Dell EMC Networking Dell Tech World 2019

[Music] hey how's it going chief thousand the CTO of Iser calm you're watching more coverage of Dale technology's world 2019 I've been covering Dale technology's world or Dell EMC world now for a couple of years and a show has morphed into this thing where it was all speeds and feeds to something that as much more akin to a CTO level show where we're talking about overall capability the theme of the show this year has been edge to core to cloud we'll get into that with my guests in this sponsored podcast Brian Henderson director of marketing for network networking yeah so that might come to a surprise to certain people it might even come to a surprise to certain people within Dell EMC that dill has not a small networking team its port a set of solutions first off from a high-level just give an overview of the range of the range of products where do you guys start and what do you need sure so when it comes to networking it's it's a little bit of a hidden gem within Dell right so people think of servers they think they go back they think of pcs right and then with the acquisition I was a former EMC guy so I go way back to the first Wizards conference before was even before it was yeah so so I've been around a bit and we've seen this massive transformation and the way especially from then till now and how people are using networks right so everything used to flow in from one big data center location with the big giant network stack the hardware was tied to the software and they were all kind of one right he Civ thing the world's changed and so we believe in this open networking philosophy where you can run other peoples operating systems on top of the switch so there's a lot of choice and we embrace that open networking style across the whole portfolio right so at the edge we have a device that we just announced at the show called the SD wanne edge and it's powered by VMware so what we do is we take a piece of software called Velo cloud which is one of the most popular SD win pieces of software out there and we run it on top of our virtual edge platform and that's able to change how people are connecting to branch offices and how people are connecting their remote offices Dell IT is we drink our own champagne so we use the same thing at the core there's a lot of switches right it's all about Ethernet switching right and the way people are architecting Ethernet switches these days is more about east-west traffic right as software-defined and if things like VX rail HCI you've got to move things back and forth versus a straight north-south orientation right so what we have there we just powered up the the portfolio there we just rebranded to power switch mm-hmm and we have a Z series we have an S series and an N series the Z series is really the big ones right there 100 Gig 400 gig coming soon and that is the the spine or the fabric switches right big then you have your topper racks which is which you know people traditionally hook up servers and HCI and and things like that within the rack and that's our S series and then at the campus we also have smaller switches you know 25 and 10 typically and those are called the N series and those are much more affordable and they go in smaller environments so that's really a good perspective you know edge core and then if we finish up the trifecta and we talk about the cloud we're part of the deltek cloud validated designs ok so when you see all this collaboration between VMware and Dell EMC coming together with software and hardware it's really about making sure that there's simple networking that kind of connects it all and we've got a really cool thing I've got you know smart fabric here and what smart fabric does is typically when you have HCI or VX rail the networking was one of the last things that was kind of a little bit tricky to set up and when people were doing early VX rail and early HCI implementations the network was like right the sticking point we simplified that so we automate all those steps it's like 98% of the steps are now fully automated with smart fabric services so our goal is to really simplify networking from edge to quarter climb so there's a lot to unpick there we'll start with we'll start at the edge sir and let's talk about this volatile partnership this is something that from a industry perspective ever since the announcement you know I kind of pushed Dell and EMC networking and VMware on this concept man VMware has these really cool software why can't we just see that on deal hardware that makes sense yes so with the Vella plow acquisition in the VMware business unit we're starting to see some of that integration looks like you know from an x86 it just kind of makes sense let's deal one of the world's biggest x86 server vendors would it make sense to put Velo cloud on that Boxtel ism as an appliance oversimplifying it or is that the solution well the edges is unique you know so what we sell there is it's almost like a networking optimized server right it's not so much a switch it's a network optimize server and the Velo cloud by vmware you know so it's kind of more of a VMware thing now right it it really simplifies how to how to set up and a software-defined when which which has been a pain point I've managed 120 site when before it was all VPN and time was just either doing configuration troubleshooting configuration troubleshoot routing etc I look at the SD when solutions on the market today belikov is one the leading ones Vella call by VMware yes one the leading solutions it's not thinking man I would love to have had that now I'm buying it all-in-one solution from my Dell tech rep basically yeah and we work with a lot of other partners to I mean its first and best Tippin with VMware but silver peak riverbed we have a network optimize server that runs all these SD win and network function virtualization on that system and what it's helping people do is you probably experience this is there's a lot of hardware sitting in all these remote office writes and it's all kind of older it's getting a little bit dusty and a lot of these routers are just kind of coming up on end-of-life and so what people are doing is they're say alright do we do we refresh the router or do we try something a little bit different and we find these days people are really