Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances

Managing storage in virtualized environments with traditional architectures based on separate server, storage and networking systems can be tedious and complex. A storage area network (SAN) also can add latency if data has to be retrieved from storage when an operation is performed on the server. With the XC Series, frequently used data is automatically stored on SSDs in the same node as the application VMs that need to access it. IT administrators no longer have to manage LUNs, volumes or RAID groups. Instead, they can manage their virtual environments at a VM level using policies based on the needs of each workload.

XC Series solutions eliminate the need for overprovisioning and capital expenditures based on anticipated capacity and performance requirements. System performance and/or capacity can be easily expanded one node at a time with zero downtime, offering customers linear and predictable scale-out expansion and pay-as-you-grow flexibility. A fault-tolerant architecture and self-healing capabilities provide system reliability and help ensure data integrity.

A cluster of XC Series appliances can be deployed in 30 minutes and is easy to manage without specialized resources. An intuitive HTML5-based interface simplifies management operations with deployment and provisioning services, VM and storage management, search, content-sensitive help, comprehensive analytics,1-click hypervisor, software, and firmware updates. Enterprise-class data protection and management features are designed to enhance administrator productivity and include tiering, snapshot-based replication, thin provisioning, shadow clones, deduplication, and compression.

The XC Family consists of XC Series and Xpress appliance and XC Core, an offering that provides customers with an additional way to acquire Nutanix software licensing while leveraging the benefits of the Dell EMC XC platform. XC Core uses the same Dell EMC PowerEdge hardware and software as the XC Series appliances while the HCI software is licensed and supported directly by Nutanix. This enables license portability across infrastructure components and separate management and support of hardware and software throughout their lifecycles.

Dell EMC is committed to expanding the XC Series ecosystem with Dell EMC software IP. This enables customers to use hyper-converged infrastructure for a broader set or workloads and achieve business results faster, more efficiently, and with less risk.

As business-critical workloads are increasingly deployed on HCI, organizations need robust data protection solutions to meet data retention, security, and scalability requirements. Dell EMC Avamar Virtual Edition, Data Domain, and Data Domain Virtual Edition with XC Series offer efficient, enterprise-level data protection, and simplified backup and disaster recovery. For customers who want to rapidly develop and deploy applications to Pivotal Cloud Foundry, one of the world’s most powerful cloud-native platforms, XC Series and Pivotal® engineering teams have collaborated to create the ideal configuration and deployment guide, which reduces risk and accelerates a customers’ ability to increase developer productivity and reduce IT operation costs.

Dell EMC’s 14th generation proven PowerEdge server platform serves as the foundation for the XC Series. XC Series appliances can be configured with your choice of hypervisor, Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, 64GB – 6TB of memory, SAS and SATA SSDs and NVMe SSDs (XC640-10, XC740xd-24 and XC940-24 only). All-flash configurations and 25 GbE networking options are available on certain models and the XC Series includes GPU, compute- and performance-intensive, storage-only and replication target nodes. All XC Series hardware, software, and deployments are fully supported by Dell EMC’s Global Service and Support organization.

The XC Series appliance portfolio consists of:

• XC640-4 and XC640-4i (1U/1-node) – Designed for smaller, remote, and brand office deployments, which are non mission-critical. XC640-4: 3-node cluster deployment; XC640-i: 1 node deployment.
• XC640-10 (1U/1-node) – Optimized for compute-and performance-intensive workloads in VDI, test and development, enterprise hybrid cloud, and server virtualization.
• XC740xd-12 (2U/1-node) – With up to 80TB per node, it’s ideal for storage-heavy applications, such as Microsoft Exchange®, SharePoint, data warehouse, and data analytics.
• XC740xd-24 (2U/1-node) – Designed for performance-intensive applications, including VDI with GPU Microsoft SQL Server®, and Oracle® OLTP, and other database applications.
• XC740xd-12C (2U/1-node) – Provides up to 80TB of cold tier storage expansion for XC Series clusters.
• XC740xd-12R (2U/1-node) – Non-clustered single-node replication target with up to 60TB capacity.
• XC940-24 (3U/1 node) Ideal for Memory and performance- intensive Microsoft SQL and Oracle OLTP
• XC6420 (2U/4-node) – Optimized for deployments where compute and storage density is required, including software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), enterprise cloud, etc.

Dell EMC has over 10 years of experience integrating hardware and software for appliances built with PowerEdge servers, including 3 generations of XC Series hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) appliances. That experience enables us to develop technologies that simplify and streamline common workflows performed throughout the appliance’s lifecycle. For the XC Series, they include:

• Factory installation of the software stack and hypervisor
• Software modules that deliver fast and seamless deployment, rapid factory restore and bare metal recovery, and rich in-band hardware monitoring and management capabilities
• Tools developed specifically for HCI to simplify workflow orchestration across a cluster
• Integrated enterprise class backup and restore capabilities with Avamar and Data Domain

The bottom line for customers: rapid deployment, less time for routine management tasks, faster system restoration, and built-in enterprise class data protection. Why settle for anything less?