Earlier this month, Dell and EMC announced a reseller agreement that enables Dell to offer hyper-convergence solutions from VCE, the converged platforms division of EMC. The agreement adds VCE VxRail appliances and VxRack systems to the Dell hyper-convergence portfolio. Jointly engineered with VMware, VxRail appliances have been integrated, preconfigured and pretested for VMware environments. VxRack systems are based upon VMware EVO SDDC (software-defined data center), a turnkey hyper-converged solution. Dell also introduced VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes and a new Dell XC Series of hyper-converged appliances, which deliver faster performance and access to data and applications.
What does this announcement mean for you? First and foremost, Dell’s expanded hyper-convergence portfolio means more choices for organizations seeking to benefit from hyper-converged infrastructure. Hyper-convergence brings together compute, storage and networking into a single, tightly integrated solution to accelerate time to value, reduce risk, increase IT efficiency and simplify management. IDC expects the hyper-convergence market to grow 60 percent annually through 2019, reflecting the increasing popularity of this model. However, one size does not fit all. Dell’s expanded portfolio enables organizations of any size to choose a solution that makes sense for their business needs and goals without the need for a significant upgrade in the immediate future.
In a previous post, we discussed how VCE VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure appliances bring the benefits of hyper-convergence to small to midsize businesses (SMBs), as well as departments and satellite offices of large enterprises. VxRail makes it possible for organizations to start small and scale at their own pace with predictable “pay-as-you-grow” pricing. However, these companies can still take advantage of rich data services, leading systems management capabilities, cloud tiering technology, and data replication, reduction and backup functionality.
Fully software-defined, modular VxRack Systems allow organizations to scale to thousands of servers and tens of petabytes of storage capacity, while providing the highest performance and value per IOP and single-call lifecycle support. VxRack Systems reduce risk, maximize efficiency and speed deployments as companies shift to an SDDC model. EMC ScaleIO software-defined storage and built-in networking enable seamless scaling so organizations can quickly and cost-effectively build clouds and leverage a VMware SDDC. VxRack Systems also offer unmatched flexibility in mapping for specific application environments and workload requirements. Organizations can choose a hypervisor – VMware vSphere, KVM or bare metal – and have the option to integrate the VMware vRealize management and orchestration suite into their VxRack System.
Dell Reference Architecture for EMC Converged Infrastructure offers flexibility in deploying a rack-scale architecture using Dell PowerEdge servers. Virtual SAN Ready Nodes from Dell can be factory integrated with Dell PowerEdge servers and VMware hyper-converged software and configured for a wide range of workloads. Dell's Hybrid Cloud Platform Reference Architecture for VMware is integrated with vCenter, vRealize and Virtual SAN to optimize private and hybrid cloud environments with hyper-converged software.
The Dell/VCE reseller agreement opens the door for organizations of all sizes to capitalize on the benefits of hyper-convergence, using technological building blocks that deliver high performance and allow for seamless, efficient growth. Let Technologent, a strategic partner of EMC, VCE, Dell and VMware, help you develop a strategic plan for implementing hyper-converged infrastructure.