Dell Unveils Framework for Unifying IT Infrastructure

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There’s clearly a tremendous amount of interest in unifying the management of IT infrastructure. Trying to adroitly respond to changing business and application requirements when compute, storage and networking are managed in isolation is all but impossible. Any number of converged and hyperconverged systems promise to address that issue, of course. But for a number of internal political and budgetary reasons, most organizations can’t make a wholesale switch to a new way to managing IT overnight.

At the VMware World 2016 conference today, Dell unveiled a new framework for achieving convergence across a wide range of IT infrastructure. Glenn Keels, executive director of product management, engineered systems, high-performance computing and cloud at Dell, says that rather than trying to force a physical upgrade to an entirely new platform, the Dell Validated System for Virtualization enables IT organizations to create their own templates to unify the management of compute, storage and networking resources to create one logical system. Keels says this approach is not only going to be simpler for most IT organizations to adopt; it will also be significantly less expensive.

“Most new converged systems are going to cost in the high six figures to a million dollars,” says Keels. “This approach starts at around $100,000.”

Since the system is designed to be extensible, Keels says either IT organizations or the IT service providers that serve them can now make use of templates, software development kits and reference architectures in the Dell Validated System for Virtualization to combine multiple Dell and third-party products that Dell sells and supports to create a logical unit of computing. That approach means that any mix of compute, storage and networking resources can now be holistically managed, says Keels.

Longer term, Keels says the Dell Validated System for Virtualization will eventually lead IT organizations down the path toward physical converged and hyperconverged systems. But in the meantime, Keels says the Dell Validated System for Virtualization recognizes the reality most IT organizations face today without forcing them to change the way they manage IT overnight.