Dell Virtualization Announcement Masks Complexities

Factory integration of hypervisors and servers
Dell is now shipping VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition with its PowerEdge R805, R905, 2950, R900, 1950, 2900, M600 blade and M605 blade servers.

The catch: You can't buy these servers from the factory with other hypervisors, even though Dell's EqualLogic SANs are integrated with wares from Virtual Iron, Parallels, and Microsoft. (See below.)

New servers
Dell is offering two new servers based on AMD Opteron chips, both optimized for virtualization with double portions of memory and I/O capacity compared with previously released Dell servers in the same category.The PowerEdge R905 is based on AMD Opteron 8000 series chips and comes with up to 2 Tbytes of internal SAS storage; the PowerEdge R805 is based on AMD Opteron 2200 and 2300 series chips and comes with up to 292 Gbytes of internal SAS. Both come with embedded hypervisors (a choice of VMware ESXi3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition); both support 32- and 64-bit applications; and both can run in Fibre Channel and iSCSI networks.

The catch: The PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers do not run Dell's Egenera PAN management software. (See below).

Storage integration
Dell is boasting integration between its PowerEdge servers and Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays, with particular focus on the ability of EqualLogic arrays to interact with VMware Site Recovery Manager for data protection and disaster recovery.

The catch: While there is close integration between the VMware application and EqualLogic arrays, this is no guarantee that other virtualization products (from Citrix, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, and Parallels), all of which also are integrated with EqualLogic arrays, will offer the same level of granular storage protection VMware does.

On the other hand, by choosing to promote the VMware application alone today, Dell is hiding at least one light under a bushel: XenServer Dell Edition from Citrix allows virtual machines to be managed via Dell's OpenManage tools for physical servers. Citrix points a finger at VMware for not being able to do this.Bottom line: Read the fine print on Dell's integration claims.

Egenera PAN management
Dell is offering Egenera's Processor Area Network (PAN) software on its PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers. This software, which is also sold by Fujitsu-Siemens on its BX600 servers in the EMEA regions, creates a common, manageable pool of devices that incorporates virtual machines along with physical ones.

The catch: The PAN system works only on the PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers, which in turn only support Citrix XenSource. And pricing is customized and modular.

Despite the potential drawbacks cited above, Dell claims to be willing and able to tailor its wares to fit a range of virtualization requirements. Today's limitations won't likely be long-lived.

At least one analyst says Dell's announcement is on target. According to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Inc., Dell's end-to-end packaging of virtualization will help it against other server providers like HP and IBM. "While virtualization is a solution proclaimed for all kinds of enterprise environments, x86 is where the real action is," says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Inc. "These new solutions put Dell in a good position to compete against the broader portfolios of enterprise solution providers."Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.

Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS)

Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL)

EqualLogic Inc.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ)

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)>Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)

Parallels Inc.

Pund-IT Inc.

Virtual Iron Software Inc.

VMware Inc.