looking to get out of some of that hardware in terms of networking and that datacenter closet sitting in a branch office so the SD way an edge really lets people look at some of the other options as far as connectivity these days so whether it's cell data whether it's Wi-Fi whether it's internet versus MPLS dedicated links which are costing people twenty to thirty to forty thousand bucks a month they're able to save a lot of money by shifting to this solution and then have the software to kind of manage the SL A's and watch the performance and my experience has been that in the past when I try to reduce the cost of MPLS by going to VPN I had these all these problems that came along with it was management it was classic service all these things as a human I couldn't do and Software Defined Networking kind of solves those problems in a bundle so the fact that you know we're seeing more and more innovation in that area is great so let's this let's stay at the edge for a moment and kind of jump to you know where we talked a little bit about the cloud conversation with the campus you know we get a little we think of the camp after the fact once we move services to the cloud I've had this conversation time and time again with customers where you know what they've had this you know and at the campus they've taken this three stack approach to to campus networks because there was why we called it the campus that was always compute there it was always like servers etc there so there was a need to still have a core a distribution layer and a access layer yep now you know we have these legacy network designs and we find that we no longer use them anymore for they're they're no longer useful so tell us about how the in series fits into solving that that challenge sure sure sure so the answer we like you said there's always a need for a campus switch and an access clear-rite layer and we find it's useful for a couple things right for the lower speeds the affordability as well and then the ability to connect up some of those are the devices whether it be firewalls whether it be connecting into some of the wireless capabilities mm-hmm so we do a lot of work with aero hive and Rukus who are both great partners in that space in fact I just met with a customer right before this was why I was late no problem and it was Mike Stanley from UTI and he runs we just had Michael on yesterday he just happened to catch up with you in the hallway yeah and he was just talking about the value of having the switch to be able to hook in his his wireless devices as well as his firewall to that so it's always gonna have a need for that space and something that's reliable and affordable and that's one of the hidden benefits I think of the Dell networking again people know it for servers and they know it for PCs storage with Dell EMC I think's fairly well known but not a lot of people know about the the reliability of Dell networking products so pause to kind of take this in because we've kind of created a solution all in itself within they'll family at the edge work the or the the the campus edge we have SD when ya to provide us access so this is even if you're all cloud SD when to provide us access out to the cloud we have the N series switches to provide access from a just connecting my notes and having some level that's the core type of connectivity yeah and then what we haven't talked about yet is so far kind of the core of that picture that you paint is that you know itch to core to cloud we as you know we've talked about the the the edge component let's talk about the core piece you know there's plenty of people still with data centers oh yeah and to your point this east-west traffic is a new thing for us our desktops are now virtualized are we have these huge applications that span across multiple nodes yeah we're building clouds within our core so we're taking VX r lv x RAC etc and building like this super disk computing yeah how's dell networking helping to solve some of those problems at the core yeah yeah great question so it's really the the fabric that connects it all together right without a very solid high bandwidth predictable reliable network none of this stuff works either you have to make sure especially you know when we look back to things like storage people love all flash storage because you didn't have to really worry too much about the tears yeah right so with networking it's very similar it's a if I can just hook up a very well architected leaf and spine network that's going to handle all my north-south all my east-west it's a big mesh fabric and if you architect that the right way it's going to have a future proof and a future ready kind of appearance to it and and what we're doing with the the speeds of the power switch these series as well as the S series were staying very close to the industry lead in that and those spaces looking at different types of form factors so we just released the industry's first twelve port 25 gig switch and that's handy for some of these VX rail installations where you don't need a huge number of ports but you needed to do that you need a lot of bandwidth you know some of these servers with the new I have to when I tell the news itself that from I have to use Intel skill scalable Xeon scalable platform etcetera you can get several hundred virtual machines yeah on a single node yeah so that's a lot of i/o leaving a single server so 25 gig is not unheard of from a single node yeah so exactly so as the world gets more cloudy more dense more virtualized a lot more traffic east-west north-south the the network has to be architected in a different way and so when we look at customers with a traditional network architecture they're all starting to see the value of having kind of a you know smarter monitoring layer which can come from us and come from some of our partners and in just a really rock-solid east/west fabric so let's talk about the true hitting hidden Jim and I might do a little classic CTO visor pushback in this area sure the first of which is why do it okay then you can tell me why you guys do it but this whole concept of open networking when I go to a open network conference Dale networking is like the premier hardware provider in these conferences like open source you know when you think of open source you don't necessarily