Dell announces PowerEdge FX architecture
Bangalore, India, November 28, 2014: Dell, world’s fastest-growing large integrated IT Company has announced the next generation of PowerEdge FX architecture, combining the efficient management of IT building blocks of server, storage and networking to optimize both modern and legacy workloads, bridging from a traditional datacenter to software defined datacenter. The next-generation Dell PowerEdge FX architecture is Dell’s revolutionary approach to combining the best elements of blades and racks into one common modular platform with storage and networking integrated to help customers better manage, scale and budget for infrastructure to meet business needs.
Today’s datacenters are evolving at a rapid pace as businesses are facing pressures to support existing application requirements while using IT in new and exciting ways – all within financial constraints. Customers typically choose between purchasing rack or blade servers, networking and storage individually as the base of their data center operations. Built on new PowerEdge technology, FX re-interprets the rack server for changing application demands, allowing customers to incrementally add or swap small IT building blocks, including servers, DAS storage and IO modules with different processors, memory sizes and storage characteristics, into a 2U converged-infrastructure chassis. The result is extremely flexible, dynamic IT that redefines data center agility.
The next-generation PowerEdge FX architecture is a 2U enclosure with six new PowerEdge server, storage and network IOA sleds built specifically to fit into the FX2 chassis and support varying workloads. Designed with integrated management capabilities, the FX architecture enables customers to easily configure, manage and add capacity to complete workload-specific blocks of IT resources.
This converged infrastructure approach affords efficiencies of shared power, I/O and management, integrated switching, and unsurpassed overall density capabilities at up to 40 2-socket servers in 10U. Building on Dell’s recent PowerEdge 13th generation server portfolio announcement, the next-generation PowerEdge FX2 also includes advanced systems management capabilities to reduce operational complexity and simplify data center management.
Commenting on FX2, Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions Group, Dell India said, “Software defined datacenters represent the IT infrastructure of the future and will bring greater levels of flexibility to enterprises by allowing them to optimize their IT environments to meet specific workload needs. Today with the launch of our new products across the datacenter, we enable our customers to future proof their environments and embrace the ‘software defined revolution’, while minimizing impact to legacy infrastructure, with ‘never before’ infrastructure flexibility also embedded, comes a comprehensive and intelligent management system which allows skilled manpower typically used to right-size and manage the environment to focus on improving business results.”
Industry-leading enhancements make IT Management easier than ever
Workload optimization
- Tailor IT infrastructure with precise computing power, storage and connectivity
- Scale from single socket microservers up to high-performance 4-socket servers within a 2U rack chassis
- Use any style of storage — SAN, DAS or software defined — including in-chassis direct-attached FX storage blocks
Data center efficiency
With FX in place, customers can scale workloads on demand and add resources incrementally — without the expense and inefficiency of overprovisioning — and be ready for modern workloads with
- Dense virtualization — with up to 16 processors in 2U, or the ability to support large storage pools or scale-out Hadoop environments for Big Data analysis.
- Optional IO Aggregator modules — to simplify cabling complexity, enhance “east/west” traffic within the chassis and provide easy LAN/SAN convergence — saving time and costs
Simplified management
Dell OpenManage streamlines the management of converged infrastructure
- Simplify building and managing data centers and private clouds by combining enterprise-level systems management with modular, converged infrastructure.
- Ensure management consistency and maintain the management style that suits customers data center and staff — manage at the server, chassis or rack level.
- Deploy and provision servers faster and automate daily operations with the agent-free lifecycle management of iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller and the Dell Chassis Management controller
Build block by block
Mix and match modular IT resources in the compact FX2, a 2U rack-based converged chassis with shared cooling, power, networking, management and PCIe expansion slots. Initially available modular building blocks include:
- FC630 half-width 2-socket server block with Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family performance (up to four per FX2 chassis)
- FM120x4 microserver block, each consisting of a half-width “sled” that houses 4 microservers running the low-power Intel Atom C2000 System on a Chip (SoC) processor (up to 4 sleds with 16 total microservers per FX2 chassis)
- FN IO Aggregator that is able to simplify network deployment by aggregating cabling from 8 cables to as little as a single cable; offers cost-effective 10GbE performance; and enables LAN/SAN convergence
Wired for the software-defined data center
The FX2’s flexible multi-fabric design allows FX servers to efficiently handle all types of storage traffic — SAN, DAS and NAS — with IO that is already optimized for the DAS/vSAN storage environments and features a distinctive Dell PCIe fabric that can free customers from proprietary limitations. Add SanDisk DAS Cache, a direct-attached caching solution brought to customers by Dell, to accelerate application performance. Coming soon, new modular building blocks that will continue to accelerate customer’s software-defined data center:
- FD332 half-width storage block with up to 16 small-form-factor (SFF) 2.5″ DAS devices (up to 3 blocks per FX2 chassis – with one FC630 server)
- New Intel Xeon powered server blocks will include the FC430 quarter-width 2-socket block (up to 16 per FX2 chassis) and the FC830 full-width 4-socket block (up to 2 per FX2 chassis)
Infrastructure that keeps up with customer’s business
As the demands on customers’ business grow, customer can incrementally adapt and grow their infrastructure along with it. Build to virtually any workload with PowerEdge FX
- Provide highly available web services or dedicated hosting that need dense processing resources and discrete physical domains
- Drive business-critical applications, from business analytics to demanding high-performance computing (HPC), online transaction processing (OLTP), online analytical processing (OLAP) and anything-as-a-service (XaaS)
- Run private clouds, databases and virtualization environments that require high-performance storage and server processing
