The Dell EMC XC Family is a powerful hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) environment that is available in 1U or 2U environments. The XC Family is built on Nutanix software and the proven Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server platform. These devices incorporate many of the advanced software technologies that power leading web-scale and cloud infrastructures.

The following figure shows the components and benefits of XC Family devices.

Figure 4: Dell EMC XC Family device overview

For VDI-optimized configurations, you can deploy a cluster with as few as three nodes, providing an ideal environment for small deployments. To achieve full XC high availability, the recommended starting cluster size is four nodes. The XC Family can support storage-heavy workloads with storage-dense nodes, graphics-heavy VDI workloads with GPU hardware, and entry-level nodes for remote and branch office environments.

The following XC Family devices are recommended for VDI:

• Dell EMC XC640—A 10-disk 1U platform with a broad range of configuration options. Each appliance comes equipped with dual CPUs, 10 to 28 cores, and up to 1.5 TB of high-performance RAM.

For the hybrid disk configuration, a minimum of six disks is required in each host: two SSDs for the performance tier (Tier1) and four HDDs for the capacity tier (Tier2), which can be expanded up to eight HDDs as required. For the all-flash disk configuration, the chassis must be populated with a minimum of four SSDs.

The M.2-based BOSS module boots the hypervisor and Nutanix Controller VM, while the PERC HBA330 connects the CVM to the SSDs and HDDs. 64 GB is consumed on each of the first two SSDs for the Nutanix home directory.

All HDD/SSD disks are presented to the Nutanix CVM running locally on each host, which contributes to the clustered DSF storage pool. Each platform can be outfitted with SFP+ or BaseT NICs.

• Dell EMC XC740xd—A 2U platform that can be configured with 24 x 2.5" disks or 12 x 3.5" disks to serve a broad range of capacity requirements. Each appliance comes equipped with dual CPUs, 10 to 28 cores, and up to 1.5 TB of high-performance RAM.

A minimum of 12 disks is required in each host: four SSDs for the performance tier (Tier1) and eight HDDs for the capacity tier (Tier2), which can be expanded as required up to 45 TB per node raw. The M.2-based BOSS module boots the hypervisor and Nutanix Controller VM, while the PERC HBA330 connects the CVM to the SSDs and HDDs. 64 GB is consumed on each of the first two SSDs for Nutanix Home.

All HDD and SSD disks are presented to the Nutanix CVM running locally on each host, which contributes to the clustered DSF pool. Each platform can be outfitted with SFP+ or BaseT NICs. The 24-disk XC740xd can support up to three NVIDIA P40 or two M10 GPU cards. Higher wattage power supplies (up to 2,000 W per PSU) are required when GPUs are in use.

The following table shows the full range of configurations that are available for XC640 and XC740xd devices. More specific recommendations are presented in the next section.

Table 1: Available Dell EMC XC Family 640 and 740xd configurations