think of Dale however when you think of when you're at an open source networking conference Dale is the first hardware provided that you encounter yeah help me understand why Dale because they'll already has a decent network operating system why invest in the challenges of embracing open networking yes so there's really couple sides to open networking in my opinion so you have open source and you have open right so early on as we were developing IP and developing partnerships we felt like we really had to make sure that we're giving back to the community real contributions to the community we still do it to this day and it was working with the law the larger hyper scalar providers out there that we saw the problem and we we just want to embrace it with a platform one of our other analyst friends just said you know there's there's plenty of operating systems out there right it would be nice to have just a solid hardware platform that's supported them all and so that was kind of the the genesis of that solving problems that the hyper scalars weren't seeing in other solutions right time and then we're seeing a lot of real incredible innovation on the software side from network operating systems big switch cumulus pluribus those are probably the big three that we like to work with and it's giving our customers a lot more choice when they start to see the capabilities of that software it's just kind of mind-boggling to them so let's talk about some of the operational advantages to running open networking solution like base rates pluribus or cumulus on a platform sure the reason why I mention open source because this this is Linux so so I'm running my network using the same and theory tools that I use around my DevOps networking modern stack the stuff that I'm doing in the cloud I'm actually bringing that to my network yeah let's talk about what are some of the cool things you've seen customers do with the open network in operations yeah so what we see a lot is open networking is and each of the providers are a little bit different so if you see big switch is managing everything as one big switch the name so you're able to take all these switches all the op systems on that and just really simplify that whole thing what they're able to do is actually look at and just installed a monitoring piece into a current existing network and radically change how they monitor and view the traffic and and watch things as they flow through that tools that they just don't have today so a lot of the times just dropping that in to see what what benefits you get we've had customers their life just just an incredible you know sign me up so Wow so the viewpoint that they get so one of the concerns with that I've heard what open networking has been support okay like if I get if I buy my if I buy my operating system from big swigs cumulus or pluribus sure I buy the hardware from Dale mhm and I have a problem who do I call you call del hmm and that that's one of the benefits so we have a very established handoff process right very smooth very streamlined we we do a lot of joint collaboration with support and in engineering a lot of cases to to make sure that that's super smooth and streamlined and we just never really hear complaints on that like alright I call in there there's no finger-pointing there's a very established that process so this is not unlike what you guys already do on the server side you know the if I can buy my licenses and support for Windows from Dale when I buy the server and if I get a blue or blue screen of death or on my server I can pick up called the Dell support line and I get so I never talked to Microsoft person I talked to the same Dell person whether it's a hardware issue or software issue you guys figure it out very good at doing that right and so saying that the same exact model so I think we hit on everything that's new let me let me twist one little thing so okay so there's open networking right the other thing we offer is our own operating system and so can't forget about that right so the one thing to mention is smart fabric services as part of that and so the real benefit there is for people that deploy our existing infrastructure vx rail Isilon MX servers and they're looking to simplify networking we've automated a bunch of those steps so when they deploy our own networking and typically it's you know part of the package deal you need a network anytime you're set right the x-ray or something like that we automate up to 98% of those steps and we make it really really simple you know this has been one of my kind of things in my teeth the theme that irritates me about HCI in a pass is hyper-converged infrastructure with everything except for the network has been the traditional piece of highly diverse you get storage would get compute but networking was always an afterthought and networking had always been a pain point and bottleneck for hyper-converged whether it's running out of Io because the two weren't validated two together so you know the validated design for VX 0 of VX rack or the Miss configuration because again networking was a afterthought so the ability to give that all-in-one solution and when one stacked that we don't like the term one throat to choke anymore yeah but you know what I'm a whole school guy recive yes what what point of contact and one true point of contact what again this is all stuff so I'm really interested to see where the future's going when you know you guys continue to integrate being where nsx being where fellow cloud powered by nsx I think is going to be the future name and a naming thing although it's all good this stuff needs to become more black box dealers Dell and Dell technologies is making it more black box there's a larger ecosystem question but again we're sponsored by big switch in the next interview so evidently there's room for partners as well so we really appreciate all the work that's done so that's it for this episode of the CTO dose at Dale tech world 2019 follow us on YouTube visit our friends over at dill technologies for to learn more about Dale networking in their other solutions talk to you next CTO dos

Channel: The CTO Advisor

Views: 4,237

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: delltechworld

Id: 3qebsVNVg90

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2019