Here's how Dell is looking to expand APEX Red Hat integration to simplify enterprise storage
Enterprises are grappling with the growing complexity of IT ecosystems, driven by the rise of containers, AI workloads and virtualization. In response, the expansion of Dell APEX Red Hat integration is designed to meet these demands by offering solutions that prioritize simplicity and consistency.
As containers and AI workloads continue to expand, Dell Technologies Inc. has sought to respond through strategic planning for future infrastructure. The market today sees companies striving for simplicity, according to Josh Sugarman, senior product marketing manager with Dell, who spoke with SiliconANGLE for an exclusive interview.
"That's being driven by the fact that ultimately, there's more tools than ever. The ecosystems are changing. When you look at virtualization, there's the rise of containers and AI, that is extremely prevalent, and needing to manage that alongside virtual machines," Sugarman said. "Then, the reality of IT staffing and skill sets, and teams being limited in a lot of ways for organizations, given circumstances."
It's no secret that multicloud strategies are complex and costly, and demand greater skill. And not every organization goes about this in the right way, according to tech research and consulting firm Gartner Inc.
"While most organizations will eventually be multicloud, many adopt multiple providers without deliberate planning, creating unnecessary chaos," it wrote in a recent report.
With an eye on simplifying complexities, Dell is seeking to determine how it can drive simplicity and consistency from a cloud and an on-premises standpoint. That's where APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, which was initially launched in October 2023, comes into play.
How will the new updates to the APEX Red Hat integration within the Cloud Platform for OpenShift simplify the management of complex IT ecosystems? And how can these advancements help enterprises navigate the challenges of multicloud strategies with greater efficiency? (* Disclosure below.)
Back in October, at the launch of APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, Dell noted that it represented the first fully integrated application delivery platform purpose-built for Red Hat OpenShift, jointly engineered with Red Hat and powered by fourth-generation Intel processors. It represented a "transformative" way to run Red Hat OpenShift on-prem, according to Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president of Partner Ecosystem Success with Red Hat.
"Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift offers a streamlined cloud-native experience by leveraging the best of our technologies in a unified application platform. I look forward to seeing how our customers use this platform to bring their own innovation to life," Chiras wrote in a press release tied to the APEX Red Hat integration in October.
Since then, the company has spent the successive months detailing how its multicloud strategy would evolve while navigating complexities. All told, APEX is intended to deliver a unified, consistent experience across all environments, according to Shannon Champion, vice president of product marketing at Dell Technologies.
"APEX was created to deliver multicloud by design -- a seamless, modern cloud and consumption experiences in all locations that bring simplicity, agility and control," Champion said last November.
There are two main things those updates are being anchored on. One is the updated Red Hat features that are now included, which provides Red Hat OpenShift virtualization by default.
"The main driver of that is obviously market conditions of people evaluating their virtualization landscape, but then also the fact that people are looking for ways to build now and for the future when it comes to containers and AI workloads alongside VMs," Sugarman said. "By integrating Red Hat OpenShift virtualization by default and including that, it really gives customers an easy way to get started with the hypervisor."
Recently, theCUBE Research published its perspective on the state of the virtualization market. Of the alternatives on the market, the IBM and Red Hat option strategically had the most interesting path because it preserves optionality, according to theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante and Rob Strechay.
"Specifically, by moving workloads to OpenShift Virtualization, customers can run workloads in any cloud and on-premises, which at the same time tapping into a modern stack that is at the forefront of AI given IBM's AI prowess," Vellante and Strechay wrote. "OpenShift, has subsumed the functionality of Red Hat Virt (which was their KVM stack) and those functions and features have been put into OpenShift (leveraging KubeVirt) to help manage bare metal infrastructure. It is a compelling full stack alternative to VMware in our view."
The updates will also include modernized Red Hat OpenShift capabilities with support for OpenShift 4.14 and 4.16 included. That speaks to consistency while ensuring customers can have a consistent landscape across all Red Hat estates, according to Sugarman.
"Whether it's OpenShift in the cloud, OpenShift on-prem, they're able to use the same versioning and have that consistency, and that build on everything we initially launched," he said. "You can manage APEX Cloud Platform, both infrastructure and OpenShift, through the OpenShift web console and then on the other side of the house."
Dell is also increasing the level of choice customers get with storage, Sugarman pointed out. That is coming out of feedback from customers in regards to the needs to adapt to different footprints and use case sizes.
"We're integrating and announcing the launch of both PowerStore and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation to go along with PowerFlex for the storage of the APEX Cloud Foundation Software," he said.
The reason to do that is because PowerStore still delivers immense capabilities, but with a smaller footprint. OpenShift Data Foundation allows an individual to have those footprints.
"[It] allows you to have those very minimal footprints if you really don't need much storage at all, whether it's block, file or object," Sugarman said. "And PowerFlex, of course, still delivers that large cluster enterprise performance."
On the other side, Dell is enabling the connection to many or all of its enterprise storage through its CSM capabilities. That means that whether it's block, file or object, a user will be able to connect to them.
"That's especially important for things like AI workloads with file and object, and, of course, any traditional workloads that would utilize those types of storage," Sugarman said.
In the age of AI, it's also important to mention the landscape around compute capabilities. In addition to the updates discussed, Dell is also moving ahead with updates to its compute capabilities with the latest Intel processors and a broader set of Nvidia GPUs.
The future for the APEX Red Hat integration involves a goal to enable choice and consistency with simplicity, according to Sugarman. By integrating Dell and Red Hat in APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, the company hopes it can advance that goal.
"The whole goal of that is to make sure that customers can use the same skill set they have, and use the same tooling they have, in a consistent basis," he said.
That could involve managing virtual machines, containers or AI. It could also mean how a company manages just with OpenShift in general, Sugarman explained.
"It's allowing customers to use those tools in a consistent way and really looking at ways that we at Dell and Red Hat as partners and joined engineers can take a lot of the burden off of customers for managing the infrastructure," he said. "[We can] really allow them to get started by innovating and focusing on their outcomes. That's our chief goal with this."