The 10 Top Hyper-Converged Platforms Of 2018 (So Far)

Hyper-Converged Boom Sales from hyper-converged systems hit $1.3 billion in the first quarter 2018, skyrocketing 76 percent year over year as businesses around the globe are increasing investment in data center technologies that eliminate silos and boost business-centric decisions. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) combines storage, computing, networking and software into a single system aimed at reducing complexity and boosting scalability. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2020, 20 percent of business-critical applications currently deployed on three-tier IT infrastructure will transition to HCI.  The largest IT vendors in the world have been focusing R&D efforts in recent years on creating hyper-converged solutions as many customers steer towards a hybrid cloud approach. Here are the ten coolest hyper-converged products tearing through the market in 2018. (For more on the biggest news of 2018, check out "CRN's Tech Midyear In Review.").

Cisco HyperFlex

The San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant leverages its Unified Computing System (UCS) as the platform for its flagship HyperFlex hyper-converged infrastructure appliance. HyperFlex, launched in 2016, integrates UCS, UCS Manager, and data and storage management software. This year, Cisco rolled out significant updatesto the platform to position the solution for hybrid cloud, tighten integration with software solutions, and add support for containers. One key addition was support for Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor. According to first quarter 2018 market data from IDC, Cisco owns 4.9 percent share of the hyper-converged systems market, generating $60 million in sales for the quarter, up 145 percent year over year.

Dell EMC VxRack SDDC
HCI market share leader Dell EMC has a large product line of hyper-converged solutions, although its VxRack SDDC infrastructure offering is one of the most powerful. The rack-scale software-defined solution is integrated with physical and virtual networking delivered through Cisco switches and VMware NSX software, along with vSphere, vSAN and SDDC Manager. The solution is optimized for predictable performance, scalability and delivering a simple path to hybrid cloud with an automated elastic cloud infrastructure.  Customers can also easily create a foundation for a complete VMware private cloud with VxRack SDDC. Dell EMC took home hyper-converged market share gold in the first quarter 2018, capturing nearly 30 percent share with sales topping $363 million, up 142 percent year over year.

Dell EMC XC Core
Dell's platform is part of the popular Dell Technologies and Nutanix XC Series of hyper-converged solutions. The XC Core uses the same Dell EMC hardware and software as the XC Series appliances, but the software is licensed and support directly by Nutanix. The new solution, based on Dell PowerEdge servers, lets customers buy Nutanix software licenses from channel partners and then add the licenses to pre-validated XC Core systems that are configured, built and tested by Dell. The XC Series have been deployed by thousands of customers in almost every major vertical thanks to its ability to tailor processors, memory and storage configurations to meet specific use cases.

HPE SimpliVity

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's primary hyper-converged offering HPE SimpliVity drives around 80 percent of the company's total HCI revenue.  HPE SimpliVity, managed by VMware vCenter, is based on a software-defined scale-out storage architecture that can scale from a single node to eight clustered nodes plus an additional 16 network-only nodes. It features always-on in-line compression and deduplication data services leveraging the HPE OmniStack Accelerator Card to provide consistent performance for virtualized production workloads. In June, the Palo Alto Calif.-based company said it plans to bring its InfoSight predictive analytics software to SimpliVity by the end of 2018. HPE captured 5 percent of the hyper-converged market in first quarter 2018 reaching $61 million in sales, up 112 percent year over year.

Maxta Hyperconvergence Software

Maxta's hyperconvergence software supports every major server brand -- including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell EMC and Cisco -- as well as multiple hypervisors and containers.  The Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor's application-centric platform allows customers to choose software only or have the software pre-installed on existing server platforms with the ability to scale storage and compute independently. With application-defined performance policies, customers can easily consolidate different applications on the same cluster while improving performance. recently joined forces with distributor Arrow Electronics to offer hyper-converged bundled, pre-configured systems on servers from Intel, Dell, Lenovo and Supermicro.

https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300106721/the-10-top-hyper-converged-platforms-of-2018-so-far.htm

Dell Technologies Accelerates Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Portfolio Growth; Simplifies Path to VMware-based Clouds

@DellEMC #VxRail and #VxRack #SDDC advancements offer greater performance and adoption of next generation technologies for multi-clouds in VMware environments NEWS PROVIDED BY Dell Technologies 13:00 ET LAS VEGAS, May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- @DellTechnologies World -- News summary No.1 market leader in global #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI ) system sales advances portfolio after 145% reported worldwide revenue growth in 20171 @DellEMC #VxRail adopts advanced technologies, including NVMe and #25Gbps networking connectivity, to greatly speed access to data and applications Dell EMC #VxRack #SDDC simplifies management and improves performance, built on VxRail hardware with Dell EMC #PowerEdge 14th generation servers Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack SDDC offer clear path to adopt @VMware-based private, hybrid and multi-clouds Full story Dell Technologies is launching new hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) advancements to further simplify customer IT transformations with more powerful systems. New Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC Systems further extend Dell EMC's HCI global systems sales leadership1 with adoption of advanced technologies and the latest innovations from Dell EMC and VMware. The combined technologies can accelerate customers' abilities to transform to modern, multi-cloud environments. "As HCI systems are increasingly being used for core data center applications, customers are adopting VxRail and VxRack SDDC as the foundation for deploying clouds of all types," said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president and general manager, Dell EMC Server and Infrastructure Systems. "These technologies, co-developed by Dell EMC and VMware, offer a simple and clearly defined path to private, hybrid and multi-clouds to help our customers transform their IT infrastructure to free up valuable staff time while enabling IT to be the enabler for faster, nimbler businesses." Results of the ESG 2018 IT Transformation Maturity Study, sponsored by Dell EMC and released this month, demonstrate that: An overwhelming majority of transformed companies–98%–use either converged infrastructure (CI) or HCI, and 86% report using both Transformed companies report running an average of more than 35% of their applications on CI/HCI, quantifying their operational expenditure savings at 25% on average Organizations running cloud-like IaaS are operating on-premises infrastructure more than two and a half times as cost-effectively as public cloud alternatives According to IDC, global HCI system sales surpassed $3.7 billion in 2017 vendor revenue, up 64.3% from 2016, as the fastest growing segment of the overall converged systems market. Dell EMC led all vendors in global HCI systems sales in 2017, with a 27.1% revenue share while growing 145% year over year at a rate more than 2.25 times faster than the overall industry.1 Meanwhile, IDC predicts the HCI solutions market will reach $10.3 billion by 2022. Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack SDDC adopt advanced technologies as ideal foundation for multi-cloud strategies Dell EMC VxRail, the top selling Dell EMC HCI solution from the world's leading HCI systems portfolio, is now even more flexible and powerful with the addition of several advanced technologies. VxRail continues to set the standard for simplifying and modernizing VMware environments, regardless of where an organization is on their IT transformation journey. Continuing to be integrated with VMware vSAN and vSphere software, new VxRail advancements include the adoption of: NVMe cache drive options future-proof enhanced performance with dramatically lower latency and higher performance than existing SAS based cache drives Powerful Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, supporting up to 1.5TB of RAM per CPU socket for 2x more memory (up to 3TB per node) NVIDIA® Tesla® P40 GPU accelerators providing 2x performance and 50% more users for high-end graphics use cases such as those needed by CAD developers and designers New 25GbE networking provides the most aggregate bandwidth of any other HCI appliance and up to 50% more networking connectivity options than the previous generation2 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 software-defined data center environments New simplified management experience with VxRail Manager Events consolidation and viewing in VMware vCenter New VxRail STIG Compliance Guide and automated scripts harden the storage, virtualization and networking components to accelerate deployments of secure infrastructure Additionally, for customers looking to build a complete Software-Defined Data Center using VxRail as a building block, they can use the guidance of the latest VMware Validated Designs (VVD). Using the guidance of VVD for SDDC 4.2 for VxRail, customers can more easily architect an SDDC with complete NSX and vRealize functionality with less risk.  Dell EMC VxRack SDDC is the ultimate infrastructure foundation for realizing a multi-cloud vision. It is the only turnkey cloud platform, based on VxRail hardware, built on 14th generation PowerEdge servers, delivered with integrated networking, and powered by VMware Cloud Foundation and Dell EMC software. VxRack SDDC delivers the simplest path to a hybrid or multi-cloud approach with an automated elastic cloud infrastructure at rack scale. Updates to VxRack SDDC, the most advanced VMware Cloud Foundation integrated system2, meet a variety of customer cloud use cases with: New, more powerful configurations built on VxRail hardware with the latest Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server platforms, designed for HCI deployments, to accelerate IT services and application delivery New enhancements for VDI with support for NVIDIA® graphics processing cards The latest VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3 with newly integrated cloud management and automation for on-premises IT-as-a-Service (IaaS) and more flexibility to scale with heterogeneous server support Exclusive SDDC automation and serviceability extensions integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation that extend the management experience and simplify cloud-ready operations Availability Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and Dell EMC VxRack SDDC Systems updates are available globally now.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-technologies-accelerates-hyper-converged-infrastructure-portfolio-growth-simplifies-path-to-vmware-based-clouds-300640020.html

