VMware Cloud on Dell EMC – the 2nd Generation of Data Center as a Service

VMware Cloud on Dell EMC

The second generation of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC unveiled. VMware launched the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC product offering at Dell Tech World 2019 in April and this is the second generation of that product.

Last week as a vExpert i’ve had a chance ( again:-) ) to participate in exclusive Bloggers Early Access Program – session about VMware Cloud on Dell EMC and in this blog post i will present ‘What’s new’.

Backing to topic…What is VMware Cloud on Dell EMC ? In ‘two words’ it’s a combination of VMware Cloud and VMware’s SDDC along with the fully integrated, preconfigured and pre-tested VMware HC appliance on the market- Dell EMC’s VxRail HC infrastructure. In other words it’s a cloud infrastructure delivered as-a-service on-premises.

And what means Data Center as a Service? It means that you can use a UI or call an API to order a new SDDC with Dell EMC VxRail to any location you like (DC or edge location). It’s a fully managed VMware Cloud Services.

From a technical point of view this is SaaS based control plane. There’s no software to install. VMware is going to give us the ability to quickly provision our initial rack. We don’t have to set up anything on site. It’s full hardware, software, networking, hosts, everything’s in there cabled up and ready to go when it arrives on site.

The VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is configured through the portal. You can order the right combination of the form factor of the rack, and as already mentioned, Dell EMC team will do the job: install hardware, software and will ship it for onsite activation.

In case of software or hardware issues Vmware is the ‘single point of contact’.

The technology inside are of course VxRail and SDDC software stack (vSphere, vSAN, NSX).

And what about lifecycle management? That’s one of the most interesting part. Customer don’t even have to worry about that at all. It’s fully managed by VMware. Everything it’s in the rack is managed by VMware. And how is it performed? In every rack we can find ‘Standby Host’ – an additional spare host used by VMware for lifecycle management.

So what’s new in this release?

1. New full height (42U) rack: “R2“:

  • single and three-phase power;
  • up to 12 or 16 hosts, respectively

The first rack type available in the previous version of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is called R1 – half height (24U) rack and could hold between three and six servers. And finally full height (42U) R2 rack with higher scale ( between 3 and 12 hosts for one-phase rack and between 3 and 16 hosts for three-phase rack) and network throughput is available. Click here for more details about racks types and specifications.

The Rack – R1 and R2

2. New host configuration: M1d.medium (dual socket, NVMe storage) is now available. The only limitation is you can’t mix instance types within the rack. But as VMware sad that will come in the near future.

Increased capacity and performance

Comparing all Instance Types configuration, capacity and performance for the most advanced workload looks like on the screen below. M1d.medium not only doubled the VM density in capacity but can run at least two times more of workloads comparing to the smalles form factor.

3. Next the most advantage feature in this release is the backup and disaster recovery. We can choose between Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery and Veeam. Both of them are certified of course.

4. Expandable capacity – self-service ordering through portal. The portal now supports the ability to add additional hosts to increase the overall rack compute capacity up to the rack maximum, which is 5 for R1 and 16 for R2. For example, if you purchased the infrastructure with 3 nodes initially, you could add 2 more nodes to a maximum of 5 nodes post initial deployment. The order will be send to Dell EMC, they will prepare the additional host and ship it onside and help you get it up and running.

6. HCX for bulk migration. VMware is adding the ability to run HCX on there. So you can migrate virtual machines and applications between different types of clouds or from your existing DC to VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.

VMware HCX | Hybrid Cloud | VMware Cloud

7. And what are the subscription terms? It’s available through 1 or 3-year terms with respective pricing for each.

More technical details you can find in Technical Overview.

And that’s it for now. If you have any questions feel free to ping me:)