Most hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are delivered as an appliance or sometimes with a well-defined reference architecture. With an appliance, customers benefit from a pre-configured, validated and tested solution that eliminates risk and enables precise workload sizing, faster procurement and deployment, and streamlined hardware and software support. But configuring and optimizing the hardware for software
compatibility and performance to support a given use case are technically complex and require advanced levels of hardware, software, integration and testing expertise.
These factors help explain why Dell and Nutanix are a winning combination. Nutanix is the recognized leader in hyperconverged infrastructure software for mainstream enterprise workloads. As a global server, storage, networking and software company, Dell is able to rapidly integrate its proven hardware platform with Nutanix software to provide hyperconverged solutions that have been adopted by hundreds of organizations around the world.
In less than a year, the two teams collaborated closely to develop the Dell XC Series, a comprehensive family of hyperconverged appliances based on Nutanix software and Dell 13th generation PowerEdge servers. We’ve continued the pace of innovation since then and in January 2016, we added support for 1.6TB SSDs, 40TB capacity nodes, and self-encrypting SSDs and HDDs with various capacities for enhanced data security. The encrypted drives work with Gemalto’s SafeNet key management system and deliver advanced data security for financial, corporate, online commerce and government organizations.
The Dell XC Series includes 1U and 2U appliances with up to 4 compute/storage nodes each and flexible combinations of Intel Xeon processors, memory, storage and graphics processing units (GPUs). These appliances are configured, validated, tested and supported by Dell for specific workloads, including enterprise business applications (SQL, Oracle, Exchange, etc.), cloud and virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI).
Why should customers care about all this? In today’s challenging IT environments, fast access to the latest innovative technologies can free up staff time, reduce operating expenses and provide a competitive business advantage. Organizations deploying hyperconverged infrastructure need to be certain their solution incorporates the most advanced software running on a proven hardware platform with predictable performance for a given workload and environment. Global service and support, supply chain management and financial services are also important and give them the ability to implement these solutions quickly and with confidence, something that only Dell and Nutanix can deliver.
Stay tuned because there’s much more coming soon.