VxRack Flex at the center of Medicity's SaaS cloud

@Medicity, a subsidiary of Aetna with offices in Salt Lake City and Alpharetta, Ga., is a software-as-a-service ( #SaaS) provider for hospitals and healthcare information exchanges (HIEs). Its network serves more than 1,000 hospitals, 250,000 end users, and 20 regional and statewide HIEs. Through Medicity's private cloud, they have exchanged more than 2.4 billion clinical transactions. Dennany said his data centers have 3 PB of data to support customers "We store and analyze very large amounts of clinical data over time," he said. "We're transforming that data into a strategic asset that supports health insurance quality initiatives." Unlike more common blade-based HCI appliances, such as Dell EMC VxRail and those from Nutanix, VxRack Flex includes upo 24 nodes in a single rack and is built specifically for petabyte-scale implementations. VxRack Flex runs on PowerEdge servers, using ScaleIO software-defined block storage and VMware virtualization. Medicity installed 48 nodes of VxRack Flex -- 24 each in its Salt Lake City and Denver data centers -- with plans for another 24-node rack this year. The initial installation provided 1.7 TB of RAM and close to 1 PB of solid-state drives. "What we're really seeking is high-performance I/O for large amounts of data," Dennany said. Moving from arrays to HCI Before switching to rack-scale HCI, Medicity used a traditional setup of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) blade servers and Dell Compellent storage arrays. Dennany said, in late 2016, he started searching for "our next-generation data center design." He explored setting up a large Kubernetes scale-out farm to support a project built around Google's Site Reliability Engineering concept. But Medicity instead picked the VxRack Flex because of its combination of power and storage management, Dennany said. "The management of a Kubernetes farm is challenging," he said. "The VxRack Flex system fit right in with our strategy and needs around raw I/O performance requirements, encryption of data at rest and our move toward a software-defined data center." Dennany said for Medicity to fill out its SaaS requirements, the company had to build its own cloud. It writes many of the applications it uses, using Microsoft SQL Server as the underlying database and Tableau software for analytics. "Traditional clouds, such as AWS or Azure, do not offer the raw performance that we require," he said. "So, we're really big fans of the ScaleIO performance. Through testing, we found we're not able to match that performance through public clouds." Dell EMC will juice VxRack Flex performance more by making it available on its latest 14th-generation PowerEdge server. Those systems will be available in April. Those new models will pack more flash and memory into each node, increasing IOPS, bandwidth and virtual machine support. Dennany said he looks forward to the upgrade, as he prepares to expand beyond his two racks. "This is a project between now and probably mid-2020, and we will continue to grow onto VxRack Flex," he said. "We're excited about the performance numbers they're talking about, like more IOPS and bandwidth. These are things we are hungry for." Database problems dealt with While building out the VxRack Flex implementation, Medicity is migrating data off its Compellent storage to the HCI system using Always On in SQL Server to mirror databases and VMware VMotion to move applications. "We're prioritizing based on client size and performance," Dennany said. "We target migrations where needed from either a capacity or performance perspective."

https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252439333/VxRack-Flex-at-the-center-of-Medicitys-SaaS-cloud

Dell EMC VP Envisions IaaS, PaaS And Container Services Running On VMware Cloud Foundation

@DellEMC 's #softwaredefined data center road map revolves around providing services on @VMware 's Cloud Foundation platform. "We envision infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, container as a service, running on VMware Cloud Foundation, running on #VxRack, which is built using our #hyperconverged infrastructure appliance, #VxRail," said @ChadDunn, vice president of product management and marketing at Dell EMC, in an interview with CRN. Dunn, an 11-year Dell EMC veteran, is the product leader for Dell EMC's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) products, responsible for strategy and the technology road map. He said many Dell customers are in different maturity stages in rolling out a software-defined data center (SDDC) strategy. [Related: Dell CFO Sweet: Positive Impact Of Tax Reform Should Offset Any Negatives In The Long Term] "Some are starting on hyper-converged appliances, building out large environments with the intent to move to a VxRack or a Cloud Foundation infrastructure later on. Then we have others that are starting right out of the gate with VxRack SDDC, which includes the Cloud Foundation software – vSAN, vSphere -- and all the components to sort of orchestrate that environment as a system," said Dunn. "That's really what our strategy is about -- how do we make infrastructures like that turnkey and very easy for our customers to get to value quickly on." The company has a turnkey HCI appliance, VxRail, as well as a rack-scale software-defined solution, VxRack SDDC – both of which are co-engineered with VMware. VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware's unified SDDC platform that brings together VMware vSphere, vSAN, and its software-defined networking product, NSX, into a natively integrated stack to deliver cloud infrastructure. [Sponsored Suggested Post: The C-Level Newsletter - Executive Voices. Exclusive Insights. News, interviews & perspectives on executives shaping the IT channel. Subscribe Today VxRail is Dell EMC's fastest-growing product with 75 percent of sales being fulfilled by channel partners, according to Dunn. He said the company is enabling partners to sell the HCI offering through certifications and its VxRail Xpert program, which is an exam-based curriculum. "Once you're in [Xpert], you get early access to a lot of insight information on VxRail, what our product road maps are, what our performance characteristics are so that you have a deeper level of understanding of the technology," said Dunn. "You can more easily offer it to your clients." Dell EMC was named a Leader in Gartner's first-ever Magic Quadrant for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure this year, ranked No. 2 in execution and No.3 in vision on the quadrant. VMware, which Dell Technologies owns an 82 percent stake in, ranked No. 2 in vision and No. 3 in execution on the quadrant.

https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300100691/dell-emc-vp-envisions-iaas-paas-and-container-services-running-on-vmware-cloud-foundation.htm

Nutanix CEO On Cisco's Hardware Problem, Dell's Dual Hyper-Converged Strategy And Why He Doesn't View HPE-SimpliVity 'As A Competitor'

Nutanix: The Hyper-Converged Pioneer Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey says tech giants like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Cisco lack "conviction" in hyper-convergence regardless of acquisitions both have made in the market. "Whatever we were talking about in 2012, is what HPE is talking about in 2018, 'We can get servers and attach some storage to it and hopefully this will be a good solution for the midmarket or the SMB.' But the problem with HPE is lack of conviction," said Pandey, in an interview with CRN. The San Jose, Calif.-based hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer recently reported first fiscal quarter 2018 sales of $275 million, up 46 percent year over year, while deferred revenues increased nearly 50 percent to $409 million. Pandey said over the coming quarters, Nutanix will adopt a software-centric strategy to expand its total addressable market. Pandey talks to CRN about its software transformation, competition with the likes of Cisco and HPE, and if Nutanix will remain an independent company.

What is your view of the new HPE with SimpliVity?

At the end of the day, we don't even look at HPE-SimpliVity as a competitor because you need the entire operating system. You need the whole stack. You need software-defined storage, but you also need the hypervisor, software-defined networking, software-defined security, you need operations management, systems management, automation – all these pieces have to come together to build an operating system. People don’t just want to buy a hyper-converged box, they're saying, 'Either I go to the cloud or if I stay on-premise, it better be as good as cloud.' So you need to have a holistic operating system story. Software-defined storage is a part of it, but it's only a small part of it.

Are you seeing any market share gain or loss since HPE launched its first joint hyper-converged product this year?

Whatever we were talking about in 2012, is what HPE is talking about in 2018 saying, 'We can get servers and attach some storage to it and hopefully this will be a good solution for the midmarket or the SMB.' Because they want to sell 3PAR and Synergy and all that stuff at the high end of the pyramid, then they want to sell Nimble in the middle of the pyramid, and sell SimpliVity at the base of the pyramid for SMB's. It doesn't work like that. You cannot hedge your way into architecture. You cannot hedge your way into transformation. You have to go all-in, which is what the largest companies like Oracle and Microsoft and Adobe had to do to transform themselves.

So the SimpliVity acquisition doesn't affect Nutanix?

SimpliVity is a little tuck-in that will now be a swim lane in HPE's portfolio. While it's good to charm the analyst, the media, the pundits, at some level if your sellers don’t have the conviction, that there's only one path forward in the re-architecture for the enterprise -- you will basically always be a 'me-too' product.

What are your thoughts on Cisco HyperFlex and their acquisition of SpringPath this year?

