5 New Dell EMC VMware Product Integrations You Need To Know About

Dell EMC Form Tighter Integrations

The technology integration between Dell EMC and VMware has entered a new level on the hyper-converged front as the two companies enhanced their synergy capabilities for partners and customers.

"Partners should take advantage of the tighter integrations we have with VMware, whether it's VMware Cloud Foundation, Project Dimension or whether it's our seamless integration of having everything you need to manage VxRail can be done through a vSphere interface – all those things add up to enabling our partners to have a more cohesive, integrated plan for end users," said Jon Siegal, Dell EMC's vice president of product marketing for converged platforms and solutions, in an interview with CRN.

Here are five new Dell EMC VMware integrations unveiled at VMworld 2018 Europe taking place in Barcelona this week.

VxRail Support Of VMware Cloud Foundation

Dell EMC's flagship hyper-converged infrastructure offering, VxRail, now supports the VMware Cloud Foundation. VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail will have new levels of automation, enterprise-class cloud capabilities and flexible networking options. The only VMware jointly engineered HCI appliance with VMware Cloud Foundation, VxRail offers an integrated cloud platform that delivers an even simpler path to the VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) and multi-cloud strategy that is future-proofed for next generation VMware Cloud technologies.

"VxRail will be the only HCI appliance in the market integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation," said Dell EMC's Siegal. "We'll have a complete automated deployment all the way through lifecycle management."

Dan McCormick, executive vice president of Davenport Group, a St. Paul, Minn.-based Dell EMC partner and 2018 CRN Triple Crown winner, said the addition of VMware Cloud Foundation is an important step in making VxRail a cloud-enabled product. "So for us and our customers, especially in that midmarket range, being able to implement VxRail knowing that they have that extensibility, not just across their own on-premise environment, but can extend that to VMware Cloud Foundation is an important, valuable addition," said McCormick.

VMware Cloud on AWS Through VxRail

Through the new support of VMware Cloud Foundation, Dell EMC's VxRail now allows extensibility to public cloud providers including VMware Cloud on AWS. Dell EMC is also partnering with VMware on Project Dimension, which is a managed service offering on VMware Cloud on AWS and for on-premise for remote edge location. Customers now can use VxRail with VMware Site Recovery for push-button failover to VMware Cloud on AWS for disaster recovery.

"We do have real world examples of customers building out HCI infrastructure and then using AWS for disaster recovery purposes," said Josh Lee, director of sales for Nanuet, N.Y.-based Dell EMC and Dell EMC and VMware partner VirtuIT Systems. "It's a good move for them. It's pricey, but it's a way for them to have alignment between AWS and Dell EMC."

New VxBlock Central And VMware vRealize Suite

VxBlock is Dell EMC's turnkey converged infrastructure solution that leverages VMware vSphere virtualization. Dell EMC launched its new VxBlock Central software that provides converged awareness, automation and analytics to simplify daily administration tasks. VxBlock Central includes a single unified user interface for accessing VxBlock System information in real time. It also includes an integrated launch point to VMware vRealize Orchestrator for automating daily operational tasks as well as a to vRealize Operations to provide detailed analytics and an easy way to manage VxBlock storage capacity.

The integration between VxBlock Central and VMware vRealize Suite provides a foundation for Infrastructure-as-a-Service and a path to implementing a private/multi-cloud operations model on VxBlock Systems. The integration provides greater visibility into converged infrastructure systems and time-saving orchestration workflows. It also allows enterprises to leverage an additional layer of vRealize software tools, including vRealize Automation, to enable full cloud service delivery and management. Dell EMC said using the vRealize Suite on VxBlock, opens the path for enterprises to achieve a consistent experience across other Dell EMC cloud platforms including VxRack SDDC and VxRail Appliances.

VxRail Support For vCenter

VxRail tasks can now be managed directly from the VMware vCenter Server console, making it easy to move to and manage VxRail from the primary management platform for VMware environments. vCenter provides a centralized platform for managing vSphere environments that enables customers to automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure across the hybrid cloud. Customers will be able to complete VxRail cluster management from vCenter web client as well as leverage a single dashboard view of system health and support resources.

"For the 500,000 vSphere customers out there, we're announcing that 100 percent of the tasks in VxRail can now be managed through vCenter," said Dell EMC's Siegal.

Dell EMC Launch New Switches For VMware SDDC

Although not a specific technology integration, Dell EMC launched a new family of 25-GbE switches aimed at providing the ideal network underlay for VMware NSX and software-defined storage implementations. The new S5200 top-of-rack open networking switches aim to help customers meet the growing demands of in-rack and storage network traffic from new technologies with features included advanced buffering, higher forwarding tables and data plane support for VxLAN routing.

"We're helping our customers here deploy a more robust and cost-effective VMware software-defined data center," said Jeff Baher, director of product and technical marketing for Dell EMC's networking and service provider solutions, in an interview with CRN. "There's a big economic driver as well to simplify and lower the cost structure of the physical underlay as people are looking to invest more in their virtual networking and the NSX capabilities."

A key factor included in the S52000 leaf series is Dell EMC's flagship open-source 10 Enterprise Edition networking operating system. The OS10 Enterprise Edition is designed to allow multi-layer disaggregation of the network functionality.