Poweredge VRTX – Simplicity, Efficiency and Versatility for ROBO and Small Office IT

Solution Brief PowerEdge VRTX – Simplicity, efficiency and versatility for ROBO and small office IT.

Compact package, big benefits A streamlined IT infrastructure can be the key to success for quickly growing remote/branch offices and small- and Dell PowerEdge VRTX is optimized for medium-sized businesses. All too often, however, IT systems remote office/branch office (ROBO) in these office environments comprise an unwieldy jumble of environments. disparate servers, storage and networking components that inhibit efficiency and flexibility. Picture the IT systems of a • Innovative space-saving design helps typical remote office/branch office (ROBO) site: Two or three eliminate hardware sprawl by integrating virtualized servers, perhaps a fourth one for backup or standby, servers, storage, networking and management into a single compact chassis a shared external storage system and a network switch or two. that fits beside a desk or under a countertop. All too often, the servers are different technology generations and brands — the result of growth over time. Along the way, “The beauty of the Dell PowerEdge VRTX external storage may have been installed to accommodate chassis is that we gained a complete expanding data and a network switch acquired to concentrate solution for our remote site, including servers, storage, networking and cabling.” networking. The result is a complicated jumble of equipment Paul Smeets that takes up a considerable amount of floor or rack space and Chief Technology Officer is complex to manage. Cadac Group, The Netherlands Accordingly, IT administrators and business unit managers alike are seeking simplified, flexible and efficient solutions that • Rapid, confident deployment and simplified enable — rather than hinder — business success while boosting ongoing management enables exceptional worker productivity and customer satisfaction. To help users IT efficiency, including automated updates achieve these goals and attain greater simplicity, efficiency and and unified management that allows versatility in ROBO sites, Dell engineered the PowerEdge VRTX administrators to reclaim valuable time for strategic initiatives. shared infrastructure platform. In mathematics, vertex means the intersection of multiple lines into a single point. Likewise, "We were expecting hurdles during setup, PowerEdge VRTX (pronounced ver-teks) integrates servers, yet it took only 30 minutes to set up the storage, networking and management into an optimized tower PowerEdge VRTX platform, a fraction of the time we expected. That’s how technology server chassis (5U when rack-mounted). should be.” Noel Teng Director Myian Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia

• Extensive internal capacities provide scalability today and ample room for growth over time.

“With VRTX, and the increased power, performance and scalability it brings, the new infrastructure is able to handle calculations 25 times larger than previously required…” Yukitomo Kuroda Manager, Information Systems Group, NEWJEC Inc., Japan Reaping financial benefits servers that are used in data centers. The resilient PowerEdge M520 is an outstanding platform for Since its initial launch in July 2013, PowerEdge VRTX mainstream business applications. The PowerEdge has received several key industry awards, including M620, with its large memory capacity, powerful IT Pro’s “Innovation Award”, “Server of the Year” performance and extensive high-availability awards from CRN, InfoWorld and PC Pro in 2013, and features, is a workhorse server for consolidation more recently InfoWorld’s “Technology of the Year – and virtualization. The M820, for its part, with its Best Server” for 2014. powerful four-socket performance, is ideal for big, These awards recognize not just PowerEdge VRTX’s backend workloads including database and ERP. By innovative design and simplified, intuitive management, supporting these servers both in the data center (in but underscore its proven financial benefits. For the PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure) and in example, compared to an installed configuration of remote offices in PowerEdge VRTX, organizations four tower servers, PowerEdge VRTX delivers a 26% can standardize on field-tested technologies while lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over five years data center staff can minimize training time by and $21,000 in savings, with a payback period of 33 leveraging their existing product knowledge. months. Alternatively, compared to a leading public cloud service, VRTX boosts business success with a 63% lower TCO over five years with over $172,000 in savings and a payback period of just 13 months.

