It’s been a busy couple of years for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. We announced the concept as Project Dimension at VMworld 2018 and then announced VMware Cloud on Dell EMC’s initial availability at Dell World last year. The focus has always been to deliver a cloud experience to customers on-premises. This gives customers the best of best worlds: the simplicity and agility of the public cloud with the security and control of on-premises infrastructure. Originally, we were focused on edge locations, but as we went through initial availability, we began turning our attention to datacenter use cases as we heard demand for it from customers. However, while VMware on Dell EMC worked for datacenters, it wasn’t properly optimized for them. That changes today!
Today I am very excited to introduce the 2nd generation of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC to support high density and high-performance datacenter use cases. Let’s dive right into all the new capabilities that make this release a great fit for datacenters.
New enterprise-scale rack
This release introduces a new, full-height 42 rack unit infrastructure rack, which includes redundant Dell EMC network switches and smart power distribution units, and SD-WAN remote management devices. With this release, this new rack can support up to 16 instance nodes.
As you can see from the diagram, the first rack R1 includes features like a UPS, which R2 doesn’t, as we assume that there is a UPS at the datacenter level.
New node types for memory- and storage-hungry workloads
This release broadens the number and breadth of Dell EMC VxRail instance types now offered for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. Our latest VxRail hyper-converged host is based on dual 2nd generation Intel SP processors, providing 48 cores, and paired with 768 GB RAM and 23 TB of NVMe all-flash storage. This new host type is optimal for hosting workloads with heavier CPU, memory, and storage demands such as Database, AI/ML applications, and Virtual Desktop type workloads.
All of our current host type including the new introduction are displayed in the following table:
G1s.small
M1s.medium
M1d.medium
Chassis Form Factor
VxRail E560F 1U
VxRail E560F 1U
VxRail E560F 1U
CPU sockets and cores
1 x 24
1 x 24
2 x 24
vCPU
48 (24 Cores)
48 (24 Cores)
96 (48 Cores)
RAM
256GB
384GB
768GB
vSAN Disk Groups
1 (800GB SAS)
2 (800GB SAS)
2 (1.6TB NVMe)
All flash Storage
11.5TB (SATA)
23TB (SATA)
23TB (NVMe)
Networking
2 x 10Gb
2 x 10Gb
2 x 25Gb
With three different host types and two different rack types to choose, corporations now have the freedom to design the most optimal system for their specific workloads and applications.
Support for business continuity via VMware Horizon
Virtual desktops are a critical capability for enabling business continuity in today’s environment. VMware Horizon enables enterprises to offer their remote workforces more secure access to their desktops and applications—especially valuable in highly regulated industries such as healthcare and financial services. VMware Cloud on Dell is now fully certified for VMware Horizon to deliver virtual desktops on-premises, at the edge or in the datacenter.
Validated backup and recovery solutions
Data Protection is a critical requirement for modern workloads and IT strategy. Organizations are looking to ensure that their data is properly backed up with full search capability. As part of this release, we have introduced two new certifications:
Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery solution, the industry’s leading solution for data protection
Veeam Availability Suite
Both of these solutions give organizations enterprise class data protection and recovery capabilities.
Get your apps onto VMware Cloud on Dell EMC quickly
In this release, we will feature bulk workload migration capabilities through VMware HCX as a technical preview*. VMware HCX enables customers to migrate hundreds of live workloads at once, with no downtime, to dramatically reduce time to deployment and simplify operational complexity. This is a highly utilized feature on VMware Cloud on AWS and within datacenters when corporations have a strong need to move large numbers of workloads from one environment to another.
Self-service expandable capacity
A big part of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC’s cloud experience is being able to order new racks via our online self-service order interface. Customers make the order and a few weeks later, one or more racks show up where they want. However, after the racks were ordered, there wasn’t an easy way to add additional nodes. With this release, we’ve now added support to expand node capacity from the self-service order interface. Customers can now start small and easily expand capacity as their application needs demand.
Hybrid Cloud Management
VMware has a portfolio of solutions to support customers’ hybrid cloud deployments – VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, and in the near future, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. A common hybrid cloud control plane fuels all three products underneath and provide a single pane of glass for visibility and control. The VMware Cloud Console provided this for VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs. In this release, we’ve extended it to bring visibility and management to VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDCs as well.
The above screenshot shows the VMware Cloud Console managing SDDCs in both VMware Cloud on AWS (Frankfurt region) and VMware Cloud on Dell EMC (at a location in Dallas, TX)!
Learn more
I am very excited about the announcement of 2nd generation of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC and will participate in a special TheCUBE digital event tomorrow, Thursday May 21st, at 8am PST. Please check it out!
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