eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Dell is keeping its enterprise-product factories lit up with activity, thanks to increasing orders for its data center appliance business.
At the Dell User Forum in Hollywood, Fla., the company on June 24 introduced a series of new enterprise appliances and integrated server and storage systems that are workload-specific, rack-based machines for data centers housed at medium-size and large enterprises.
In some ways, the new integrated-together servers for storage, databases and other use cases are similar to what Oracle, with its “engineered together” approach uniting hardware and software, is doing in the high-end space. These new Dell data center machines are also being touted by the company as performing much faster than its own previous editions and competitors’ hardware, something Oracle has been boasting about for more than a decade.
In fact, one of the new appliances was designed expressly for Oracle Database 12C.
The new products include:
—Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases, a pre-built, pre-integrated appliance designed to accelerate leading database environments including MySQL, Sybase, Microsoft SQL and MongoDB. This package includes Dell PowerEdge Servers, Dell Storage and Dell Networking with application acceleration technology from Fusion-io to improve database performance, enabling large and midsize customers to cost-effectively respond to business needs rapidly and reliably.
—Fluid Cache for SAN is straight out of the 2010 Compellent acquisition. This brings data closer to the server while improving application performance and reducing response times for scale-out workloads that require high levels of concurrent usage.
—Dell Integrated Systems for Oracle 12c Database: In addition to the Dell Application Acceleration for Databases appliance, Dell today announced a purpose-built appliance designed specifically for Oracle 12c database deployments. This appliance helps customers migrate to and accelerate current Oracle 12c environments. Oracle probably won’t be thrilled to see this on the list because it competes directly with some of its own hardware.
The good part for Oracle, however, is that Dell will sell some of Oracle’s databases and other software in the mix. The base configuration available in the Oracle appliance will provide significant performance gains and cost savings over similar pre-packaged appliance solutions now available, Dell said.
The Dell Database Acceleration Appliance for Oracle pre-bundles Dell infrastructure with Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Fusion Applications removing from customers the hassle of hardware integration and fine-tuning of applications.
—Dell In-Memory Appliances for Cloudera Enterprise: Dell says this will accelerate Hadoop deployments, which can often be slow-moving. The appliances will bundle leading Dell technology with Cloudera Enterprise (Data Hub Edition including Apache Spark), and Intel’s performance and security-optimized chipset, to help organizations obtain high-performance data analysis.
This package includes Dell hardware, Cloudera Enterprise (Data Hub Edition including Apache Spark) for easier management and compatibility within existing data center environments, Intel Architecture for fast processing, and ScaleMP’s Versatile SMP (vSMP) architecture to aggregate multiple x86 servers into a single virtual machine to create large memory pools for in-memory processing. The Dell In-Memory Appliances for Cloudera Enterprise will be available in pre-sized, pre-configured options.
—Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances: Dell also announced plans to deliver the Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances powered by Nutanix. With the announcement, Dell extends its software-defined storage portfolio with plans to offer customers a new series of appliances. These will combine compute, storage and networking into a single offering.
All the new products will become available in the second half of 2014, Dell said.