Dell Data Center Solutions: a Strong Alternative to DIY in Hyperscale

Dell Data Center Solutions: A Strong Alternative to DIY in Hyperscale

Pioneer in Scale-Out Servers for Large Datacenters Provides Value- Added Services to Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

Executive Summary Over the last decade, large search engine, social media, and cloud providers have built giant datacenter capacity to power their internet services, and they have found themselves needing a new type of server to support their massive scale. For these organizations, their IT infrastructure is the cost of goods sold for the services they provide. They depend on the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for their datacenter infrastructures to maximize profits.

Dell developed Data Center Solutions (DCS) in 2006 specifically to address the complex needs of these hyperscale datacenter customers. Dell claims that DCS’s workload-tailored approach results in significant TCO advantages compared to “one size fits all” solutions like HP’s Project Moonshot, and it can provide the same benefits and innovation as an ODM Do It Yourself (DIY) model with added supply chain continuity and global deployment benefits.

DCS addresses the needs of the largest cloud datacenters in the world. For more mainstream customers, Dell takes leading-edge innovations from DCS and evolves them into “hyperscale-inspired” solutions in their Dell PowerEdge C and PowerEdge product lines for standard private cloud deployments and web hosting environments.

Dell’s supply chain expertise underpins Supply-Chain-as-a-Service (SCaaS) capabilities such as aggregate purchasing power, agile bid responses, and resilient global reach for datacenter customers. Dell DCS’s multi-ODM sourcing model provides cost advantages as well as high quality designs. Dell Financial Services and Dell’s Rack Integration Services contribute to a comprehensive “sales-to-operations” offering.

Moor Insights & Strategy believes Dell will benefit from and should continue to leverage this cross-product line cultivation and rapidly translate their DCS feature simplicity model into their PowerEdge cost and pricing structure. Dell should also stay on top of emerging cloud software frameworks like OpenStack to help focus DCS and PowerEdge customer requirements. The PowerEdge organization also must consider how they will address and compete with emerging regional and vendor-driven rack requirements like the Open Compute Project and Project Scorpio.

Scale and Hyperscale Large cloud datacenters are undergoing rapid growth due to consumer adoption of mobile computing and emerging Internet of Things (IoT) devices and infrastructure. These organizations need innovative ways to handle the flood of new demands from these new usage models. They rely on hyperscale computing to do so. Hyperscale computing is the infrastructure and provisioning required to deploy internet-based services and utility computing from thousands of traditionally-networked server chassis to millions of server and distributed storage nodes connected by a new generation of network fabrics. Hyperscale datacenters have the following emergent attributes:

 For each service, the OS, development tools, and much of their applications stack are based on open source code. Open source allows frequent, incremental increases in performance and efficiency which become a competitive advantage when operating at scale.  System hardware and silicon vendors react to changes in software frameworks and work with the larger services directly to understand their requirements and create differentiated feature sets.  Services buy new hardware then write and deploy new infrastructure code and workloads based on those new hardware features. They characterize the performance of new features and provide immediate feedback to their vendors.

This is an open-ended feedback loop—a “virtuous cycle”. Infrastructure vendors work directly with their customers. Customers have total control over their software ecosystems and can deploy new code quickly to take advantage of new hardware. The impact of hyperscale computing results in the emergence of hardware architectures that are tuned for specific services and workloads.

Enterprise datacenters are noticing the savings and efficiencies achieved in hyperscale environments and want to take advantage of these benefits themselves. However, they do not have the scale to warrant the development of custom architectures that are tuned to their specific workloads. These customers are looking at moving to hosted or on- premise cloud computing to realize the infrastructure and operational advantages of hyperscale on a smaller scale. Several industry initiatives have been developed for customers seeking to build efficient cloud computing infrastructures:

 Open source cloud computing software frameworks, like OpenStack and CloudStack, have been developed for use in public and private clouds of all sizes. These modular architectures focus on providing the compute, network, and storage component resources for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services using common standards.  Rack-level hardware “standards” developed by organizations like the Open Compute Project (OCP) and Project Scorpio in China are designed to provide common efficient server design solutions for scalable computing. However, many of the design concepts are specific to certain hyperscale datacenter environments (Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) and do not necessarily translate well to standard private cloud deployments. ______Page 2 Dell Data Center Solutions a Strong Alternative to DIY in Hyperscale 12/11/2013 Copyright © 2013 Moor Insights & Strategy

Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) and PowerEdge C Dell recognized early on the emerging trend of hyperscale computing based on feedback from the largest datacenters in world. In 2006, Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) was created with the sole purpose of tackling the complex needs of these customers.

Since its inception, Dell DCS has powered the majority of the world’s largest search engines, social media sites, clouds, and most visited websites. Dell shipped their first DCS server in May 2007 and achieved the milestone of shipping their millionth server just five years later in 2012.

