What is the difference between HCI and VxFlex?
VxFlex is the answer to replicate the benefits of a legacy environment while also delivering on the advantages that HCI promises. VxFlex integrated systems create a server-based SAN by combining storage virtualization software, known as VxFlex OS, with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to deliver flexible, scalable performance and capacity on demand.
What is ready VxFlex?
VxFlex Ready Nodes is ideal for HCI or server SAN architecture, heterogeneous virtualized environments, and high-performance databases. Learn how the VxFlex Family and VxFlex OS are designed to meet challenges with various hypervisors and operating systems.
What is Dell EMC VxRail VxRack HCI?
Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack HCI is geared for larger hyper-converged infrastructure deployments within VMware shops, but supports only VMware vSphere hypervisors. Dell EMC PowerFlex Rack is a rack-scale product that provides compute, storage and integrated networking.
What is VxFlex OS?
Dell VxFlex OS is storage software built for x86. servers that provides a server-based SAN using the local storage on three or more servers. It can grow to over a thousand nodes while scaling performance, capacity, and resiliency linearly.
What is the difference between VxRail and PowerFlex?
Compared to VxRail, which supports VMware exclusively and with which it overlaps, VxFlex supports multiple hypervisors and bare metal servers, and can be used as a traditional SAN resource or in HCI mode.
What is VxFlex ready node?
VxFlex Ready Node is the combination of PowerFlex software-defined block storage and Dell PowerEdge® servers, optimized to run PowerFlex, enabling customers to quickly deploy a fully architectured, software-defined, scale out server SAN.
What is VxRack Flex?
Transform your infrastructure with VxRack FLEX, a software-defined server-san that is optimized for a wide range of use cases including IaaS and PaaS. This turnkey HCI solution provides: Flexibility with multi-hypervisor and bare metal options. High performance for applications and databases.
Is PowerFlex a block storage?
What is PowerFlex and how does it work? PowerFlex is a software-only solution that uses existing servers' local drives and LAN to create a virtual SAN that has all the benefits of external storage. PowerFlex utilizes the existing local storage devices and turns them into shared block storage.
What is VxRail VMware?
VxRail is the first hyperconverged system fully integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation SDDC Manager. Host and deploy traditional and modern applications on a single infrastructure. Automate Kubernetes infrastructure deployment with VMware Cloud Foundation and Tanzu.
Which type of server eliminates resource silos and manages physical virtual and logical infrastructures?
With HCI the separate silos in the traditional and CI infrastructures are eliminated. Software-defined storage running on a standard x86 server pools its Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and presents it up to applications running on the virtual machines powered by the compute elements of the server.
What is a VxRack?
The VxRack System 1000 series is a hyper-converged platform that complements Dell EMC converged infrastructure systems. These self-contained units of servers and networking are well suited for use cases that require a highly scalable infrastructure.
What is VxRack Sddc?
Dell EMC VxRack SDDC system powered by VMware Cloud Foundation is a new class of hyper-converged integrated systems that provides the easiest path for a VMware software-defined data center. This turnkey solution is fully integrated and takes advantage of market leading hardware and software technologies.
What is Dell EMC VxRail?
Dell EMC VxRail is a hyper-converged appliance. Like VSPEX™ BLUE, the Dell EMC product that it replaces, and other hyper-converged infrastructure systems, VxRail includes compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources in a single device.
VxFlex Ready Nodes offers flexibility in deployment options
HCI/single-layer architecture: A hyperconverged infrastructure model, where compute and storage reside within the same server, creates a single-layer architecture and offers TCO savings while allowing you to modernize your data center with greater efficiency.
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What is Dell Vxflex OS?
Dell VxFlex OS is storage software built for x86 servers that provides a server-based SAN using the local storage on three or more servers. It can grow to over a thousand nodes while scaling performance, capacity, and resiliency linearly. Each node in a storage cluster serves as an individual storage controller within the cluster. Provided as an alternative to fiber-channel-based SAN infrastructure, it integrates all the resources of participating servers including CPU, DIMM Memory, Network, NVDIMMs, SSD and NVMe storage media, pooling and sharing those resources across a cluster while providing extreme performance and reliability. The storage network is IP-based thus eliminating costly HBA and Fiber Channel switch infrastructure.
What is SDC in Vxflex?
