Dell Delivers Cloud And Virtualisation Solutions With VMware

Dell announced new cloud and virtualisation 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.

Dell Networking has expanded its S-series portfolio with the new S6000, the industry’s highest-density 1RU 10/40GbE switching platform for highly-virtualised datacentres. 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 virtualisation and automation features help customers scale larger virtual deployments in a smaller physical footprint, and helps solve the challenge of bridging virtualised and non-virtualised aspects of the infrastructure.

S6000 supports advanced network virtualisation and software-defined networking features including hardware-accelerated L2 Gateway functionality for use with VMware NSX, bridging traffic between virtualised and non-virtualised 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 virtualisation 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.

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.

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 Partnersfor 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.

Helping businesses of all sizes streamline virtualisation, 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 center 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 virtualisation management experience.

Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise 7.0is 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 virtualised 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 datacentre sustainability and reduce power consumption to decrease operating costs and capital expenditures, while improving workload performance.
Foglight for Storage Management3.0 helps IT staff better identify and recommend fixes to storage performance problems before they have an adverse effect on the physical or virtual infrastructure.

“Virtualisation and cloud computing are pushing customers to find solutions that are fast to deploy, easy to manage and optimised for performance,” said Russ Fujioka, vice president, Global Alliances, Partners and Marketing Innovation, Dell. “With Dell’s new customer-inspired solutions unveiled today, Dell is demonstrating how we’re at the forefront of delivering innovative cloud and virtualisation solutions that combine leading solutions from VMware and Dell.”

“Dell and VMware share the goal of helping customers optimise their cloud and virtualisation solutions for agility, dynamic response and value,” said Sanjay Katyal, vice president, Global Alliances and OEMs, VMware. “Today’s announcements by Dell demonstrate how we’re partnering together to build mature, tightly integrated joint solutions to help customers reach their full potential.”