IT organizations are increasingly subjected to escalating demands to deliver agile, transformative, scalable, and secure applications and services to meet the needs of a progressively global and adaptive business landscape. This change had its roots in the previous decade and resulted in the mass acceptance of Converged Infrastructure (CI) technology as a mechanism to scale the Data Center. The Dell VxBlock platform is a leading systems provider within the CI market.

The VMware vision of the modern data center is one that is software-defined based on a standardized architecture. The architecture is a fully integrated hardware and software stack that is simple to manage, monitor, and operate. This architecture for the VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) empowers companies to run hybrid clouds and leverage unique capabilities to deliver outcomes that enable efficiency, agility, and security. The VMware SDDC uses VMware vSphere, VMware vSAN™, and VMware NSX-T® to provide compute, storage, and networking virtualization to the SDDC.

VxBlock 1000 with VMware Cloud Foundation can run both traditional and cloud-native applications running on premises in the customer data center and offers best in class hybrid cloud functionality. The VCF cloud operating model pairs the existing VxBlock 1000 integrations with VMware vRealize Suite for additional cloud management, self-service, automation, intelligent operations, and financial transparency.

Dell Technologies has customized the VxBlock 1000 platform architecture for VCF. VxBlock 1000 implements VMware vSAN and NSX for easier VCF deployment and network flexibility, along with the proven, enterprise-class performance, resilience and economics of separate servers and external networked storage for data center infrastructure.

VMware Cloud Foundation provides integrated cloud infrastructure (vSphere compute, vSAN storage, NSX networking, and security) and cloud management services (with the vRealize Suite) to run many types of enterprise applications in both private and public environments. These applications range from traditional applications that are deployed as virtual machines (VMs) and VMware Horizon virtual desktops to Kubernetes powered containerized cloud-native applications. Cloud Foundation helps break down the traditional administrative silos in data centers by merging compute, storage, network provisioning, and cloud management to facilitate end-to-end support for application deployment. The Cloud Foundation SDDC Manager component automates the life cycle management of a complete SDDC on standardized hyperconverged architectures. Customers can deploy Cloud Foundation on-premises on a broad range of supported hardware or consume it as-a-service in the public cloud.

Dell Technologies shares VMware’s vision of the modern data center and extends that vision to the infrastructure. For customers who choose VMware as the primary technology for modernizing their data center or building a multicloud IT environment, Dell Technologies offers an automated path to the VMware SDDC with VMware Cloud Foundation on VxBlock.

Figure 1.   Cloud Foundation on VxBlock

VMware Cloud Foundation on VxBlock delivers a simple and direct path to the hybrid cloud and Kubernetes at cloud scale with one complete automated platform. Cloud Foundation on VxBlock builds on VxBlock and Cloud Foundation capabilities, with additional unique integration features that Dell Technologies and VMware have jointly engineered, to help simplify, streamline, and automate the operations of your entire SDDC. This means you get both the converged infrastructure and cloud platform software stack in one complete, automated life cycle experience.

The platform delivers a set of software-defined services for compute, storage, networking, security, cloud management, and end-user computing as well as container-based cloud- native platform services, in both private and public environments. This makes it an ideal operational hub for your hybrid cloud. To accelerate an organization’s move to adopt containers and a hybrid cloud operating model, Dell Technologies offers unique integration between Cloud Foundation and VxBlock. The integration supports VM-based and container-based workloads at the same time on UCS servers, with support for incorporating Dell Technologies external storage systems across multiple cloud environments.