Microsoft with Dell EMC treads on a new path to hybrid cloud

Microsoft has hosted its annual Windows Server Summit. One of the major themes was “Innovations in Microsoft Hybrid Strategy: a deep dive into Microsoft’s hyper-converged technologies and how to add hybrid services from Azure.” Cloud based services are an integral and flexible part of any future ready hybrid cloud system. Cloud services help IT organizations quickly transform service delivery to agile modern hybrid cloud environments.

Dell EMC customers are using Azure Cloud Services today to modernize core IT capabilities and to extend on premise data center capabilities with Azure cloud-based services. As one of Microsoft’s biggest partners, Dell EMC has collaborated with Microsoft to develop hybrid solutions for years. Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a hyper-converged Windows Server 2019 cluster that uses validated hardware to run virtualized workloads on premises, optionally connecting to Azure services for cloud-based backup, site recovery and more. Dell EMC’s Azure-dedicated portfolio today includes support for both Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI.  Azure Stack, an extension of Azure on-premises that can run on Dell EMC hyper-converged engineered systems, allows users to consistently build and run cloud applications anywhere across the Azure ecosystem, using the Azure Portal with Azure IaaS and PaaS services. With Azure Stack HCI, a BYO on-prem private cloud solution, users can run virtualized workloads in a familiar and flexible way – but with the efficiency of Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure – and connect to Azure public for hybrid scenarios such as cloud backup and cloud-based monitoring.  

These two different offerings provide the customers with the ability to choose how they achieve a hybrid cloud environment in Azure that addresses their unique goals. The latest announcement includes the addition of Windows Server 2019 to all 15 configurations under WSSD; the availability of Azure Stack on the Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 platform; and a metered usage consumption model for Azure Stack infrastructure with Flex on Demand from Dell Financial Services.

This new offering leverages the Windows Server Datacenter license to provide software defined storage, using Hyper-V virtualization down to the storage level.  These multi-node clusters provide cost effective volumes with high performance and low latency, using common management tools.  In addition to the previous 15 use case-driven configurations under WSSD, Dell EMC has added -

·         Windows Server 2019 to all 15 configurations, offering more choice and expandability

·         Dell EMC’s newly released storage dense PowerEdge R740xd2 as a new chassis platform, allowing for more demanding workloads

·         QuickStart –a 4 node, 2 switch configuration that’s an easy to order and deploy,end-to-end high availability solution

•     Dell EMC PowerSwitch25GbE networking to increase throughput

·         Anew upgrade service, taking customers from existing Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodearchitectures to Windows Server 2019 with continued support entitlement

·         Best in class systems management by unifying and automating management capabilities for modern infrastructures with the OpenManage Integration for Windows Admin Center console.