Dell EMC's new PowerEdge MX is agile infrastructure for IT transformation

- Dell EMC PowerEdge MX offers high performance, modular compute, storage and networking infrastructure

- Kinetic infrastructure extends configuration flexibility to individual storage devices 

- Designed to flexibly support both traditional and emerging workloads

- Enables optimal use of various IT resources with dynamic adjustments as needs change 

- Dell EMC OpenManage Enterprise – Modular Edition offers system management 

Dell EMC Launches PowerEdge MX

Dell EMC is launching Dell EMC PowerEdge MX, modular infrastructure that is designed to support a wide variety of traditional and emerging data centre workloads. PowerEdge MX offers the first modular infrastructure architecture designed to easily adapt to future technologies and server disaggregation.

“While emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, IoT and software-defined storage and networking, offer competitive benefits, their workloads can be difficult to predict and pose new challenges for IT departments,” said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, President and GM, Dell EMC Server and Infrastructure Systems. 

“PowerEdge MX enables a modular approach to flexibly build and combine compute, storage and networking, so organizations can transform their IT in a way that optimises resources and offers investment protection for future generations of technological advances.”

Designed for the software-defined data centre, the PowerEdge MX can support a combination of dense virtualisation, software-defined storage, software-defined networking, artificial intelligence and big data projects. 

With its kinetic infrastructure, customers can break free from the bounds of technology silos and time-consuming, routine operational management while also dynamically assigning IT to optimally match different applications and needs. Kinetic infrastructure has the benefits of a modular design but "extends the flexibility of configuration down to the individual storage device and, in the future, all the way to memory-centric devices", says Robert Hormuth, Dell Fellow and Executive Director of Platform Architecture & Technology in the Enterprise Office of CTO at Dell in a blog post. This flexibility was not available previously.

The PowerEdge MX ecosystem includes a newly-designed chassis and precisely-sized resource blocks of servers and storage that connect to the infrastructure through a smart input/output (I/O) fabric. Supporting the latest low latency NVMe drives and native 25 Gpbs Ethernet (GbE) connectivity, customers can tailor compute and storage configurations to their own requirements and benefit from shared pools of disaggregated resources to respond to changing needs as they happen. By creating on-the-fly hardware capacity, overprovisioning and stranded assets are reduced as performance and efficiency are optimised.

The PowerEdge MX eliminates the mid-plane, which traditionally separates compute resources from power, networking, I/O and other services. The absence of a mid-plane enables direct compute to I/O module connections, allowing for future technology upgrades without disrupting customer operations and without a mid-plane upgrade. 

With this approach, PowerEdge MX is prepared to one day support fully disaggregated components, down to memory-centric devices, such as storage-class memory, graphics processing units (GPUs) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), to offer customers full composability. According to Hormuth in another blog post, "Composable infrastructure turns physical infrastructure into pools of modular building blocks that workloads can use, as needed, to provide a service."

Customers have the flexibility to customise their PowerEdge MX with components such as:

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000 chassis – This 7U chassis includes eight bays to accommodate a variety of single- and double-width compute and storage combinations.

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX740c and MX840c compute sleds – Two- and four-socket blade sleds deliver full-featured compute and a set of storage options including NVMe drives.

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX5016s storage sled – A maximum of seven full-width MX5016s sleds in the MX chassis can handle up to 112 drives of direct-attached storage. 

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX Ethernet and Fibre Channel switching modules – New low-latency, high-bandwidth switching modules for multi-chassis environments include automated processes for topology compliance, quality of service and autonomous healing for peak network performance with the PowerEdge MX single management interface. 

The PowerEdge MX is the industry’s first modular infrastructure to deliver end-to-end 25 GbE and 32 Gbps Fibre Channel host connectivity. Combined with 100 GbE and 32 Gigabit Fibre Channel uplinks, customers can expect up to a 55% reduction in switching latency for fabric architectures.

The PowerEdge MX also benefits from comprehensive in-system management, including Dell EMC OpenManage Enterprise – Modular Edition, which delivers key functions of OpenManage Enterprise management within the server chassis. Customers can perform full lifecycle management on all PowerEdge MX components across multiple chassis at once; roll out changes and templates faster; and access servers remotely with the Dell EMC OpenManage Mobile application and the new Quick Sync 2 feature. OpenManage Enterprise also offers management of rack and modular solutions via a single interface.

Dell EMC’s end-to-end support and deployment services range from delivery of a fully integrated modular solution to customised deployment and configuration to meet individual customer needs. Services also include ProSupport Plus*, which offers around the clock support, direct access to senior ProSupport Plus engineers and a designated Technology Service Manager for full system support.

“The benefits of the new PowerEdge MX mirror our focus on innovation to simplify IT for our customers. This new architecture includes many features that reduce complexity, such as profile-based deployment and management and intelligent switch configurations. Its future-proof architecture, with a ‘no mid-plane’ design, eliminates bottlenecks and opens the door to easily accommodate future demands and technology,” said Francisco Perez, Senior, Information Technology Administrator, Masergy, a hybrid networking, cloud communications and cybersecurity provider with Asia Pacific support.

Matt Eastwood, Senior VP, Enterprise Datacenter, Cloud Infrastructure and Developers, IDC said, “Computing platforms continue their fundamental transformation in line with the digital transformation journey that most firms have embarked on. Dell EMC PowerEdge MX is a poster child for this transformation as customers look for highly efficient and agile architectures that can easily adapt to a multitude of workloads and future technology advances.”

Matt Halcomb, Technical Solutions Architect, World Wide Technology (WWT), a technology solution provider with a significant Asian presence said, “We’re looking forward to offering PowerEdge MX to a host of customers that are looking for greater simplicity in their IT environment, but with the flexibility to support the full swath of virtual environments and workloads—all with a single source for management. 

"With the rise of modern workloads, such as artificial intelligence and IoT, the demands on IT are growing and are increasingly changing. An investment in PowerEdge MX can help customers tackle all of these challenges while offering investment protection to benefit from full composability down the line.” 

Details:

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX will be available globally beginning September 13.

Explore:

Read the ESG white paper: Insights from Modernised IT: Modular Compute Can Have a Big Impact (PDF)

Read the Hurwitz Group white paper: How Dynamic Infrastructure Accelerates Business Innovation: Kinetic Infrastructure and Dell EMC PowerEdge MX  (PDF)

*Dell ProSupport Plus availability and terms vary by region.