Datacenter Scalable Solutions: supporting our customers’ large scale data center deployments

Earlier this year we introduced a new line of business called Datacenter Scalable Solutions (DSS), designed to meet the specific needs of customers such as web tech, telecommunications service providers, hosting companies, oil and gas, and research organizations. These customers are large scale, but are in size just below hyperscale. This market is growing three times faster than the traditional x86 server market and requires us to evolve how we manufacture, forecast and service these customers. While operating in stealth mode prior to our public announcement in August, we consistently heard from these large-scale customers that they were looking for minimalistic server design, open and industry-standard systems management, and the right mix of performance, flexibility and scalability.

Today we are excited to introduce our first DSS-branded products, all powered by the Intel E5 v3 series CPUs:

  • DSS 1500 –this 2-socket workhorse server is tailor-made for compute-intensive applications and high-volume workloads in today’s large scale data center environments.
  • DSS 1510 – a 1-socket version of the DSS 1500, this flexible rack server delivers powerful performance and is ideal for web tech and hosting in addition to electronic design automation (EDA).
  • DSS 2500 – This 2U, 2-socket server with expandable internal storage is an excellent candidate for big data and similar workloads with storage needs.
  • DSS 7000 – this 4U storage server is the industry’s densest, packing in up to 90 hot-serviceable 3.5” drives. Ideal for scale-out file and object storage for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and other cloud applications with an exascale future in mind.

Large, just-below-hyperscale customers have different requirements from our PowerEdge customers. DSS customers typically purchase large volumes of equipment to run a narrow set of applications, designed specifically for scale-out to meet increasing demand as their business grows. In doing so, they deeply investigate and tweak the performance at both the code and hardware component level, which sometimes leads them to specify and qualify hardware components tuned to meet their specific needs.

Alternatively, many small to large organizations have IT staffs that support a broader set of applications to support a varied set of business functions. Our PowerEdge customers range from SMBs to large enterprises – in every vertical and around the world – and require a robust systems management portfolio to help monitor and remediate data center situations remotely from anywhere in the world.

We are excited to introduce the first DSS-branded products that have been purpose-built to provide the sub-hyperscale market with the technology they need. Featuring a minimalistic design and the right balance of performance, flexibility and openness, these servers provide versatility and scale while reducing infrastructure costs.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Dell DSS will continue to leverage its agile operating model to engage with customers on feature modifications, unique optimization requests and supply chain requirements in order to help them drive business innovation.

DSS-branded servers are available now directly from Dell and will soon be available from channel partners. Please contact a Dell sales representative to learn more.

About the Author: Jyeh Gan

16 year Dell veteran in global leadership roles ranging from engineering to marketing to strategy. Helped start Data Center Solutions (DCS), led Dell Data Center Infrastructure organization and led teams on assignment in Asia.