I’m writing this on Day 2 of Dell Technologies World 2018. The conference in this timeframe in years past was EMC World. When Dell and EMC merged, the show was named Dell EMC World. This year, the name was changed to Dell Technologies World to reflect the companies that are part of the Dell world.
In all transparency, I work for VMware, one of the companies in the Dell Technologies family. Here are the things I’ve seen at the show that has piqued my interest.
New Servers for AI announced at Dell Technologies World
I found the servers that were announced very interesting – mostly because I’m working on the story of virtualizing AI. Here’s what was announced:
- The PowerEdge R840 is a dense, 2U platform with support for up to 4 Intel CPUs and up to 2 GPUs or up to 2 FPGAs. It’s geared to turbocharge data analytics with its flexible performance and capacity options including a 24 NVMe drive configuration and significant storage space.
- The PowerEdge R940xa is a 4U platform built for extreme acceleration. It supports a 1:1 CPU to GPU ratio with up to 4 Intel CPUs and up to 4 GPUs or up to 8 FPGAs. Large internal storage (with up to 32 drives) provides an alternative to rising cloud fees and security risks.
I’m speaking tomorrow about how these workloads can be virtualized with vSphere (including the GPUs), but the fact of the matter is we need incredible server hardware like this for vSphere to really shine.
Virtual Cloud Network announced
The big announcement from VMware is the Virtual Cloud Network. Pat Gelsinger put it best in his keynote yesterday: “We’re moving from datacenters to centers of data – and networking needs to be redefined”. Software is the future of networking, and the products that are part of the Virtual Cloud Network are NSX Data Center, NSX Cloud, NSX Hybrid Connect (formerly known as HCX), NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud, and AppDefense. If you are interested, you can find the product details on this page.
Community
The community was in full force this year, even though there wasn’t a place specifically for the Dell EMC Elect to land this year. The Tech Field Day crew was there, as was The CUBE. Dell also brought a great group of influencers to the group, and they drove conversation. The VMUG folks were there, and there were also user groups meetings like the Converged User Group Meeting.
This year was very different from last year. There was more energy and excitement. The different companies in Dell Technologies are starting to bind their individual strengths into something larger. This made for great conversations.
My favorite community area was where the therapy dogs were hanging out. Whoever thought to do this is a genius!
Omg doggies are back!!! #DellTechWord pic.twitter.com/V6uuNUKaNo
— Gina Minks (@gminks) April 30, 2018
We have two more days of this conference! I am looking forward to even more conversations. What did you find the most interesting?