Dell is unveiling the PowerEdge M915, an AMD-powered system aimed at virtualized data centers. In addition, the company is rolling out new networking and storage offerings.
Dell is
rolling out a host of server, networking and storage offerings designed to give
businesses more tools as they look to increase their virtualization
capabilities.
Key among the
new products is the PowerEdge M915, which is powered by Advanced Micro Devices'
Opteron 6100 Series processors, which offer up to 12 cores. The core count is
important to businesses looking to grow their use of virtualization because the
more cores there are, the more virtual machines can be hosted on that single
physical machine, according to Robert Bradfield, senior product manager for
blade marketing at Dell.
"There are a
lot of cores," Bradfield said in an interview with eWEEK. "You can get up to 48
cores in a single blade."
That could
grow later this year when AMD starts shipping its "Interlagos" Opterons, which
will offer up to 16 cores. The PowerEdge M915, which will be available later
this month, will be able to run on the Interlagos chips.
The PowerEdge
M915, can be bought in two- or four-socket models, and it offers up to 512GB of
RAM in its 32 DIMM (dual-in-line memory module) slots and 2 terabytes of
storage. It is aimed at either highly virtualized environments or for
compute-intensive workloads, such as databases. There are also two SAS or SSD
(solid-state disk) hot-swappable drives, and businesses also can get Dell's
PowerEdge Failsafe Hypervisor technology, which offers greater failover
protection via embedded hypervisors.
Dell has
outfitted several servers with AMD's Opteron 6100 "Magny-Cours" chips. In
February, the vendor announced the
PowerEdge C6145 server, which is powered by the
chips and is aimed at the high-performance computing and hyper-scale markets.
In addition,
Dell is also incorporating a NIC (network interface card) partitioning
technology in its blade systems that are switch-independent, enabling NIC
partitioning on the Dell servers using anyone's switch infrastructure,
Bradfield said. With the new product, each physical 10 Gigabit Ethernet port
can be divided into up to four NICs totaling 10 Gbit, and can be used in both
physical and virtual environments.
The
switch-independence of the NIC is a key differentiator from those of other vendors,
whose NICs tend to require that you also use that vendor's networking switches.
On the
networking side, Dell is bringing greater 10GbE and virtualization capabilities
to its PowerEdge M1000e chassis via the PowerConnect M8024-k Ethernet blade.
Included in the offering is 10GbE networking support, up to 24 ports of 10GbE
that is compatible with 1GbE networks, and the Simple Connect mode to
streamline switch deployment and ease manageability.
In addition,
Dell's PowerConnect W-Series is aimed at wireless connectivity, and includes
the PowerConnect W-6000 chassis and controller module for greater mobility,
security and centralized management for campuses, up to 2,048 access points and
more than 30,000 mobile users. Dell also is promising outdoor connectivity via
that W-AP175P Access Point.
Dell's
PowerConnect B-Series switch offerings provide 10GbE, Fibre Channel and Fibre
Channel over Ethernet connectivity.
In storage,
Dell unveiled the DX Object Storage platform for fixed digital content.
The offerings
are the latest from Dell as the company continues to grow beyond its origins as
a server and PC box maker and into more of a solutions provider role that
includes not only data center resources but also services. It's a move some
analysts say is beginning to take hold.
"About three
years ago, Dell began to sketch for analysts an idea of an enterprise provider
that could rival Hewlett-Packard and IBM," Roger Kay, principle analyst with
Endpoint Technologies Associates, said in a
blog post in Forbes. "A lofty goal without much
meat to it. But over the past three years, that story has grown ever more
convincing. First of all, it hasn't changed. The vision has only
grown more detailed. The number of proof points has multiplied. What
was a sketch has been colored in, given texture and specified minutely. Dell
still can't go up against the established enterprise players directly in most
cases. But it is building a portfolio of capabilities that distinguish it
from its rivals, and, more frequently, it is earning a hearing from customers
who wouldn't have considered it in the past."
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