In just a few short days, mankind will be united by love of country and sport, as we celebrate the Opening Ceremonies to mark the beginning of the long-awaited Tokyo Summer Olympics. Thousands of athletes representing approximately 205 countries will compete in 46 various sports for the chance to bring honor and glory home. Countless memories will be made, not just by the athletes, but also by the families, friends and fans that cheer them on from afar. This Summer Games will be unlike most before, as all spectators will be virtual. By now, virtual experiences are not new to many of us, but there are still new opportunities and challenges posed by this adapted style of competition.

In a similar way, IT Administrators everywhere are facing new opportunities and challenges presented by the transformation and acceleration of this multi-cloud world. How do they adapt their infrastructure and policies to support the do-anything-from-anywhere economy? Which partners are the best fit to help them build this technology ecosystem of the future? And how can they support their DevOps teams (athletes) and customers (fans)? Enter heavyweights – Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and VMware vSphere with Tanzu™.

As the world’s leading vendor for x86 server units for 18 consecutive quarters,¹ countless IT Admins and companies have placed their trust in the PowerEdge portfolio, which proudly put forward their largest product launch ever earlier this year, with new offerings for the Edge, as well as new rack and tower models featuring the latest Intel® and AMD processors. Companies can empower their hybrid cloud and accelerate cloud-native apps when PowerEdge is combined with VMware vSphere® with Tanzu™, which enables IT to securely run and manage Kubernetes containers from within VMware vCenter. This is convenient and critical, considering that over the next five years enterprises are predicted to build over 500 million logical apps using cloud native tools and methods.²

vSphere with Tanzu Basic simplifies Kubernetes operation on-premises, uniting VMs and containers to offer a single application platform. It gives you everything you need to run Kubernetes using what you already know and love: vSphere. By embedding Kubernetes into the vSphere control plane, both operators AND developers benefit. Operators gain access to Kubernetes capabilities through a familiar set of tools and scripts, while developers can access cloud resources using Kubernetes APIs.

On your mark, get set (quickly), go!

IT Admins gain agility without having to learn new tools, as everything from server firmware to software to container can be managed all in the same place – vCenter. PowerEdge servers can be managed from within vCenter by using the Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) plug-in. When combined with vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), an eight-node PowerEdge cluster running vSphere can complete hypervisor and firmware updates 68 times faster, as noted in this Principled Technologies report. Again, nothing new to learn! Want to add Tanzu Basic to a PowerEdge cluster? It takes seven simple tasks once the load balancer is initially configured.

Agility Increases for the Team

Not only do DevOps teams benefit with the ability to spin up containers quickly within this technology ecosystem, machine learning is faster. Companies using Kubernetes can benefit from data center solutions that provide high performance on containerized applications. As demonstrated in this Principled Technologies report, process over 19,000 images in 13.9% less time with AMD EPYC™ powered R7525 servers running vSphere 7 Update 2 with Tanzu, backed by a Dell EMC PowerStore 5000T storage array. This could provide real-world benefits for retail, for example, if stores use computer vision to prevent shoplifting, keep their shelves properly stocked, or optimize their marketing, as accomplishing tasks in less time during the machine learning workflow could translate to achieving those goals faster.

Bring home the Gold

In the game of business, companies are leveraging IT to build and sustain competitive advantages, and PowerEdge servers teamed with vSphere with Tanzu™ can be some of your biggest supporters. To demonstrate how we “walk the walk” ourselves, review this Dell Digital infographic, our own Dell Technologies IT Organization, to see how PowerEdge servers and Tanzu transformed our development infrastructure, compressing application development cycles by 85% and accelerating time to market massively for new features for our customers’ shopping experience.

With over twenty years of joint innovation and partnership, we are here to help you compete and win! To learn more about the PowerEdge and VMware relationship and advantages for your business, check out our webpage. You can also explore the full Dell Technologies Tanzu Advantage across our broader infrastructure solutions group portfolio here.

¹ IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tracker x86 Servers – Units, as of 1Q2021, June 10, 2021.

² IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2020 Predictions, Doc # US45599219, Oct 2020.