This ESG Lab Review was commissioned by Dell EMC and is distributed under license from ESG.

© 2018 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Background

As organizations continue to look for ways to modernize their infrastructures by delivering a cloud-like experience on-

premises, hyperconverged offerings are exceeding expectations. In fact, the adoption of hyperconverged infrastructure has

more than doubled over the last year and it shows no signs of slowing down.1 Simplified, flexible deployment options that

are easily managed and that easily scale are just a few of the factors driving the rapid adoption of hyperconverged

technology. As consolidation and modernization efforts are well underway across all of IT, hyperconverged offerings

continue to meet the needs of the business while satisfying existing and future application SLAs, whether they are related to

performance, scalability, reliability, or cost. With many organizations running enterprise applications and databases of

different shapes and sizes, including hypervisors and operating systems, on traditional physical or virtual infrastructure

models, all configurations and architectures must be considered when planning and expanding further adoption of

hyperconverged infrastructure in the data center.

VxRack System FLEX

VxRack System FLEX (VxRack FLEX) is a rack-based hyperconverged solution

that leverages Dell EMC ScaleIO to deliver flexible, scalable, and performant

software-defined storage. The ScaleIO software runs on industry-proven Dell

EMC PowerEdge servers to deliver a full hyperconverged stack that enables

IT organizations to deal with one vendor that can supply all the software,

hardware, and support required to modernize their data centers. Key to the

solution is the scale-out architecture, offering organizations flexibility to start

small and grow based on their needs. Further, this elasticity delivers on the

hyperconverged promise of cloud-like scale and flexibility on-premises. While many other hyperconverged offerings

disregard networking altogether, VxRack FLEX supports both physical and virtual networking and includes top of rack

switches that control network traffic, management, and redundancy. Put it all together and organizations get a

hyperconverged solution that can easily be used with all other Dell EMC products and services, and, together with ScaleIO,

deliver impressive performance and protection at scale. In addition to ScaleIO built-in data protection capabilities, advanced

data protection capabilities, including backup and recovery, continuous data protection, and protection storage are

available with technologies such as Dell EMC Data Domain with Data Domain Boost (DD Boost) and Dell EMC RecoverPoint.

ScaleIO – Data-center-grade Software-defined Storage

Powering the VxRack FLEX solution is ScaleIO, Dell EMC’s scale-out software-defined storage solution that abstracts the

direct-attached storage found in Dell EMC PowerEdge servers into a pool of shared block storage. By converging the storage

and compute on the same physical servers, this single and/or two-layer architecture helps to simplify management and

maximize storage efficiency as the infrastructure grows from four to thousands of nodes. Whether using HDDs, SSDs, or

even NVMe or PCIe flash, storage is combined into virtual block-storage pools with varying performance tiers. Combined

with QoS, snapshots, caching, fault sets and protection domains, and data-at-rest encryption, ScaleIO running within the

VxRack FLEX system delivers a data-center-grade, fully integrated hyperconverged solution. Leveraging a software-defined

storage approach to satisfy enterprise application and database block storage requirements enables organizations to

potentially break free of large initial investments and high operational costs commonly associated with traditional SANs.

Further, fears of technology updates, refreshes, and data migrations impacting costs, risk, and periods of downtime can be

all but eliminated.

1 Source: ESG Research Report, The Cloud Computing Spectrum, from Private to Hybrid, March 2016; and ESG Master Survey Results, Converged and

Hyperconverged Infrastructure Trends, October 2017.

ESG Technical White Paper

Enabling Enterprise Cloud Adoption with Dell EMC and VxRack FLEX

Date: March 2018 Author: Mike Leone, Senior IT Validation Analyst | Dom Amato, Associate IT Validation Analyst

Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the bigger truth.™

Lab Review: Enabling Enterprise Cloud Adoption with Dell EMC and VxRack FLEX 2

© 2018 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Transitioning to a Cloud Operating Model

Organizations continue to look for ways to

modernize their infrastructures for traditional and

emerging applications, which come in various

shapes and sizes, with different operating profiles

and SLA requirements. This is especially true in

massive, dynamic IT environments that consist of

multiple mission-critical applications leveraging the

same underlying infrastructure. As outlined by the

National Institute of Standards and Technology

(NIST), cloud computing must provide “a model

for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand

network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and

services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” 2

Additionally, in order to take full advantage of the cloud, organizations are looking for ways to follow a cloud operating

model on-premises in a private cloud environment, making the eventual transition to a hybrid or off-premises approach fast

and seamless.