It's the exact same argument [for Cisco]. You go back to, you can't have swim lanes where you're saying, 'I'm going to work with Pure [Storage] at the high-end. I'm going to work with someone in the middle segment of the market, and by the way, I'll have HyperFlex just as a way to distribute software.' It doesn't work like that. You can't hedge bet. You can't have a FlexPod and a Pure stack and then something else. You need conviction on what does it mean to transform your customer's business. You can't create ten ways. You can't sit on the sidelines when this massive disruption is happening in cloud computing.

How do you view Cisco as a hyper-converged competitor?

They don’t have an operating system. You need to have an entire stack to go and say, 'Am I better than VMware's vSAN? Am I even getting close enough to the AWS and Azure experience?' Because that is the fork in the road for customers, 'Do I buy VMware and do things on-prem? Or do I look at Amazon or Azure?' So hyper-convergence by itself was a good story in 2012, but today, that idea of software-defined storage running on commodity servers is five years too late by itself.

Can Cisco stay in the hardware business?

It all depends on what the next few years have in store. Look, they all wanted to be in the enterprise mobile computing business five years ago when Apple was seeping into the enterprise with BYOD.  They had tablets, HP acquired Palm, and Cisco had a Cius tablet with Android and things like that – they all had aspirations. At some point when they started to see AWS get into the enterprise a few years ago, they all had cloud vision, but it wasn't done right. So large companies do things just because they feel like they have a better account control than some of these insurgent and new startups or outsiders like Amazon, like Nutanix.

A big focus for @DellEMC in 2018 is their own hyper-converged #VxRail offering. Where does your relationship look like with Dell next year?

They are also trying to figure out their own swim lanes because they have the #VMAX product and the #VNX product, the #Compellent product, VxRail product. We just happen to be one more swim lane in that sense. The thing is that, if they can sort that out, the partnership will get sorted out automatically. They are expecting the market forces to basically create a pull for the different swim lanes saying, 'There'll be people who like to buy #VxBlock, people who like to buy a VNX midrange product, people who like to buy VxRail, and people who love #XC because they love @Nutanix .'

Why is Nutanix adopting a software-centric strategy?

One of the good things about Nutnaix is how we continue to expand our TAM. … When we went and gave our software to OEM partners -- first Dell, then Lenovo, then finally IBM -- we said, 'Let them go and build different reference designs based on our software, and let that thing compete with the marketplace with our own NX appliance.' Then about 12 to 18 months ago, we started doing these ELA's which is like software consumed at scale. With some of the very large customers we had, we said, 'Let's have them completely decouple hardware consumption with software.' They were saying, 'Software appreciates, hardware depreciates. I want to get our business going with you where I can buy all the software and get all the discounting up front, and then I can go buy hardware overtime.' It was all about access. How do we make access to Nutnaix technology frictionless?

So what is Nutanix's new software-centric vision?

This decision to now go all software is basically the next step in that same direction around frictionless access. We announced Xi [Cloud Services] which is about, 'You can now control Nutanix with cloud services as well. You're not going to take sides between on-premise and off-premise, with owning and renting. So if you want to continue to own Nutanix, you can now download it from a website and install it on a server that we didn't ship to you, kick the tires on it, and then come back if you really want to consume this thing.' So it's about increasing the access to our technology in the most friction-free manner.

Does this software strategy expand your total addressable market (TAM)?

It absolutely expands our TAM. It takes a lot of these analyst forecast that say, 'Oh [hyper-converged] is actually a $2 billion industry. Now it's a $4 billion industry. Now it's $8 billion' – it's up to companies like us who are category creators to expand the TAM. TAM is what the leading category creator business says it is.

How will Nutanix partners make this transition?

They'll either go and implement a private cloud for the end customer, or they can be managed services providers where they take our software, buy the hardware, take some risk along the way, but be that cloud provider. When they go and take the software and implement the private cloud to the customer, they are now using the professional services to put together a solution rather than just resell boxes.

The other thing is it is a recurring business because if they go and sell software upfront, customers will want to consume that software, but they want to buy hardware over time. Every time they want to go and consume that software, they will be a level of professional services involved and that is where the channel keeps coming back.

There's been many hyper-converged acquisitions in 2017. Will Nutanix will remain independent?

A lot of this it is the DNA of a company. What does independence really mean? It means staying power to go and optimize for the long-time as opposed to just optimizing for the short term. Staying power is based on long-term greed. So, do you have long-term greed or short-term greed? It's tied to two other things: ambition, which fuels long-term greed; and attention to detail, which is, 'Can you do this without burning too much cash? And can you do this with an awesome customer experience where customers love you and nothing else matters?'

So if we were to have some long-term greed, which is fueled by the ambition of the company – and the ambition has to tie back to product strategy, the adjacency of our market and the fact that we continue to expand the total addressable market – that is long-term greed. Tie that with attention to detail, I think you have a recipe for staying power. That's all we look at.

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/virtualization/300096761/nutanix-ceo-on-ciscos-hardware-problem-dells-dual-hyper-converged-strategy-and-why-he-doesnt-view-hpe-simplivity-as-a-competitor.htm

Dell EMC Teams with Splunk to Deliver Packaged Solutions for Harnessing the Power of Machine Data

HOPKINTON, Mass., Sept. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- News summary  #DellEMC Ready Systems for #Splunk Validated Splunk solutions combine power of Splunk with simplicity, scalability of Dell EMC #VxRail Appliances and Dell EMC #VxRack System #FLEX Broadened relationship creates 'one-stop shop' for organizations looking to capture untapped value of machine data Complete solution including hardware, software and services empowers customers to collect, analyze, secure, and act on machine data in real-time Tweet this New #DellEMC Ready Systems for #Splunk empower orgs to understand, harness power of #machinedata http://bit.ly/2hgANAf #ReadySolutions #splunkconf17 Full story Today, Dell EMC announces an expanded relationship with Spunk that will provide organizations with an analytics-driven approach to resolve infrastructure and application problems faster, reduce downtime and increase customer satisfaction. By combining technology from both Dell EMC and Splunk, customers can leverage a simpler path to the adoption and expansion of Splunk through a pre-engineered portfolio of purpose-built systems for Splunk® Enterprise. The new Dell EMC Ready Systems for Splunk help organizations of all sizes combine the power of Splunk with the simplicity and scalability of Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and Dell EMC VxRack System FLEX. Unleashing the power and value of machine data Machine data can reveal valuable information about user transactions, customer behavior, machine behavior, IT operations analytics, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Dell EMC Ready Systems are engineered to handle this high-volume, high-velocity and highly diverse data set, enabling customers to harness the power of Splunk's monitoring, analytics, and machine learning capabilities with the simplified deployment and scalability of Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure. Splunk makes it simple to collect, analyze and act upon the untapped value of machine data generated by infrastructure, security solutions and business applications – giving organizations more insights to drive operational performance and business results as well as up to 90% reduction in mean time to resolution. Designed for customers looking to maximize their Splunk investment, the new Dell EMC Ready Systems for Splunk helps consolidate, simplify and protect machine data. The new Dell EMC Ready System maximizes customer's Splunk investments through the scale and ease of deployment Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure brings to the table. Solutions for Organizations of All Sizes Two flavors of Dell EMC Ready Systems for Splunk are now available. For small- to medium-sized businesses standardized on VMware, Dell EMC Ready System for Splunk on VxRail offers the benefits of the only Splunk appliances powered by Dell EMC PowerEdge platforms that are fully integrated and pre-tested with VMware vSAN™ to seamlessly extend existing VMware environments, simplify deployment and enable IT organizations to leverage in-house expertise and operational processes. Dell EMC Ready System for Splunk on VxRack FLEX is ideal for medium- to large-sized businesses that require data center rack scale, and support for multiple hypervisors, operating systems and bare-metal configurations, and want to run multiple workloads in a single rack. Availability The Dell EMC Ready System for Splunk solutions are now globally available directly through Dell EMC and its channel partners. To see these solutions in action, please visit Dell EMC at .conf2017: the 8th Annual Splunk Conference at Booth #P1. Supporting Quotes: Stu Miniman, senior analyst, Wikibon "Organizations face a barrage of information from an ever-growing number of devices. It becomes difficult not only to understand all this incoming data, but also analyze and identify what data is valuable. Dell EMC's work with Splunk to offer new Ready Systems for Splunk, featuring VxRail and VxRack FLEX, customers gain flexibility and simplicity to address this issue in real time, with the ability to collect, analyze, secure, act and report on machine data." Rick Fitz, senior vice president and general manager, IT markets, Splunk "Dell EMC and Splunk strategically partner to help our joint customers find new ways to access the benefits of machine data analytics through Splunk while deploying seamlessly and at scale with Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure. With these new offerings, we are excited to provide a streamlined path for our customers to easily harness the power of machine data to successfully drive operational performance and meaningful business results." Armughan Ahmad, senior vice president and general manager, Hybrid Cloud and Ready Solutions, Dell EMC "Every second of every day, hundreds of thousands of IT components record what's happening in an organization, with those records coming in many different formats. Businesses need a way to not only understand what data they're capturing, but also its value – how they can use it to drive their business goals. We're pleased to expand our relationship with Splunk, a recognized industry leader, to offer businesses the ability to harness the power and value of their machine data in real time." Additional resources Learn more about the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Splunk Find out more about how Dell Technologies is collaboratively solving customers' biggest challenges by visiting Dell Technologies' Annual Report to Customers Connect with Dell EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and DECN Follow the latest news on Twitter from @Dell or @DellEMCNews
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-emc-teams-with-splunk-to-deliver-packaged-solutions-for-harnessing-the-power-of-machine-data-300522629.html

