Dell EMC, the number-one provider of cloud infrastructure, announces key portfolio enhancements and integrations with VMware designed to help customers further automate operations of their modern data centre and hybrid cloud environments. These new 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 greater demand for automation and bandwidth both inside and outside the data centre. Through collaboration and joint engineering, Dell EMC and VMware are enabling organisations to derive more value from their IT investments.

“Organisations that digitally transform with a software-defined and cloud-ready modern data centre 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 & 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 maximise 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 modernise IT and rapidly scale their VMware environments to support a hybrid cloud operating model,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, Chief Operating Officer, 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 vRealise Suite integration with VxBlock – both integrated cloud platforms that automate deployment and simplify hybrid cloud operations.”

Dell EMC VxRail simplifies networking, management and access to latest VMware innovations

Organisations 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 centres, and hybrid cloud environments. Customers turn to Dell Technologies as a trusted partner to provide a seamless, simplified experience through a jointly engineered digital foundation between Dell EMC VxRail and VMware. Through this collaboration and co-engineering, VxRail is becoming even simpler to adopt, deploy and manage.

New advances to Dell EMC VxRail include:

• Simpler networking deployments with the first HCI appliances to integrate fully automated network awareness and configuration during set up, cluster expansion, and day-to-day management with Dell EMC SmartFabric Services. To deploy VxRail at any scale more rapidly, SmartFabric Services, as part of Dell EMC Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition network operating system, automates up to 98% of the network configuration steps for VxRail hyper-converged environments through integration with VxRail Manager and VMware vSphere. SmartFabric Services also enable customers to quickly deploy and automate data centre networking fabrics while being fully interoperable with existing data centre 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 an even simpler 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.
• Transparent systems management with all VxRail tasks available to be managed directly from the familiar VMware vCenter Server console, making it even easier to move to and manage VxRail from the primary management platform for VMware environments.
• Greater flexibility by supporting a two-node VxRail cluster, instead of the previously required three. This makes VxRail more accessible at the edge for larger organisations, 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 now 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 centre, 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 disaster recovery.

New Dell EMC VxBlock Central simplifies CI operations with enhanced awareness, automation and analytics

Enterprises worldwide modernise their data centres and run their VMware-based clouds using Dell EMC VxBlock Systems—turnkey CI systems that bring together compute, storage, networking and VMware vSphere virtualisation. Continuing this long history of CI innovation, demonstrated with the introduction of the VxBlock System 1000, new Dell EMC 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 vRealise Orchestrator for automating daily operational tasks and a launch point to vRealise Operations to provide detailed analytics and an easy way to manage VxBlock storage capacity.

Integration between VxBlock Central and VMware vRealise Suite provides a strong 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 vRealise Operations and vRealise Orchestrator software provides greater visibility into CI system status and time-saving orchestration workflows. It also allows enterprises to leverage an additional layer of vRealise software tools, including vRealise Automation, to enable full cloud service delivery and management. Using the vRealise Suite on VxBlock opens the path for enterprises to achieve a consistent experience across other Dell EMC cloud platforms including VxRack SDDC and VxRail Appliances.

Dell EMC Networking for data centre and cloud operations

As Enterprises and service providers modernise operations for virtualisation, cloud computing, Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT) there is increasing importance on, and expectations for the performance of, traffic within the data centre and out to public clouds.

Dell EMC’s latest lineup of 25GbE-enabled S5200-ON top-of-rack open networking switches helps 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 centre fabrics for traffic between racks and provide a robust network underlay for VMware NSX network virtualisation and software-defined storage implementations. The S5200-ON also features enhanced buffering, higher forwarding tables and data plane support for VxLAN routing.

Dell EMC expands integrated cloud platform options in Cloud Marketplace to accelerate IT modernisation and Digital Transformation

The Dell EMC 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 centralised portal. When it comes to implementing a cloud platform, Dell EMC offers multiple options to align with customers’ unique competencies and goals.

Cloud Building Blocks allow customers to design and build a custom cloud platform using best-of-breed cloud-enabled infrastructure such as Dell EMC Unity and Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes, providing flexibility as well as investment protection. Dell EMC Unity is the first NFS-based external storage array family to be validated with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are validated by VMware to run VCF on the new 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 Centre Utility is a newly available Cloud Consumption solution providing organisations 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 maximum flexibility for resource consumption – with or without professional services.

Availability

New Dell EMC 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 Q1 2019, followed by VMware Cloud Foundation and Project Dimension within 1H 2019. Customers can sign-up for the Project Dimension Beta now.

Dell EMC 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 new VxBlock System.

Dell EMC S5200 ON switches are available now. SmartFabric Services for VxRail will become available in December with Dell EMC 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.

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