The SDC is a lightweight host service that provides block device access which leverages the SCSI host layer of a server to expose Dell VxFlex OS logical volumes to one or more client hosts. These volumes can easily be shared across as many as 1024 total hosts, accommodating the needs of clustering software such as Oracle Gridware. The SDC software is installed on any host requiring volume access and communicates with specific Software Data Servers containing the requested data (explained more deeply later) in a Dell VxFlex OS storage cluster. Through logical volume mapping, the SDC layer on a given client has access to its volumes and disk blocks regardless of the storage node on which they reside. It does this via the native SCSI layer of the host. This was done to avoid the tremendous inefficiencies and scalability limitations of iSCSI. Since the SDC communicates with the storage cluster nodes via TCP/IP, it is fully routable. The SDC can communicate on up to eight network ports, providing both fault tolerance and load balancing.
How does rebalance work on Dell VXflex?
It also triggers once a rebuild has completed. Rebalance operations ensure an even distribution of data across the storage cluster. Combined with rebuild processing , this accounts for the elasticity of Dell VxFlex OS. Simply add a drive or SDS and the system does the rest , ensuring all systems are evenly loaded. If there is a time when you have excess capacity, simply remove an SDS or device, and repurpose them as needed. The system will automatically rebuild the removed media.
What are the configurations for Dell Vxflex?
There are thee standard configurations for Dell VxFlex OS clusters. They include: • Hyperconverged (HCI) • Two-layer • Mixed
Does Dell VXFlex have free space?
For this reason, Dell VxFlex OS always has some free reserved space for such occasions. The default reservation space is usually 1/n * the total free space, where n is the number of SDS nodes in the system. This is another benefit of having more nodes in a system when component failure is of concern. In the case of a 3-node cluster, a free space ratio of 34% is required.
Is Dell VxFlex a two layer storage?
For a variety of reasons, some customers prefer to manage compute and storage resources separately. This is referred to as a Two-layer or Server SAN configuration. It is built with a group of storage servers supplying storage, while another group of compute hosts consume it. Both server groups communicate over an IP LAN, and the application and storage layers are physically divided. This is not unlike traditional storage systems such as the Dell Technologies VMAX, Unity, or XtremeIO. However, Dell VxFlex OS utilizes TCP/IP instead of the Fiber Channel protocol with Host Bus Adapters and FC switches.
Does Dell VXflex have a management UI?
In addition to a management UI, Dell VxFlex OS offers an Installation Manager with an associated Gateway software agent. These two components work together to provide secure storage and cloud automation for activities including installation and non-disruptive software upgrades. The secure Gateway leverages role-based security access to expose Restful APIs for automating all front-end and back-end storage tasks. Authentication can be product-native, or integrated with LDAP, or Active Directory. Tight integration with vCenter offers a single pane of glass for managing the system when configured on ESXi. Data at rest encryption is also integrated with our CloudLink key manager offering.
What is a VXflex rack?from dell.optrics.com
VxFlex integrated rack (formerly VxRack FLEX) is a rack-scale engineered system, with integrated networking, that provides linear scalability and enterprise-grade availability. VxFlex integrated rack is engineered, manufactured, managed, supported, and sustained as one system for single end-to-end lifecycle support.
How many nodes does a VXflex rack have?from dell.optrics.com
VxFlex integrated rack can achieve over 1M IOPs with less than 1 millisecond latency using only six 1U nodes.*
What is a Vxflex?
VxFlex systems offer VMware® vSphere, Red Hat Virtualization, and Windows/Hyper-V integration as an engineered system, alongside the ability to support other hypervisors and operating systems through bare metal configurations**. This unique ability provides workload flexibility and gives organizations many options with no future lock-in if IT and business requirements change as new projects and workloads arise.
What is VXflex built on?
VxFlex, built on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, provides better all-flash economics, improved performance, and workload flexibility to address new customer use cases for both traditional and cloud-native workloads running in mixed environments.
What is VXflex storage?
The VxFlex storage environment can be designed to resemble a hyperconverged or traditional two-layer SAN architecture. Hyperconverged combines compute and storage together on the same node while a two-layer model separates them.
Vendor claims hundreds of Dell EMC PowerFlex customers in education, finance and healthcare. It marks the second name change for ScaleIO platform that EMC bought in 2013
Dell EMC PowerFlex is the new name for VxFlex software-defined storage, culminating the vendor's portfolio-wide branding under the Power nomenclature. The rebranding involves Dell EMC storage and networking products that use Dell PowerEdge compute servers.
Configuring PowerFlex
PowerFlex Manager manages PowerFlex rack and appliance models, and PowerFlex software is also available in VMware Ready Node configurations. Dell EMC PowerFlex could be used to create a two-layer SAN to disaggregate compute and storage.
Customer consolidates on Dell EMC PowerFlex
David Lee said he was looking to consolidate storage that would enable him to take full advantage of VMware VMotion. After several years of storage built on various SANs, Lee integrated Dell EMC PowerFlex block storage to support students and faculty at Nexus International School in Singapore, where he is director of IT infrastructure.
