It’s clear that organizations of all sizes are deploying hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) in production environments for a wide range of applications these days. In a recent survey, 47 percent of survey respondents are using HCI for primary infrastructure and 45 percent are deploying mixed workloads on HCI1. The reasons for this trend are also apparent: rapid deployment, simplified management and scale-out expansion to accommodate evolving needs and new projects.
As a global IT systems company and the leading HCI solutions vendor, Dell is fully committed to enhancing its portfolio to meet the growing requirements of mainstream enterprise applications. In addition, our position as the leading server vendor enables us to incorporate advanced technologies into the hardware foundation that is critical in the deployment and management of enterprise applications on hyper-converged infrastructure.
Today, in conjunction with our participation at Nutanix .NEXT, we’re announcing several recent developments with the Dell XC Family based on Nutanix software, the latest Dell PowerEdge servers and our integration and management software. These advancements illustrate how our server leadership and innovation are incorporated into our HCI offerings:
- The Dell XC940-24 is the first quad-processor appliance for Nutanix environments and can be configured with up to 6TB 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 and 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.
- With the new Dell XC640-4i appliance, we’re also expanding 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.
- 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.
Dell is committed to developing the XC Family and making it the ideal platform for Nutanix. Our HCI solutions leadership is based on a unique proposition and the industry’s broadest portfolio of industry-leading technologies and solutions to address essentially any adoption model for consuming HCI. Working with customers around the world, we know there’s no single way—no silver bullet—to address every opportunity or challenge. Customers know they can turn to Dell to find the solution that makes the most sense for their own unique requirements.
If you’re visiting Nutanix .NEXT in New Orleans this week, please attend our breakout session on Wednesday, May 9 at 1:25pm in Hall E2. You can also visit with technical experts and see live XC Family demos in booth P2 in the Solutions Expo. We look forward to speaking with you about why Dell offers the industry’s best option for deploying Nutanix-based hyper-converged infrastructure.
- Topline Research, August 2017
