Dell Broadens OpenShift Solutions

Dell and Red Hat are getting a little cozier, as Dell is expanding their OpenShift solutions to help organizations deliver on DevOps and multicloud objectives. The new offerings will of course be delivered through APEX, with a Dell-managed Container-as-a-Service solution. Dell will also offer a Validated Platform for Red Hat OpenShift as well as a co-engineered hybrid cloud solution that should look a lot like VxRail upon completion.

Dell and Red Hat are getting a little cozier, as Dell is expanding their OpenShift solutions to help organizations deliver on DevOps and multicloud objectives. The new offerings will of course be delivered through APEX, with a Dell-managed Container-as-a-Service solution. Dell will also offer a Validated Platform for Red Hat OpenShift as well as a co-engineered hybrid cloud solution that should look a lot like VxRail upon completion.

Dell OpenShift Solutions – Enabled by PowerFlex

While the OpenShift announcement looks and feels a lot like a software integration, we like to remember that there’s still hardware underpinning these efforts. In the case of Dell’s OpenShift commitment, that’s PowerFlex.

The timing for PowerFlex is good, just last month PowerFlex received its first major update in a very long time. One of the key new features included new lifecycle management updates, which becomes important as we consider PowerFlex as underpinning an OpenShift converged hybrid-cloud architecture and Dell Validated Platforms.

Dell also had containers and modern workloads very much in mind in the Powerflex 4.0 update, as PowerFlex supports various Kubernetes and hyperscaler platforms and the flexibility to utilize either bare metal or a virtualized deployment architecture. The release also expanded support for Amazon EKS Anywhere on bare metal to go along with existing support for Amazon EKS Anywhere in a virtual environment.

Dell Validated Platform for Red Hat OpenShift

The Dell Validated Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, “streamlines deployment processes and management of on-premises infrastructure for container orchestration with fully documented deployment and configuration guidance.” Essentially this means that Dell’s hardware and software teams have put in the work to ensure the Validated Platforms are easy to consume.

While this sounds intuitive, OpenShift deployments today are still not as easy as they could be to implement, which leads to frustration and projects taking longer than expected to get online. With Dell bundling the hardware and software together, and documenting it, should mean the path to OpenShift success with Dell should look a little more professional than some of the cobbled-together bits of kit we’ve seen. The support matrix for these systems should also greatly benefit.

Dell & Red Hat Engineered OpenShift Solution

If you want to control and manage your OpenShift gear but want even more integration, Dell and Red Hat are co-engineering a hybrid cloud solution. While this won’t come to market until next year, if Dell does this correctly, the solution should look a lot like their converged offering for VMware, VxRail.

The biggest benefit with VxRail is the ongoing operational benefit when it comes to lifecycle updates. It’s also a little easier to get going out of the gate thanks to an appliance that shows up to the data center ready to go. In the case of OpenShift, it remains to be seen how deep Dell and Red Hat go, but given what we’ve seen from the VMware appliance and even Dell’s Azure Stack HCI work, there’s good reason for OpenShift fans to be optimistic.

Dell APEX Container-as-a-Service Solution

Like many other things within the Dell portfolio, the as-a-Service model is a major focus with OpenShift as well. Should your shop be more determined to focus on applications and less on hardware management, Dell will offer a fully managed service for OpenShift.

In this case, Dell manages the entire stack, likely based on the engineered appliance detailed above. The gear remains within the customer’s data center. For those who want to be entirely cloud-based, it’s reasonable to expect Dell to offer this service as part of their Alpine, make everything available in the cloud, initiative.

The Dell APEX Container-as-a-Service Solution is delivered as a subscription service.

Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations

Looking forward, Dell and IBM plan to offer artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) and intelligent automation capabilities to this offering. The goal will be to help customers gain additional visibility and actionable insights across infrastructure and applications.

Availability

Dell APEX Containers for Red Hat OpenShift has planned availability in the US in early 2023 with broader availability to follow.

Dell Validated Platform for Red Hat OpenShift is available globally on September 30, 2022.

The Dell hybrid cloud solution with Red Hat OpenShift has planned availability in 2023.

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