New Dell PowerEdge Servers Open Doors to High Performance Channel Sales

Months after announcing its latest addition to the PowerEdge portfolio with single and dual socket servers designed for data centers, Dell EMC previewed an additional set of PowerEdge servers, this time with the power of four sockets designed for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

At Dell Technologies World 2018 earlier this month, the PowerEdge R940xa and PowerEdge R840 were announced by Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president of product management and marketing for Dell’s server and infrastructure systems as well as Jeff Clark, Dell’s vice chairman of products and operations. In addition, a new version of the Dell Precision Optimizer, version 5.0, was formally announced, enhancing AI and ML performance for the servers.

Within the channel, partners are saying this could create new opportunity within the high-performance database market.

According to Pendekanti, these servers are built to deal with performance bottlenecks while addressing the full spectrum of customer workloads. The newer models are said to do so with improved response times and fewer statistical errors than previous generations of PowerEdge servers. He said 46 percent of customers use Big Data as a key driver, and security is a key challenge for 66 percent of customers.

Clarke said the machines are “bar none the fastest and most intelligent servers on the planet,” citing a new record benchmark test for SAP Linux.

For channel partners serving customers with high performance requirements for large database applications, the addition of these servers opens up new doors for business.

Let’s take a look at the individual servers.

R940xa

Combining up to four GPUs in a 1:1 ratio, the R940xa’s design accelerates applications to deliver decisions for GPU database workloads in real-time. The “x” in the server’s name stands for “extreme intelligence.”

The R940xa takes advantage of CPU Ram to move data into GPU RAM for faster computation. As Clarke noted, this fast computing is a “better” way to deal with analytics because of speed. “Fast analytics means faster business outcomes, which mean faster business results,” he said during his speech. The R940x’s four GPUs, or eight field-programmable gate arrays, and have mix and match capacity and performance options with up to 32 drives. It also features RESTful API for improved developer efficiency.

R840

This machine is specifically designed to turbocharge data analytics, going back to Clarke’s point that both machines were built to enhance utilization of Big Data. The R840 features up to 24 direct attached NVMe drives, speeding up response times and accelerating critical workloads with up to two GPUs and/or two FPGAs. According to Pendekanti, this is about two times above their nearest competitors, making them 3.5 times faster.  

Dell Precision Optimizer Version 5.0

This software has actually been out before it was touted at the conference, but is making waves in how it utilizes AI to create automated application adjustments to maximize performance. Precision Optimizers run in the background while learning an application’s behavior, then takes that data to employ a trained machine learning model that automatically adjusts the system to perform its optimized settings. This process is said to produce a 394% improvement in application performance.

Workstation performance can be optimized through automated adjustments to the system’s configuration, as it will modify settings to CPU, memory, graphics, storage and operating system to improve performance when switching between applications.

For Channel Partners with Enterprise Clients

If your customers are looking for these latest innovative solutions from Dell EMC, the Precision Optimizer Version 5.0 is available now. The R940xa and R840 is set for release later this month.

On the other hand, if your customers are not quite ready for this level of a solution, or perhaps doesn’t have the budget for it, IT Xchange carries a variety of recertified or new and discontinued Dell EMC server technology, as well as that from several other leading names such as HPE, IBM and Lenovo.

To learn more about acquiring server solutions to fit the needs of your customer base, contact us to learn more.