VxRack FLEX serves as an ideal infrastructure for running traditional and emerging workloads that are deployed with a cloud

operating model in mind. Dell EMC understands that dynamic workloads come in all shapes and sizes, and the VxRack FLEX

is architected with those considerations in mind. With the VxRack FLEX allowing for easier resource management,

organizations can be confident in its ability to meet the application requirements for running mixed workloads

simultaneously. And because the underlying architecture is built with cloud infrastructure architectures in mind, VxRack

FLEX enables the delivery of cloud-like services that customers can depend on, including integrations with leading

hypervisors, such as VMware and major cloud vendors.

Cloud Computing Reference Model

According to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a reference model is an

abstract framework for understanding the significant relations among the entities of an environment, and for the

development of consistent standards or specifications supporting that environment.3

The blueprint for a cloud infrastructure capable of delivering a cloud-like experience while continuing to meet the needs of

a dynamic business is shown through a cloud computing reference model. The model is designed specifically to describe

and align the various layers and cross functions that should be considered when designing and deploying a cloud

environment. Five logical layers include entities that may be present: physical, virtual, control, service orchestration, and

the services themselves. Further, three cross-layer functions

are essential to reliable and secure cloud services: service

management, business continuity, and security.

As an infrastructure foundation for a cloud operating model,

Dell EMC’s VxRack FLEX architecture enables IT organizations

to build cloud services leveraging VMware vRealize to

optimize workload and resource management.

ESG reviewed how VxRack FLEX supports and participates in

four specific aspects of the cloud computing reference

model: the physical, virtual, and control layers, as well as

the business continuity function.

2 Source: The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing 3 Source: Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)

Lab Review: Enabling Enterprise Cloud Adoption with Dell EMC and VxRack FLEX 3

© 2018 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Physical and Virtual Infrastructure Layers

The infrastructure layers of the cloud computing reference model act as the

foundation for the entire cloud environment. The physical layer includes all

physical components of the environment, including compute, network, and

storage, as well as any protocols, tools, and processes used to operate them.

These entities are also responsible for satisfying requests made by the other

layers. The virtual layer is deployed on top of the physical layer to virtualize the

resources provided by the physical layer, creating pools of virtual resources.

The VxRack FLEX, delivered as an engineered system, provides the physical and

virtual layers as an advanced hyperconverged infrastructure. This delivers a

turnkey experience as VxRack FLEX is engineered and architected into a release

certification matrix (RCM) for system lifecycle assurance and integrity. A fully

integrated rack-scale fabric provides for scalability with a fully integrated Cisco

rack-scale spine-and-leaf network fabric with pre-integrated physical networking. And for mission-critical applications with

the highest of performance SLAs, the physical and virtual layers of the VxRack FLEX are NVMe-ready, meaning organizations

gain peace of mind knowing that even their microsecond latency requirements will be met.

Control Layer

Next, the management and configuration of all physical and virtual resources are accomplished at the control layer. The

technology that enables this functionality is deployed on either the virtual or physical layer and handles requests from IT

administrators or top-level services.

The VxRack FLEX simplifies management and control by monitoring scale-out VxRack FLEX deployments within an

organization’s data center as a shared resource infrastructure rather than individual components. While the VxRack FLEX

monitors the infrastructure as a whole, granular control is still available to easily inspect the status and behavior of each

individual component. And when considering that most traditional applications are virtualized on VMware vSphere, the

addition of VMware vRealize software also allows for workload automation between layers to increase productivity by

alleviating time traditionally spent on mundane

administration tasks. This unified management approach

enables Dell EMC’s release certification matrix (RCM) to

ensure the entire infrastructure remains up to date with

the latest and greatest drivers, security patches, and

features/functions. The ability to provide a single update

process streamlines any maintenance and upgrades,

cutting off the potential for downtime or missed update

windows.

