It’s been a big year for Dell and our customers as we’ve continued to focus on introducing meaningful technologies that help IT teams build future-ready data centers. Back in June, we announced a partnership with hyperconverged infrastructure leader Nutanix to jointly develop the Dell XC Series, a line of web-scale, converged appliances that are configured to handle a variety of specific, virtualized workloads. Now, five months later, we’re happy to announce that the first five models will begin shipping next week, combining compute and storage into a single converged offering.
The new XC Series is part of Dell’s broad portfolio of software-defined storage solutions developed to support customers who prefer taking a new approach to IT. These appliances, powered by Nutanix software on Dell’s proven x86 server platform, provide enterprise-class storage features for virtualized environments with simple deployment, management and scale.
Understanding the significance of this undertaking, it was important to both our team and Nutanix’s that we work together closely. The hardware and software development were jointly overseen by both engineering teams in order to make the appliance as feature-rich as possible while also ensuring it would offer customers the most reliable and serviceable solution that customers expect from Dell. In fact, the entire project has been collaborative, from product management and marketing to sales.
Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager of Dell storage, said in a recent joint video address: “I think [this close partnership] is one of the reasons why the XC Series is such a unique presence in the industry. It’s the only Tier 1 hardware platform combined with best-of-breed web-scale technology.”
The XC Series offers 100% software-driven architecture, pay-as-you-grow scalability, simple deployment and management and hypervisor agnosticism. This rapid time-to-value, efficient VM-based scalability, and ease of management make it a good fit for a variety of virtualization needs, including:
- Virtual desktops
- Test/dev
- Branch offices
- Enterprise applications (e.g., Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Oracle, SAP)
- Private cloud
- Backup and disaster recovery
This collaboration with Nutanix has not only led to a quality solution, but also enabled us to develop this solution very rapidly. We look forward to continued collaboration on the next generation of XC Series appliances and other solutions in the coming months.
We are pleased to begin shipping the XC Series this month, and look forward to offering our customers with more great options for future-ready data center storage solutions.
To learn more about the XC Series, watch our XC Series video, visit a Dell Solutions Center, follow us on Twitter or talk to us at Dell World this week.