Nutanix reports record revenues for first year since going public

#Nutanix closed its first year as a public company with a beat-and-raise quarter, firing on all fronts and heading confidently to a billion-dollar run rate next quarter. It was a record FY17 final quarter for Nutanix with revenues reaching $226.1m, beating last quarter's guidance of $215m-$220m. GAAP net loss was $90.7m, down on the previous quarter's $112m, but worse than the year-ago $49.93m net loss. Last year revenues were $139.8m, so they're up 61.7 per cent, and it's also a 17.9 per cent increase over the prior quarter. The quarterly chart shows how Nutanix has had a seriously higher net loss per quarter throughout this fiscal year compared to previous ones.  Nutanix revenues and GAAP net income to Q4 fy2017 Nutanix seems to be buying breakneck revenue growth with high net losses, but says it has $349m in cash and short-term investments so it can fund this level of growth for a few quarters more. The full-year revenues were $766.9m, 72.4 per cent up on FY16's $444.9m, while the net loss of an impressive $458m, nearly half a billion, dwarfed that of last year's $168.5m.  Nutanix full-year results to FY17 CEO and happy bunny Dheeraj Pandey pumped out a bullish canned quote: "The fourth quarter was another record quarter and an outstanding conclusion to the fiscal year... This quarter, marked by record revenues, continued adoption of AHV, increased software-only sales, strong growth from our OEM partners, and positive operating cash flow, was a great way to end our first year as a public company." The company now has 7,051 customers, up 87 per cent year-on-year, and 70 per cent of bookings are from return customers. There are 559 customers now from the Global 2000 – it was 372 a year ago, and 37 per cent are outside the USA. The number of large, >$3mn deals grew as well. It has more than 11 customers with a lifetime spend of more than $10m with Nutanix. The land-and-expand strategy has worked very well. The Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) product represented 24 per cent of sales in the quarter (four-quarter rolling average). AHV sales were 23 per cent in the prior quarter, 21 per cent in the quarter before that and 17 per cent in FY17's first quarter. Software-only bookings grew 96 per cent. Earnings call In the earnings call on Thursday, Pandey said: "[Our] 'One OS, One-Click' journey will continue as we blur the lines between owning and renting computing. Our strategy for the next several years is to continue building a hybrid cloud operating system that will converge the two consumption models with our current offerings – that is containers with virtual machines and public cloud with private." He talked about the Xi service with Google, saying: The idea of Xi is to run the same OS in both sides of the hybrid divide effectively converging all the elements of infrastructure so that the devices customers own seamlessly blur with a cloud service event akin to how apple iOS fuses an iCloud service with an iPhone. Both Xi and containers will come together into a single hybrid umbrella with the help of our multi-cloud management software Nutanix Calm. Calm elevates automation from the lower layers of infrastructure app to an abstraction that is application centric. Effectively detaching applications from data centers and making them movable in a multi cloud world. Calm, Xi and Kubernetes containers formed a trisect of a product strategy for the next several years. We continue to evolve just like when we decided to work on our own hypervisor, AHV. AHV, Acropolis and Prism are the architectural debts of the past eight years that will form a robust foundation for Calm and Xi in the coming eight years. This strategy and its presentation seems more concise and pertinent to modern data centre IT trends than anything similar coming out of #DellEMC, #HPE, #IBM and #Cisco. Competition So where's the bad news? CFO Dustin Williams hinted at what might be happening with OEM Dell EMC, whose own #VMware-focussed #VxRail and #VxRack products sales are growing strongly. "Looking forward, we haven't built in the expectation that the Q4 Dell performance will continue into Q1." Dell represented some 10 per cent of sales in the quarter, a little higher than in prior quarters. Fortunately, #Nutanix has won #IBM as a new OEM and sales on Cisco #UCS hardware grew strongly. "We also doubled our Cisco UCS bookings in Q4 versus Q3." As Cisco is now buying its hyperconverged system software supplier, Springpath, that trend might slow. Pandey discussed Cisco and other competitors in the call. "It's about the entire operating system and increasingly it's about the same OS running on both public and private cloud side as you see from Microsoft talking about Azure and Azure Stack. And I think Cisco's current offering is very far from this. They are too focused on the form factor that [was talked] about five years ago. I think they and HP and NetApp are still playing a hardware game off HCI. I think the real game that's being played in pure software is... about the entire opening system itself." By operating system he means a full stack embracing servers, networking, storage, virtualisation of all three and management services. Pandey only sees two companies with offerings in this area – VMware and Nutanix. He said: "In the coming 12 to 18 months, you will actually see us become a full-fledged networking and software-defined security vendor just like what you are seeing VMware as well." El Reg thinks Microsoft with its Hyper-V/Windows stack will be in this category as well. Pandey dismissed composable infrastructure, like HPE's Synergy, saying: "It's a niche because it's about a hardware routing mechanism that let's you address disk drives using some hardware switching... I think composable is a cute terminology but at the end of the day the world is moving towards commodity, towards rack-mount servers that are off the shelf as opposed to using some hardware tricks to really go and build solutions." Outlook Nutanix and Pure are neck and neck in the revenue annual run rate charts. Nutanix is on $904.4m and should beat $1bn next quarter. Pure is on $898m and could also surpass the $1bn mark next quarter. The outlook for the next quarter is for revenues between $240m and $250m – $245mn at the midpoint and 46.9 per cent higher than the year-ago quarter. This is continued breakneck growth. The non-GAAP net loss is expected to be $0.37/share, which compares to $0.59/share this quarter. So the trend is down and suggests that profitability might, at some stage, actually happen. Perhaps FY18. ®

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2017/09/01/nutanix_results/#ampshare=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/01/nutanix_results/

Why Dell EMC’s Chad Sakac No Longer Gets in Bar Fights About HCI and SDS

LAS VEGAS — #Hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI ) and #softwaredefinedstorage ( #SDS ) are arguably the hottest trends in data center modernization. IDC puts HCI at a $6 billion opportunity by 2020 — it’s the fastest growing segment in the data center space — and consistently ranks #DellEMC as a leading vendor in both HCI and SDS.

Both trends are on display at #VMworld2017 this week, and on Monday #DellEMC unveiled its latest HCI systems integrated with #VMware software. Parent company #DellTechnologies owns both companies.

SDxCentral Senior Editor Jessica Lyons Hardcastle caught up with Chad Sakac, president of the converged platforms and solutions division at Dell EMC at VMworld to talk all things HCI. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

VMware is deeply integrated with some of your HCI systems, but you also partner with Nutanix. Will you give me the rundown on Dell EMC’s HCI appliances and rack-scale systems?

Sakac: Basically there are only two questions we need to ask customers to figure out what the right system for them is. The first question is: have you standardized on VMware, and are you aligned with VMware and their roadmap? If the answer to that is yes, then our answer is either VxRail or VxRack SDDC. If they say, ‘No, we may use VMware but VMware is one thing of many, and it’s not a central part of how we look at infrastructure,’ then we have two answers: XC and Flex.

That first question can be visualized as some customers have a preference for infrastructure that is vertically integrated and some customers have a preference for infrastructure that is horizontal and supports all sorts of different stuff.

The word that signifies the value of the vertically integrated stack is simple. It is the most simple way to design an HCI system.

The word for a horizontal stack is flexible. They are never as simple. You have to think about how do I update this thing? And then how do I update VMware? How do I update Linux? It could be any of the things that are on it.

The second question is: are you ready to transform your network? Or are you just ready to transform your storage? If the answer is: ‘I’m not yet ready to transform my network with [VMware’s virtual networking technology] NSX, or the way I procure my network.’ Then what they want is they want either VxRail or an XC.

If they are ready to transform their network, depending on how they answer the VMware question up front, then they’re either going to be a VxRack SDDC or a Flex.

Two simple questions, four choices.

How much of Dell EMC’s HCI business do each of these four systems represent?

Sakac: Some stuff we say publicly; some stuff we don’t. I’ll give you a bigger-than-a-bread-box idea.

VxRail, we’ve publicly stated, is at a $400 million run rate. And we stated that at the end of Q1. So we are well north of a $400 million run rate at this point. From a cold start to, in essence, a half a billion-dollar business in a year and a half, that’s quite something.

