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
• Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack SDDC adopt advanced technologies as ideal foundation for multi-cloud strategies

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.

Customer quotes

Russell Phillips, vice president, Facilities and Development, Celtic Manor Resort"Celtic Manor is experiencing a time of considerable expansion with the new International Convention Centre Wales opening in 2019 and further hotel plans in the pipeline. By implementing Dell EMC VxRail Appliances on latest 14th generation PowerEdge servers into our data centers, we have seen amazing performance with existing applications. Management and monitoring has become more streamlined with one console allowing the team to concentrate on new technologies to enhance our business. The support is superb with only one number to call, and we now have a clear simple path for future storage expansion and compute. VxRail has been a great asset to our business growth plane, removing many technology barriers in one fell swoop."

Ryan Deppe, network operations supervisor, Cianbro Corporation"Dell EMC VxRail, built on a set-it-and-forget-it model, has played a substantial role in our ability to transform our IT. VxRail appliances have allowed my team to be more focused on business driven IT projects, creating innovations that drive the business and responding quickly to any requirements from our executive team or board. We've moved away from a 'keep the lights on' mentality to devoting more energy into aligning IT with our strategic business operations."

Analyst quote

Eric Sheppard, research vice president, Enterprise Servers and Storage, IDC"Hyper-converged systems continue to be the fastest growing segment of the converged systems market as enterprises and industries worldwide are bolstering adoption rates to simplify their IT infrastructures. The growth of HCI has key significance to the larger cloud ecosystem, creating possibilities of tighter integration between technologies. As the leading provider of HCI systems globally, Dell EMC's latest advancements, in partnership with VMware, offer even greater benefits to businesses look to transform modern and multi-cloud environments."

Partner quote

Yanbing Li, senior vice president and general manager, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware"Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC, co-developed by Dell EMC and VMware, provide turnkey technologies that enable organizations to quickly and easily use their VMware vSAN and VMware Cloud Foundation deployments. Customers can use these advanced solutions to rapidly modernize their data centers."

Additional resources

• Video: Dell EMC VxRail Appliances O? verview
• Video: Dell EMC VxRack SDDC Systems O? verview
• Whitepaper: VxRail Comprehensive Security by Design
• Follow the latest news on Twitter from @DellEMC

Copyright ? 2018. All Rights Reserved. Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks, Virtustream, VMware and the Dell Technologies logo are trademarks of Dell Technologies in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

1 Source: Ranking based on revenue from IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, 4Q17, April 3, 2018
2 Based on Dell EMC internal analysis using publically available competitor specs as of April 2018.