With its new hyper-converged infrastructure systems, ‘location, conditions of the edge don’t matter,’ says Dell
Dell Technologies has added two additions to its hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) VxRail portfolio – the all-new ruggedized VxRail D Series and the introduction of AMD EPYC processor support for the VxRail E Series. According to Shannon Champion, director of product marketing for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure at Dell Technologies, part of the motivation behind the latest products was the fact that as more and more enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside of data centers, new environmental challenges are emerging, including temperature and humidity control.
“As we look at some of the trends, what we’re seeing is a trend towards more and more data being processed at the edge,” Champion said during the company’s product announcement event, adding that as a result, enterprises are putting their infrastructure closer to where the data is being created.”
That closer location, however, might not be particularly suitable for network infrastructure. But, Dell claims that with its rugged VxRail systems, “location and conditions don’t matter.”
And that’s because the new ruggedized VxRail D Series delivers “a breadth of platform configurations with automation, orchestration and life cycle management” in a “compact and durable form factor, designed to withstand remote and harsh environments.” The system features 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and is 20 inches deep, making it the smallest VxRail yet. The system can also withstand extreme temperatures, sustain up to 40G of operational shock and operate at up to 15,000 feet.
In addition, Dell announced that AMD EPYC processors are now available in a new, efficient E Series platform on VxRail, 2nd Gen, which the company said will allow for a new option that has up to 64 high performance cores as well as support for PCIe 4, that can be deployed at the edge or in data centers. The press release stated that this is an ideal option for customers that need high-performance computing power, in a single socket platform.
Champion also made sure to restate that, built with VMware, the xRail series continues to be the only “jointly engineered HCI system.”
“[It is] built with VMware, for VMware environments,” she said, “and it’s designed to enhance the native VMware experience.”