VxRail represents about a third of the vSAN customer base. And that business has grown at 240-plus percent, year-over-year. As Pat Gelsinger said on stage, and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell said it, too, it basically grew more than 400 percent over an 18-month period. VSAN growth and VxRail growth. You can think of that as being a huge mass.

Now the XC business, we represent in any given quarter, between a third and a quarter of all Nutanix customers. They chose our OEM of Nutanix. You take a look at Nutanix’s customer count, they’re at about 6,000 customers. We represent roughly about a third of that. So about 2,000 customers.

VxRail has roughly 3,000 customers; XC has roughly 2,500 customers in total, you can see those are two very big numbers of customers.

The number of customers that use VxRack SDDC and Flex are much smaller. They number in the hundreds, not thousands. However, they are enormous customers.

In the keynote on day one, you saw Medtronic, they’re a VxRack SDDC customer. They have five VxRack SDDCs across five data centers. It’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nodes. Our largest VxRack Flex customer has north of 1,500 nodes. That’s 28-racks’ worth of HCI.

In terms of revenue mix, right now we see roughly around two-thirds appliances and roughly a third these giant rack systems.

What’s starting to happen that is interesting is that many larger customers are starting to say, “I’m really interested in these rack-scale approaches.” We’ve got lots of customers that, for example, had five Vx blocks of CI [converged infrastructure] and they’re refreshing, and two of the five turn into a VxRack. Generally those customers that have invested massively in CI say the network is part of the system for them.

What’s driving this growing focus on networking?

Sakac: Hyperconverged appliances were born as a simplification for customers in the world of  infrastructure. That was their promise, their brand, their core value proposition. As soon as customers get to a certain scale of appliance count, even though they can build their own network, they start to go, ‘I want the network domain to be as easy as what you’ve done for the storage and compute domain. I want that to be part of the lifecycle. I don’t want it to be my problem anymore I want it to be your problem.’

Anytime a customer is thinking about 10 or more appliances, you should at least ask them, why aren’t you thinking about your network as part of this project?

What percentage of enterprise are going that route and considering networking? Is it still relatively small?

Sakac: Tiny. As a percentage, this is a thing which is both depressing and exciting at the same time.

How so?

Sakac: There are 350,000 vSphere customers. That’s a lot. This represents millions and millions of hosts.

We’re about 50 percent, 60 percent of the CI [converged infrastructure] market as a whole. Let’s say that’s roughly 7,000 customers that have said, ‘I’m sick and tired of building and running my own infrastructure stack. You guys can do it better. Make it easy for me so I can focus on things that matter even more.’

At the same time there’s currently 10,000 vSAN customers. And of this, roughly around 3,000 are using VxRail as the way that they do vSAN.

Nutanix has said that they have around 6,000 customers. And then there’s only hundreds of customers that choose rack-scale systems today. So this is depressing in one dimension because 340,000 customers are still suffering the pain and agony of trying to build their own infrastructure stacks.

It’s also exciting in the sense that it highlights that the world of SDS [software-defined storage] and HCI is still only at its most nascent era. It’s ramping like crazy, but it’s got a huge way to go before it even is a dent in the whole landscape of the ecosystem.

What’s the next phase of HCI?

Sakac: There’s a phase that is staring us right in the face, which is HCI is no longer exciting. And no longer exciting is actually the most exciting phase for real work to occur.

Because HCI is now the standard?

Sakac: Because it’s no longer a big debate. It used to be you’d get into a bar fight with someone about is HCI ready? Is software-defined storage ever going to be good enough to run blank applications? And then eventually you get to a point where it’s like: yep. Everyone knows it works. There are debates about which way is better or worse. But everyone gets on to the business of getting on to business.

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/dell-emcs-chad-sakac-no-longer-gets-bar-fights-hci-sds/2017/08/

VxRail 'billion-dollar business' soon, says Dell EMC's Sakac

LAS VEGAS -- As president of Dell EMC's converged platforms division, Chad Sakac leads a group that performs a lot of balancing acts. Dell EMC's converged platforms include products in the fast-growing hyper-converged market as well as the converged infrastructure (CI) systems that hyper-convergence often replaces. It also sells converged infrastructure built around Cisco servers and switching, as well as those with Dell's own hardware that competes with Cisco. And its #hyperconverged products include #XC appliances powered by #Nutanix software through a #DellOEM deal before its merger with #EMC. XC systems compete with #VMware #vSAN-powered #VxRail, an EMC product before the merger.  Customers may need a scorecard to keep track of Dell EMC's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) lineup. Besides VxRail and XC, there is #VxRack rackscale #HCI and #VxRackFlex with EMC's ScaleIO #softwaredefined #blockstorage. And Dell-owned #VMware sells its #vSAN software standalone and through other hardware partners. On the CI side, Dell EMC recently pared its product line by eliminating VBlock -- the original CI product -- in favor of #VxBlocks with VMware software-based switching instead of #Cisco 's.
We caught up with Sakac at VMWorld 2017 to discuss all things converged and hyper-converged. He said while hyper-converged is "hot, hot, hot," it still has a long way to go to catch traditional SANs, and admitted the decision to scrap the Vblock CI brand caused "sleepless nights." Where's the storage news at VMworld? Sakac: One of the big storage news pieces is the ongoing market shift toward software-defined. I wrote in my blog that the official Dell Technologies point of view is the majority of workloads today can be well-served by software defined storage/HCI. And coming from the storage market leader, that's a pretty strong statement. If you're not an incumbent, you have nothing to lose. If you are an incumbent with hundreds of thousands of customers, people who've built their careers on SANs, to say we think today the majority of workloads would work fine on ScaleIO, on vSAN and on VxRail, VxRack -- that's a big piece of storage news.

http://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/450425314/VxRail-billion-dollar-business-soon-says-Dell-EMCs-Sakac

Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo outline next-gen hyper-converged systems on VMware

#Hyperconvergence in the #datacenter is at the center of a series of announcements out of the #VMworld conference kicking off in Las Vegas this week. #DellEMC, #Lenovo, and #HewlettPackardEnterprise unveiled systems designed to boost their portfolios aimed at the lucrative converged systems market. Dell EMC, parent company to #VMware, has a span of product rollouts that the company says will reduce infrastructure complexity for enterprises. Products include new VMware Ready Systems, expanded features on the Dell EMC's turnkey hybrid cloud platforms, and advancements to #VxRail Appliances and #VxRack #SDDC Systems. Each update is designed to help modernize IT for VMware environments and data centers at any scale, according to Dell EMC.

As for HPE, the company has announced what it describes as a composable platform for VMware Cloud Foundation based on HPE Synergy. HPE says the platform will help IT organizations deploy infrastructure as a service and private clouds in minutes and lower virtual machine costs compared to public clouds and traditional server racks.

"HPE Synergy powered by Cloud Foundation will provide a powerful solution to consolidate traditional, private and cloud native workloads onto a single integrated infrastructure platform that is simple to deploy and operate," said John Gilmartin, VP and GM of Vmware's Integrated Systems business.

The VMware Cloud Foundation on HPE Synergy should be certified and available from HPE and channel and distribution partners in late 2017, while vSphere and vSAN are certified and available with HPE Synergy today.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-emc-hpe-and-lenovo-outline-next-gen-hyperconverged-systems-on-vmware/

The 7 Most Important Things To Know About Dell EMC's New 14G PowerEdge Servers

Down To The Bedrock The latest generation of the PowerEdge server portfolio that Dell EMC unveiled at the Dell EMC World conference in May has finally hit the market. Most of it, at least. Five of the seven models in the new line become available this week while customers will have to wait until later in the year for two. Dubbed 14G, the fourteenth generation of the venerable PowerEdge line launches in lockstep with the release of Intel's new Xeon Scalable processors. Of course, that means PowerEdge 14G has plenty of competition, including Lenovo's rebranded ThinkSystem server line, which was introduced last month and also relies on Intel's latest processors Dell EMC intends 14G to be "the bedrock of the modern data center," and the portfolio will underpin a wide variety of Dell EMC systems, including the popular VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure offering, which hits the market with a starting price of about $25,000. Clearly, Dell EMC is intent on pushing growth in the server market as it consolidates. Dell EMC was the only major server vendor to show server revenue growth in the first quarter as the worldwide market declined nearly 5 percent, according to research firm IDC. Click through to see the most important aspects of the new PowerEdge 14G line.

