Dell EMC Ready Solutions With VMware Accelerate AI

by Adam Armstrong June 2, 2020

written by Adam Armstrong June 2, 2020

Today Dell technologies announced that it will be accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) workloads through Dell EMC Ready Solutions with VMware. More specifically the Dell EMC Ready Solutions are based on VMware Cloud foundation and comes with the new features of VMware vSphere 7 that include Bitfusion. Dell is the first company to leverage capabilities in VMware environments. Given how tight the two companies partner, this comes as no surprise.

Dell EMC Ready Solutions With VMware

AI can be the technology that truly changes the game. However, there are several roadblocks in the way of unleashing its true potential. Not only is there a skill gap (something that can be trained out over time) but there is an infrastructure gap. Dell is looking to fill this gap and do so in familiar VMware environments to get AI up and running at scale.

Dell aims to get this infrastructure support up through its Dell EMC Ready Solutions. As the name implies, ready solutions are ready for a specific task. Dell EMC has been releasing Ready solutions for the last two years around AI, ML, and HPC. The company is releasing two new Dell EMC Ready Solutions with VMware to speed AI adoption in VMware environments.

First up is the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI: GPU-as-a-Service. This solution is aimed and fully utilizing GPUs for faster accelerator access through virtual GPU pools. This is done with by leveraging VMware vSphere 7 with Bitfusion. Bitfusion enables user to virtualize GPUs on premises. With VMware vSphere 7 factory installed in Dell’s supply chain, users can pool their resources and share them out of the box. The Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI: GPU-as-a-Service also uses the latest VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware vSphere 7 support for Kubernetes and containerized applications to run AI workloads anywhere.

The other new Ready Solution is the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Virtualized HPC. This new Ready Solution should make it easier to run HPC workloads versus having specialized systems for them. Again, VMware vSphere 7 with Bitfusion is included. According to the Dell, VMware allows the virtualization of HPC and AI operations allowing IT teams to quickly provision hardware as needed, speed up initial deployment and configuration, and save time with simpler centralized management and security.