.

Advances to VxRail include:

• Simpler networking deployments with the a HCI appliances to integrate automated network awareness and configuration during set up, cluster expansion, and day-to-day management with SmartFabric Services (ii). To deploy VxRail at any scale more rapidly, SmartFabric Services, as part of the company’s Networking OS10 Enterprise edition network OS, automates up to 98% of the network configuration steps for VxRail hyper-converged environments through integration with VxRail Manager and vSphere. SmartFabric Services also enable customers to deploy and automate data center networking fabrics while being interoperable with existing data center infrastructure.

• More automation for the entire VMware cloud stack, along with networking, to more quickly deploy and manage hybrid cloud environments with VxRail clusters. The only VMware jointly engineered HCI appliance with VMware Cloud Foundation, coming soon, VxRail offers an integrated cloud platform that delivers a simple path to the VMware SDDC and hybrid cloud strategy that is future-proofed for next generation VMware cloud technologies. It allows extensibility to public cloud providers, such as VMware Cloud on AWS, and hybrid cloud container services such as Pivotal Software, Inc.

• Transparent systems management with all VxRail tasks available to be managed directly from the familiar vCenter Server console, making it easier to move to and manage VxRail from the primary management platform for VMware environments.

• Flexibility by supporting a two-node VxRail cluster, instead of the previously required three. This makes VxRail more accessible at the edge for larger organizations, such as retailers with limited requirements at remote locations. Additionally, new, flexible vSAN licensing further enables customers to choose their desired level of HCI software functionality and investment.

• Tighter integration with next-generation VMware Cloud technology with VxRail available on the latest vSAN release (version 6.7U1), support for VMware Validated Design for SDDC 4.3 and planned Project Dimension integration for data center, edge, and hybrid-cloud use cases. Project Dimension will combine VMware’s compute, storage and networking solutions with VxRail, managed as a Service by VMware. Additionally, customers can now also use VxRail with VMware Site Recovery for push-button failover to VMware Cloud on AWS for DR.

VxBlock Central simplifies CI operations
with enhanced awareness, automation and analytics
Enterprises modernize their data centers and run their VMware-based clouds using VxBlock systems-turnkey CI systems that bring together compute, storage, networking and vSphere virtualization. Continuing this long history of CI innovation, demonstrated with the introduction of the VxBlock System 1000, VxBlock Central software provides converged awareness, automation and analytics to simplify daily CI administration. VxBlock Central includes a single unified user interface for accessing VxBlock System information in real time. It includes an integrated launch point to VMware vRealize Orchestrator for automating daily operational tasks and a launch point to vRealize Operations to provide detailed analytics and an easy way to manage VxBlock storage capacity.

Integration between VxBlock Central and VMware vRealize Suite provides a foundation for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and a simplified path to implementing a private/hybrid cloud operations model on VxBlock Systems. VxBlock Central’s CI-aware integration with vRealize Operations and vRealize Orchestrator software, provides greater visibility into CI system status and time-saving orchestration workflows. It also allows enterprises to leverage an additional layer of vRealize software tools, including vRealize Automation, to enable cloud service delivery and management. Using the vRealize Suite on VxBlock opens the path for enterprises to achieve an experience across other company’s cloud platforms including VxRack SDDC and VxRail Appliances.

On November 6, 2018, a live announcement and CrowdChat hosted by industry analysts from Wikibon, Inc. will feature experts from Dell EMC, VMware and joint customer Cianbro Corporation. The online event will be available for on-demand replay.

Dell EMC Networking for data center and cloud operations
As enterprises and service providers modernize operations for virtualization, cloud computing, big data and the IoT there is increasing importance on, and expectations for the performance of, traffic within the data center and out to public clouds.

The company’s latest lineup of 25GbE-enabled S5200-ON top-of-rack open networking switches help customers take advantage of the 25GbE connectivity that is necessary to meet growing in-rack and storage network traffic demands from these new technologies. The S5200 family also helps form high-performance 100GbE data center fabrics for traffic between racks and provide a robust network underlay for VMware NSX network virtualization and software-defined storage implementations. The S5200-ON also features enhanced buffering, higher forwarding tables and data plane support for VxLAN routing.

Expands integrated cloud platform options in cloud marketplace
to accelerate IT modernization and digital dransformation
The firm’s Cloud Marketplace integrates the power of the Dell Technologies family to offer customers a choice of cloud platforms, enhanced cloud-enabled infrastructure capabilities, as well as consulting and technology services, and consumption models in a centralized portal. When it comes to implementing a cloud platform, the firm offers multiple options to align with customers’ competencies and goals.

Unity 350F all-flash storage

Cloud Building Blocks allow customers to design and build a custom cloud platform using cloud-enabled infrastructure such as Unity and vSAN Ready Nodes, providing flexibility as well as investment protection. Unity is a NFS-based external storage array family to be validated with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and vSAN Ready Nodes are validated by VMware to run VCF on the PowerEdge MX modular infrastructure. Reference architecture cloud platform implementation options are designed to reduce project risk and speed delivery by providing a choice of certified components and configuration guidance. Integrated Cloud Platforms, such as VxRail and VxBlock, are pre-engineered, so customers can be up and running quickly while delivering the most streamlined operational experience with simplified and automated lifecycle management.

Dell EMC Cloud Marketplace features a continuously expanding set of options to help customers build their hybrid cloud platforms. Data Center Utility is an available Cloud Consumption solution providing organizations the control of private cloud with the benefits of public cloud consumption including elastic capacity, metered usage and an OpEx model. Data Center Utility is a custom metered usage solution that provides flexibility for resource consumption – with or without professional services.

Availability:

• VxRail capabilities, from VxRail 4.7 software, will be available this month via web download for existing customers and this December for new node deployments and expansions. Additional functionality, including support for two-node ROBO clusters and vCenter transparent operations is planned for early 1Q19, followed by VMware Cloud Foundation and Project Dimension within 1H19. Customers can sign-up for the Project Dimension Beta.

• VxBlock Central software will be available for download in December by current and new VxBlock System customers. The VxBlock Central Base software license is included with the purchase of a VxBlock system.

• S5200 ON switches are available.

• SmartFabric Services for VxRail will become available in December with Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition 10.4.2 and VxRail 4.7.0 software. SmartFabric Services are included at no additional cost in the Dell EMC Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition license.

Rich Gagnon, CIO, City of Amarillo, TX, USA, said: “Moving all of our city’s 46 departments onto Dell EMC VxRail and Dell EMC Networking is substantially simplifying and modernizing our IT infrastructure. Our hyper-converged infrastructure, combining VxRail with Dell EMC switches, is so simple to deploy and manage that we’re able to be more efficient with our IT resources. This enables us to move from building and maintaining systems to creating innovative new IT services that are more impactful for our departments and our city. We are excited to see the impact that Dell EMC SmartFabric Services will have on our ability to be more agile and responsive to changing infrastructure needs and to simplify DR response. Additionally, being able to manage VxRail directly from VMware vCenter will make management even simpler for our team.“

Ryan Deppe, network operations supervisor, Cianbro Corp., said: “The new real-time alerts from VxBlock Central and integration with VMware vRealize are huge, making it easier to get information than before. We are a growing business, and having the new automation from VxBlock Central integrated with vRealize in my back pocket means that I can quickly expand the VxBlock when my management asks for it.“

Resources:
VxRail Blog: Lower Your Lap Bar – VxRail with Network Automation Corkscrews to the VMware Cloud
VxBlock Blog: Converged Management Automation: Faster Path to Cloud Operations
Live announcement and Wikibon Crowdchat on new VxBlock Central