The Foundation

#DellEMC shipped more than 465,000 servers in the first quarter, and part of its strategy for growing that number is making PowerEdge the basis for a broad selection of Dell EMC solutions. The new #14G servers will be the foundation of offerings that used the previous generation of #PowerEdge servers, including #VxRail appliances, #VxRack systems, the #Nutanix-based XC hyper-convergence offering, #vSAN ReadyNodes, #ScaleIO ReadyNodes, #IsilionSD Edge and #ElasticCloudStorage. PowerEdge servers will also be available in several new #DellEMC offerings, including the #DataDomain Appliance, #CloudArray, Ready Bundles, Ready Systems Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, Dell EMC Native Hybrid Cloud and Dell EMC Cloud For #MicrosoftAzure Stack.

Traditional To Software-Defined

The new PowerEdge is part of what Dell EMC calls scalable business architecture, a system that allows customers to move from traditional to virtualized to cloud-native workloads in software-defined data centers more easily. The 14G portfolio is optimized for NVMe to help speed the deployment of software-defined data center and hyper-converged infrastructure with faster database and storage performance and faster migration of VMs. The company also says life-cycle management is easier and problems will be resolved nearly twice as fast as in the past through Dell EMC's ProSupport and Support Assist programs.

On Lockdown

Dell EMC counts security as one of the major selling points of its servers, and 14G continues that with cryptographically trusted booting, which includes Intel Boot Guard protection, signed firmware and automatic BIOS recovery, among other features. The PowerEdge portfolio also includes System Lockdown, which helps secure any system configuration from malicious or unintended changes and alerts users to any attempt to make system changes. The new servers also come with System Erase, which allows users to retire or repurpose 14G servers by quickly wiping data from storage devices and embedded memory.

http://m.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300088771/the-7-most-important-things-to-know-about-dell-emcs-new-14g-poweredge-servers.htm

Dell EMC Launches Next Generation of the World's Best-Selling Server Portfolio

Dell EMC is announcing worldwide availability for its next generation of the world's bestselling server3 to help customers of all sizes fuel their IT transformation initiatives. Recently previewed at Dell EMC World 2017, the award-winning design of the new 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio forms a scalable, automated and secure compute platform for traditional and cloud-native applications, designed for new Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. "The Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers improve upon the world's best-selling server portfolio, designed to drive our customers' IT transformations," said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president, Server Solutions Division at Dell EMC. "Our modern infrastructure solutions are a game changer in today's digital economy. With our cyber-resilient architecture and performance innovations, we will enable our customers to unleash their business potential." In a recent ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve study commissioned by Dell EMC, organizations furthest along in their IT transformation initiatives are seven times more likely to view IT as a competitive differentiator. To achieve this, the priority for many IT transformation initiatives is a modern infrastructure that can securely deliver improved efficiencies while driving innovation that enables new business models. With its scalable business architecture, intelligent automation and integrated security, the new Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server portfolio delivers on these desired benefits. PowerEdge servers, the bedrock of the modern data center, enable customers to push innovation further and faster to achieve their IT transformation goals. The scalable business architecture of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers helps customers efficiently meet their changing business needs with enhanced performance capabilities for traditional, virtualized and cloud-native workloads in a software-defined data center. The new Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio, highly optimized for non-volatile memory express (NVMe), helps customers accelerate deployment of software-defined data storage and hyper-converged infrastructure stacks with: Accelerated database performance and lower latency with up to 12 times more database IOPS1 and up to 98 percent less database latency in a VMware vSAN cluster4 Faster and seamless live migration of virtual machines now up to 58 percent faster with up to 75 percent less CPU usage when using 25GbE with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA)5 Faster storage performance in compute to maximize application performance with up to six times more NVMe drives, up to five times total flash storage, 30 percent more input/output slots and 25 percent density improvement6 Intelligent automation in Dell EMC PowerEdge servers enable IT professionals to focus on mission-critical tasks that drive greater customer and business value. Specifically, OpenManage Enterprise with a powerful RESTful API offers tools for automating deployment, updates, monitoring and maintenance. The new, more powerful OpenManage Enterprise management console offers users: Easy server lifecycle management from deployment to retirement and repurposing with enhanced Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC9). It gives up to four times more improved performance in user interface and experience and a 30% time reduction to set up iDRAC with QuickSync 22 mobile-based management Up to 90 percent faster PowerEdge server issue resolution using ProSupport Plus and SupportAssist proactive and predictive technology7 Dell EMC believes that integrated security is integral to compute and should not require extra licensing fees. Dell EMC pioneered root of trust within its PowerEdge servers for the past two generations. A robust cyber-resilient architecture enables customers to protect, detect, recover and retire PowerEdge servers via: Cryptographically trusted booting that anchors end-to-end server safety and overall data center security. It includes features like silicon-based root of trust, Intel Boot Guard protection, signed firmware and automatic BIOS recovery and the new OpenManage Enterprise as a virtual console delivers enhanced server safety while offering customers operational flexibility System Lockdown, a capability unique to PowerEdge, helps secure any system configuration from malicious or unintended changes while alerting users to any attempted system changes System Erase, which allows users to easily retire or repurpose their 14th generation PowerEdge servers by securely and quickly wiping data from storage drives and other embedded non-volatile memory In collaboration with Intel, Dell EMC is bringing Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors to Dell EMC PowerEdge14th generation servers. With 27 percent more CPU cores and 50 percent more memory bandwidth6, Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server customers can accelerate performance of business critical applications and workloads. Dell EMC's most advanced line-up of PowerEdge servers includes rack and blade form factors. Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 – Ideal combination for dense scale-out data center computing and storage in a 1U/2-socket platform Dell EMC PowerEdge R740 – Workhorse for demanding environments providing the ideal balance between storage, I/O and application acceleration and with superior configuration flexibility in a 2U/2S platform. R740 enables up to 50 percent more VDI users per server8 and up to 50 percent more GPU accelerator support for Hadoop analytics9 Dell EMC PowerEdge R740XD – This 2U/2S platform is best-in-class storage performance and density for applications like software-defined storage and with the versatility demanded by cloud service providers, Hadoop/Big Data users and co-location hosting Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 – This 3U/ 4S platform handles extremely demanding, mission critical workloads like enterprise resource planning (ERP), e-commerce and very large databases. The PowerEdge R940 can save up to US $600,000 in Oracle Licensing costs10 and performs up to 44% faster in a SAP SD Sybase Environment11 Dell EMC PowerEdge M640 and FC640 – Unparalleled modular serves designed for high performance with best-in-class density for exceptional scalability in a Blade and Modular platform Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 – Ideal for high performance computing. Maximizes density, scalability and energy efficiency per unit in a 2U/8S Modular platform PowerEdge servers are also the bedrock of Dell EMC solutions. Dell EMC's industry-leading solutions and platforms also will benefit from the power and security of this new generation of PowerEdge servers. The servers will be embedded in storage and data center appliances, hyper-converged appliances and racks, hybrid cloud platforms, ready nodes, bundles and other Dell EMC solutions. These integrations go deeper than simply running software on hardware. With industry-leading hardware and software in its broader enterprise portfolio, Dell EMC is able to allow the software management stack insight into the hardware to optimize performance, as well as deeply test and validate them together. The new servers will be the foundation of #DellEMC solutions that used the previous generation of #PowerEdge such as #VxRail Appliances, #VxRack Systems, #NutanixXC Series, #vSAN ReadyNodes, #ScaleIO Ready Nodes, #IsilonSD Edge and #ECS (Elastic Cloud Storage). Additionally, it will be available in many new Dell EMC solutions and platforms, including #DataDomain Appliance, #CloudArray, #ReadyBundles, Ready Systems, Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, Dell EMC Native Hybrid Cloud and Dell EMC Cloud for #Microsoft #AzureStack. Availability Dell EMC PowerEdge R940, R740, R740xd, R640, and C6420 are now available worldwide. Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 and M640 will be available later in 2017. Dell EMC solutions based on new PowerEdge servers will become available worldwide throughout the second half of 2017.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-emc-launches-next-generation-of-the-worlds-best-selling-server-portfolio-300486257.html

Dell EMC seeks to speed up cloud-native business value

As cloud-native computing becomes even more important for organizations of all types, #DellEMC is emphasizing its efforts in the hybrid cloud arena, according to Ted Bardasz (pictured, right), senior director of product management, big data solutions, at Dell EMC, #DellTechnologies Inc.’s infrastructure group. “We think about developer-ready infrastructure … to be able to wheel in an environment with someone on-prem to take advantage of a cloud-native platform, we grabbed additional services around that to really give a full, comprehensive experience monitoring and reporting, disaster recovery, availability zones, an object store,” Bardasz said. To do so, #DellEMC partners with #PivotalSoftware Inc. to integrate the Pivotal #CloudFoundry — a cloud-native platform for deploying and operating modern applications — into its products, including #VxRail, #VxRack and #NSX. “We bring all of that together so that for an on-prem customer that’s looking at building cloud-native apps we can get that deployed in just a couple of days and give them a very rich experience,” Bardasz said.

https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/07/05/dell-emc-seeks-to-speed-up-cloud-native-business-value-dellemcworld/

Is EMC’s merger with Dell changing the shape of its converged infrastructure?

