Dell EMC releases ScaleIO software from EMC integrated with PowerEdge servers, and thinks it will be a strong channel offering.
Michael Sharun, country manager for Dell EMC Canada
Dell EMC has announced Dell EMC ScaleIO Ready Node, one of the first of the offerings from the Dell enterprise division to integrate technologies from the two formerly separate companies. By the standards of what will come later, this integration is a relatively simple affair. It puts the ScaleIO software-defined, all-flash offering running on Dell EMC PowerEdge x86 servers in a fully validated solution.
“This is one of the first joint Dell-EMC products to be released, an all-flash offering integrated with the Dell PowerEdge servers,” said Michael Sharun, country manager for Dell EMC Canada. “This is our first product where we had engineers from both the EMC and Dell teams looking at it, and validating it. The result is that it will deliver very predictable performance and deliverables will be very well defined.”
The ScaleIO technology, which EMC acquired in 2013, became one of the jewels in its software crown before its own acquisition by Dell. Its scale-out and highly parallelized architecture makes it suitable for all workloads, unlike traditional all-flash storage on server solutions that were typically limited to a single application.
“There’s nothing on the market that’s like ScaleIO,” Sharun said. “It’s truly software-defined storage. It’s not dependent on a hypervisor, or an OS. It speaks to the fact we are very open. Even though we are strategically aligned with VMware, ScaleIO works, with other systems – Microsoft, Linux, and OpenStack. Customers need to have choice.”
The Dell EMC ScaleIO Ready Node will offer the software on Dell hardware, but the software remains for sale as before for customers who want to use other hardware.
“Having something that’s hardware-dependent would be counterintuitive for a software defined solution,” Sharun said. “This is, however, something that both the Dell and EMC teams wanted, because it does provide the option of an end-to-end solution.”
Sharun said that this new product should be of interest to their partner community, particularly on the old Dell side where there would likely be less awareness of ScaleIO’s capabilities, as well as a preference for Dell hardware.
“When we did research early on, we found that partners were excited about Dell and EMC coming together, and we expect they will be excited about this product,” he said. “This is really a strong channel product because it’s so scalable. You can bring it in, and enhance it as you move forward. This really expands a partner’s growth within a client set. It definitely helps the partner be a trusted advisor to the customer as well.”
ScaleIO Ready Node is available now.
