If you were among the thousands of attendees at VMWorld 2017 in Las Vegas, you probably witnessed the buzz around the latest announcements coming from industry leaders across the spectrum of technologies and Dell was once again made news with the latest announcements featuring our hybrid cloud platforms.
If you didn’t get a chance to attend, here is a “one click down” view and perspective on the latest release for Dell’s Enterprise Hybrid Cloud – our turnkey platform built for VMware environments.
Combining the Power of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud With Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
One of the biggest pieces of news shared at the show was the addition of VxRack SDDC support within Enterprise Hybrid Cloud. As the only turnkey, rack-scale hyper-converged engineered system powered by VMware Cloud Foundation software, VxRack SDDC brings together vSphere, vSAN, and NSX into a natively integrated stack that then delivers the infrastructure foundation upon which Enterprise Hybrid Cloud is built providing one of the fastest and easiest ways to stand up and manage a VMware-based hybrid cloud platform.
In addition to adding support for VxRack SDDC, we also extended the capabilities for VxRail-based Enterprise Hybrid Cloud deployments. First announced at Dell World in May 2017, the addition of VxRail appliance support to Enterprise Hybrid Cloud provides smaller enterprises the same business outcomes of a more automated, agile IT service delivery but in a smaller footprint. This infrastructure option is also great for larger enterprises that are getting started with a hybrid cloud operational model.
In this release, we added the following for VxRail deployments:
- Multi-site support (up to 4 vCenters) not only for increased scale, but also as a way of providing application and VM-level disaster recovery using RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines.
- Expanded accelerated install, which covers now also Modular Add-Ons, such as BaaS and DR with RecoverPoint for VMs.
- Accelerated upgrade capability to reduce the time required to upgrade the platform while minimizing the complexity and risk of performing manual upgrades.
Delivering on Full Platform Lifecycle Management
One of the key tenets of Dell’s hybrid cloud platforms is that we do the integration and testing of new versions of software releases as they come out from both Dell, and in the case of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, VMware – showcasing the partnership and collaboration between Dell Technologies strategically aligned businesses. In this release, we updated the core software components including:
Updates to core platform software including VMware NSX, vSphere, and updates to the vRealize Suite as well as Dell’s ViPR, Avamar, RecoverPoint for VMs, and CloudLink SecureVM products.
Of special note are the new capabilities that Enterprise Hybrid Cloud can also leverage through the latest VMware vRealize Automation release (7.3). These include:
- Support for Microsoft Azure as a public cloud end point
- Parameterized blueprints to enhance reusability and reduce sprawl
- Configuration Automation Framework via Puppet Enterprise integration
- Simpler integration of existing ITSM tools through native integration of ServiceNow
- Health Service providing role-based and Tenant access to health data
- VMware Admiral Integration supporting collaboration between cloud administrators and development teams for traditional, containerized, and hybrid applications
With the continued goal to simplify the journey to a hybrid cloud operating model for our customers, you can quickly see that we are laser focused on providing the latest functionality and innovations into our platforms that will accelerate IT Transformation initiatives for enterprises of all sizes. If you would like to learn more, please visit: www.dellemc.com/enterprisehybridcloud