Tunnel consisting of blue binary code on a black background leads to a key hole shaped light.Tunnel consisting of blue binary code on a black background leads to a key hole shaped light.

Artificial Intelligence

New Validated Design Unlocks the Power of AI

Dell Technologies, VMware and NVIDIA clear the way to speed access to artificial intelligence across the enterprise with the launch of Dell Technologies Validated Designs for AI.
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In enterprises around the world, the race is on to capitalize on massive amounts of data collected in the course of day-to-day operations. In this quest, artificial intelligence applications are emerging as an essential key to the data-driven enterprise.

This is where things get harder. Incorporating AI-driven applications into enterprise data centers can be a complex undertaking. IT teams typically build separate systems for these workloads, with different hardware, software, accelerators and tool sets. While developers can create applications anywhere using containers, the process of putting those applications into production can lack predictability and stability, while raising concerns about data security.

But that’s all old news. Today, Dell Technologies, NVIDIA and VMware are offering enterprises a new way forward with the launch of a new solution to democratize and unlock the power of AI across the enterprise. This new Dell Technologies Validated Design for AI is jointly engineered and validated to help organizations capitalize on the benefits of virtualization for AI workloads.

Now, data-driven enterprises can more easily run emerging workloads alongside existing applications in VMware virtualized data centers with near‑bare‑metal performance — while optimizing the use of critical hardware investments, including server GPUs.

What’s under the hood

The Validated Design for AI includes the latest version of VMware vSphere combined with NVIDIA AI Enterprise suite on Dell VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). This combination of leading-edge technologies makes it possible to leverage the latest NVIDIA GPUs, using vSphere for virtualization with the predictability and security of containers in VMware Tanzu and centralized management from VMware vCenter. Add VMware vRealize Automation, and now you can provide self-service access to IT resources that drive your AI workloads.

Here’s a quick overview of the components of this new Dell Technologies Validated Design for AI:

  • Dell VxRail HCI delivers a turnkey experience that enables continuous innovation. Joint engineering between Dell Technologies and VMware leads to a seamless, curated and optimized hyperconverged experience. This deep integration combined with the simplicity of VxRail HCI System Software and the performance of the underlying next‑generation Dell PowerEdge servers provides an ideal platform for virtualized AI. Even better, factory‑installed VMware vSphere provides support for the latest NVIDIA GPUs, delivering enterprise virtualization for GPU‑powered workloads.
  • NVIDIA A100 or A30 GPUs accelerate AI, data analytics and HPC workloads with up to 20X higher performance over the prior generation. The A100 supports NVLink bridge, the world’s first high‑speed GPU interconnect offering a significantly faster alternative for multi‑GPU systems than traditional PCIe‑based solutions. NVLink bridge is available in the PowerEdge R750xa, also an NVIDIA Certified System.
  • NVIDIA AI Enterprise software provides an end‑to‑end, cloud‑native suite of AI and data analytics software that is optimized, certified and supported by NVIDIA to run on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA‑Certified Systems, such as Dell VxRail. It includes technologies for rapid deployment, management and scaling of AI workloads in the modern hybrid cloud. With NVIDIA AI Enterprise running on vSphere, enterprises can avoid silos of AI‑specific systems that create management headaches, security risks and other problems.
  • VMware Tanzu helps developers make the most of microservices, containers and Kubernetes; automate the delivery of containerized workloads; and proactively manage apps in production. It provides a self‑service, compliant experience for developers that clears the path to production.
  • Dell PowerSwitch Networking is based on open standards to free the data center from outdated, proprietary approaches. Its future‑ready networking technology helps you improve network performance, lower networking costs and remain flexible to adopt new innovations.
  • Dell PowerScale storage is designed to reduce complexity and optimize results for data‑intensive AI workloads. PowerScale provides scalable, available data lake storage that eases adoption and management to enable today’s powerful AI systems to deliver transformative decision making, business growth and operational efficiencies. PowerScale is available in all-flash and hybrid models to quickly deliver large amounts of data to AI models for faster, more accurate results.

Ultimately, this first jointly engineered solution of NVIDIA AI Enterprise software on VMware vSphere with Tanzu deployed with Dell infrastructure gives AI data scientists and developers the solution they need to deliver the next generation of AI-powered applications, while allowing IT professionals to support AI using the tools they are most familiar with.

For a closer look at this groundbreaking solution, see the Dell Technologies Validated Design for AI Solution Brief and the video Dell Technologies, NVIDIA and VMware Bring AI to Every Enterprise.

About the Author: Chhandomay Mandal

Dr. Chhandomay Mandal is the Director of Solutions Marketing at Dell Technologies. He leads solutions across artificial intelligence, analytics, business applications, VDI and HPC as well as industry-specific solutions for healthcare, media & entertainment, semiconductors and smart manufacturing. Prior to his current role, he led Dell’s all-flash storage solutions marketing efforts for desktop virtualization, server virtualization and private cloud. Dr. Mandal has been awarded 13 patents. He has a PhD from University of Florida, MBA from Indiana University, and BTech from Indian Institute of Technology.