Home Enterprise Dell EMC Introduces ScaleIO Ready Nodes

Dell EMC Introduces ScaleIO Ready Nodes

by Adam Armstrong

Today Dell EMC announced that its ScaleIO will now be available on a Ready Node, a software-defined, all-flash offering running on Dell EMC PowerEdge x86 servers. This is the second announcement since the two companies finished their merger last week. The previous announcement combined the powerful DSSD D5 NVMe storage with PowerEdge servers. The merger gives customers the best of both worlds, allowing ScaleIO software to run on the flexible configurations of the Dell PowerEdge servers.


Today Dell EMC announced that its ScaleIO will now be available on a Ready Node, a software-defined, all-flash offering running on Dell EMC PowerEdge x86 servers. This is the second announcement since the two companies finished their merger last week. The previous announcement combined the powerful DSSD D5 NVMe storage with PowerEdge servers. The merger gives customers the best of both worlds, allowing ScaleIO software to run on the flexible configurations of the Dell PowerEdge servers.

We have previous done a fairly extensive review of ScaleIO on an EMC VxRack Node beginning here. We found the performance to exceed our expectations. While ScaleIO can be deployed on most gear the new Ready Nodes will take out much of the legwork, as the name implies the node is ready to go when it ships. ScaleIO ReadyNodes are a server SAN that can be deployed quickly and fit within existing infrastructure. The new ScaleIO Ready Nodes will be all-flash, enabling them to scale out and overcome limitations that other all-flash storage ran into on server solutions. Its all-flash nature extends its power to any and all workloads while the SSD drives work in parallel to help eliminate performance bottlenecks. The new Ready Nodes also allow users to take advantage of the aggregate performance of the SSDs in a single node meaning that the performance scales linearly as nodes are added.

Key Features:

  • Next-Gen Hardware: ScaleIO Ready Node runs on workload-optimized Dell PowerEdge rack servers, designed to deliver exceptional performance, flexibility and scalability.
  • Enhanced Caching Layer: Caching software makes the most actively used data accessible in faster-responding media for applications utilizing hybrid-based configurations.
  • Operating System Flexibility: ScaleIO Ready Node delivers a server SAN with the flexibility needed to adapt as business needs and standards change.

Customer benefits:

  • Comprehensive Solution: A Dell EMC qualified, tested and supported SDS solution that meets the demands of mission-critical enterprise workloads while delivering higher and more consistent performance, capacity and cost efficiency than non-flash and hybrid offerings.
  • Deployment Simplicity: Customers can build a modern data center out of common Dell servers, using very few SKUs.
  • Powerful Performance: The Dell servers allow VM and container consolidation while ScaleIO delivers powerful yet consistent I/O to all applications.
  • Operational Ease: The solution makes it easy to expand the pool with more servers and also the ability to retire old servers – while avoiding loss to application services.

The Dell EMC merger didn't just give Dell another source of revenue, it also allows products like ScaleIO and PowerEdge (products that, while they weren't made to work together, sure seem like it) to not only be integrated together, but it means that both hardware and software come from a single vendor and have a single support. The Ready Node can also be managed by Dell's iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller.

Other features of the ScaleIO Ready Node is it pay-as-you-grow pricing, meaning customers can start small and scale as they grow. The Ready Node is hypervisor and OS agnostic with support for VMware vSphere, Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V, Linux and OpenStack deployments.

Availability

ScaleIO Ready Node is available now. Customers can select either storage-only or hyper-converged deployment models and though Dell EMC is push all-flash there are hybrid configurations available.

Dell EMC main site

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