#EMC Corp. was known for sandwiching technologies into converged infrastructure before merging with #Dell to form #DellTechnologies Inc. Will it go on creating those systems independently or bring in new ingredients and influences through the merger? The company’s #VxRack System with #FLEX, a converged infrastructure product, provides a hint. “It’s leveraging, really, the best of our software-defined, the best of the server technologies out there — and it’s really leveraging this trend of customers that have started to adopt #HCI [hyper-converged infrastructure], and now they’re ready to go all in,” said Jon Siegal, (pictured) vice president of product marketing at Dell EMC, Dell’s infrastructure group. VxRack FLEX’s makers happily dove into Dell’s wide server portfolio, basing the system on Dell’s 14th generation PowerEdge server, Siegal added. These new servers house processors from Intel’s Xeon Scalable family of processors; Dell’s direct line to pre-released Intel chips boosts the infrastructure stacks above market expectations, Siegal told Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during an interview at theCUBE’s Boston, Massachusetts studio. (* Disclosure below.) On the other end of the VxRack FLEX stack, users can actually generate an on-premise cloud with easy application spin-up through Pivotal Cloud Foundry cloud computing software, Siegal explained.

https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/06/01/is-emcs-merger-with-dell-changing-the-shape-of-its-converged-infrastructure-thecube/

Tech Data TS unit add VxRail and VxRack

#TechData ’s brand new Technology Solutions unit will get a boost from #DellEMC #VxRail appliances and #VxRack Systems to its network of channel partners with add-on cloud services, including resource-saving plug-ins. These plug-ins, designed for #VMware #vRealize Orchestrator environments, bring automation to existing infrastructures. It also lays a foundation for data centre transformation and cloud readiness. The new packaged add-ons and services boost partner revenue bases along with allow solution providers to develop their own practices. Sid Earley, vice president, Dell EMC and VMware solutions for Tech Data in the Americas, said multi-vendor orchestration plug-ins can help partners automate servers across organizational silos and disparate companies or groups. Tech Data’s new plug-ins include: Facilitate creation or cancellation of IT service management transactions and tickets for managing process and data integration. Leverage out-of-the-box sample workflows that accelerate time to market with near-immediate investment realization, while integrating into multi-vendor cloud solutions. Gil Shneorson, senior vice president and general manager, VxRail Appliances, Converged Platforms & Solutions Division, Dell EMC, said Tech Data’s cloud services IP and plug-ins can provide resellers with an opportunity to add value to their customers’ hyper-converged environments, further simplifying their journey to private and hybrid cloud. In addition, channel partners get access to both the Technology Solutions’ Cloud Marketplace and Tech Data’s cloud platform, StreamOne. Adding on to this access will be cognitive computing, the data centre, data analytics, the Internet of Things, mobility, security and enterprise networking.
http://www.computerdealernews.com/news/tech-data-ts-unit-add-vxrail-and-vxrack/54420

New Dell EMC Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Advancements and Cloud-Like Consumption Model Ease Adoption

#DellEMC announces it is eliminating barriers to hyper-converged infrastructure ( #HCI ) adoption with several updates to its HCI portfolio, including Dell EMC #VxRail Appliances, #VxRack Systems and #XC Series, and new flexible consumption models aimed at making IT even simpler to acquire, deploy and manage. "HCI is the fastest-growing part of the IT infrastructure market because customers want radical infrastructure simplification, and Dell EMC is the fastest-growing vendor in this segment with the strongest HCI portfolio, bar none," said Chad Sakac, president, Converged Platforms and Solutions Division, Dell EMC. "We're making the move to HCI even easier for customers with innovative payment solutions that eliminate the burden of upfront costs and long-term commitments, backed by HCI's ability to easily scale up and down." According to IDC, the worldwide hyper-converged system market continued its trajectory as the fastest growing subset of the broader converged infrastructure market in 2016, surpassing US $2.2 billion in global revenue, a substantial increase of 110 percent compared to 2015. Dell Technologies was the fastest growing hyper-converged system market vendor, growing revenue 206 percent in 4Q 2016 year over year, based on the success of Dell EMC VxRail Appliances, VxRack Systems and the XC Series.1 Customers to Gain More from Enhanced Dell EMC Hyper-converged Infrastructure Portfolio The Dell EMC VxRail Appliance family is the industry's only HCI appliances powered by VMware vSAN™ and jointly engineered with VMware. According to analyst firm IDC, sequential revenue growth from VxRail Appliances was four times higher than the entire HCI market during the fourth quarter of 2016, demonstrating more than 70 percent quarter over quarter growth.1 In response to VxRail Appliances being deployed increasingly for core data center applications, Dell EMC VxRail Appliances 4.5 delivers several new enterprise features available on Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers in the coming months: Enhanced enterprise deployment features – Streamlined installation and implementation experience designed to help enterprise customers manage VxRail Appliances at scale. The VxRail Appliance deployment experience, which is optimized to deploy a single appliance in only 20 minutes3, now can be applied to larger cluster sizes, allowing customers to add and manage 10 or more appliances as easily as a single appliance. Additional hardware flexibility lowers total cost of ownership – New single processor options, priced as low as US $25,000 for a three-node cluster,4 reduce the cost of deploying processor-based licensed software for scaling up to 64 nodes. New network options, including up to 12 additional ports, allow VxRail Appliances to be deployed in environments requiring physical network segmentation of workloads. Support for the latest VMware technologies – New VMware vSphere 6.5 and VMware vSAN 6.6 support adds optimized data service algorithms to accelerate flash performance, software-defined data-at-rest encryption to protect against unwanted access to data, and enhanced protection for stretched clusters. Improved interoperability with Dell EMC technologies – Customers deploying VxRail Appliances now can leverage a centralized Dell EMC Secure Remote Services (ESRS) gateway to provide a single point of secure, two-way remote support for their entire Dell EMC infrastructure. The Dell EMC VxRack Systems, the only rack-scale hyper-converged systems with integrated top-of-rack Spine-Leaf networking and SDN options, are the perfect choice for customers embracing software-defined technology across the data center and ready for HCI with pre-integrated physical and software-defined networking. Updates to the VxRack portfolio of VxRack FLEX powered by ScaleIO and VxRack SDDC powered by VMware Cloud Foundation include: Support for more data-demanding applications –VxRack FLEX expands configurations with support for Dell EMC PowerEdge R930, enabling the most data-demanding applications such as OLTP, in-memory databases, OLAP, CRM and ERP. High performance networking architecture for modern data centers – VxRack FLEX now incorporates the next-generation Cisco Nexus 93180YC-EX switches that increase scale, improve performance and natively support software-defined networking. Enhanced hardware flexibility – VxRack SDDC now offers six additional PowerEdge R630-based server nodes for both expanded high performance and entry level options in cores, memory and CPUs. The Dell EMC XC Series hyper-converged appliances combine compute, storage and virtualization resources in turnkey, 1U and 2U appliances configured to-order. XC Series appliances are best suited for customers requiring hypervisor choice, which may include Microsoft Hyper-V, and support a variety of specific use cases, ranging from typical enterprise business applications to VDI environments. Updates to the portfolio include: Dell EMC XC430 Xpress – This new appliance offers small to midsized companies a complete, all-in-one infrastructure solution with robust three-node configurations starting as low as US $25,000.5 Optimized for the smallest environments up to four nodes, the XC430 Xpress consolidates servers and storage in as small as 3U of rack space to drastically simplify on-site infrastructure. Dell EMC XC Series with Dell EMC Data Protection –Dell EMC Avamar Virtual Edition, Data Domain and Data Domain Virtual Edition with XC Series offer efficient, enterprise-level data protection and simplified backup and disaster recovery, offering capabilities not previously available with the XC Series. Dell EMC XC Series with Pivotal Cloud Foundry® – To rapidly develop and deploy applications to Pivotal Cloud Foundry, XC Series and Pivotal® engineering teams have collaborated to create the ideal configuration and deployment guide, which reduces risk and accelerates a customer's ability to increase developer productivity and reduce IT operation costs. Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th Generation Servers to Offer HCI Portfolio Boost The new Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server portfolio will serve as the modern compute foundation across the Dell EMC HCI portfolio. Through testing and validation, Dell EMC's fully engineered, turnkey HCI solutions will benefit from the advanced scale and performance of the new server portfolio to accelerate customers' journeys to modernize their data centers. Dell EMC will begin incorporating PowerEdge 14th generation server capabilities into its HCI portfolio in the coming months. New Innovative Payment Solutions for Cloud-Like Consumption Offer Hyper-Converged Infrastructure with Minimal Financial Risk While organizations are increasingly adopting HCI solutions to simplify their IT infrastructure, barriers include upfront costs and perceived risk of a new IT operating model. Removing these barriers, the new Cloud Flex for HCI by Dell Financial Services (DFS) brings a cloud-like consumption model to the Dell EMC HCI portfolio by offering a flexible, financing solution that eliminates upfront capital costs with declining payments over time. This is offered, through Dell EMC and channel partners, with no obligation after the first year and allows customers to return any or all HCI appliances. Cloud Flex for HCI is available immediately with Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and Dell EMC XC Series and has planned availability in the third quarter of 2017 for Dell EMC VxRack Systems. Additionally, Dell EMC is dramatically reducing the barriers to entry for desktop and application virtualization with Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions powered by VMware Horizon. These end-to-end solutions encompass the infrastructure, software and the option of endpoints and services all from a single vendor. VDI Complete is based on VxRail Appliances or Ready Nodes for vSAN, and provides straightforward, predictable pricing and exceptional total cost of ownership with a single number for support. Customers can choose to either build their own VDI solution or buy a pre-configured end-to-end solution from as little as US $8 per seat, per month1. Availability: Dell EMC VxRail Appliances 4.5 has planned global availability in September 2017, with several features available to existing VxRail Appliances 4.0 customers in June 2017. Dell EMC VxRack FLEX updates have planned global availability in July 2017. Dell EMC VxRack SDDC updates are available globally now. Dell EMC XC430 Xpress has planned global availability in June 2017. The first phase of Dell EMC XC Series Dell Data Protection support is now available globally as a reference architecture. Dell EMC XC Series with Pivotal Cloud Foundry is available globally now as a reference architecture. DFS Cloud Flex for HCI and Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions are available now in select countries globally.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-dell-emc-hyper-converged-infrastructure-advancements-and-cloud-like-consumption-model-ease-adoption-300453273.html

