What’s New in Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure: Dell Software Defined Storage with Dell PowerFlex
Tue, 23 Apr 2024 17:10:13 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
A few weeks ago, Dell Technologies announced a new release of Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure that introduced a multitude of new features as well as support for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI version 23H2. Today, we are announcing the availability of a new architectural option for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure customers – extending the Azure Stack HCI storage fabric to Dell PowerFlex software-defined storage
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure has an architecture designed around common building blocks for compute, software-defined storage, and automated management and operations.
Figure 1. Dell APEX Cloud Platforms common infrastructure
The new capability offers customers the unique advantage of having the flexibility to utilize Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) alongside Dell PowerFlex, Dell Technologies’ enterprise-class software-defined storage option. APEX Cloud Platform for Azure is the only offer in the Microsoft Premier Solutions for Azure Stack HCI category that supports linear scaling of storage independently from Azure Stack HCI resources. APEX Cloud Platform for Azure with PowerFlex utilizes PowerFlex storage nodes for block storage. Any of the Dell PowerFlex product variants—rack, appliance, or custom node—can be utilized to satisfy the solution. PowerFlex provides a multitude of essential features:
- Ability to host a wide range of business workloads, including:
- Mission-critical databases and applications that require high transactional performance and low latency
- Applications that require consistent I/O performance, such as those used for streaming, ingestion, and reporting transactions within AI and data analytics environments
- Highly-available platform at six 9s (99.9999%), which translates to just 31.5 seconds of platform downtime a year. On top of that resiliency, the platform incorporates exceptionally fast rebuild and rebalance operations.
- Modular scale-out architecture, built to support exponential data growth
This new storage option, designed to co-exist with—not replace—Microsoft S2D, has been tested in a proof of concept by both Dell Technologies and Microsoft engineering teams, ensuring that the solution supports the uses cases and features described previously.
“As we continue to innovate and empower our customers with cutting-edge solutions, the partnership with Dell and Microsoft is paramount. With the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, customers gain great flexibility and simplicity by leveraging Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct alongside Dell’s enterprise-class software defined block storage. By integrating Microsoft Azure Stack HCI with Dell software-defined block storage, this solution gives businesses the autonomy to deploy workloads across on-premises and in the Azure cloud.” – Meena Gowdar, Group Principal PM Manager, Azure Edge and Platform, at Microsoft.
The architecture of the tested solution is illustrated in the following figure:
Figure 2. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure with Dell PowerFlex high-level architecture
As you can see in Figure 2, the components of a Microsoft S2D-only option overlap completely with the option integrating Dell PowerFlex custom nodes.
This architecture has been designed with the following principles in mind:
- High availability – designed to avoid single points of failure in the compute, storage, and networking domains
- Scalability – enabling you to size the infrastructure accordingly to meet initial deployment demands while also allowing infrastructure assets to grow as demand scales up
- Manageability – leveraging a set of familiar tools to manage the environment
- Simplicity – providing a seamless experience for presenting this new external storage to Azure Stack HCI for IT administrators already familiar with S2D
Tested configuration
The Dell Technologies engineering team performed the testing and validation of the PowerFlex storage configuration using the following building blocks:
- Eight MC-760 HCI nodes
- Eight Dell PowerFlex R760 custom nodes
This was deployed and connected as shown in the following figure:
Figure 3. Dell SDS validated configuration
Note: A fully-supported Dell Validated Design will be available at a later date, providing a more complete set of guidance for configuration, deployment, and design.
To learn more, read the detailed architectural white paper, Enabling Mission Critical Workloads on APEX Cloud Platform for Azure with Dell PowerFlex.
For more information on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, please check the Resources section.
Resources
- Enabling Mission Critical Workloads on APEX Cloud Platform for Azure with Dell PowerFlex
- YouTube Playlists about Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure:
- White papers, blogs, videos, and interactive demos about APEX Cloud Platforms
- Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure main product page
- Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Support site with official user manuals and guides
Author: William Leslie, Director, Cloud Platform Technical Marketing
X: @williamleslie8
Related Blog Posts
Monitoring the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure with Azure Insights
Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:29:18 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Some background
In September 2023, we officially released Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, the first offer in the market for Premier Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
Collaboratively built with Microsoft, this new platform extends and optimizes Azure Hybrid Cloud to on-premises, delivering three fundamental benefits:
- Simplifying deployment and operations
- Accelerating application modernization
- Optimizing workload placement
Figure 1. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Architecture
The innovation at Dell Technologies never stops. We are constantly developing and improving our products, and we have just launched our first update to the platform. Briefly, this release introduces and enhances:
- New Features:
- Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2
- Single-node expansion to a 2-node cluster
- Convert 2-node switchless storage network cluster to 2-node switched storage
- ACP foundation software improvements:
- Day 0/1 Operations (Automated cluster deployment up to 16 nodes, JSON file upload, Day 1 RESTful APIs)
- Day 2 Operations (GUI for drive add/replace, GUI for node repair/replace)
- Integrations:
- Serviceability (Add ESE/RSC logs to support log bundle collection)
- Azure Update Manager
- Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
Check out those updates in greater detail in these blogs: What's New with the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure March 2024 Release and Dell Technologies First to Deliver Azure Stack HCI 23H2.
