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What You Missed at Dell Technologies World: An Executive Recap Summary

Michael Colonno

Enjoy a backstage pass and personal tour through all things Dell EMC in this exclusive Dell Technologies World highlights blog — discover new PowerEdge Servers, HCI, XC, Isilon Cloud, NAS, Storage, and Ready Stack.

Preconceived notions are a dangerous thing — they close your mind to new experiences. I think that’s how some people (and maybe even myself included) felt walking into the very first Dell Technologies World.

Where was the EMC co-branding in the name that had been there at last year’s Dell EMC World event?

Did the lone Dell brand in the name signal a reduced audience or focus?

Far from it! With an open mind, I walked in and soon realized that the conference targeted an even broader audience now, with a combined 45,000 physical and virtual attendees.

Dell Transformation Remains Strong

The Transformation message was communicated even further this year, but in a more unified manner. The Dell team was able to portray a multi-disciplined transformation with key talking points on all business fronts including cloud, their hardware platform, and end-user computing.

I was impressed by some of the new releases and by the special event sessions which touched on hot topics such as blockchain, containerization, and artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, AI and Internet-of-Things (IoT) were a central focus of conversations just about everywhere you turned.

“AI is going to become an active member of every team, every boardroom, every corporate activity, to bring information and analysis,” said Danny Cobb, Vice President of Global Technology Strategy at Dell. “It will empower employees to be more effective in their work lives.”

The Monday morning keynote by Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell, culminated in the arrival on stage of AeroFarms, a New Jersey based customer who described how they were stacking farms vertically and using modern imaging, big data, and machine learning to turn all the details about a plant into data (click here learn more about their story.)

Allow me to highlight a few other salient product technology points from the event and share some content from Dell blogs that captures emerging Dell EMC investments, technologies, and trends.

New PowerEdge Servers: R940/R940xa

High Performance Computing (HPC) remains a major focus for servers with renewed emphasis on the push from Dell into this space. Various sessions at the conference described how new Dell servers are built for AI, Augmented Reality, IoT, and other HPC use cases. These “four-socket CPU beasts” are “ready for whatever you can throw at them!”

In his Tuesday morning session, Jeff Clarke also focused on these new servers, referring to the new R940xa as “bar none, the fastest and most intelligent server on the planet.”

Feature Highlights:

The PowerEdge R940 is available with up to 24 separate 2.5” drives and as many as 12 NVME drives – in just 3U. Inside, it’s powered by up to four next-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. With a scalable business architecture, intelligent automation, and integrated security built-in as standard, this affordable but incredibly high-performing server delivers the following significant customer benefits:

  • 50 percent more NVMe than previous R930 server
  • Up to 48 DIMMs, totaling 6TBs of memory with up to 12 NVDIMMs
  • Highly optimized design, reducing footprint from 4U to 3U
  • Up to 28 cores per processor (a 27 percent increase) and a 50 percent increase in memory bandwidth

Use Case 1: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Investments in AI and Machine Learning are expected to deliver 2x, 3x, 4x, and even 5x ROI… and obviously, to get the big results you’ll need specialized resources such as the new PowerEdge servers built for maximizing AI and machine learning.

Use Case 2: Blockchain

There has been so much in the press about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But the underlying blockchain technology is enabling more than just a new financial instrument.

Use Case 3: Additional Horsepower

As the data center becomes more complex and your workload requirements evolve, plain vanilla compute alone may be inadequate. Check out new technologies like FPGAs and GPUs. PowerEdge has increased support for these new capabilities by five times in the past year.

Use Case 4: Intelligent Automation

To be competitive, organizations of all types need to be able to scale, and scale is about people as much as it is about technology. In survey data from KPMG, over 60 percent of CIOs reported that skills shortages limit their ability to scale. With Dell EMC OpenManage software, you can radically reduce the time and people needed to manage your infrastructure.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

This year the talk around IT transformation focused on not just a standardization of hardware to be cloud ready but more specifically around HCI with VxRail and VxRack as your software-defined path to a multi-cloud world.