Dell EMC ScaleIO Awarded StorageReview’s Inaugural Editor’s Choice Award

#DellEMC today announced that #ScaleIO—the company’s #hyperconverged #softwaredefinedstorage offering—has been awarded StorageReview’s first-ever Editor’s Choice award. Intended for the most leading-edge products, the Editor’s Choice award is a rare honor, and one that ScaleIO earned over several months of intensive testing in the StorageReview lab.

“We were blown away with the Dell EMC ScaleIO solution throughout the review process,” said Brian Beeler, editor-in-chief of StorageReview . “Dell EMC ScaleIO is far and away the most impressive storage solution that we’ve not only seen this year, but probably ever. The performance, flexibility and reliability of ScaleIO is nothing short of astounding. Over the course of several months, it also made us rethink the way we acknowledge such superior performance. At the conclusion of this phase of the review, we decided to launch a StorageReview  Editor’s Choice award that will be judiciously granted for only the best-of-the best products we see.”

“ScaleIO is leading the market in data center-grade software-defined storage,” said Josh Goldstein, VP of Marketing and Product Management for ScaleIO. “The product was architected for scale and performance, and this recognition from StorageReview is great validation. Beyond this, and perhaps more importantly, ScaleIO is delivering a far lower total cost of ownership and simplifying how storage is managed over its lifecycle.”

Notable StorageReview results for ScaleIO:

On Sysbench OLTP testing with MySQL:
Scales beyond traditional storage arrays, with throughput and latency significantly better plus the ability to use near 100% of capacity
“ The performance was excellent, easily proving once again that ScaleIO is the leading software-defined solution on the market in terms of performance and flexibility.”
On SQL Server testing:
Provides superior resource efficiency while performing much faster than other hyper-converged platforms and slightly edging out FC-connected all-flash storage
“ For customers demanding the highest performing hyper-converged storage solution for SQL Server, ScaleIO just upped the bar again by being the most efficient HCI solution we’ve ever tested.”
On virtualized workload testing with VMmark:
Delivers record-smashing performance with sub-millisecond latency, with only 14% CPU utilization at max scale
“The most impressive feat though was how well ScaleIO in HCI did, demonstrating how little impact the storage overhead has on the platform.”
On HCI testing with HCIbench:
Triples the performance of other hyper-converged platforms, while testing with a significantly larger footprint
“…[ScaleIO is] able to offer incredible bandwidth – supporting even the most demanding workloads.”
Availability:

ScaleIO is available in three consumption choices – ScaleIO Software, ScaleIO Ready Node (Software + Dell PowerEdge Server) and VxRack System Flex (turnkey, fully-integrated rack-scale system).

ScaleIO is deployed at datacenter-scale by large enterprises and service providers including top banks, telcos, and healthcare companies. Click to see how Verizon uses ScaleIO to solve business challenges and achieve storage lifecycle savings.

Click to read more about ScaleIO, ScaleIO Ready Node and VxRack System Flex

http://www.satprnews.com/2017/02/15/dell-emc-scaleio-awarded-storagereviews-inaugural-editors-choice-award/

Dell Technologies grabs giant spanner, begins the Great EMC Retool

Following on from an exec-level re-org and top table resignations in December, and layoffs in January, lumbering tech monster Dell Technologies is again ringing the divisional changes in a bid to reduce reporting lines move up the sales dial. Within David Goulden’s Information Solutions Group (ISG) - the combined EMC and Dell servers and networking organisation - the Chad Sakac-run CPSD (Converged Platforms and Solutions Division) has merged two units and dropped one incumbent exec. Senior veep Jim Ganthier bossed the Validated Solutions unit with fellow big cheese Armughan Ahmad heading the Global Solutions and Technology Alliances unit: now Ahmad will run both. Ganthier leaves Goulden’s ISG to join a unit led by Dell’s top female exec; EVP and Chief Customer Officer Karen Quintos. She was Dell’s Chief marketing officer before the EMC acquisition but she made way for Jeremy Burton post merger and became CCO. Ganthier is to become SVP for Customer Solutions Advocacy,reporting to Karen Quintos. Rory Read, Dell Technologies Chief Integration Officer was involved with Sakac in effecting the transfer. According to an intenral staff email from Sakac that was seen by us: "We ... need to constantly be evaluating how to make things simpler, clearer. Under Rory Read’s leadership, we have an opportunity to evaluate ways we can simplify our solutions, processes and how we work together to benefit our customers and team members." There is a critical opportunity to ensure a total closed feedback loop to make sure that we are getting the last mile enablement to our key customers and key partners right. There is also an opportunity for very senior customer advocacy for Dell Technologies about our solutions - not just our point products. This would require a technologist who would engage with our largest customers and partners; explain how we come together as a whole vs. the parts; showcase the solutions we have; help them with their journey; and, listen for feedback on how to get even better. If Bill Scannell and Marius Haas’ teams are the thousands of ‘hands and feet’ - think of this as critical ‘eyes and ears’ to close the feedback loop from the ‘outside in’ perspective. Of course, this role is far more than just eyes and ears. It’s vital that we understand our customers’ pain points as well as their outcomes so that we can guide them towards the right solutions for their business needs. This technologist will be a vital resource to our sales team and can work hand in hand with them to bring deep enterprise solutions expertise to the customer. #DellTechnologies CSPD president Chad Sakac told us: "There was a clear opportunity to do something obvious – our workloads and solutions are VERY linked to our tech alliance partners. Examples? #RedHat wants to build their RedHat #OpenStack Platform 10 with us. #SAPHANA platforms business is cooking. Our #Cloudera/#Hortonworks / #Splunk data analytics business is booming. #Microsoft wants to build #VxRack #Azure Stack with us. And of course, our Dell Technologies Strategically Aligned businesses like #VMware and #Pivotal are family – critical for solutions like #VxRail, #VxRack #SDDC, the Native #HybridCloud and more." "What do these all have in common? Tech Alliances + Solution = the offer. "Bringing the Tech Alliances team and the Solutions team together is what everyone always needs – simplification, focus. Armughan Ahmad is a long-time Dell veteran, and ideal for the combined role." "At the same time – a great opportunity for another great long time Dell veteran in Jim Ganthier. With big parts of integration in the rear-view mirror, having people that are technologists, that know our solutions could be part of our Chief Customer Office led by Karen Quintos. Jim’s experience with our solutions business helps us get leverage out to him being in front of many of our customers…. That feedback to Armughan represents a 'closed loop'. Likewise, bringing our Tech Alliances and Solutions teams together = a clear move, good for the customer, good for Dell EMC, good for Jim." He added: "We’re in full swing, man. Integration is going amazingly well. We’ve fully aligned our field model and account structure, the unified channel program is ready to roll, and we’re making a few additional fine-tune adjustments to come out of the gate strong as we kick off our fiscal year." Dell Technologies - the holding company for the trading entities - has got a load of debts to pay down following the $60bn+ buy of EMC, and anything that helps it achieve this has got to be pursued. Expect further tuning as time passes

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/06/dell_technologies_reorganising_emc/