With the acceleration of the digital transformation across the entire industry, more and more enterprises have entered a new stage of deep cloud utilization. And the hybrid cloud, which combines the agility and innovation of public clouds with the manageability and controllability of private clouds, has become the best choice for various industries to build their infrastructure technology foundation.
According to the report “IDC MarketShare: China Hybrid Cloud Market Share, 2023” released by IDC, the overall market size of China’s hybrid cloud in 2023 reached 88.79 billion yuan, among which the market size of hybrid cloud infrastructure was 45.27 billion yuan, accounting for more than 50% of the overall hybrid cloud market in China. This indicates that the demand for hybrid cloud infrastructure from industry customers is still at a relatively high level.
The underlying reason is that the flexible computing power, strong elasticity, stable security architecture, and continuous service capabilities of the hybrid cloud infrastructure can not only provide traditional enterprise customers with a digital-native foundation, but also accelerate the process of enterprise digital transformation. This has enabled it to quickly become the mainstream cloud infrastructure deployment model in China.
It was precisely because of this new market trend that Dell Technologies Group previously announced the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform (Dell APEX Cloud Platform). This cloud platform is a fully integrated turnkey system combination that seamlessly integrates Dell Technologies’ infrastructure, software, and cloud stack. By extending the cloud operation model to local and edge environments, it can help enterprises achieve consistent multi-cloud operations.
It is worth noting that the Dell APEX cloud platform also offers two major types of cloud platforms: Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure and Dell APEX Cloud Platform for RedHat OpenShift. It fully supports both cloud ecosystems, and in a “two-pronged” approach, leads the new delivery form of hybrid cloud applications, and comprehensively accelerates the digital transformation of thousands of industries.
01.
Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure: Creating a New Experience for Hybrid Cloud
In fact, Dell Technologies and Microsoft have had a long-term strategic partnership. Previously, the two companies collaborated on Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack HCI. In particular, Azure Stack HCI enables enterprises to manage their hyper-converged infrastructure in a simple and user-friendly manner, and on this basis, it also provides enterprises with greater convenience to enjoy the capabilities offered by Azure in the cloud, including security center, backup, cloud-native services, etc., thereby enhancing the scenarios of hybrid applications.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure (hereinafter referred to as DellACP for Microsoft Azure) offers the best platform for modernizing applications and workloads across Windows and Linux virtual machines, containers, and Arc-enabled services. It can extend the Azure hybrid cloud experience to data centers and edge environments, providing a consistent Azure experience anytime and anywhere.
The main advantages of Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure lie in the following three aspects: Accelerating application modernization through consistent AKS delivery, simplifying the environment to enable Arc services on demand, and ensuring consistent application workflows across locations. Specifically:
Firstly, Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack HCI form a closely verified integrated solution. As a “Premium Solution” collaboration within the Azure Stack HCI framework, Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure is capable of achieving end-to-end automated updates, and the update speed is extremely fast. Data shows that after Azure Stack HCI releases the relevant “patch packages”, Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure can complete the update synchronously within 4 hours, enabling users to experience the new features and enhanced security of Azure Stack HCI as soon as possible. This is the significant value brought about by the joint development and verification between the two parties.
Secondly, Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure offers Azure Stack HCI OEM licenses. Compared with the previous “subscription” model of Azure Stack HCI, this license model also has significant differences. That is, all three services (Azure Stack HCI, Windows Server Datacenter, and Azure Kubernetes Services) can be paid for once and do not require regular renewal. Not only does this have an advantage in terms of price, but it also helps users save a lot of costs. More importantly, since the user purchases the Azure Stack HCI OEM license, they can receive “one-stop” services for both hardware, software, and full-stack support from Dell Technologies.
Thirdly, Dell Technologies has further integrated Dell PowerFlex into the Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure environment. This feature does not replace the storage space direct-through function provided by Azure Stack HCI. Instead, it offers a flexible, scalable and high-performance storage solution, further enhancing the performance and scale of customer applications.