In this blog, we want to put the spotlight on one particularly significant, useful, and easy to consume new capability – Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.
Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure seamlessly integrates with Microsoft’s Azure Portal, providing the ability to monitor events generated on both Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure hardware and the Cloud Platform Manager VM.
This new Insights for Azure Stack HCI monitor feature allows our customers to directly visualize in Azure Portal informational event data generated by the multicloud (MC) node hardware and the Cloud Platform Manager VM using an Insights integrated workbook.
With this workbook, we are empowering users to effectively manage and optimize their clusters and, in turn, receive the benefit of accelerated issue detection and time to resolution. I know, we’re excited too.
Enabling Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure: Is it difficult?
Not really. Simply follow these steps:
- First, ensure you meet these mandatory prerequisites in your cluster:
- Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2 (registered and connected to Azure)
- Arc-enabled (Azure Monitor extension installed)
- Insights enabled
- Once you have completed the prerequisites, navigate to the Insights page of your cluster in Azure portal and:
Figure 2. Enabling Event Monitoring in Azure portal
- Select the Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure workbook
- Click Enable selected
- Click Enable to enable the workbook
Boom. Done. That was easy, and now the workbook is enabled…what is next?
What does Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure look like?
Once the page refreshes, you’ll be taken to the first of the two tabs of the workbook – the Overview tab – which provides a brief description of what this workbook is and the information it can provide to its users.
Figure 3. Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform Overview tab
The second tab in the workbook – the Health tab – presents a summary of the alerts or events that have occurred on the cluster, broken down into Warning, Critical, and Informational alerts.
The Health tab also provides a Nodes table with a high-level overview of each node for the selected time range, including which cluster it belongs to, the node name, health status, node state, uptime, and domain.
Figure 4. Event Monitoring for APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Health tab
A second table – the Alerts table – shows each alert in greater detail, including its corresponding node, component and subcomponent, severity level, event code, product service tag number, reported time, a short description, and even a knowledgebase article for issue diagnosis and troubleshooting guidance.
Note that you can leverage the Search bar to filter the information based on a given search term and the Time Range drop-down menu to show the events that occurred on all the MC nodes for the cluster within a specific time range.
Conclusion
Our workbook, Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, makes real the ability to monitor events generated on both Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure hardware and the Cloud Platform Manager within the Azure Portal.
This powerful integration provides a great deal of value, significantly reducing the issue detection time and time to resolution.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates in Info Hub!
Resources
We have tons of great content to help you deep-dive into Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure powered by Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software:
- What's New with the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure March 2024 Release
- Dell Technologies First to Deliver Azure Stack HCI 23H2
- YouTube playlist with educational and demo videos
- NEW YouTube playlist for March 2024 release
- Info Hub white papers, videos, and interactive demos
- APEX Cloud Platform for Azure main product page
- Microsoft’s official announcement of 23H2 general availability
- General availability of Azure Virtual Desktop
- Azure Stack HCI Security Book
- Check out What’s new for Azure edge infrastructure in 2023 for an eye opening case study of a fictional grocery store chain that uses Microsoft Azure to deploy and manage infrastructure at the edge using Azure Arc, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Stack HCI. This is a highly enlightening, end-to-end view of how all the technologies within the Azure hybrid cloud ecosystem can harmoniously work together to solve a real-world business problem in the retail vertical.
And as always, please reach out to your Dell Technologies account team if you would like to have more in-depth discussions about the Dell APEX Cloud Platforms family. If you don’t currently have a Dell Technologies contact, we’re here to help on our corporate website.
Author: Ignacio Borrero, Senior Principal Engineer, Technical Marketing Dell CI & HCI
@virtualpeli
Appendix
Concept | Definition |
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure hardware | A turnkey on-premises infrastructure platform, collaboratively engineered between Dell Technologies and Microsoft to optimize Azure hybrid cloud operations. Based on multicloud (MC) nodes as the cluster(s) foundation. |
Cloud Platform Manager VM | Each cluster runs the Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software in a Cloud Platform Manager VM. This software is responsible for communicating with the underlying infrastructure and integrating automation workflows into Microsoft Windows Admin Center. |
Azure Workbook | A flexible canvas for data analysis and the creation of rich visual reports within the Azure portal. |
What's New with the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure March 2024 Release
Wed, 06 Mar 2024 18:09:44 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is about to reach its first six months of existence, and we’re celebrating by incorporating a plethora of enhancements across the entire platform.
