Dell Launches New Solutions for Data Centre

Dell Networking today introduced new capabilities for campus and data centre environments, including the launch of new cloud-managed wired and wireless solutions powered by Dell and Aerohive, Operating System 10 milestones and in-rack platforms for the data center.

“Rapid increase in adoption of virtualization, cloud and big data analysis are presenting new workload challenges for organizations. To address these emerging workload demands, it is important for organizations to grow and transform their networks with future ready solutions,” said Amandeep Singh, Country Manager, Dell Networking. “With our advanced campus and data center networking solutions, customers will have access to solutions that are secure and easy to manage. These solutions are built to scale based on customers’ needs, delivering wired and wireless convergence, public and private cloud-based management with industry-leading support and the capability to handle emerging workload demands.”

“Major trends such as cloud and software-defined create a dynamically changing IT landscape, both on campus and in the data center,” said Tom Burns, vice president and general manager, Dell Networking and Enterprise Infrastructure. “These new Dell Networking solutions help our customers navigate these changes with future-ready architectures, open technology and hyper-scale inspired efficiency.”

New cloud-managed wired/wireless campus solution 

Building on its One Network campus vision, Dell Networking has collaborated with Aerohive to deliver a new cloud-managed solution that integrates and manages wired and wireless infrastructure. The co-branded solution incorporates Dell N-Series switches and Aerohive access points into Aerohive’s HiveManager NG – a next-generation cloud-based management solution. This solution greatly simplifies end-user access, setting a new standard for wired and wireless network convergence by bringing enterprise-class management to the public or private cloud.

With a customizable user-focused interface, HiveManager NG allows for high-level or in-depth views of all facets of Dell and Aerohive networking devices including applications, users, policy management and switch port status. Further simplifying wired and wireless converged network management, Dell has expanded its industry-leading ProSupport to provide users with a single point of contact for unified network support. Through SupportAssist technology, ProSupport offers proactive and predictive automated support for issue prevention and resolution.

Movement Mortgage is one of the nation’s fastest-growing, privately-held mortgage companies, employing more than 2,000 people, at more than 300 branches across the United States. “To have a unified wireless platform across all operations and branch offices, and have it just work has undeniably advanced the efficiency and productivity for our employees, as well as streamlined operations for our IT staff,” said Will Simons, IT Director, Movement Mortgage.

These milestones demonstrate Dell and Aerohive’s shared vision of cloud-managed IT, providing streamlined operations, configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting for all elements of customers’ networks. “We believe cloud management has the opportunity to transform the way our customers serve their customers,” said David Flynn, CEO, Aerohive Networks. “We are proud to extend enterprise-class cloud management that Aerohive customers use to manage our access points to Dell’s switches. HiveManager NG sets the standard for building and managing networks.”

Open Networking – new community and capabilities

As a leader in Open Networking, Dell is driving ahead with its Operating System 10 (OS10) development with community building and integration projects including Open Compute Project’s (OCP) Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) and partners Ansible, F5 and Silverpeak. These new new OS10 collaborations and use cases demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability of Open Networking software:

• Dell OS10 and OCP SONiC– Dell, in conjunction with Microsoft Azure and other industry leaders, made foundational contributions to the newly-announced SONiC effort. The goal is to open source all the components needed to build fully-functional networking software. SONiC is a collection of software packages/modules that can be installed on Linux on a network hardware switch which makes it a complete, functional router.  Dell has successfully integrated its OS10 base software to serve as a foundational element for SONiC.
• Ansible – From app deployment to multi-tiered orchestration, Ansible Tower by Red Hat powers enterprise automation by adding control, security and delegation capabilities.
  • “Since OS10 runs in a native Linux environment, integrating it with Ansible Tower is quite straightforward. Customers can now easily and rapidly deploy Dell switches into their automated IT environment, helping to reduce operational costs while also enabling server-like agility in configuration management.” - Tim Cramer, Senior Director of Ansible Engineering, Red Hat
• F5 – F5 with OS10 delivers load balancing over active-active clusters across network services for scale out deployments.
  • “Dell OS10 programmability enables unique partner solutions for datacenter network fabric. Optimizing OS10 for F5’s Application Delivery Controller infrastructure not only offers tighter integration between network and compute, but also reduces power and cooling related operating costs.” - Jeff Bellamy, Senior Director Business Development, F5 Networks
• Silver Peak – Silver Peak provides leading, optimized SD-WAN interconnects between the data center and branch offices across public and private clouds.
  • “OS10 represents the future of open networking in the data center. Direct integration of Silver Peak’s Edge Connect SD-WAN with OS10 illustrates the value of open software and the ease with which customers can combine best-of-breed solutions into their network infrastructure.” – Rolf Muralt, vice president, Product Management

New in-rack platforms for the data center

Dell announced new in-rack platforms optimized to accelerate 10G deployments to harness the latest silicon-based features. Industry analysts forecast a significant migration to 10G in the next four years as enterprise customers begin to retire 1G speeds in the data center.

Built for different needs, the S4048T-ON and S6010-ON share common attributes including:

• Designed to meet enterprise, mid-size and high-performance computing requirements;
• ONIE-compliant to provide cloud and Web 2.0 customers an Open Networking environment with fully-tested and validated third-party operating systems;
• Advanced features for VXLAN, larger tables and expanded buffering compared to other Dell models; and
• Both switches will begin shipping in mid-May.

S4048T

• The Dell Networking S4048T is purpose-built 10GBase-T switch for copper-based server and storage connectivity to offer customers investment protection.
• The switch supports numerous, high-capacity port configurations in a compact, 1RU form factor.

S6010

• The Dell Networking S6010-ON is designed for demanding data center environments to provide optimum density and price point.
• The Dell S6010-ON delivers line-rate performance with a non-blocking switching fabric, improved packet buffering and reduced oversubscription.