Dell ups stakes in VMware battle with Nutanix-powered servers – Blocks and Files

Dell is stepping up its attack on Broadcom’s VMware customer base with a deal to run Nutanix software on its servers and add PowerFlex external storage support as well.

Since Broadcom took over VMware it has alienated a league of VMware customers with price and product package changes, as well as irritating VMware channel partners by cancelling contracts, forcing some of them to reapply and accept altered Ts and Cs.

Rivals are understandably trying to poach any dissatisfied VMware customers. With this in mind, Travis Vigil, Dell SVP for Product Management and Nutanix Product Management SVP Thomas Cornely highlighted in a joint blog that: “Dell Technologies and Nutanix are building on their 14+ year relationship with two new innovative solutions … sold and delivered by Dell.”

The two don’t mention either Broadcom or VMware in their “Streamline Hybrid Cloud for Tomorrow’s Innovation “ missive, concentrating on what they are bringing to the market.

Nutanix and Dell signed a partnership deal in June to try and encourage upset Broadcom VMware customers to move to a joint Dell-Nutanix platform. At the time the two said Nutanix’ AHV hypervisor will run on Dell servers and a Dell AHV server will connect to storage-only HCI nodes 

Now we have a Dell XC Plus appliance and PowerFlex support.

The Dell XC Plus is a turnkey, HCI-based appliance integrating the Nutanix Cloud Platform software stack, including the AHV hypervisor and a centralized Prism control plane, on Dell PowerEdge servers. There are six models with varying CPU, GPU, memory, networking and storage capacities.

Dell PowerFlex is a scale-out virtual SAN and hyperconverged system with multi-hypervisor support, scaling out to thousands of nodes. PowerFlex will be the first external storage supported and integrated with the Nutanix Cloud Platform. The two SVPs say that joint customers can manage compute and storage independently, run their choice of hypervisor, and achieve extreme performance at scale while maintaining the full suite of Nutanix software features. 

They add: “Over time, we intend to explore expanding Nutanix Cloud Platform integration with other Dell IP-based storage solutions.” Maybe we’ll see Dell file and object storage products supported with the XC Plus.

The PowerFlex Nutanix integration is currently in development and will be available to early access customers later this year.