With Dell PowerFlex, customers can host applications that require high transaction performance and low latency, such as mission-critical databases and applications; provide consistent I/O performance for streaming processing, ingestion, and reporting transactions, especially in intelligent and data analysis environments; PowerFlex has 6 nines of availability and can also minimize customer downtime; the modular horizontal expansion architecture can support exponential data growth, enabling the infrastructure to be seamlessly expanded as demand increases; in addition, customers can use the shared general storage layer based on Dell PowerFlex to expand the Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure platform, providing general storage services and supporting a consistent application environment, thus enabling seamless application and data movement across multiple clouds.
Fourthly, in order to better meet the needs of customers in data centers and edge environments, Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure also provides different “node-ready” configurations. For instance, for CPU-intensive applications, Dell Technologies offers the MC-660, which adopts a 1U rack-mounted form factor and occupies a small space, capable of meeting the requirements of computationally-intensive applications; for balanced CPU/storage applications, Dell Technologies offers the MC-760, which adopts a 2U rack-mounted form factor, featuring balanced performance and capacity for high-performance application integration, capable of meeting demanding workloads; furthermore, for applications in space-constrained, challenging edge and ROBO locations, Dell Technologies also offers the MC-4000x/45x0x series, with flexible, sturdy multi-node innovative edge solutions, to meet customers’ applications.
It is easy to see that Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure originated from “Azure Stack HCI”, but it goes beyond “Azure Stack HCI”. It is not only the best “evidence” of the deep cooperation between Dell Technologies and Microsoft, but also truly enables enterprises to obtain consistent services in both Dell Technologies’ cloud platform or local data center environment, thereby creating a “new experience” of hybrid cloud.
02.
Dell ACP for RedHat OpenShift: Unlocking the New Era of Hybrid Cloud
“Like a sudden spring breeze in a night, thousands of trees burst into a thousand blossoms of ice flowers.” Just as virtualization was in the past, today’s container technology is also rapidly sweeping the world, becoming a new starting point for enterprises’ digital transformation and intelligent upgrading. Especially with the accelerated implementation and application of container technology, it can be said that it has brought enterprises more flexible and elastic support.
In addition, more and more enterprises are also confronted with the uncertainties and escalating costs of managing virtual infrastructure. They are actively exploring alternative solutions for virtualization and are increasingly attaching importance to intelligence. They hope to maintain their differentiation and competitiveness through these means. These new trends also pose new challenges to hybrid cloud infrastructure.
In this context, Dell Technologies has also collaborated closely with Red Hat Company and launched Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift (hereinafter referred to as Dell ACP for OpenShift) for the market. This platform supports the running of VMs, containers, and machine learning workloads on a single device; at the same time, it enables the modernization of existing infrastructure and applications, as well as the construction of new infrastructure and applications; moreover, it supports the consistent application of the environment in local, edge, and cloud environments, thus allowing enterprise customers to build both the present and the future using virtualization and cloud functions. The key advantages of this platform are reflected in the following aspects:
First of all, Dell ACP for OpenShift not only offers powerful support for containers, but also provides an extremely exciting feature, namely KubeVirt. This is a Kubernetes plugin developed by Redhat and is open-source. It can not only schedule containers but also traditional virtual machines. In simple terms, it provides the ability to run virtualization within containers, making it a modern choice for general virtualization.
It can be seen that the KubeVirt project is one of the most active projects in the CNCF community, with over 200+ contributing companies. At the same time, it also has many functions of enterprise-level virtualization. Coupled with its construction based on KVM, it is adopted by numerous technology companies both at home and abroad. It also has strong reliability and security. In addition, KubeVirt can help enterprises significantly save the authorization of Guest OS and maximize the reduction of cost expenses for virtualization projects.
