Tech Field Day 13 Preview: DellEMC

Last but not least in my Tech Field Day 13 Preview series is Dell EMC. If you’re reading this you are probably aware of the Dell and EMC merger that occurred in September 2016. This 67 billion dollar merger took the #2 server manufacturer by market share and combined it with the (tied for) #1 storage vendor. The dust is starting to settle and server bezels are starting to reflect the new logos. I think the merger has brought many great products into the Dell catalog and is exciting to see it unfold.

This article is coming a little late because I honestly had no idea where to even begin speculating on a company as large as Dell EMC. They do servers, storage, networking, and everything else in between. A little birdie told me that, among many other products, we will be hearing about VxRail. I have been following this product since it was originally announced as Evo:Rail. The idea of an all in one VMware supported box seemed like it would solve many of my problems at the time. I’ve watched the HCI market mature and the Evo:Rail product evolve into VxRail and am excited to get a good look at it.

VxRail is a hyperconverged system, bundling storage and compute into the same boxes. Unlike some of their key competitors they are built ground up on VMware’s SDDC packages. VxRail is a system developed with VMware performance in mind. As the role of server admins evolve so do the technologies. Having all in one boxes pre-tested and preconfigured to run VMware can help the administrator rack it and get to work quickly. The concept is certainly successful; hyperconverged sales are up 137.5% year over year during the second quarter of 2016.

Dell and Dell EMC are much more than just one product so I expect that they will present on many different technologies. I’ll be covering them in greater detail next week!