Dell Expands Enterprise Technology Portfolio

Dell announced a variety of business-centric products and services on June 17, primarily servers and consulting offerings designed to make the creation of data centers, and the implementation of virtualization, a more efficient task for the enterprise and SMBs alike.

The company’s small-to-midsize-business offerings include the EqualLogic PS4000 storage array and the PowerVault NX3000 NAS (network-attached storage) device. The former is designed to offer enterprise-class storage virtualization, thin provisioning and management capabilities, while the latter reduces duplicate files with SIS (Single-Instant Storage) technology while sharing files across Windows and non-Windows clients. The NX3000 can also double as an optional iSCSI target in the support of application data.

Dell is also introducing the PowerEdge T410 and T710 tower servers, which are aimed specifically at both SMBs wrestling with small amounts of space and businesses across the size range looking to boost their productivity.

At 24 inches deep, the short chassis of the PowerEdge T410 is designed to compact itself into tight spaces and shallow racks. Both the T410 and the T710 feature one-button deployment via the Lifecycle Controller, and the T710 can include up to 16 drives for large local storage capacity.

On the high-performance computing end, Dell is also introducing the PowerEdge R410, designed for intensive high-performance computing workloads. The company claims these new servers have a 73 percent performance improvement over the last generation, while also saving power. The device includes the DMC (Dell Management Console) and Dell Lifecycle Controller for simplified management.

In addition, Dell is pairing its new hardware lines with a variety of consulting and other services designed to streamline implementation into both SMBs and the enterprise. The Dell ProConsult offerings include five consulting options designed to optimize the data center, each focusing on a specific area: Platform Optimization & Virtualization, Data Center Planning & Management, Disaster Recovery, Data Management, and Facilities Efficiency.

Dell is also offering two “business-ready” virtualization configurations to introduce a virtual enterprise infrastructure into a business. These two infrastructures include Data Center Virtualization Configuration, which combines Dell PowerEdge M-series blades and EqualLogic PS600 iSCSI storage technology, Cisco Catalyst networking switches, VMware vSphere 4 and Platspin Migrate from Novell; and Small and Medium Business Virtualization Configuration, which combines a variety of hardware, including the PowerEdge R710 and the Dell PowerVault MD3000i, with Microsoft’s virtualization suite.

Other additions to Dell’s virtual solutions line include enhanced hypervisors, with support for VMware vSphere 4, Windows Server 2208 R2 Hyper-V and Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.0; enhanced disaster recovery with reduced application downtime and managed data protection; and application virtualization. The Dell ProManage Virtual Server Remote Monitoring and Reporting allows IT administrators improved visibility into VM performance, to determine the average utilization of everything from processor to disk at the VM level and to, ultimately, save time.