I am happy to announce new and updated joint solutions from Dell and Microsoft that can revolutionize the way you run all aspects of your IT infrastructure and operate your business. Over the last 25 years, Dell and Microsoft have worked together to develop innovative complete solutions that combine the best of our hardware, software and services. We often end up with something much better than the sum of the parts. 

Much of this joint innovation comes from the upgraded power and sophistication of Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers. We worked closely with Microsoft to pinpoint the technology factors that our customers struggle with when implementing “virtual era” solutions – flexibility, scalability, storage, I/O, systems management – and designed a series of servers capable of addressing these issues for organizations of all sizes. Microsoft has been hard at work evolving its applications to address many of the same concerns.

Dell PowerEdge 12th Generation Series

The increasing complexity of new technologies, the escalating demands of business applications and a huge surge in data volumes are pushing IT infrastructures to the limits of capacity manageability. In response, Dell tapped into deep engineering expertise and worked with strategic partners like Microsoft to design a new series of PowerEdge servers.

Designed for the future and optimized for future versions of Windows Server, Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers are a direct response to evolving data center requirements in the virtual era. With enhanced management and workload solutions, PowerEdge 12th generation servers deliver dramatic performance and management gains. Dell is offering a spectrum of servers in the 12th generation series that can fill multiple roles within an enterprise architecture for improved virtualization, cloud computing, collaboration, and business intelligence.

Virtualization and Private Cloud

As organizations virtualize, integrated management solutions are essential. To support our strategic partnership, Dell and Microsoft have engineered solutions that combine our best virtualization, system management and infrastructure capabilities to deliver strong workload performance and low total cost of ownership.

As a part of the PowerEdge 12th generation server launch, we have refreshed our joint virtualization and private cloud offerings and added new integration points.

Dell’s pre-engineered vStart solutions are based on proven solutions and best practices from thousands of Dell and Microsoft integration, engineering and implementation projects. When paired with Dell’s implementation services they accelerate the journey to the cloud and provide a rapid time-to-value for virtualization and private cloud projects.

  • All vStart versions have been upgraded to include the PowerEdge 12th generation servers and vStart 200m is Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track validated.
  • The Dell Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track private cloud infrastructure is enhanced to support workload deployments including SQL Server 2012, Microsoft collaboration solutions and more.
  • Dell VIS Creator software has been added into Dell’s vStart solutions to allow companies to automate self-service delivery of IT resources.                           

Systems Management

Managing IT infrastructure in the virtual era can be challenging. Dell and Microsoft have built an integrated portfolio of systems management tools that simplify and automate essential tasks in managing your physical and virtual IT infrastructure. Dell has an extensive integration (and possibly the widest set of integrations) with Microsoft System Center © across our hardware portfolio.  We provide monitoring and management capabilities with Microsoft System Center for our Dell Servers (PowerEdge), including our embedded management technology with the iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller, Storage (EqualLogic, PowerVault MD, Compellent etc.), Dell Biz Client (Latitude, Precision, Vostro), Dell Printers, and Dell PRO pack for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, etc.  The Lifecycle Controller frees up valuable admin time for Dell and Microsoft System Center customers around hardware configuration, OS Deployment and hardware patching independent of the operating system or the hypervisor running on the host system.

  • Microsoft System Center, Dell’s OpenManage and Dell AIM systems management applications will continue to be tightly integrated.
  • Dell’s 12th generation of the servers along with Microsoft System Center, will further enable this strategy to help our customers monitor the Dell hardware in an agent-free manner. With Microsoft System Center and the Dell’s 12th generation of servers, a customer will be able to monitor Dell hardware in a heterogeneous OS and hyper-visor environment further helping them leverage the System Center and Dell investment. This eliminates or minimizes any migration cost or overhead of adopting a technology-change in a datacenter environment.  At this time, all lifecycles of the server can be performed without any agents.
  • Dell will continue to enhance the lifecycle controller integration for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to provide new, better and robust functionalities for our existing and new customers that adopt Microsoft System Center with Dell’s 12th generation of servers
  • With this, Dell and Microsoft complete the entire lifecycle management of a server hardware from beginning to end, including virtualization integration with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Collaboration

Dell’s focused strategic partnership with Microsoft and our deep knowledge of Microsoft collaboration software enable smarter deployment of solutions with Dell hardware and services to enable workforce communication & productivity. 

  • Dell has developed a scalable enterprise solutions incorporating Microsoft’s industry-leading collaboration software – Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 – using the PowerEdge 12th generation platform to provide built-in hardware intelligence and management for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync applications. The 12th generation platform is also engineered to support optimal performance for Microsoft collaboration software through improved use of server resources, increased storage capacity, increased memory and greater processing capability. We improved reliability and automated recovery options for Microsoft Exchange and other mission critical business applications.
  • Dell is also offering a SharePoint Infrastructure Optimization solution for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 that provides improved storage utilization with Microsoft SharePoint. The current solution leverages the Dell DX Object Storage Platform with AvePoint®  DocAve™ software and offers proactive capacity planning and management, enhanced business continuity and flexible and scalable data governance through automated archiving with compression.

Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Dell offers a host of innovative business intelligence and data warehousing solutions based on the PowerEdge 12th generation platform and Microsoft ® SQL Server © 2012 and are able to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes. These solutions are well-tested, proven and verified and can be deployed using a complete portfolio of Dell components and services that enhance the Microsoft software experience.

  • The NEW Dell Quickstart Data Warehouse Appliance will be the first data warehouse appliance in the market to run on SQL Server 2012.   It is geared at mid-market and departmental use enabling easy data access, analysis, and Business Intelligence to make better decisions, and the integration needed out of the factory to deliver results faster. This new data warehousing appliance, with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, takes advantage of the Dell Boomi acquisition for data integration and goes to beta test on February 27, 2012.
  • Fast Track for SQL Server 2012, a reference architecture developed jointly by Dell and Microsoft, combine Dell’s PowerEdge 12th generation servers and Fluid Data Architecture with the benefits of SQL Server software.  Delivered as a reference architecture, customers receive step-by-step best practices, eliminating any guesswork on how to balance and configure all the components of the hardware and software.  This reduces the risk, cost, and time to successful implementation and gives customers one of the lowest costs for a complete data warehouse solution in the market. This offering includes both data warehousing and major components of an integrated Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information Management platform.
  • The Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance is a jointly developed appliance with Microsoft and Dell for the largest customer requirements with the most demanding data warehousing needs of scale of up to 600 Terabytes. Delivered as an appliance, customers receive software and hardware already integrated giving them the fastest time to solution and immediate value at a fraction of the cost of acquisition as well as operation and maintenance. Because PDW is part of the SQL Server portfolio, customers will receive both Data Warehousing and major components of an integrated Business Intelligence and data integration platform included in the purchase.

Final Thoughts

Our focused strategic partnership with Microsoft and our deep knowledge of the Microsoft suite of applications enables smarter deployment of solutions using Dell hardware and services. Together, we give you the ability to modernize and grow your infrastructure over time to meet business objectives.