The server market seems to wind its way along a path of increasing competitiveness, and each passing product seems to look and feel the same. Businesses find it hard to determine which solution is right for their organisation and what makes them different. Dell appears to have decided that enough is enough, and with its VRTX mini blade solution, it appears to be separating the wheat from the chaff.
"Dell has developed this mini blade solution for the entry-level business that wants a plug-and-play future without compromising on functionality," says Othelo Vieira, product manager for Dell at Tarsus Technologies. "This server blends storage and networking capabilities within a single out-of-the-box unit that can be slipped under a desk and simply plugged in. That's it. The elegant simplicity inherent in this cannot be denied."
So, what can the Dell VRTX offer other than easy set-up? For a fledgling business, and this offering is very much aimed at the entry-level investment, the key factors considered when buying a server are capacity, scalability and cost. The Dell VRTX has excellent capacity, at 48TB of storage on initial set-up, and an additional four servers can be tacked onto the system as demand grows.
There is the agent-free, Web-based management environment that can mitigate risk and downtime, as well as the design itself to add even more value to a neat package. The VRTX does not need any additional cooling options to maintain functionality, and this, especially in Africa, is a big selling point for the channel. The business will immediately see cost savings if they don't have to invest in extensive cooling or data centre infrastructure to maintain the performance of the system.
"The new VRTX server is a standalone product that cannot merge its resources within a cluster, but does handle its own workloads," explains Vieira. "It can be wheeled to any location and provides instant support and server capabilities. This is the antithesis of the costly, noisy and high maintenance systems that sit within most organisations today."
The quiet efficiency of the Dell offering is one of its primary selling points, as is the fact that it can take on generic PCI cards for networking and can handle virtualisation with the inclusion of another unit. It may be a clich'e to say that the market is crying out for better price points and more flexibility, but it is true.
"The overall server market is growing in complexity and sophistication," says the recent Gartner report on the Magic Quadrant for blade servers. "Vendors in the leaders' quadrant have the highest scores for their ability to execute and completeness of vision." This report goes on to discuss how Dell has taken a position within this quadrant, thanks to a variety of factors, including their aggressive pricing and a strong mid-market presence.
"One size has never fit all, and it never will," concludes Vieira. "So why should any modern solution adopt that premise when technology and innovation can ensure that any size can have it all."
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