14 DAY TRIAL // In the effort to standardize and simplify datacenters, Dell has been working on realizing its vision of a flexible and dynamically orchestrated infrastructure. The technology released by the enterprise will move datacenter environments closer to this vision, through a combination of 10Gb Ethernet and infrastructure-management tools. These solutions have taken the form of the Advanced Infrastructure Management and new Dell storage arrays and networking equipment.
“Dell is taking a practical approach to developing its IT and datacenter solutions for large organizations,” Matt Eastwood, group vice president of IDC’s Enterprise Platform Group, said. “Today’s new compute fabrics must be flexible – with modular components that are easily managed and that can adjust and change with the demands of the environment. Dell’s heritage and legacy of focusing on standards-based technologies is well-suited for these environments and can drive real returns for customers.”
Dell presented a complete solution for datacenter optimization composed of infrastructure-management technologies and 10GbE Efficient Unified Fabric solutions. The infrastructure manager allows a datacenter to be completely run by a single administrator by dynamically allocating workloads without the need for cabling or software modifications. This capability extends to both physical and virtual workloads and can integrate into already existing heterogeneous environments.
The company also released a series of networking switches, which will complement the increased efficiency and better infrastructural management capabilities. These products include the Dell PowerConnect 8024F, which is Dell’s first 1U 10GbE switch, and Dell's first Converged Network Adapter for Dell PowerEdge servers. The PowerConnect 8024F has 24 ports with SFP+ and four combo 10GBase-T ports. The full wire speed is of 10Gb and the switch supports dense virtualization deployments and is excellent for converged Ethernet environments.
The dual port CAN (Converged Network Adapter) enables users to establish working connections between their servers and Fibre Channel SANs (through a 10Gb Enhanced Ethernet fabric), while allowing the same physical infrastructure to be used for different types of network traffic without losing connectivity with their existing storage infrastructures.
The 10GbE architecture not only allows for the establishment of the aforementioned connections but, on the other hand, can enable reductions of 50% for networking acquisition costs and of 76% for networking costs. Dell has released several server configurations, which integrate both the infrastructure-management solution and the 10GbE Efficient Unified Fabric. Examples of such servers are the EqualLogic PS6010 and PS6510, which are capable of delivering up to ten times more bandwidth per port and up to 250% more bandwidth per array.
Dell also announced its release of the EqualLogic PS6500X and version 4.3 of the EqualLogic firmware. When combined, groups of EqualLogic PS6500X with 10K SAS drives are capable of attaining a storage capacity of 460TB, compared with the previous maximum of 115.2TB, and up to 768TB per group with the EqualLogic PS6500E. What the firmware cannot accomplish is support thin provisioning or tiering inside an EqualLogic enclosure and automatically move data from an enclosure to another, but neither is this ability necessary for the small and mid-sized arrays that it targets.
The complete business-ready configurations offered by Dell are made up of two PowerEdge M610 blade servers, an EqualLogic PS6000 iSCSI storage area network, two PowerConnect 6220M blade switches and a choice between a 24-port Brocade Foundry 424 or Dell PowerConnect 6224 networking switch. 11th-generation PowerEdge servers also got a new upgrade, namely the Dell Lifecycle Controller, which is an an embedded management solution designed to improve deployment and maintenance. The controller does this by providing administrators with the possibility to remotely discover servers, automatically update the firmware of replaced parts and even deploy operating systems at any time and in any locations.
“Our competitors are trying to take short cuts by providing proprietary stacks that create lock in and really only benefit the vendor,” Praveen Asthana, vice president, Dell Enterprise Storage and Networking, said. “Dell has a completely different vision: we provide a dynamically configurable offering that is really easy to set up or use because it comes pre-assembled or ready for assembly based on proven reference architectures; yet it remains fully open and works with a customer’s existing infrastructure. This way we maintain customer choice and remain pragmatic.”
Out of these solutions introduced by the enterprise, immediately available are the Advanced Infrastructure Manager (in the US and Canada), Dell EqualLogic PS6500X, Dell PowerConnect 8024F, the Dell ProConsult Storage Consolidation services and the Dell Lifecycle Controller firmware version 1.3 (available for download on Dell's website). Availability for the other datacenter solutions is set for no later than 2010.
Dell Business Ready Configurations are expected to become available soon (first in the US and Canada, and in other countries in 2010) and the PowerConnect-B-RX, B-DCX 4S and B-8000 series of networking products will be globally available on February 15. The PS6010 10GbE is set to achieve worldwide availability on December 15, 2009 and the PS6510 on January 15, 2010. Dell's website contains full information on the Dell EqualLogic Storage solutions, the Dell Global Services, the company's networking solutions, as well as on the various servers.