On-premise data centers should have some of the same features as the cloud in terms of scalability. With these capabilities, it’s easier to provide a self-service infrastructure making you fully automated, optimized for performance, while also having scalability.

Here are some of the latest VxRack SDDC updates:

  • The most advanced VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) engineered system with automation and serviceability extensions
    • Direct access to support, articles, Dell EMC Community and eServices
    • Enhanced management experience with events viewable in vCenter and updates integrated into the SDDC Manager LCM and security framework
    • Proactive call home support and automated dispatch support for parts replacement improves SLA uptime and reduces time to resolution
  • Integration with the latest VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3 with cloud management and automation for on-premises IT-as-a-Service
  • New configurations built on VxRail hardware with Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th Generation servers for more powerful and predictable performance including support for NVIDIA GPUs to support VDI use cases
  • VMware Validated Designs 4.2 with VxRail allows customers to build a complete software-defined data center, reduces risk, and simplifies operations and maintenance by building a validated standardized SDDC design based on VMware best practices
  • VxRail innovation with the addition of NVMe cache drives, 25 GB/s connectivity, Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with high memory options, and NVIDIA P40 GPU processors

HCI Networking Updates:

  • Purpose-Built HCI S4112-ON Open Networking Switches:
    • Half the width of standard 1RU switches
    • Efficient use of valuable rack space while providing high performance top of rack switching
    • 10/25GbE fiber and 10BaseT
    • 100GbE ports available
    • OS10 Enterprise Edition package provides complete layer 2 and layer 3 networking functionality

Dell XC Series (Nutanix) Updates:

Dell EMC XC940-24: The Dell EMC XC940-24 is the first quad-processor appliance for Nutanix environments and can be configured with up to 6.0 TB of memory, all flash or a mix of SSDs and HDDs, and 10GbE or 25GbE networking. It is purpose-built for in-memory and memory-intensive databases, big data, analytics, and other applications that require extremely high levels of performance. The XC940-24 effectively expands the range of enterprise workloads that can be supported with hyper-converged infrastructure.

Dell EMC XC640-4i: The new Dell EMC XC640-4i appliance expands the lower-end of the range of applications that are a good fit for HCI. Supporting 1-, 2- and 3-node deployments, it is designed to meet the growing number of applications that are hosted outside traditional centralized data centers and cloud environments. This appliance provides a cost-effective HCI solution for non-mission critical applications in remote and branch offices, retail locations, Internet-of-Things (IOT) systems and other edge computing environments.

Life Cycle Management (LCM): The new Life Cycle Management (LCM) capability for the XC Family provides another example of how our server technology and expertise are leveraged for the XC Family. LCM leverages PowerEdge technology and standards-based APIs to automatically inventory and update the BIOS and firmware for several components in an XC system. It supports both in-band and out-of-band communications and provides updates 70 percent faster than manual methods, so customers can efficiently plan and execute upgrades without disrupting existing cluster operations.

NAS in the Cloud with Dell EMC Isilon

Recently, many third-party vendors have created a space around bridging the gap between on-premise storage and the cloud. Dell EMC has very intelligently created a solution by leveraging Google Cloud.

Currently, this solution is only in early access, but it shows promise. This solution allows organizations to deploy a dedicated Isilon securely with sub millisecond latency to GCP Compute. Dell EMC provides 24×7 proactive monitoring and support of these environments.

This system can deploy performance intensive file-based workloads on Isilon Cloud for GCP all unified on OneFS. Something very important to point out is that the customers will retain the value they experience with Isilon right now with the full capabilities of GCP such as instant scaling.

Other benefits include:

  • As in the cloud without compromises: Fully featured Dell EMC Isilon with the same predictable file performance and linear scalability that customers enjoy with Isilon in their datacenters
  • Access to GCP services: Robust analytics and compute services extract more value from NAS data
  • Hands-off operations: Management of Isilon Cloud for GCP with 24×7 proactive monitoring and maintenance from Dell EMC
  • Peace of mind: An enterprise grade NAS solution in the cloud with dedicated hardware and network eliminates data compliance and security concerns arising from a shared storage environment

Storage Product Updates

Dell EMC has released some important products that promise to change the way people look at storage.

