Dell bolsters hyper-converged infrastructure range with EMC

Dell has expanded its portfolio of hyper-converged infrastructure and will resell a number EMC’s hyper-converged offerings.

This comes ahead of Dell’s $67bn (£44bn) proposed takeover of EMC, which will be the largest acquisition in tech history if it is completed.

Hyper-converged infrastructure is typically highly integrated computing, storage and virtualisation tech with a software-centric architecture. It usually comes in a single appliance (or box) from a particular vendor. Dell now boldly claims it has the industry’s broadest range of kit.

New additions for Dell include EMC’s VCE VxRail Appliance Family, VCE VxRack Node and VCE VxRack System 1000 FLEX.

This is noteworthy, as earlier this year, Dell boss Michael Dell wrote an open letter to VCE customers (and investors) in an attempt to dispel fears over Dell’s acquisition of EMC. He said that that little will change for customers, especially for customers of converged infrastructure company VCE.

So what is Dell reselling? Well the VCE VxRail Appliance Family was jointly engineered with VMware and is fully tested and configured for VMware environments. It combines EMC data services and systems management capabilities with VMware’s hyper-converged software in a single product family. These VCE VxRail Appliances start at $60,000 and scale depending on workloads.

The VCE VxRack Node and VxRack System 1000 FLEX meanwhile provide a way for customers to move from physical storage area networks (SANs) to hyper-converged engineered systems, capable of scaling to thousands of nodes.

“Dell’s hyper-converged infrastructure approach is consistent with our overall philosophy, which focuses on enabling customer outcomes versus pushing a one-size-fits-all agenda,” said Marius Haas, chief commercial officer and president, Enterprise Solutions, Dell.

“Our hyper-converged portfolio spans a broad range of the most trusted and differentiated purpose-built appliances, integrated systems, factory installed solutions and flexible reference architectures, allowing Dell to offer systems that can be deployed and scale in minutes or help customers flexibly build their own systems with existing IT.

“This expansion, added to our Blueprint programme, enables Dell to offer customers prescriptive choices to meet their own particular demands and, ultimately, best support their desired business outcomes.”

Dell first announced its intention to acquire EMC last October, but the deal has been hit with some significant hurdles, not least VMware’s falling share price. There have also been concerns about the impact of a hefty tax bill.

That said, the European Commission and the US Federal Trade Commission have now cleared the Dell-EMC merger after no competition concerns were raised.