15 Hot Products Unleashed At Dell EMC World 2017

Dell EMC's Data Center Assault

This week's Dell EMC World, which replaces the old EMC World that ran for years before Dell last year closed its EMC acquisition, is a showcase for the kind of massive push the combined company is making in the data center business. That push is being fueled by Dell's industry-leading server business and growing networking business, as well as by EMC's industry-leading storage business and the virtualization and cloud technology of VMware.

Dell EMC is using Dell EMC World to highlight how much its product lines have changed since the merger, and look at more changes to come. Many are based on the company's upcoming 14th generation PowerEdge server line, which is expected to not only be the company's flagship server product going forward, but also a key component in the company's storage and converged infrastructure offerings. Also driving the change in Dell EMC's product lines is its private and hybrid cloud technology which will increasingly tie into the company's overall product strategy.

Whether you made it to Las Vegas for Dell EMC World or not, CRN was there. Turn the page, and see what Dell EMC has in store.

PowerEdge 14G Servers

The highlight of Dell EMC World's product launches will be the company's new 14th-generation, or 14G, PowerEdge server family. The new server family is targeted at rack-scale, web-scale, converged, hyper-converged and other modern data center applications. Dell EMC also plans to pair its 14G servers to a wide swath of its storage and converged infrastructure offerings including its VxRail, VxRack and Dell EMC XC hyper-converged appliances.

Cloud Flex For HCI

With Dell EMC's new Cloud Flex for HCI, customers will be able to choose to pay for VxRail or Dell EMC XC offerings on a per-month basis over three years, with the total outlay over that time about the same as if the appliances were purchased outright. Monthly fees decrease over time, and the appliances can be returned to Dell EMC with no fee after the first 12 months. Customers can add nodes or upgrade the appliances as needed. It is slated to be available in the third quarter.

VDI Complete

VDI Complete is a turnkey offering for virtual desktop infrastructure that contains all the elements necessary to implement VDI. There are three variations, including a bundle with a PowerEdge server, VMware ESX, and vCenter and Horizon that is assembled by the customer or partner; a vSAN ReadyNode-based stack; and a complete system using VxRail or Dell EMC XC. Sizing of the bundle depends on the types of client devices, such as Wyse thin clients or Dell laptops, and whether the partner or the customer will furnish the client devices.

Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack

Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is a bundled offering which includes VMware cloud and Dell EMC storage technologies. Unlike the company's Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, or EHC offering, the new Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is a turnkey platform for building a hybrid cloud offering with the same look, feel, and technology as the Microsoft Azure public cloud. It was developed in partnership with Microsoft as a way to build an Azure-based private or hybrid cloud with full encryption and data protection. Customers can add Pivotal Cloud Foundry to let developers develop Azure-based applications.

VxRail 4.0

This latest version of the VMware-based hyper-converged infrastructure appliance has been enhanced with new enterprise capabilities including automated deployment and management of multiple appliances, hardware flexibility aimed at reducing the processor core-based cost of ownership, and improved interoperability with other Dell EMC technologies by leveraging the centralized Dell EMC Secure Remote Services (ESRS) gateway.

Dell EMC XC Enhancements

The Dell EMC XC Series hyper-converged appliances, which are based on Dell EMC server hardware and Nutanix software, are now available in several new versions. These include the Dell EMC XC430 Xpress, with a lower entry cost and a smaller size starting at 3U for SMB; versions bundled with Dell EMC Avamar Virtual Edition, Data Domain and Data Domain Virtual Edition; and guides to deploying Pivotal Cloud Foundry on the XC Series.

New VxRack Editions

The Dell EMC VxRack rack-scale hyper-converged infrastructure offerings were given a number of upgrades including support for Dell EMC PowerEdge R930 servers for performance-demanding applications such as on-line transaction processing or in-memory data bases, as well as an option to add highly scalable next-generation Cisco Nexus 93180YC-EX switches. The company also introduced VxRack Flex, powered by its ScaleIO software-defined storage, and VxRack SDDC powered by VMware Cloud Foundation.

