Last Dell Technologies World, we unveiled the next evolution in the Dell APEX portfolio with Dell APEX Storage for Public Cloud, a family of native public cloud offers that accelerates ground-to-cloud strategies and provides the building blocks for a universal storage layer. As a central component of this family, we announced the Dell APEX Navigator, a unified experience delivering simple, secure software that streamlines storage management and operations across environments.
In November, Dell showcased how ITOps teams could simplify management and operations with the multicloud storage features in APEX Navigator. At Dell Technologies World 2024, we’re excited to expand APEX Navigator with the availability of APEX Navigator for Kubernetes, a new way to resolve Kubernetes data storage complexity and scalability challenges for Dell PowerFlex.
“Traditional Data Center and cloud technologies are mixing together in new and powerful ways to help the industry continuously improve. IDC, Gartner, and many others have said the speed of deployment and ease of consumption are critical capabilities. APEX Navigator does a great job of bringing all of this together in one place for your storage environment. AHEAD is looking forward to seeing what APEX Navigator does next.”
– Jonathan Kowall, Manager, Specialist Engineering – AHEAD
Dell APEX Navigator for Kubernetes: A Unified Experience
APEX Navigator for Kubernetes is a web-based management experience that
unlocks stateful capabilities for applications running in multisite Kubernetes environments. Available today, APEX Navigator for Kubernetes enables data administration excellence for your storage admins and DevOps team members, extending persistent enterprise storage to Kubernetes through an easy, scalable way to deploy, manage and operate Dell Container Storage Modules.
Key features include:
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- Seamlessly onboard a Kubernetes cluster in five minutes1 and let Navigator automatically discover essential resources like StorageClasses, Namespaces and more.
- Reduce software deployment time by 72% and gain rapid access to Dell’s app mobility, observability and authorization features.2
- Embrace scalable fleet management (multicluster) in one centralized interface. Apply quota and RBAC rules effortlessly and govern across Kubernetes landscapes.
- Establish a comprehensive view of your storage capacity and performance with familiar open-source tools such as Prometheus and Grafana.
- Clone stateful applications and metadata across clusters with a completely built-in operational experience the enables you to start an app mobility job in less than 60 seconds.3
These features collectively provide the enterprise storage administration capabilities needed to manage and operate Kubernetes environments powered by PowerFlex. Customers can test out the capabilities themselves through a 90-day, risk-free evaluation of our premium features.4
But that’s not all—APEX Navigator for Kubernetes will continue to expand. By the end of this year, it is planned to support Dell PowerScale and Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift.
“Dell APEX Navigator provides centralized storage software management that enables customers to rapidly adapt as business and workload requirements evolve. Our research indicates that management and operations teams increasingly want to simplify their IT environments and improve business agility, and Dell’s enterprise-class multicloud and Kubernetes data storage capabilities are well positioned to help with these challenges.”
– Scott Sinclair, Practice Director – Enterprise Strategy Group
Dell PowerFlex: Performance, Management, and Security
As modern applications, such as Kubernetes, become popular in dynamic IT landscapes, agility is crucial. Adopting data-heavy workloads and advanced AI technologies heightens demand for versatile and robust IT infrastructure, and PowerFlex stands at the forefront of this transformation. It offers a consistent user experience from on-premises to public cloud environments that complements APEX Navigator. PowerFlex also forms the foundation of a universal block storage layer across multicloud locations, providing a common set of storage capabilities enabling data mobility and streamlining cloud storage management across platforms.
Available at the end of this month, the latest version of PowerFlex is pushing the boundaries of versatility to keep your operations ahead of the curve. This latest update brings significant advancements, including:
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- Enhanced performance. Realize up to 70% increase in write6 performance using the latest generation PowerFlex nodes with Dell’s innovative software-defined persistent memory (SDPM) technology and satisfy the voracious appetite of performance-thirsty applications.
- Streamlined management and operations. PowerFlex Manager failover now happens in as little as five seconds,7 enhancing its availability. Monitor performance and trends over time with deeper integration of APEX AIOps Infrastructure Observability, formerly CloudIQ.
- Fortified security. Building on our embedded security foundation with Secured Component Verification (SCV), IT administrators can easily ensure system components match their original specifications from manufacturing to installation. Additionally, this update includes the latest in data encryption and key management technologies, as well as audit logs.
Through these updates, PowerFlex reaffirms its position as a foundational component for organizations looking to thrive in an evolving IT world, offering extreme business agility, exceptional performance and immense consolidation capabilities.
And to ensure you get the best experience, Dell Support Services provides highly trained global experts around the clock to address your APEX Navigator and PowerFlex needs. With a 97% customer satisfaction rate, our world-class support team minimizes disruptions and helps you maintain a high level of productivity and outcomes.
Meet Us at Dell Technologies World
Don’t miss our sessions at Dell Technologies World for a chance to learn more about APEX Navigator for Kubernetes and PowerFlex. Stop by the Dell Technologies booth on the show floor, or the hands-on-lab area, to get a demo of the solution with one of our experts.
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- Session ID: 7006P-2 – Chart your course to Kubernetes data-storage simplicity. Tuesday, May 22, 2024 – 3:00 PM-4:00 p.m. PT
- Session ID: 7034P-1 – PowerFlex: Learn best practices to deliver IaaS using infrastructure as code. Wednesday, May 22, 2024 – 8:30 AM-9:30 a.m. PT
Not attending Dell Technologies World and want to learn more? Visit the following pages for deeper insights:
Or view our technical demos to see APEX Navigator in action:
1 Based on internal testing, April 2024.
2 Based on internal testing, April 2024, when measuring the Navigator-driven deployment of Dell Container Storage Modules across five clusters.
3 Based on internal testing, April 2024.
4 Subject to availability. Terms and conditions apply: for Dell APEX Navigator for Kubernetes view the Dell Cloud Service Offering Agreement and Dell APEX Navigator for Kubernetes Service Offering Description. Terms apply to Dell offers only.
5 Based on internal Dell testing of FG storage pools using 16G based nodes compared to 15G based PowerFlex nodes, March 2024.
6 Based on Dell’s internal testing using PowerFlex 4.6, 16G nodes, and Dell’s new Software-Defined Persistent Memory technology vs. NVDIMMs. Your test results may vary. March 2024.
7 Based on Dell’s internal testing using, March 2024.
8 Based on an internal analysis from Dell Technologies, February 2024.
