No hardware required:Dell launches private cloud for VMware, Nutanix and Red Hat

Dell presented its new private cloud at this year's Dell Technologies World. It allows customers to use different cloud operating environments, such as VMware, Nutanix, or Red Hat. To this end, the US company provides ready-made blueprints that can be used on any Dell servers and storage systems. The company also promises that the provisioning of a complete cluster should require around 90 percent fewer steps compared to other tools and be completed in two and a half hours. Manual intervention after the initial configuration is not necessary.

Private cloud, initially only available with VMware

Customers can purchase the necessary licenses directly from Dell or use existing licenses. Initially, the US company is only offering VMware vSphere, with blueprints for other environments to follow in the second half of the year. In addition, companies can continue to use their existing server and storage systems and use various cloud stacks without having to replace their hardware or becoming dependent on hardware manufacturers. This should enable a decoupling from proprietary license models and greater investment security.

The new cloud service is based on a reorganization of the infrastructure strategy. Instead of three-tier architectures and hyperconverged systems, which are often tied to a hypervisor, the US company is aiming for a modular infrastructure between private cloud stacks. Dell itself speaks of a disaggregated infrastructure. With this, the three components of computing power, storage, and network are to be decoupled and managed and controlled via central software. In this way, Dell wants to accelerate the provision of private cloud environments and offer management of the entire life cycle.

Dell brings a platform for infrastructure management

The technical basis of the private cloud is the new Dell Automation Platform. It is designed to support customers in the automatic provision of software as well as the management and operation of their local Dell infrastructure. This includes secure zero-touch onboarding, centralized management and AIOps support for automated operational optimization. Independently of the private cloud, a standalone release of the Automation Platform is also planned for the second half of the year.

The US company also presented new functions for Dell NativeEdge. These include policy-based load control as well as backups and migrations of virtual machines. These features will not only be usable with current Dell hardware, but will also support legacy products and hardware from other manufacturers. In addition to changes to the data center infrastructure, Dell also presented new servers from the PowerEdge series for AI applications at its in-house exhibition.

(dahe)