First and foremost, Dell has become the first Microsoft partner to enable 23H2 for new deployments. We can ship new platforms based on Dell multicloud (MC) nodes that include a factory staging of Azure Stack HCI 23H2. Dell Services will assist customers on the initial deployment experience,
Azure Stack HCI 23H2 (2311.2 release) comes full of rich features, including:
- Simplification in infrastructure deployment as key Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) components are created as part of the Azure Stack HCI deployment
- Enhancement in Azure Arc-enabled on-premises resources like virtualized desktops, server VMs, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) hybrid workload clusters, as they are now automatically Azure-Arc enabled
- Azure Stack HCI cloud-based deployment
- Management of updates across all Azure Stack HCI clusters using Azure Update Manager
- New capabilities and improvements to the core Azure Stack HCI stack – hypervisor, storage, security, and virtual machines
Check out these features in greater depth in this blog, Dell Technologies First to Deliver Azure Stack HCI 23H2.
But there is much more to this March release than 23H2, ranging from new cluster node expansion options to improvements in Dell APEX Cloud Platform foundation software for Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2 operations to serviceability and platform monitoring enhancements.
Cluster expansion
Today, all cluster expansion operations are led by Dell Support and Services. Starting with this APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure March release, there are two new operations supported:
- Upgrading a single node deployment to a 2-node cluster
Through a Dell Services-led engagement, it is possible to expand a single node deployment to a 2-node switched or switchless cluster.
Figure 1. Single node to 2-node cluster Azure Stack HCI expansion
- Converting a 2-node switchless storage network cluster to a 2-node switched storage network cluster
Dell Services converts from a switchless storage network topology to a switched one. From there – 2-node switched – we can grow our Azure Stack HCI deployment up to 16 nodes.
Figure 2. 2-node switchless to 2-node switched cluster conversion
Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation software improvements
Numerous improvements in the platform will affect distinct solutions’ areas. As of today, platform deployment operations are done through a white glove experience led by Dell Services teams, but we are investing in a more API-driven approach moving forward:
- Day 0 – Day 1 Operations
- To make initial deployment even simpler, we can now use a JSON file that stores the configuration options for our environment, avoiding the need to go step-by-step through the deployment wizard.
- A RESTful API has been made available to automate provisioning operations.
- The automated initial deployment was limited to 6 nodes. From this APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software v1.01 and forward, this process can include up to 16 nodes.
- iDRAC Service Module (iSM) is installed as part of the initial deployment after the first cluster node boots. Its lifecycle management is handled by Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation software.
- Day 2 Operations
- Wizard driven process for node repair/replace
- This is a Dell services-led procedure, that – depending on the issue – may require re-imaging the node or preparing a new server.
- In a nutshell, when the issue requires the Operating System to be reinstalled, we need to go through the node repair operation.
- Wizard driven process for node repair/replace
Figure 3. GUI driven process for node repair/replace
- Wizard driven process to add/replace disks in a node
- These operations can be customer-led.
- Validation checks are run to ensure optimal operation completion.
- Verification checks are run post disk insertion. When these finalize successfully, the process can be considered completed.
Figure 4. Add disk to a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure node shows successful completion
- There is a similar wizard when the case is disk replacement instead of disk addition. The output of the replacement process will look like the following:
Figure 5. Replace disk/s to a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure node shows successful completion
- Serviceability improvements
- Embedded Service Enabler (ESE) and Remote Secure Credential (RSC) logs have been added to the log bundle collection mechanism. These logs can be very useful when remote access to the cluster is denied and we want to diagnose the connection issue.
Figure 6. Checking the content of a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to verify both ESE and RSC logs are included in the bundle
- Microsoft Azure portal integrations
- Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure will deliver a customized Azure workbook which will allow you to monitor faults and events that happen on the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure hardware and the Cloud Platform Manager via the Microsoft’s Azure Portal itself.
Figure 7. Dell's customized Azure workbook, integrated with Insights in Azure Portal, to monitor real time faults and events generated within Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
Check the Resources section in this blog for useful links to more information on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure and specifics to this new release.
We will continue working on enhancing the platform features, so stay tuned for more new and exciting capabilities soon.
Resources
- Blog: Dell Technologies First to Deliver Azure Stack HCI 23H2
- Blog: Monitoring the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure with Azure Insights
- Info Hub blogs with further details about the new enhancements in our latest release
- Info Hub white papers, videos, and interactive demos
- YouTube playlist with educational and demo videos
- NEW YouTube playlist for March 2024 release
- Main product page with spec sheets, solution briefs, infographics, and other great collateral
- Dell Support site with administrator guides
- Microsoft’s official announcement of 23H2 general availability
- General availability of Azure Virtual Desktop
- Azure Stack HCI Security Book
- Check out What’s new for Azure edge infrastructure in 2023 for an eye opening case study of a fictional grocery store chain that uses Microsoft Azure to deploy and manage infrastructure at the edge using Azure Arc, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Stack HCI. This is a highly enlightening, end-to-end view of how all the technologies within the Azure hybrid cloud ecosystem can harmoniously work together to solve a real-world business problem in the retail vertical.
And as always, please reach out to your Dell Technologies account team if you would like to have more in-depth discussions about the Dell APEX Cloud Platforms family. If you don’t currently have a Dell Technologies contact, we’re here to help on our corporate website.
Author: Inigo Olcoz - Senior Principal Engineer Technologist Dell HCI Technical Marketing
X: @VirtualOlcoz