back to article Dell to unleash hybrid server/storage boxen that can run virtual machines

Dell will next week announce a significant refresh and consolidation of its storage range and at the same time try to reinvent storage arrays as computing appliances for data-centric workloads. Dell’s storage range has had numerous overlaps for years, thanks to its acquisitions of Compellent and EMC, plus its home-grown kit. …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Boxes

    "Dell to unleash hybrid server/storage boxeS that can run virtual machines"

    There, FIFY.

    1. DemeterLast

      Re: Boxes

      They're called "boxen" because you must treat them as you would any herd animal.

      1. JacobZ

        Re: Boxes

        Kids today, eh?

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Boxes

          yeah, "kids today" - no sense of humor! Then again with the 'grammar nazi' icon, it might've started out as a joke...

          (no up/down vote from me until the snark level has been properly measured)

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Boxes

      Looks like its only taken them 12+ years to deliver what Tintri delivered - using open source. suspect it will be not as functional and admin friendly.

  2. Chz

    Is this an update to the VRTX, or something completely different? Previous employer used those as all-in-one ESX solutions before "hyperconverged" was on everyone's lips.

  3. Twanky

    Dell will next week announce...

    A server platform to support the detection of future crime.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Perfect for parallel file systems

    Looks like an ideal box to run with Spectrum Scale ECE, with the file system distributed across all the boxen and erasure coded

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Perfect for parallel file systems

      thinking of "scale" in general, I wonder how it does in THAT department... as in could these things be "scaled up" into a full data center in order to get better performance for, say, an SQL database with a web interface, something practical for a medium company that is on its way to becoming a LARGE company, and will need to "scale up" at some point?

      My guess is it'll scale, because, VMWare.

      (I don't do mega-IT so maybe this stuff is more obvious to others, though I'm still curious)

  5. K

    The power of marketing..

    "Your storage can now run VMs locally"

    Of what was previously known as, standalone ESXi host with local storage.

    1. DCFusor

      Re: The power of marketing..

      It's been funny watching the wheel turn, again and again.

      Mainframe with thin clients...

      PCs on premises

      Cloud (mainframe with thin clients)

      Is one of the rotating wheels - all you need is marketing to rebrand things and call them "new".

      This is just another instance of a local server that has enough storage to, um, serve something.

      Seems all too large a fraction of one's expertise has to be "read through the marketing BS".

      I'll get my coat...

  6. Art Jannicelli

    The rise of NVME...

    I have seen this coming for 5+ years. They could be prepping the Datrium model to go main stream...

    Picture running your VM's in NVME, with a copy/snapshot/journal being replicated down to SATA disks on the server, that is protected by Erasure coding, that is deduped and compressed in a global data map. Then your backups and replication jobs target this second tier of data to avoid impacting production.

    Right now, a lot of the HCI vendors are still suffering from architecture written for Hybrid HCI, that still relies on a cache to receive the data before stripping it to disk. Of course with NVME this is completely unnecessary and backward since NVME is directly addressable as memory.

    I think this is also why we are seeing the rise of D-HCI from HPE (Nimble +Proliant), Netapp (Solidfire Element + Server), and others... As again away to prepare to run VM's in NVME, and have another tier ready to offload Dedupe, Compression and EC.

    So my prediction is Dell will be announcing a platform that is optimized for NVME as storage, and an additional D-HCI platform.

  7. ManMountain1

    "Create a niche" ... sounds just like HPE's dHCI, NetApp's HCI, and some others. Just disaggregated HCI basically.

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