The DCS business model is drastically different from Dell’s traditional enterprise IT server model in terms of the customers served and the design approach used. An illustration of these differences, as explained by Dell, is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: DCS in the Dell Server Solutions Portfolio

DCS provides workload-tailored solutions including collaborative design/development, dedicated engineering, asset tracking and reporting, and onsite services. Dell’s customer focus includes the world’s largest search engines and cloud computing providers. DCS leverages Dell’s volume supply chain to deliver—quickly and at scale— the latest, most efficient, and cost-effective datacenter technology.

DCS architectural teams assess each customer’s requirements and datacenter environment. They develop server and storage designs from a rack perspective to increase density and energy efficiency and to reduce deployment complexity. DCS engineers also work to optimize workload-specific performance at the server node level, using Dell’s application optimization, power, and thermal expertise.

Dell’s engineering teams have developed technologies that directly address many of the key pain points for customers including power, thermals, and physical space optimization. Dedicated experts in the fields of datacenter architectures, thermal design, and power efficiency are engaged for each new design. Using Dell’s best practices, optimized hardware designed by DCS meets high standards of quality and reliability.

DCS prides itself on the innovation and TCO savings they have provided to their customers over the last seven years. Some key areas of innovation include:

 Power Optimization: DCS was a pioneer in creating optimized rack infrastructures that balance performance and efficiency. With a deep understanding of their customers’ system implications, DCS engineering teams strive to eliminate all unnecessary power consumption in the rack. DCS’s optimization innovations include collaboration with industry partners (such as suppliers of voltage regulators and uninterruptable power supplies) on tailored solutions that meet the specific needs of their customers.  Efficient Datacenter Cooling Solutions: DCS leverages best practices in design and application of HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) in the datacenter to achieve greater efficiency. DCS’s thermal engineering teams understand datacenter air flow and recirculation, and they provide a detailed evaluation of each customer’s environment. One example of this approach to solving specific needs was removing the fans from server chassis in a rack and embedding larger fans in Dell’s modular datacenter (MDC) facilities.  Modularization: DCS has been a thought leader in using shared infrastructure in their server designs. DCS created some of the first designs that shared infrastructure within a densely populated chassis (e.g., shared power supplies and fans), moved infrastructure from the chassis to the rack (e.g., consolidation of networking), and developed modular datacenters to move infrastructures out of the rack and into a building.  Microservers: DCS’s focus on cost-, density-, and power-optimization has resulted in “out of the box” designs beyond traditional rack and blade server form factors. Dell was an early pioneer in developing the microserver market with their Fortuna product designed for the European web hosting market and was also recognized by ARM as the first major server vendor to develop an ARM-based server concept. This innovation has continued with the Dell ‘Copper’ and ‘Zinc’ ARM development platforms as well as recent microserver designs specifically optimized for cold storage workloads.  Datacenter Standardization: Dell has been a strong supporter of the effort to standardize the datacenter, including participation in the Open Compute Project since its founding. DCS’s latest G5 Open-Hyperscale Architecture was designed to meet the needs of customers seeking solutions that address Project Scorpio, Intel Rack Scale Architecture, and Open Rack design requirements.  Elimination of the “Feature Tax”: DCS takes a no-frills approach to server design. By studying a customer’s workloads, the DCS team determines exactly what is needed to execute code, store, or move data for each workload. ______Page 4 Dell Data Center Solutions a Strong Alternative to DIY in Hyperscale 12/11/2013 Copyright © 2013 Moor Insights & Strategy

Eliminating components that their customers’ applications do not require results in lower hardware operating and acquisition costs.

In addition to Dell’s datacenter design and engineering expertise, hyperscale customers look to take advantage of the SCaaS benefits that Dell can provide. These benefits include aggregate purchasing power through scale and spot market pricing, agile bid responses that comprehend changing market conditions, and enterprise-class global supply chain reach. Dell’s multi-source ODM model ensures cost optimization for each design. Dell Financial Services’ financing options allow customers to conserve capital and maximize their return on investment. Dell’s Rack Integration Services handles project management, solution and rack layout engineering, physical integration and validation, and logistics and installation for data center rack deployments.

An illustration, explained by Dell, of the company’s supply chain and services capabilities around the world is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Dell’s Global Services and Supply Chain Support

DCS has been successful in designing, building, and deploying workload-optimized solutions for the world’s largest cloud datacenters. Microsoft Bing, eBay, and others have provided public testimonials about their positive experiences as DCS customers. Table 1 provides a list of key customer accomplishments.

