Dell Technologies collaborates with a broad ecosystem of public cloud providers to help our customers support container-based cloud-native environments and place data and applications where it makes the most sense. With that in mind, we’re happy to announce that Amazon EKS Anywhere has been validated on Dell PowerFlex software defined infrastructure bare metal.
Amazon EKS Anywhere is a deployment option for Amazon EKS that enables customers to easily create and operate Kubernetes clusters on-premises with easy connectivity and portability to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Deploying Amazon EKS Anywhere on Dell Technologies infrastructure streamlines application development and delivery by allowing organizations to easily create and manage on-premises Kubernetes clusters. This further increases productivity for DevOps teams that want to leverage end-to-end automation and management of IT operations for cloud-native application development.
The rise of DevOps is leading businesses and information technology (IT) organizations everywhere to rethink how they develop and manage their infrastructure. This shift requires a developer-oriented model involving automated processes, rapid resource delivery and reliable infrastructure. Amazon EKS Anywhere drives operational simplicity through Kubernetes orchestration by helping customers automate cluster management, reduce support costs and eliminate the redundant effort of using multiple open-source or third-party tools for operating Kubernetes clusters.
Dell PowerFlex is engineered to streamline operations and boost agility with intelligent, software-driven automation. PowerFlex Manager, a unified management toolset for PowerFlex systems, simplifies IT operations and lifecycle management tasks by providing extensive automation which leads to a 47% reduction of total cost of operations and makes IT infrastructure teams over 70% more efficient.¹ Combining automated Kubernetes cluster management with intelligent, automated software-defined infrastructure is an impactful option for customer on-premises Kubernetes deployments. This allows IT organizations to provide infrastructure as code and empower their DevOps teams to be the innovation engine for their businesses.
Today’s announcement includes certification of another DevOps-ready platform, and a second PowerFlex configuration for running Amazon EKS Anywhere on PowerFlex. Adding to the previously announced Amazon EKS Anywhere on PowerFlex with VMware in January 2022, customers can now deploy and run their Amazon EKS Anywhere on PowerFlex using bare metal or VMware vSphere.
Dell PowerFlex is an unbounded software-defined infrastructure that maximizes IT ecosystem flexibility. Capabilities such as unified block and file storage, NVMe/TCP connectivity and broad operating system (OS)/hypervisor/platform support flexibility to consolidate disparate, heterogeneous workloads onto a common platform. This gives our customers more flexibility and choice by letting them decide where and how they run their containers and cloud-native apps.
Customers will enjoy the incredible performance, flexibility, automation and ease of operations of Dell PowerFlex Software defined infrastructure and the flexibility of the Amazon EKS Anywhere managed service. To learn more, visit here.
The PowerFlex container storage module (CSI) was used for the validated bare metal configurations. The CSI driver is leveraged by DevOps and platform teams to deliver dynamic and automated provisioning capabilities of EKS-A. Persistent Storage Volumes utilizing native Kubernetes application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing infrastructure as code operations. Dell also provides additional container storage modules (CSMs) for observability, authentication, resiliency and replication to further enhance storage proficiency.
Our work with AWS reinforces the importance of on-premises infrastructure and Kubernetes orchestration integration in driving the future of IT. Customers can run their Kubernetes orchestration in the public cloud or on premises through a single console with Amazon EKS Anywhere, while having the reliability, security, ease of operations and global support that Dell Technologies infrastructure offers. At Dell Technologies, we are committed to transforming businesses and shaping the future of innovation and look forward to collaborating with AWS now and in the future on additional infrastructure platforms to make this vision a reality. Providing more choices for our customers is a key priority for both AWS and Dell.
Additional information on Amazon EKS Anywhere can be found in their announcement blog. For additional details, visit the Dell PowerFlex page.
¹ IDC White Paper: Dell PowerFlex Helps Enterprise Organizations Streamline IT and Storage Operations. September 2020.