VMAX 950F

The VMAX 950F is Dell EMC's new all-flash enterprise storage array family flagship product. New with the VMAX 950F is a 68 percent increase in the performance as measured by IOs per second, as well as a 30 percent increase in response time. Its performance gains come from a combination of new Intel

Broadwell chips, new memory support, and upgraded software that take advantage of them. Software enhancements include secure snapshot support for long-term snapshot retention, as well as enhancements for the DARE (data at rest encryption) SAN security requirements. It is scheduled to ship in June.

XtremIO X2

The new second-generation XtremIO X2 high-end all-flash block storage platform offers a 25 percent increase in the data reduction capabilities compared with the previous version, and supports scale-up in addition to scale-out to let customers add additional storage densities to previously deployed nodes while cutting total cost of ownership by half on a per-gigabyte basis, Dell EMC said. It is targeted at applications that benefit from its built-in deduplication and ICDM (integrated copy data management) capabilities including virtualized desktop infrastructure and test-dev.

Next-Generation Unity

Also refreshed is the Unity all-flash midrange array line with four models that take advantage of new CPU and memory capabilities. They offer 16 times the storage density, with up to 80 15.3-TB SSDs, and a 30 percent performance improvement over the current generation. They can handle a maximum file size of 256 TB compared with the current 64 TB. Installation takes less than10 minutes, according to Dell EMC. It is scheduled to ship in July.

SC Series 5020

Dell EMC also introduced the latest iteration of its SC Compellent midrange storage arrays. The SC5020 has double the capacity of previous SC4020 models, and offers 45 percent more IOs per second performance. It is the first in the SC family to support a wide range of Dell EMC enterprise storage software including PowerPath automated data path management and load-balancing software, ViPR storage automation software, RecoverPoint disaster recovery software and Connectrix storage networking.

Isilon Infinity/ONEFS 8.1

Dell EMC's Isilon scale-out NAS platform for unstructured data is getting a new architecture called Infinity. With Infinity, Isilon gets a 6X improvement in IOs per second performance and an 11X improvement in throughput, the company said. The new Infinity architecture gives Isilon its first modular scale-out storage capability with separate compute and storage nodes to allow compute and storage to scale independently of each other within a single chassis. The company is also introducing its first all-flash Isilon offering. The new Isilon, scheduled to ship in June, also squeezes what used to require 16U of rack space into 4U.

Integrated Data Protection Appliance

The Integrated Data Protection Appliance is a new turnkey offering that combines the company's Data Domain backup appliance with a new version of its Data Protection Suite software. The appliance allows customers to go from installation to backup in less than three hours, according to Dell EMC.

Data Domain, DDVE, New Cloud Replication Capabilities

Dell EMC is moving to more closely tie its Data Domain Data Protection Appliance to public clouds with new capabilities, including the ability to back up data from workloads in Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services clouds to Data Domain and to replicate data between on-premise Data Domain appliances and cloud-based DDVE, or Data Domain Virtual Edition. DDVE, which was released last year, currently runs in on-premise cloud environments, but is slated to also run on Azure and AWS clouds sometime during the second quarter. DDVE eventually will be able to run in any cloud environment, Dell EMC said.

Dell EMC Networking S5148F-ON

The S5148F-ON is the newest member of the Dell EMC open networking family. The company calls it the industry's first 25-Gigabit Ethernet open networking switch. It features either 48 25-GbE ports and six 100-GbE ports or 72 25-GbE ports, and is optimized for 25-GbE server and storage connectivity coupled with 100-GbE fabric uplinks. The switch is fully programmable, and supports open network install environment (ONIE) and Dell Networking OS10.

Dell EMC ScaleIO.Next

ScaleIO, Dell EMC's enterprise-grade software-defined block storage offering, was upgraded with several enhancements at Dell EMC World. The new version, dubbed ScaleIO.Next, includes inline compression, enhanced snapshots capabilities, granular thin provisioning, and seamless volume migration in increased storage efficiency; simplified management for VMware with support for VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols); and the promise of higher performance and reduced latency when Dell EMC PowerEdge 14G servers with NVMe flash drives start shipping. ScaleIO.Next will be available as a software-only offering, an appliance based on Dell PowerEdge servers, and as part of a VxRack rack-based hyper-converged infrastructure offering.