Deploy performance anywhere Whether installed upright on the office floor or rack- mounted in an IT closet, PowerEdge VRTX is well suited for office environments ranging from a single, stand-alone small business location to hundreds of distributed offices serving large enterprises and public organizations. The requirements of these environments differ from those of headquarters data centers, where ample floor space, cooled air and a trained, dedicated IT support staff can be found. Consequently, simply bundling data center servers, storage and networking into full-height or half-height The large, integrated shared-storage capacity of racks and offering them as packaged solutions for PowerEdge VRTX not only permits remote offices ROBOs may not address the specific needs of these to grow at their own pace, it also accommodates environments. the explosion of data in areas such as customer On the other hand, with its customer-inspired design information management and business intelligence and innovative engineering, PowerEdge VRTX was in the retail industry; medical imaging in healthcare; purpose-built to meet ROBO requirements. Support and financial modeling in banking and accounting. for up to four PowerEdge M-series half-height blade Moreover, internal storage enables ROBOs to server nodes (or two full-height, four-socket nodes, protect their workloads with high-availability or any combination of half-height and full-height capabilities including Live Migration, vMotion and nodes) internal storage up to 48TB and a built-in high-availability clustering, all inside the chassis. network connection provides remote offices with These capabilities not only help protect workloads ample resources for virtualization, backup and and maintain uptime, they also avoid the cost growth. Along with a locking front bezel for security and complexity of external storage devices. The and office-quiet acoustics, PowerEdge VRTX fits integrated, internal storage of PowerEdge VRTX unobtrusively into ROBO sites. enables ROBOs to reduce both upfront capital The PowerEdge M-series blade server nodes driving expenditures (CAPEX) and ongoing operational compute performance in PowerEdge VRTX are the expenditures (OPEX). same PowerEdge M520, M620 and M820 blade Simplified systems management across a color-coded map that gives IT administrators the enterprise an instant, at-a-glance assessment of remote system health and location. Compared to the PowerEdge VRTX also brings significant benefits to traditional, hierarchical tree view of remote systems, IT administrators. Systems management on VRTX Geographic View helps greatly reduce the time it is performed using the same Dell OpenManage™ takes for IT staff to become aware of remote system systems management tools as other members problems and to begin problem diagnosis and of the PowerEdge server family. For example, resolution. For example, maximizing uptime enables headquarters data center staff who are already retail enterprises to capture revenue streams in their managing PowerEdge M-series blades and the retail outlets, medical facilities to ensure continued PowerEdge M1000e chassis with the Dell Chassis patient care in their distributed clinics and logistics Management Controller (CMC) experience the companies to keep packages moving from their same look and feel with the CMC for PowerEdge warehouses to their ultimate destinations. VRTX installed in remote offices. Just like in the data center, CMC for PowerEdge VRTX helps PowerEdge VRTX: An agile solutions eliminate the traditional model of managing servers, platform for office IT storage and networking with separate tools and consoles. Instead, it unifies and presents hardware PowerEdge VRTX is a 5U “infrastructure in a box” that management in a single console. Streamlining brings simplicity, efficiency and versatility to ROBO management in this way brings time-saving environments. Modular and integrated, PowerEdge efficiency to IT administration tasks and helps VRTX enables organizations to bring order to office reduce the potential for error. Consistency between IT chaos, by eradicating hardware sprawl, reducing data center management and remote systems CAPEX and OPEX, and delivering extensive scalability management also allows IT administrators to use within a stable platform to support enterprise existing knowledge and minimize training time. growth. Its unified management helps reduce the number of tools and consoles needed, minimizing Another option for managing remote PowerEdge complexity and freeing IT administrators to spend VRTX systems is the Dell OpenManage Essentials time on strategic initiatives that advance business and Console. OpenManage Essentials enables IT organizational outcomes. Built from the ground up administrators to monitor up to 400 remote VRTX specifically for office environments, PowerEdge VRTX’s systems, providing a vast view of networked IT compact chassis allows performance to be deployed resources all the way out to the distributed offices. where it is needed, from data centers to remote and Moreover, with OpenManage Mobile, remote mobile sites, and its low acoustical output allows PowerEdge systems can even be managed from a it to operate non-disruptively, even in quiet office smart device. environments. An innovative platform that delivers Geographic View, a tool offered exclusively for significant financial benefits, PowerEdge VRTX truly PowerEdge VRTX, helps simplify the distributed helps to drive business success. infrastructure even further. Geographic View is Selected solution reference architectures

Microsoft® Exchange Server® 2013 virtualized on VMware® vSphere® on PowerEdge VRTX PowerEdge VRTX Enterprise-class virtualization with VMware, enabling: Architecture for 2,000 users with mailbox resiliency, providing: • Enterprise-class infrastructure • Cross-site resiliency • Integrated data protection • Intra-site resilience • Advanced virtualization • VM workload migration

Dell PowerEdge VRTX WAN optimization with Silver Peak ® Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for OLTP on PowerEdge VRTX Accelerated application performance across the WAN to: PowerEdge VRTX as a backbone for enterprise-class database • Accelerate network performance and enhance user applications, delivering: productivity • Internal host clustering • Drive faster response times and elevate customer satisfaction • Guest clustering across sites • Save time and cost for data replication and backup • Disaster recovery via AlwaysON Availability Groups feature • Protect IT investments by leveraging current infrastructure without additional hardware

Microsoft Exchange, Lync® and SharePoint® Server 2013 for SMB Office enterprise-class UC&C solution for Dell PowerEdge VRTX with AppAssure PowerEdge VRTX and PowerVault DL4000 Integrated solution for data backup, replication and recovery, Pre-engineered reference architecture for up to 500 users, enabling: providing: • Backup in minutes, restore in seconds • Full suite of productivity tools to solve office collaboration • Application-aware backup and replication for server nodes and productivity needs and virtual machines • Onsite control of your communications and content • Integrated, in-line global deduplication and compression • Efficient, centralized application management • Anywhere-to-anywhere recoveries – P2V, V2V, V2P and P2P • Virtualized design for consolidation and availability • Near-continuous data protection Dell DVS Enterprise for Windows Server 2012 RDS on PowerEdge VRTX Microsoft Windows Server® 2012 with Hyper-V® enabled VDI architecture for running all four DVS layers within a single on PowerEdge VRTX compact chassis, featuring: Multilayered virtualization to meet remote, branch and small • High availability office infrastructure needs, including: • Balanced performance and resource utilization • High availability • Rapid deployment and provisioning • Integrated data protection

To learn more about how PowerEdge VRTX can help you attain better business outcomes, go to Dell.com/PowerEdge/VRTX.