Storage

Dell EMC upgrades VxRail, VxRack in push towards VMware-based Clouds

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LAS VEGAS – Today, at Dell Technologies World  here, Dell EMC announced a refresh of their hyperconverged infrastructure [HCI] portfolio with new VxRail and VxRack systems, with the key advances coming from leveraging other parts of the Dell EMC portfolio.

“With our VxRail strategy, we are really trying to drive a multicloud VMware-powered solution for markets looking to deploy best of breed multi-cloud technology,” said  Sam Grocott, Senior Vice President Marketing, ISG at Dell EMC. “This is a foundation for building HCI with a VMware validated design, and a completely refreshed hardware architecture.”

Dell EMC cited IDC data in support of their proposition that customers are continuing to flock to HCI. IDC said vendor sales in 2017 exceeded $3.7 billion, up 64.3 per cent from 2016, making it the fastest growing segment of the overall converged systems market, on track to reach $10.3 billion by 2022. Dell EMC posted 145 per cent year over year growth rate, achieving a 27.1 per cent HCI share.

Dell EMC’s own data, from their ESG 2018 IT Transformation Maturity Study released earlier this month, indicated that among the leading edge category of companies who are at the highest stage of digital transformation, 98 per cent use either converged infrastructure or HCI, and 86 per cent use both. They run than 35 per cent of their applications on CI or HCI, and report operational expenditure savings of an average of 25 per cent.

“These are the simplest, most powerful and secure  VxRail offerings ever,” Grocott said. “They have been refreshed with our PowerEdge 14G technology. “This more than doubles the amount of memory and the amount of graphics acceleration, and also enhances security.”

A new VxRail STIG Compliance Guide and automated scripts harden the storage, virtualization and networking components to accelerate deployments of secure infrastructure

“STIG compliance will expand our market reach because the enhanced security capability will let it be deployed in environments that require a higher degree of security, Grocott said.

The VxRail is also now fully supported as a VMware-validated designed for SDDC, with VVD for SDDC 4.2 for VxRail. It allows customers to more easily architect an SDDC with complete NSX and vRealize functionality with less risk.

The VxRail adds support for the Dell EMC Networking S4112-ON half-width, 10 and 25 GbE Open Networking switch, a space-saving top-of-rack switch, purpose-built for the SDDC. The new 25GbE networking up to 50 per cent more networking connectivity options than the previous generation.

The new VxRail is available now, starting at around $25,000 for a 3-node cluster.

The new Dell EMC VxRack SDDC, based on VxRail hardware, is designed to deliver a simple  path to a hybrid or multi-cloud approach with an automated elastic cloud infrastructure at rack scale.

“It is the only turnkey cloud platform with VMware, and benefits from our exclusive connectivity with them,” Grocott said. Like the VxRail, it is built on 14th generation PowerEdge servers and delivered with integrated networking and is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3 and Dell EMC software.

“We think it is a significant step forward in terms of easing and simplifying enterprise clouds for our customers,” Grocott said.

Dell EMC VxRack SDDC Systems updates are available now.