Table 1: Dell DCS Hyperscale Customer Wins Since 2006

Customer Dell Wins Largest Search Engines 4 out of 5 Top Social Media Sites 3 out of 4 Largest Clouds 4 out of 5 Most Visited Websites 12 out of 15 Source: Dell While DCS continues their success with hyperscale customers, their business model does not allow them to scale cloud customers who have specialized server needs but do not have the volume economics to warrant a unique design. With these customers in ______Page 5 Dell Data Center Solutions a Strong Alternative to DIY in Hyperscale 12/11/2013 Copyright © 2013 Moor Insights & Strategy

mind, Dell created the PowerEdge C product line to make “hyperscale-inspired” designs more widely available in a family of rack servers and microservers. The PowerEdge C product line is designed for customers focused on scale-out cloud computing, Web 2.0 services, telco/hosting operations, high-performance computing, and big data applications.

DCS innovation has inspired many of the specific products and design concepts brought to market in the PowerEdge product line. These innovations include, among others, dense form factors (12x commodity HDDs in a 2U chassis, 4x 2-socket sleds in a 2U chassis, 24x 2-socket sleds in a 12 U chassis) and power efficiency innovations (940mm fans in a 12U chassis, 480V three-phase power into a rack, lithium ion batteries in chassis power supplies). DCS has also commercialized fairly large subsystems. For example, the PowerEdge C410x PCIe expansion chassis was originally developed for a DCS customer and then commercialized via the PowerEdge C brand. The C410x enabled Dell to configure a variety of competitive platforms, especially for HPC users. The platform’s success spawned multiple “copycat” systems from Dell’s competitors.

Figure 3 describes the innovation cycle created by DCS to drive the evolution of the rest of Dell’s server product portfolio.

Figure 3: Dell DCS Innovation Transfer Example

PowerEdge C provides the benefits of DCS innovation for cloud customers in mainstream form factors, service models, scale, and cost. The “C” line is the first of the PowerEdge product lines to incorporate Dell’s cloud features and borrows the “feature simplicity” mantra from DCS. Based on the positive customer response from hyperscale customers to DCS’s design methodology, others in the industry such as the Open Compute Project and ODMs have since adopted the feature simplicity approach as well.

Commercializing “Open” For hyperscale computing technologies to enter the broader private cloud market, industry leaders must drive these innovations in ways that can be broadly accessible and applicable. The software, hardware, and supply chain ecosystems are critical elements required to build efficient cloud computing infrastructures.

 OpenStack is quickly gathering critical mass as the de facto standard open source cloud computing framework. However, to be truly commercial, OpenStack must move out of DIY and independent hardware vendor implementations (e.g., Unix vs. Windows/Linux flavors). Dell is a key contributor to OpenStack and should continue to help drive maturity and commercialization.  “Rack level” standards like the Open Compute Project (OCP) cannot be applied broadly across hyperscale and private cloud customers. These standards cannot comprehend and optimize for individual customers’ unique workload requirements, service-level agreements, specific regional considerations, and differences in scale. The DCS model provides unique value when compared to such “one size fits all” approaches. DCS’s latest G5 Open-Hyperscale Architecture was designed to meet the needs of customers seeking solutions that address the various rack-level standards requirements. The PowerEdge product line leverages this DCS innovation to create “hyperscale-inspired” solutions in standard form factors for private cloud and enterprise adoption.  SCaaS for hyperscale only works well if a vendor has bigger scale than its customer. Dell is one of a very few vendors who can effectively provide supply chain savings and efficiencies to large datacenter customers. Dell’s world-class supply chain ecosystem is also a key benefit for SMB and enterprise customers.

Call to Action DCS has been an industry pioneer in creating workload-optimized solutions to meet the needs of hyperscale datacenters. Dell claims that their customer-centric approach to design, development, and deployment of server solutions results in significant TCO advantages for large datacenter customers compared to “one size fits all” solutions. Using hyperscale customers as the leading indicator for future enterprise datacenter needs, DCS’s platform design innovations are leveraged and evolved into future concepts for PowerEdge C and PowerEdge enterprise product lines.

When evaluating server solutions for cloud computing, it is important to buy at the right level for your scale. Dell’s DCS and PowerEdge product portfolios are designed to offer a breadth of solutions to meet the needs of cloud installations of all sizes—from a small hoster deploying with partial racks to a hyperscale customer deploying millions of nodes. Hyperscale customers should consider evaluating DCS’s workload-optimized design capabilities and SCaaS benefits before deciding on a DIY approach. Private cloud buyers should evaluate PowerEdge and PowerEdge C “hyperscale-inspired” product portfolios to understand how Dell’s solutions could be a fit for their cloud workloads.

Important Information About This Paper

Authors Paul Teich, CTO, Senior Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. Gina Longoria, Analyst in Residence at Moor Insights & Strategy.

Editors Scott McCutcheon, Acting Director, Research, at Moor Insights & Strategy. Patrick Moorhead, President & Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

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