Overview

The Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is a fully engineered hybrid-cloud platform that is built on a Microsoft hybrid-cloud-integrated architecture. This architecture consists of common modular building blocks that scale linearly from 4 to 16 nodes in a scale unit (SU). Dell EMC Integrated System provides a simple, cost-effective solution that delivers multiple performance and capacity options to match any use case. The solution supports a wide variety of cloud-native applications and workloads.

Dell EMC Integrated System is based on Microsoft Azure Stack Hub software and built with Intel Xeon Gold and Platinum processors. Dell EMC Integrated System enables customers to start small and grow, scaling capacity and performance with minimal disruption. Scaling in predictable units ensures a “pay-as-you-grow” approach for future growth.

The following figure shows the solution architecture.

Figure 1.                  Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub architecture

Scale unit

Dell EMC Integrated System is built around a scale unit (SU), which is comprised of 4, 8, 12, or 16 identical nodes. As a hyperconverged platform, each node includes both compute and storage resources. Within the SU, the solution provides flexibility at a component level to optimize processor, memory, storage capacity, and caching ratios.

Microsoft Azure Stack Hub

Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is an extension of Azure, bringing cloud computing to on-premises environments. You can build applications across hybrid-cloud environments, balancing flexibility and control. You can build applications using a consistent set of Azure services. You can speed up cloud-application development by building on application components from the Azure Marketplace, including open-source tools and technologies.

Dell Technologies hardware life cycle host

The Dell Technologies hardware life cycle host (HLH) is designed to enable monitoring and updates for Dell EMC Integrated System. The HLH is a Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 management server. The HLH contains Dell Technologies management software and tools to enable server and network monitoring, and “call-home” capability. HLH also provides patch and update capability for the components that Dell Technologies provides.

Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub tactical

Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub tactical is a ruggedized and field-deployable product for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub. The product core components (servers, switches, and so on) are contained in pods protected by transit cases. The product core components are identical to our currently shipping all-flash data center Dell EMC Integrated System offering. 

A pod is a 4U rack container that has smaller dimensions than a regular 4U rack. There is one management pod and two SU pods. The management pod includes the hardware life cycle host (HLH), 25 GbE Top-of-Rack (ToR) switches, and a baseboard management switch.

Each SU pod holds two PowerEdge R640 SU servers. One PowerEdge R640 server occupies a 2U rack space in the pod. You can add additional PowerEdge R640 servers up to the full node limits of a Dell EMC Integrated System all-flash SU node.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 server

Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 is a four-socket, 2U rack server that is designed to run complex workloads using highly scalable memory, I/O capacity, and network options. The PowerEdge R840 provides configurability to create an optimal configuration that balances solid-state drive (SSD) and hard-disk capacity.

As of the Dell EMC 2011 release, several GPU options, NVIDIA V100, NVIDIA T4, and AMD Mi25, are available for some of the PowerEdge R840 and PowerEdge R640 configurations. A GPU provides higher throughput and parallel processing, which allows the system to process hundreds of transactions simultaneously.

PowerEdge R840 configurations are not expandable beyond the purchased configuration.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server

Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd is a high-performance software-defined storage server. It is a two-socket, 2U rack server that is designed to run complex workloads by using highly scalable memory, I/O capacity, and network options. PowerEdge R740xd provides configurability to create an optimal configuration that balances SSD and hard-disk capacity.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 server

Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 is a high-performance software-defined storage server. It is a two-socket, 1U rack server that is designed to run complex workloads by using highly scalable memory, I/O capacity, and network or GPU options. PowerEdge R640 provides an optimal server for use as an all-flash SU.