XtremIO X2-T: A fantastic entry point for smaller companies with smaller needs, this single X-Brick scales from 34.5 TB up to 69.1 TB raw. Offering the same 6:1 data efficiency you expect, this product is ideal for customers who do not demand scale, but value the memory upgrade flexibility this model offers if unplanned growth does occur.

The new native replication in X2 is:

  • Efficient: Only sends unique data, to minimize WAN bandwidth requirements
  • Consistent: No performance impact with scale-out architecture
  • Simple as 1, 2, 3: Simple Protection Wizard is built-in to XtremIO HTML5 UI

POWERMAX: This array is a monster and is positioned as the performance engine to power all of a company’s analytics needs. All IT transformation needs analytics to modernize a company and this is the platform to do it.

  • Fast: At up to 10 million IOPS and 150GB/sec, it’s the world’s fastest storage array(Reference 1). Powered by its multi-controller architecture designed for end-to-end NVMe, it is ready for storage class memory (SCM)(Reference 2), which enables new levels of performance today and into the future.
  • Smart: PowerMaxOS includes a built-in machine learning engine that analyzes and forecasts 40 million data sets in real-time, driving six billion decisions per day. It leverages predictive analytics and pattern recognition to maximize performance with no overhead.
  • Efficient: Inline deduplication and enhanced compression enables up to 5:1 data reduction – doubling the rack density(Reference 3) with up to 40 percent power savings(Reference 4).

Dell EMC Ready Stack Program

I’m mentioning this last because I find it appealing to both Dell EMC partners and customers. Dell EMC has acknowledged that there is indeed a significant gap and opportunity when it comes to Certified Reference Systems.

Making this simple and straightforward, Dell states:

Dell EMC Ready Stack is a certified reference system that simplifies and accelerates the process of deploying full-stack systems based on Dell EMC best of breed technologies. It’s a great way to help your organization get modern faster, with less risk and less effort than through alternative solutions. Whether you already have Dell EMC in your environment or you’re using reference architectures from other vendors and are looking to refresh.

Benefits:

Simplicity of a complete stack based on the industry’s leading building blocks. Each validated design features the following:

  • Dell EMC Storage
  • Dell EMC PowerEdge servers
  • Dell EMC Networking
  • Dell EMC data protection options
  • Compatibility with multiple hypervisors and/or bare-metal deployments as well as containers
    • Sizing, design, and deployment guides
    • True integrated support from a single partnership – CDI and Dell EMC

On behalf of everyone at CDI, we are grateful to Dell for recognizing our achievements with their Presidents Circle Award for 2017. Our partnership with Dell EMC remains strong and we appreciate the opportunity to join forces again in 2018-2019 and beyond.

References:

  1. Based on Dell EMC internal analysis of published bandwidth of the PowerMax 8000 versus competitive mainstream arrays, March 2018.
  2. Coming when SCM drives are available in early 2019.
  3. Based on Dell EMC internal analysis comparing maximum capacity per floor tile of the PowerMax 8000 against the VMAX 950F, March 2018.
  4. Based on Dell EMC internal analysis, March 2018, comparing a fully configured PowerMax 8000 vs. a fully configured VMAX 950F. Actual power savings will vary.
Michael Colonno

Michael Colonno, AVP, Solutions Architects, CDI

Michael Colonno, AVP, Solutions Architects, is an information technology expert focused on data center and cloud solutions. In his current role, Michael is responsible for providing technical guidance to CDI’s customers, collaborating with account managers, other architects, vendors, and implementation engineers to develop and recommend business continuity and workflow strategies. He excels at providing an architectural perspective based on the industry’s best practices, while acting as a knowledgeable consultant for customers and other CDI team members. Michael is highly-trained in today’s leading technologies with certifications including a double VCP in server and NSX, CCNP data center, and holds many other product specific certifications for design as well as implementation. He holds a BA in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University and in his spare time enjoys weightlifting and spending time with his wife and young son, Jackson.