This article is based on announcements made by Dell Technologies at VMworld 2019 in San Francisco. Original reporting by Asha Barbaschow, who travelled as a guest of VMware. Source: ZDNet.
The Multi-Cloud Problem Driving Dell’s Strategy
Dell Technologies used day one of VMworld 2019 in San Francisco to announce a series of updates to its cloud platform, framing them around a challenge its customers know well: managing workloads across an increasingly complex mix of cloud environments.
Varun Chhabra, Dell Technologies Cloud VP of Product Marketing, described the core tension: organisations are no longer choosing a single cloud strategy. Instead, they are making workload-specific decisions — selecting whichever environment best fits each application’s requirements. The result is multi-cloud sprawl.
“There are different needs every workload has, and because of that reason, organisations are making workload-specific decisions that are driving the use of multiple clouds in an organisation.”
— Varun Chhabra, Dell Technologies Cloud VP of Product Marketing
Chhabra noted that over 90% of Dell Technologies customers run two or more clouds, and that a majority operate across five different cloud environments. The organisational consequence is significant: each cloud demands its own operational and management tooling, creating silos that reduce agility and slow delivery.
VMware PKS Support: Kubernetes on Dell EMC VxRail
The headline announcement for DevOps practitioners was Dell Technologies Cloud’s new support for VMware PKS (Pivotal Container Service), enabling automated deployment of PKS on Dell EMC VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure.
The integration adds native Kubernetes and container support to the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform, allowing organisations to run and manage Kubernetes clusters for production workloads alongside traditional virtualised applications — on the same underlying infrastructure.
According to Chhabra, the goal is to give IT teams a single, consistent platform that satisfies both developer demand for container-ready infrastructure and enterprise requirements for reliability, security, and scalability:
“IT organisations are looking to meet developer demands for container-ready infrastructure. At the same time, they want to make sure that as more and more applications move towards container infrastructure, the architecture is enterprise grade — that it’s ready to scale, that it’s production-ready, and that they can dependably rely upon the infrastructure.”
— Varun Chhabra
Specific capabilities included in the announcement:
- Automated deployment of VMware PKS on Dell EMC VxRail
- Full lifecycle management (LCM) of multiple Kubernetes clusters
- Enhanced automation, performance, and security for containerised workloads
- A unified platform for both cloud-native and traditional virtualised applications
The PKS announcement arrived alongside VMware’s broader unveiling of the VMware Tanzu portfolio, which VMware positioned as a comprehensive solution for building, running, and managing software on Kubernetes across the enterprise.
Cloud Validated Designs: Pre-Tested Infrastructure for Hybrid Cloud
Dell Technologies also introduced Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs, described as pre-tested infrastructure bundles with deployment guidance. The designs combine Dell EMC compute, storage, and networking components, validated against VMware Cloud Foundation.
The key architectural benefit is the ability to scale compute and storage independently, which Dell Technologies says allows infrastructure-intensive workloads to be supported more efficiently — without over-provisioning one resource to keep pace with another.
Available configurations at launch included:
- Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for Dell EMC PowerMax storage arrays
- Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for Dell EMC Unity storage arrays
- Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers
Chhabra indicated Dell Technologies intends to expand the portfolio of validated designs over time.
Google Cloud Partnership Completes the Hyperscaler Picture
Building on existing partnerships with AWS and Microsoft Azure, Dell Technologies announced the addition of Google Cloud to its supported public cloud targets. The move positions Dell Technologies Cloud to span the three largest global hyperscalers.
The integration uses VMware Cloud Foundation tooling to enable workload portability between on-premises Dell infrastructure and Google Cloud — without requiring VM migrations, format conversions, or changes to security policy configurations. Chhabra described the intent as allowing workloads to move to the public cloud and return on-premises as business needs evolve.
Data Center-as-a-Service Reaches US Customers
Dell Technologies also announced limited availability of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC — its fully managed Data Center-as-a-Service (DCaaS) offering — for US customers. First announced at Dell Technologies World in April 2019, the offering represents Dell’s implementation of VMware Project Dimension.
The service delivers cloud-managed infrastructure into customer data centers, with Dell handling operational lifecycle management. Chhabra described customer demand as exceptionally strong and indicated a roadmap for global availability would be announced in due course.
Flex On Demand: Pay-Per-Use for On-Premises Infrastructure
To align on-premises procurement models with the consumption experience of public cloud, Dell Technologies introduced Flex On Demand — a flexible consumption program for Dell Technologies Cloud.
The model allows customers to provision excess capacity in their data center upfront but only pay for it when it is actually consumed. This addresses the common operational challenge of handling traffic spikes and burst demand without committing to full capacity costs in advance.
According to Chhabra, the driver behind this model is customer demand for the same agility they experience with public cloud — rapid provisioning through web-based portals and pay-as-you-go billing — applied to on-premises infrastructure.
Dell EMC VxRail: Kubernetes Lifecycle Management and Performance Enhancements
Gil Shneorson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Dell EMC VxRail, elaborated on VxRail’s expanding role as the foundation for Kubernetes deployments within the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform.
Specific VxRail updates announced at VMworld 2019 include:
- Automated Kubernetes infrastructure deployments
- Integrated Lifecycle Management (LCM) for Kubernetes clusters
- Performance, security, and connectivity enhancements
“Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to meet this demand, and through joint engineering between VMware, Pivotal and Dell EMC is delivering with Dell Technologies Cloud.”
— Gil Shneorson, SVP and GM, Dell EMC VxRail
The joint engineering reference reflects the close collaboration between Dell EMC, VMware, and Pivotal — all subsidiaries under the Dell Technologies umbrella at that time — that made the integrated PKS and VxRail solution possible.
Summary of Announcements
| Announcement | What It Does |
|---|---|
| VMware PKS support on Dell EMC VxRail | Automated Kubernetes deployment and lifecycle management alongside traditional VMs |
| Cloud Validated Designs | Pre-tested infrastructure stacks (compute, storage, networking) validated with VMware Cloud Foundation |
| Google Cloud partnership | Extends Dell cloud platform support to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud |
| VMware Cloud on Dell EMC (US limited availability) | Fully managed Data Center-as-a-Service for on-premises customer data centers |
| Flex On Demand | Pay-per-use consumption model for on-premises Dell Technologies Cloud infrastructure |
| VxRail Kubernetes enhancements | Automated deployments, integrated LCM, performance and security improvements |
Disclosure: Original reporting by Asha Barbaschow, who travelled as a guest of VMware to VMworld in San Francisco.