Business Continuity Function

Business continuity acts as a cross-layer function in the model to take measures against potential infrastructure downtime.

These measures are either proactive or reactive depending on the nature of an outage. IT administrators can plan ahead to

conduct business impact analysis, risk assessment, and deployment plans for any repairs, while also ensuring the proper

levels of data protection are leveraged to give IT administrators the tools for disaster restart and recovery in the event of a

machine or human failure, including malware or cyber-attacks. And being a cross-layer function, a solid business continuity

plan allows organizations to keep the lights on across all aspects of the infrastructure.

Lab Review: Enabling Enterprise Cloud Adoption with Dell EMC and VxRack FLEX 4

© 2018 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

On top of a virtualized, cloud-ready infrastructure, VxRack

FLEX gives customers the tools to securely back up and

recover data in both short- and long-term scenarios.

VxRack FLEX relies on Data Domain to address application

landscapes that include large production and non-

production database backup and recovery efforts. Backup

from native tools can still be performed, but additional

advantages through DD Boost ensure that only unique

data is sent to the backup server to decrease the amount of bandwidth required for each operation. This client-side

deduplication not only increases backup job speeds but also removes the management of duplicate data in physical or

virtual tape cartridges. For organizations moving data to the cloud with Data Domain Cloud Tier, data is natively tiered to

the public, private, or hybrid cloud for long-term retention. Only unique data is sent directly from Data Domain to the cloud

and data lands on the cloud object storage already deduplicated. This enables organizations to reduce their storage

footprint before shipping to the cloud, reducing cold cloud storage costs, and minimizing ingress/egress costs.

For disaster recovery, traditional tier-1 mission-critical workloads typically leverage existing expertise and process with

technologies like VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Tier-2 applications, in some cases due to cost and resource

constraints, have not been part of the same DR strategy. For these tier-2 applications, VxRack FLEX via Data Domain Cloud

DR allows enterprises to copy backed-up VMs from their on-premises Data Domain and Avamar environments to AWS

object storage (S3), as well as orchestrate DR testing, including failover and failback of cloud workloads in a disaster

scenario. With Cloud DR being an extension of the existing on-premises data protection to the cloud processes, the user

experience is quite familiar to administrators, minimizing required education and training. Additional benefits enabled with

Data Domain Cloud DR include a minimal cloud footprint (no additional compute is required during routine replication, and

minimal compute is required in case of test or recovery), and orchestrated recovery and failback of workloads.

The Bigger Truth

As organizations continue modernization efforts of existing IT infrastructures by running workloads in a cloud (whether

private or public), they require a solution capable of supporting their dynamic workloads. With the VxRack FLEX,

organizations gain an infrastructure that is pre-integrated and pre-validated before being shipped, making deployment

quick, easy, and free of disruption. With storage and compute that can scale independently, VxRack FLEX gives organizations

the ability to migrate data and workloads to an infrastructure that supports the operating principles put forth in the cloud

compute reference model.

With VxRack FLEX, organizations gain a fully software-defined infrastructure ready to work with integrated VMware IaaS to

easily pool resources with a goal of distributing workloads and decreasing the burden of management. With Data Domain

and DD Boost, not only can administrators efficiently and securely protect workloads on-premises, but also the backup

technology helps with the potential cost of long-term on-premises protection by moving data to a public cloud. And for

disaster recovery, Data Domain Cloud DR provides alternatives for safeguarding production environments, reducing the

expense and management of replicating workloads and broadening the number of applications protected with orchestrated

failover and failback from AWS.

ESG Lab recommends VxRack FLEX as a cloud-enabling HCI offering for IT organizations looking to invest in a modernized

infrastructure capable of seamlessly integrating infrastructure, workloads, and as-a-service technologies on-premises and in

the cloud.

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The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted

before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real

customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production

environments.