Dell unveils Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL

Today at VMworld, we announced Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL, an important addition to Dell’s integrated systems portfolio. We have applied our expertise in x86, management, hyper-converged, and VMware environments to the development and co-engineering of this appliance to help customers achieve:

  • Unparalleled simplicity of deployment and management to enable customers to gain maximum value from their VMware environments
  • Greater business agility with a predefined, scalable and elastic set of VMware technologies

In an industry report from June 2014, Gartner  defined Integrated Systems Stack as a server, storage and network hardware, combined with application software to provide appliance or appliance functionality. Amid various market dynamics that make data center management increasingly complex, Dell has responded thoughtfully with choice in technology solutions for customers, including best-of-breed hardware and software, converged technologies and infrastructure, and integrated systems including the new Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL. This evolution continues as customers continually look for ways to simplify data center management. Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL help customers do that within their virtual environments, via two appliances:

  • Dell Engineered Solution for VMware EVO:RAIL, Virtual Infrastructure Edition – A general purpose solution which enables customers to quickly stand up and scale-out VMware-based virtualized instances
  • Dell Engineered Solution for VMware EVO:RAIL, VMware Horizon View Edition A VDI-specific edition which helps customers of all sizes quickly stand up VDI deployments

Each appliance will be sold as a single SKU solution hardware and software bundled together and consists of 4 server nodes (e.g. blades) enclosed within a single 2U. VMware tells us they chose to work with Dell as their preferred partner for EVO:RAIL in North America for a few reasons, all of which also mean our mutual customers can expect a great experience with this new solution. In addition to Dell’s leadership in selling and building VMware solutions to Dell customers is our unparalleled focus on application optimization and workload enablement within customers’ data centers. That unique focus means differentiation within our x86 infrastructure portfolio and roadmap, and with the way we engage with partners for new kinds of solution development. Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL are a great example of this kind of deep partner collaboration – after many hours together, in four different engineering facilities, our new Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL are optimized and tuned to take full advantage of VMware’s new technology, all to the benefit of our customers, who will experience:

  • reduced deployment time – they’ll be up-and-running on their new Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL in 15 minutes
  • a rapid time to value through pre-integrated deployment with of their stack in minutes rather than the hours required to load, test, tune and go live individual solution components
  • no disruptions in their virtual environments with the addition of this new appliance
  • protection of their existing VMware investments
  • industry-leading service and support from Dell

What excites us is the Dell salesforce can offer this solution from mid-market to the Global 500. Further, it is based on the hyperscale building block architecture that we have brought to market and which we are hallmarked for. I’d like to thank Manish Patil who led this engineering work for Dell.

About the Author: Sam Greenblatt