Organizations that need to deploy Dell PowerEdge servers will now have the benefit of the distributed file system and virtual storage features of Nutanix Inc.’s virtual computing platform.
As a next step to Dell’s partnership with Nutanix in June this year, the two companies announced that a new product line of Web-scale converged appliance called Dell XC Series will begin shipping with Nutanix software. The new line is made up of integrated solutions combining Dell PowerEdge servers powered by Nutanix software. The series features five appliances with price and performance options for virtual applications such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and enterprise business applications for deployment in data centres and branch office locations.
This is the first time the Nutanix’s software will be “decoupled” from the company’s hardware and it will benefit Dell customers who are looking for converged solutions for their Dell servers, according to Anton Granic, senior director at Nutanix. He said the integration of their technologies provides both companies with an excellent differentiating factor in the converged solutions space.
“Customers achieve simplicity and scalability of Web-scale for the Dell servers…Dell gets to offer their customers more solution options and our channel partners get to offer additional products to their customers,” Granic said.
“Customers were looking for a converged solution, but Dell hardware did not have such software before,” said Nikita Maheshwari, product marketing manager for Nutanix. “Some customers resorted to using other solutions, but they were not truly converged.”
While converged solutions abound, many of them still subscribe to a legacy three-tier approach, according to Granic. “This leads to an infrastructure siloes and forces organizations to maintain complex systems that require costly teams such as server teams, storage team and networking teams.”
The Nutanix solution “collapses” these silos just as it does with its NX-9000 converged server/storage appliance. The NX-9000 eliminates the need for network-based storage and has an operating system that includes data compression, deduplication, backup and ability to asynchronously replicate workloads.
“Today, companies both large and small see excellent value in an infrastructure that integrates storage, servers and software into a workload-centric solution that can be provisioned in hours and scaled in minutes,” said Alan Atkinson, vice-president of Dell storage, in a statement. “The Dell XC Series’ Web-scale technology is a game-changer when it comes to deployment, scale and control within the data centre.”
Dell XC Series features include:
- Streamlined purchase and deployment – XC Series appliances are delivered directly from Dell and Dell channel partners, with factory-installed software and hypervisors
- Proven and reliable, enterprise class Dell PowerEdge high performance x86 hardware
- Nutanix software with critical enterprise capabilities such as data locality for high performance, de-duplication and compression for capacity optimization, easy one-click hypervisor upgrades, and more
- Nutanix Prism UI providing the same consumer-grade simplicity as all Nutanix products
- Flexibility to run one of multiple hypervisors, including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V
- Deployment, integration, and operational services by Dell, with a single support number for all software and hardware support
The XC Series appliance will be sold by Dell sales teams and channel partners worldwide and will be generally available beginning Nov. 11 this year.