Our Dell EMC Ready Node program is cooking with gas. The most well known, and most popular Ready Node is the VMware vSAN Ready Node program, but there are ScaleIO Ready Nodes (a very popular choice), and here at Dell EMC World – we’re announcing the new Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodes.
As a reminder:
Ready Nodes, Ready Bundles, Ready Systems is the taxonomy we use for our program where we bring multiple technology pieces together at Dell EMC. Ready Nodes = software + server; Ready Bundles = software + servers/network/storage; Ready Systems = software + CI/HCI.
In each case – Ready = more than a simple combo of products. Ready = designed to provide all the end-to-end assists for simplified configuration, sizing, quoting, deployment, financial packaging. BTW – IDC calls this category of “thing” Certified Reference Systems.
The Ready Node/Bundle/System program is also how we bring our open technology partner ecosystem (SAP, Microsoft, RedHat, VMware, Pivotal, Cloudera, Splunk, Hortonworks, the HPC ecosystem and many others) to life – and strive to make things SIMPLER for people who are more on the “build” end of the “build-to-buy” continuum.
I’m often asked by people who are server specialists (or server buyers) “what’s the difference between a vSAN Ready Node and VxRail”.
I’m often asked by VMware people (or VMware admins) “what’s the difference between a vSAN Ready Node and VxRail”
The answer is simple: A vSAN Ready Node is a bundle of software + server – validated to work together, with some tools to make acquisition and initial deployment easier. VxRail is a product – for it’s entire lifecycle (not just on initial deployment) you can’t separate the components – and we are singularly responsible for the whole thing – it’s an appliance.
Ready Nodes are for people who like to build, but want to accelerate and de-risk things a bit.
Currently – we have 5 Ready Node family members:
Now to be clear – the vSAN Ready Node program is a VMware program, and one that is open to many folks in their ecosystem, including Dell EMC competitors. I think that’s awesome – and welcome the competition. I think our Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the best, but there are others too.
For more info on each – read on!
The VMware vSAN Ready Node program is cooking. vSAN software is our Dell Technologies “go-to” for customers who want a VMware HCI SDS model. To be clear – this mode of consumption (Ready Nodes) sits between software-only (just vSAN – very flexible) and VxRail (turnkey HCI – very simple outcomes) – and while the vSAN node program is very successful, we do see that there are more customers who go software-only and HCI.
Then you have ScaleIO Ready Nodes. They are flat out, the fastest, most scaleable way to create a SDS Server SAN (including vSphere use cases – particularly where they want to operate, scale, share storage in a way that doesn’t bind to the VMware operational model). Frankly, I think our sales and SE teams that don’t propose this vs. our external storage competitors, they are missing out. A moderately sized ScaleIO Ready Node deployment will smoke any array on the planet and is a competition killer. Oh, and ScaleIO Ready Nodes are also is orders of magnitude easier to update, to rebalance – and there’s no forklift upgrade. I almost forgot – they also have huge ecosystem support and integration, including with all the new cloud native cool kids :-)
Seriously – Dell EMC teams and partners – if a customer doesn’t need specific data services, or particular host attach, or specific capacity density – but just needs awesome transactional storage, ScaleIO Ready Nodes are the go-to choice. Don’t fight the way the market is moving – embrace it.
Then you have the new kid on the block, the Storage Spaces Direct Ready Node (that’s a mouthful :-)
If you are all about Windows Server 2016 and Storage Spaces Direct, and for some reason don’t want ScaleIO (seriously – it will run circles around Storage Spaces Direct in most vectors particularly at scale – S2D scales to 16 nodes in a cluster, and is a nice kernel-loadable module, with no RDMA iWarp or RoCE needed) – then this Ready Node will de-risk your path forward.
There are also Ready Nodes (software + server, remember) that are not Storage focused. SAP HANA is an example.
For example – for customers who want scale-up SAP HANA, the SAP HANA Ready Node is the way to go.
BTW – note how the “Ready Node”, “Ready Bundle” and “Ready System” taxonomy works. If you want a Scale-out SAP HANA deployment – which by definition will need network and external storage, We have SAP HANA Ready Bundles (for TDI deployments), and SAP HANA Ready Systems (which run on VxBlocks).
Now – it’s exciting times for the SAP HANA Ready Node program – with the new partnership that we have with ATOS around Bullion systems (for massive scale-up – think 384 cores, 24TB in a single system), expect to see Dell EMC SAP HANA Ready Nodes for those very large DRAM and core count built on them soon!
At the other end of the SAP HANA spectrum – we do something unique that you doesn’t get the attention of the massive scale UP HANA examples (everyone loves things that are big – but sometimes powerful, small packages are needed). In that space, we have SAP HANA Edge Ready Nodes. If you want a small easy way to get SAP HANA at the smallest footprint, smallest cost – this is the way to go.
There you have it – Ready Node-a-palooza. We will keep investing in the Ready Node program – it’s one of the forms of technology consumption for people along the “build it yourself” continuum that really works, and our field, our partners, and our customers dig it.
This is a terrific explanation of Ready Nodes & VxRail. It does not get more simple than this.
Posted by: John Christy | July 27, 2017 at 12:39 PM