Today at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, Dell EMC announced several advancements in both its hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and hybrid cloud platforms portfolio with a special eye on how it will benefit VMware customers. The two companies share a unique relationship that is not only mutually beneficial; it is good for both companies customers as well. Dell EMC is announcing new advancements in its turnkey VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC Systems, its Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and Native Hybrid Cloud turnkey platforms, new VMware Ready Systems, and that its HCI infrastructure will adopt PowerEdge 14th generation servers with availability first on Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes.
Today at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, Dell EMC announced several advancements in both its hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and hybrid cloud platforms portfolio with a special eye on how it will benefit VMware customers. The two companies share a unique relationship that is not only mutually beneficial; it is good for both companies customers as well. Dell EMC is announcing new advancements in its turnkey VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC Systems, its Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and Native Hybrid Cloud turnkey platforms, new VMware Ready Systems, and that its HCI infrastructure will adopt PowerEdge 14th generation servers with availability first on Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes.
Dell EMC is announcing the 4.5 version of its VxRail. VxRail appliances are already powered by VMware vSAN and jointly engineered with VMware. The 4.5 version will offer simple automation and lifecycle management for the latest VMware technologies – vSphere 6.5 update 1 and vSAN 6.6 update 1.
New benefits include:
- Greater scalability – With new batch multi-node scaling, the automated VxRail Appliance deployment experience, optimized for a single appliance, can be applied to multi-node expansions.
- Improved management –VxRail Appliances offer new support for REST-based APIs to programmatically deliver lifecycle management software upgrades to an entire VxRail cluster at once.
- More security options –Advanced security includes vSAN Encryption, the industry’s first native HCI security solution with data-at-rest encryption built into vSAN 6.6.
For customers that are looking past something on the smaller side like VxRail, there is Dell EMC VxRack SDDC. Like the name implies, it is everything that comes in VxRail only on rack scale for a software-defined data center. The latest VMware technologies, including those announced today, as well as VMware Cloud Foundation power Dell EMC VxRack SDDC.
Other new benefits include:
- Greater flexibility and performance – Forty new Dell EMC PowerEdge-based configurations include expanded CPU and all-flash storage options including higher capacity 3.84 TB drives.
- Integration with latest VMware software – Joint engineering with VMware delivers tight integration with VMware Cloud Foundation for automation and lifecycle management of VMware vSphere 6.5, vSAN 6.6 and NSX 6.3 in a single stack.
On the same note of Dell EMC VxRack SDDC, the company's turnkey hybrid cloud platforms, Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) and Dell EMC Native Hybrid Cloud (NHC), are now available on VxRack SDDC.
Benefits of the cloud products running on VxRack SDDC include:
- Increased scale and availability – Multi-site support now extends to VxRail-based deployments, enabling organizations to start small and grow their hybrid cloud environment to up to four sites with virtual machine-level disaster recovery and management through a single portal.
- More public cloud options – Adding Microsoft Azure as an end-point offers customers greater flexibility to choose among public clouds.
- Greater simplicity and automation – Support for accelerated installation of VxRack SDDC-based deployments and new automated upgrades to VxRail-based deployments reduces time for installation and upgrades.
New capabilities of NHC include:
- Highly available deployments on Dell EMC VxRail – New high availability options with multi-site, multi-foundation and multi-availability zone configurations support global-scale deployments.
- The Workbench – A set of tools designed to help developers and operators new to Pivotal Cloud Foundry launches with the Access Testing Tool and new Deployment Management Tool. This allows developers to quickly diagnose connectivity issues to legacy environments and IT operators can maintain control by setting rules and policies while developers can push applications securely to multiple locations via one click.
Dell EMC is also announcing new Ready Systems for customers looking to deploy hybrid clouds on HCI. Created through a close collaboration with VMware and VMware Validated Designs, the new Dell EMC VMware Ready Systems aim to provide a simple, standard approach to building hybrid clouds while enabling customers to take on more of the deployment, configuration and lifecycle management responsibilities. These new solutions mean that customers can quickly and easily combine the above mention products with VMware technologies and have the ball rolling with lower upfront capital investments.
On a similar note, Dell EMC is still making vSAN Ready Nodes. Soon the Ready Nodes will be built on 14th generation PowerEdge servers.
Availability
- Dell EMC VxRail Appliances 4.5 software is expected be available beginning in September 2017. Existing customers will be able to upgrade to VxRail 4.5 shortly thereafter.
- Dell EMC VxRack SDDC, powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, is planned for global availability by end of September 2017.
- Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud on VxRack SDDC is available globally today.
- Dell EMC Native Hybrid Cloud on VxRack SDDC is available via an early access program with general availability planned for 2018. Native Hybrid Cloud high availability on VxRail and Workbench tools are available today.
- VMware Ready Systems from Dell EMC have planned global availability in the second half of 2017.
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