Dell EMC Launches 'Compelling' VxBlock 1000 With New Cisco And Data Protection Integration

In its biggest converged infrastructure launch in years, Dell EMC unveiled today the new VxBlock 1000 which increases server scalability by 56 percent along with enhanced capabilities and sales options for partners.

"What our customers are asking for, is for greater operational simplicity and efficiently – this is an answer to that," said Kent MacDonald, senior vice president at Long View Systems, a Calgary, Canada-based solution provider, ranked No. 87 on CRN's 2017 Solution Provider 500 list. "It's great for partners to see this type of innovation and investment by Dell in the converged market. This is validation that, although cloud is a significant area and a growing resource, there's still a great need from customers for converged infrastructure solutions."

The converged infrastructure market leader's new VxBlock 1000 adds new options of storage and native data protection as well as compute and networking from Cisco. For the first time, organizations can mix four types of storage arrays – Dell EMC's Unity, VMAX, XtremIO and Isilon – as well as opt for Cisco's UCS C-Series rack servers in VxBlock.

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Compared to previous generations, the VxBlock 1000 increases server scalability by 56 percent, from 512 to 800 servers, and can now support up to ten storage arrays.

Additionally, unlike VxBlock products in the past, data protection is "now a native element of the VxBlock 1000 architecture," said Trey Layton, senior vice president of Dell EMC Converged Infrastructure, in an interview with CRN.

"We've always offered the ability for customers to add data protection to the architectures, but in doing so, there were these established and fixed standards and it maybe didn't adapt to every particular data protection scenario a customer encountered in VxBlock. So customers gave us a lot of feedback in saying, 'We'd like to see you adapt your integration standards for data protection in a more flexible manner," said Layton. "Now it's a native element. It's very simple to add on. It's not something that comes with a rigid standard that you have to apply."

The all-in-one system also reduces rack space by up to 60 percent, according to the company, as well as a 75 percent reduction in time for lifecycle management with a single upgrade process for multi-technology systems.

MacDonald said the new solution will help solve the "complexity anchor" customers are currently dealing with.

"This raises the bar in how you can create that operational simplicity and efficiency customers are really looking for which will is very compelling," he said. "We're excited to start selling this."

Dell EMC supports more than 2,000 VxBlock customers today, according to Layton, with many customers "begging for us to release new converged infrastructure capacities like this."

"The VxBlock 1000 is about introducing greater degrees of flexibility, improving and enhancing the operational lifecycle experiences associated with the VxBlock architecture to improve customer satisfaction, and serve a larger base of customers," said Layton. "We already have a majority of those converged infrastructure customers. We want to sell more to the existing customers that we have and take share from the competitors."

Dell's Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program is being applied to the VxBlock 1000 which includes a three-year satisfaction guarantee and built-in Virtustream Storage Cloud. The VxBlock 1000 is now globally available for partners to sell.