5 New Dell Edge Computing And PowerEdge Server Products Launched

Dell Technologies is diving deeper into the edge by unveiling five purpose-built edge computing solutions that channel partners can take to market in 2020.

Dell Dives Deeping Into Edge Computing

Dell Technologies is launching a slew of new edge computing products to drive more horsepower and data analytics at the edge including a new PowerEdge server and streaming analytics engine platform.

“This is a huge boost for our edge portfolio and for our channel partners to be able to take these new edge products to market for new opportunities,” said Dell’s Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president, service solutions product management and marketing in an interview with CRN. “I do think we are far ahead of anybody else in edge computing -- we have our PowerEdge [server line]. We provide the broadest portfolio and are confident in how we’re piecing everything together here.”

The $91 billion Round Rock, Texas-based infrastructure giant is the worldwide market leader in servers, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure. Dell’s founder and CEO Michael Dell recently told CRN that 2020 marks the beginning of the “data decade” and the edge will play a key role as more and more data is generated and processed outside traditional data centers.

“We’re going to continue to drive investments in the core business and innovation to allow customers to simplify their IT to unlock all the power of all this data. There’s a big explosion in the amount of data,” said Dell.

Here are the five new Dell edge computing products unveiled today that you need to know about.

The New PowerEdge XE2420 Server

The company’s biggest product unveiling today targeting the edge is Dell EMC’s new ruggedized 2U PowerEdge XE2420 server. The new two-socket server is a compact, high-performance server designed for space constrained and harsh operating environments. The PowerEdge XE2420 provides a low-latency system with flexibility to add up to four accelerators and 92TB of storage per server to handle growing data and application demands.

“It has support for four-GPUs, these are the T4 GPUs from Nvidia,” said Pendekanti. “We put these GPUs here because a lot of analytics is happening at the edge, so this is where our channel partners now have a viable product that can go into some of these space constrained locations at the edge. These are 2U, two-socket servers so there’s a lot of horsepower along with the GPUs that makes analytics easier.”

The PowerEdge XE2420 has operating temperature tolerance of up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit as well as a filtered bezel for dusty locations. The server provides low-touch management features like automatic SSL certificate enrollment and renewal.

“The XE2420 has the same management, framework and built-in security as the rest of our PowerEdge portfolio. So our partners can now get into some of these vertical industries with the PowerEdge XE2420 and they don’t have to relearn an entire server as well,” said Pendekanti.

Dells PowerEdge XE2420 will become generally available in North America starting March 31 and globally in April.

Streaming Data Platform

With billions of Internet of Things (IoT)-connected devices coming online each year, the new Dell EMC Streaming Data Platform is tailored-made for big data ingestion and analysis at the edge. The new enterprise-grade platform delivers a single solution for all customers’ data that provides auto-scaling ingestion, tiered storage with historical recall on-demand, and unified analytics.

“Data itself has no value, but the value is in the information created out of the data. That is why we have come up with a unified processing and a unified analytics engine,” said Pendekanti.

Dell, which owns a majority stake in virtualization superstar VMware, said the software inside the Streaming Data Platform is not a prepackage appliance but a significant piece of the puzzle.

“By having a mix of Dell Isilon [storage] that houses all the data, then we bring in PowerEdge for the compute and then with this software element -- we’re able to create this streaming data platform. It’s a mix of compute, storage and software to help in the data ingestion process,” he said. “We’re proving all the correct infrastructure pieces and depending on our partners to meet the data needs of our customers today.”

Dell’s Streaming Data Platform is now available globally.

iDRAC9 Datacenter

Dell’s new remote access controller, the iDRAC9 Datacenter, is the company’s software management technology that adds streaming data analytics capabilities critical for understanding edge operations to all PowerEdge servers. The software has up to 20 new metric reports providing millions of data points per server allowing customers to leverage AI operations to create custom routines based on the specific data they want to analyze on iDRAC9.

With streaming telemetry on iDRAC9, customers can discover trends, fine-tune operations and create predictive analytics to reduce downtime and ensure peak performance, according to Dell. iDRAC9 simplified automated certificate enablement is designed to provide zero-touch security and the edge.

“iDRAC9 takes a very deep look at three elements: security, management and the control part of it to ensure that we’re able to secure everything from the edge to the cloud to the data center,” said Pendekanti. “We’ve improved the ability for someone to deploy the OS remotely via iDRAC9 which is extremely helpful. With the telemetry, we’re able to monitor not just the standard health of the server, but into the subsystem details like GPUs and optical drives. This is a real-time stream of data that can be fed back to a channel provider who’s running a customer NOC to identify problems as they occur and even ahead of potential down time.”

Its remote deployment capability can reduce administration time by up to 99 percent per server after initial setup compared to manual deployment, according to Dell. The iDRAC9 Datacenter is now available globally for partners to sell.

Modular Data Center Micro 415

Dell has created a new purpose-built edge enclosure that holds up to 20 rack units of IT infrastructure. The new Dell EMC Modular Data Center Micro 415 aims to bring the data center to any ruggedized environments. The enclosure provides pre-integrated power, cooling and remote management in a size shorter and narrower than a parking spot that speeds up the storage, processing and analysis of nearby data.

“This is an opportunity for our partners to go back in and use our modular data centers as part of a deployment scenario in retail, healthcare, warehouses and for the telco towers coming up from 5G,” said Pendekanti. “Dell partners might have built a solution to do warehouse management, but you might be constrained on where you can locate the environment. But with this new enclosure, you can serve your customer in any location in a safe way. Partners can expand their footprint.”

The Micro 415 can house up to seven of Dell’s new PowerEdge XE2420 servers, 14U in total, enabling 644TB of storage in a single rack. Dell’s Modular Data Center Micro 415 will become generally available in the second half of 2020.

HPC Ready Architecture For AI And Data Analytics

By 2022, enterprises will be creating and processing over 50 percent of their data outside the data center or cloud, according to research firm Gartner.

The new Dell EMC HPC Ready Architecture for AI and Data Analytics includes a rack of technology that includes PowerSwitch networking gear, PowerEdge servers for management and compute nodes, Dell’s Datacenter Scalable Solutions (DSS) and the company’s Isilon scale-out NAS storage solution. This pre-integrated rack is now generally available.

In terms of all the new edge products, Pendekanti said organizations can increase their RIO, lower total cost of ownership and protect their valuable data.

“Our goal now is to ensure that we get the most breathe and depth at the edge for our partners and customers,” said Pendekanti. “The edge is still an emerging market. We keep on maturing how we come out with the right products to help our customers and partners. These launches prove that we are a leader at the edge.”