Dell delivers Cloud and Virtualization solutions

Dell has announced new cloud and virtualization solutions to help customers deliver increased performance, agility and efficiency. The new end-to-end offerings demonstrate the breadth of the Dell and VMware integrations and strength of the partnership.

“Customers are in the driver’s seat when it comes to procuring cloud and virtualization solutions and Dell is on target with its new offerings as the company is both innovating and partnering to give customers exactly the solutions that will best fit their business needs,” said Wayne Pauley, Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). “Dell’s new offerings should help customers boost IT performance and better enable business agility. When you include VMware’s virtualization technology with Dell’s solutions, customers will want to take a close look at how they can further enhance and quickly optimise their businesses with these joint solutions.”

Data Centre Solutions
Dell Networking today expanded its S-series portfolio with the new S6000, the industry’s highest-density 1RU 10/40GbE switching platform(1) for highly-virtualized data centres. A fixed form factor design, the S6000 offers up to twice the density and throughput while consuming up to 50 percent less power than previous generation top-of-rack switches. Built-in advanced virtualization and automation features help customers scale larger virtual deployments in a smaller physical footprint, and helps solve the challenge of bridging virtualized and non-virtualized aspects of the infrastructure.
• S6000 supports advanced network virtualization and software-defined networking features including hardware-accelerated L2 Gateway functionality for use with VMware NSX™, bridging traffic between virtualized and non-virtualized environments.
• Dell is also previewing enhanced functionality with Active Fabric Manager (AFM) 2.0 specifically for VMware environments. Active Fabric Manager provides simplified configuration, management and monitoring of Dell Active Fabric leaf and spine elements. With AFM 2.0, Dell will be introducing command line interface functionality for VMware vSphere® Distributed Switch allowing customers to now configure both physical and virtual fabric switches with common design templates and industry-standard command line syntax.

Dell also introduced:
• Fault Resilient Memory: A unique technology developed by Dell and VMware, this innovation allows Dell PowerEdge 12th generation server customers using VMware vSphere 5.5 to maximise available server memory while increasing protection for the hypervisor against memory faults, providing a stable virtualization platform for mission critical applications.
• Dell Storage integrations with VMware vSphere 5.5: New software releases, Dell Compellent vSphere Client Plug-in 2.0 and Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager for VMware 4.0, provide seamless integration with vSphere 5.5, enabling users to manage and provision storage, and easily protect and recover VMs using snapshot and replication schedules with the management of multiple storage arrays from a single VMware vSphere Web Client interface.
• OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter: With support for VMware vSphere 5.5 in version 2.0, this solution enables both vSphere Web and Standard Clients, while maintaining agent-free integration of iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller to simplify monitoring, automate cluster-level firmware updates and speed bare-metal deployment through the vCenter management console.
Cloud Client Computing Solutions
Dell Cloud Client Computing introduced a broad range of innovative technologies in the DVS Enterprise for VMware Horizon View solution to help customers enhance their corporate IT environments. DVS Enterprise for VMware View updates include:
• Broader array of pre-integrated solutions and reference architectures: New support for VMware Horizon View™ workloads with Dell Active System Manager, a new technical whitepaper for VMware Horizon View with PowerEdge VRTX , and new Branch Office Desktop and Business Process Desktop reference architectures, helps organisations accelerate the deployment and configuration of virtual desktop infrastructure, maximise efficiency and deliver predictable and reliable desktop experience to end users.
• Enhanced user experience: With support for virtualized high performance 3D graphics leveraging VMware View vSGA and vDGA and NVIDIA GRID K1/K2 GPUs, unified collaboration and VoIP with Microsoft Lync 2013, customers can access rich media and graphic applications from any location and on virtually any device, while providing IT departments with the ability to centrally host and manage sensitive user data and resources.
• Extended end point devices for VMware Horizon View with PCoIP: The Dell Wyse P25 and P45 zero clients and Dell Wyse D10DP virus-immune thin client developed exclusively to support PCoIP. Built on the latest AMD dual-core APU (accelerated processor unit) and auto-management technology, the D10DP delivers outstanding graphics performance, zero maintenance required and boots up in less than 10 seconds. PCoIP support is now offered on a powerful dual core thin client based on the virus-immune ThinOS firmware base.
• Enhanced strategic go-to-market partnership, technology partner ecosystem and channel commitment: With new joint channel sales processes, certified technology partners, incentives and dedicated technical and engineering resources, Dell is extending its commitment to serve partners who sell joint Dell-VMware solutions.

Dell also updated its cloud-based virtual desktop solution, Dell Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) On Demand with new features from Desktone’s secure multi-tenant VDI platform, delivering session-based desktops, published applications, persistent or non-persistent Windows 7 or XP desktops, RSA secure authentication, among others. With these updates and Dell’s rapid pilot program, one of the world’s largest Media and Entertainment Services companies is implementing this solution. Dell has also extended DaaS On Demand to Channel Partners for the first time and is offering a free trial so customers can quickly and easily experience the benefits of delivering secure, fully-featured virtual desktops to users without any upfront capital cost.

Software
Helping businesses of all sizes streamline virtualization, storage and cloud computing initiatives, Dell Software recently introduced the next generation of its Foglight® Virtualization Operations Management suite to help businesses address a number of data centre transformation challenges – from virtual environment optimisation to solving storage performance challenges and creating energy savings. The trio of products accelerate IT staff efficiency and can cut operational costs by reducing infrastructure complexity with end-to-end visibility and best practice advice built on years of virtualization management experience.
• Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise 7.0 is a highly scalable and cost effective product that now includes support for VMware vSphere 5.5 and vCloud Director to help virtual administrators monitor and ensure end-to-end visibility into the overall health of the virtualized environment.
• Foglight for Virtualization, Standard 7.0 is specifically designed for the small-to-medium size environment and includes new capacity management and planning functionality that helps to drive data center sustainability and reduce power consumption to decrease operating costs and capital expenditures, while improving workload performance.
• Foglight for Storage Management 3.0 helps IT staff better identify and recommend fixes to storage performance problems before they have an adverse effect on the physical or virtual infrastructure.