Dell Unveils New Virtualization Features

Products from the Round Rock, Texas-based company include new Dell PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers for virtualization. The PowerEdge R805 has twice the memory and I/O capacity of Dell's previous generation 2 socket servers, according to the company.

Customers can choose either VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition-integrated hypervisors. Dell PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers start at $3,049 and $6,499 respectively. In addition, the Dell PowerEdge R900 and R905 provide 4-socket virtualization performance.

Dell EqualLogic storage arrays provide advanced SAN-aware integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager for data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized environments at no additional cost in management tools, Dell said.

Combined with Dell EqualLogic storage virtualization technology, the product is designed to eliminate SAN deployment and management complexity so that customers can more easily provision and manage their virtual storage environments.

Dell also teamed up with data center virtualization system provider Egenera to provide linking virtualization and data center automation beyond the blade chassis. The Dell PAN (Processing Area Network ) system is built on PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers. Dell/EMC storage and Citrix XenServer have been factory integrated as a complete, turn-key solution that consolidates and virtualizes server compute-resources into an entire PAN system that can be managed like hard drives in a SAN. According to Dell, the PAN system provides rapid provisioning and re-deployment in minutes rather than weeks.

The company has also unleashed several virtualization solutions, such as the Virtualization Simplification Workshop, which is intended to help customers determine which options are the most suitable for their specific business needs and technical environments.

Another new solution is the Virtualization Healthcheck, which reviews existing virtualized production environments and identifies problems in technology, process and people issues that impede virtualization scale out and also provides a results-oriented plan. Dell is also providing ProSupport Remote Advisory Services, which the company said enables fast access to technical experts for consulting on virtualization implementations.

"Virtualization is quickly moving beyond hypervisors and hardware consolidation," said Rick Becker, vice president of software and solutions, Dell Product Group, in a statement. "Enterprises are looking for a broad array of servers, storage and services designed specifically for virtualized environments."