Furthermore, Dell ACP for OpenShift is a highly reliable development platform. As a joint project of Dell Technologies and Red Hat, it fully integrates the innovative achievements of both parties. To ensure that the enterprise stack remains in a continuously verified state, the testing time for each version exceeds 13,000 hours. Therefore, the stability and reliability of the entire platform are extremely strong. At the same time, the software of Dell ACP also provides OpenShift with very powerful automated management capabilities, enabling enterprises to achieve rapid deployment and upgrade of OpenShift on this platform.
Finally, Dell ACP for OpenShift also provides enterprises with a wide range of diverse storage options. In terms of Required storage (basic storage), enterprises can choose PowerStore and PowerFlex; while in Supplemental storage (additional storage), enterprises can select PowerScale, ObjectScale, etc., to meet their own needs in the field of cross-block, file and object storage.
From this, it can be seen that Dell ACP for OpenShift not only simplifies the enterprise containerization deployment process, but also possesses strong capabilities in virtualization, automation, and security and trust. This is a truly future-oriented hybrid cloud infrastructure platform that can help enterprises promote virtualization innovation across hybrid clouds.
03.
Three distinctive service capabilities define the new standards for choosing a hybrid cloud.
Looking back, the launch of Dell APEX cloud platform undoubtedly represents a “milestone” solution in Dell’s journey towards modernizing hybrid multi-cloud. Particularly, its three distinctive service capabilities have made it the best hybrid cloud infrastructure platform for helping enterprise customers manage and utilize the cloud effectively. This can be observed from three aspects:
First, there is the capability of deep integration. The Dell APEX cloud platform offers a turnkey system with “deep integration”. It is not merely hardware or software; rather, it is a comprehensive and deeply integrated system solution encompassing an entire ecosystem, representing a new generation of hybrid cloud infrastructure with strong consistency.
And its most distinctive capability is that it can provide end-to-end lifecycle management throughout the integrated hardware and software stack. Through the automated orchestration capabilities provided by the APEX Cloud Platform Foundation software, the Dell APEX Cloud Platform can help enterprises achieve compliant and efficient maintenance and operation of their data center infrastructure in a hybrid multi-cloud stack. All software and hardware upgrades and “patching” during this process are certified and optimized. This process cannot be achieved simply by installing a software or program; rather, it is the innovative outcome of deep cooperation and joint engineering between Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners over many years.
Second, it is the universal platform capability. The most valuable part of Dell APEX cloud platform encompasses the “both hardware and software” universal platform capabilities. At the hardware level, it includes the latest generation computing platform, namely the new generation PowerEdge servers. These servers are built based on the “Zero Trust” network resilience architecture and have been innovated in terms of automation and sustainability. At the software level, it refers to Dell Technologies’ software-defined storage capability. Based on PowerFlex storage (and ObjectScale on the Red Hat OpenShift APEX cloud platform), enterprises can independently expand storage capacity and performance, better supporting workloads with different performance requirements.
Thirdly, it is the ability of ecological cooperation. The Dell APEX cloud platform has jointly collaborated with partners such as Microsoft and Red Hat to deeply develop two types of cloud platforms: Dell ACP for Microsoft Azure and Dell ACP for Red Hat OpenShift. This enables enterprises to conveniently, simply and effortlessly select the software ecosystem that suits their own needs based on their specific requirements. Meanwhile, Dell Technologies can provide a universal technical architecture platform to enterprise customers, helping more enterprises achieve an automated and simple operation and maintenance hybrid multi-cloud architecture, thereby enabling the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises.
Overall, the Dell APEX cloud platform has created a unified architecture, a technology capability that can continuously evolve, a consistent user experience, and compatibility with different software ecosystems for enterprise customers. This enables enterprises to quickly migrate their businesses to the cloud and freely choose the cloud. It not only helps enterprises achieve deeper cloud usage and lays a solid foundation for digital transformation, but also leads to a new way of application delivery for hybrid clouds. As a result, the Dell APEX cloud platform has truly become the new standard for hybrid cloud selection.