Dell EMC announces the PowerEdge MX-- an example of what the company calls "kinetic infrastructure," a modular datacentre able to support multiple generations of technologies, making for a future-proof server.
The design of the MX has no mid-plane, allowing support for fully disaggregated components, down to memory-centric devices such as storage-class memory, GPUs and FPGAs. As a result it offers full composability, transforming infrastructure into a "dynamic pool of instantly responding, adapting and evolving resources."
Primarily aimed at software-defined datacentre, the MX handles combinations of virtualisation, software-defined storage, software-defined networking, AI and big data. It supports emerging technologies such as NVMe and 25GbE connectivity, and customers can pick and match features such as compute or storage to take advantage of the composable nature of the hardware.
Components for customisation include the MX7000 chassis (a 7U chassis with 8 bays allowing it to accommodate a range of full- and double-width compute and storage combinations), the MX740c and MX840c compute sleds (2- and 4-socket blade sleds with support the Intel Xeon Scalable processor family with up to 6TB of memory) and the MX5016 storage sled (holds up to 16 hot-pluggable SAS HDDs, with drives individually mapped to one or more servers).
Networking comes through the MX Ethernet and Fibre Channel switching modules-- low latency, high-bandwidth switching modules designed for multi-chassis environments. They include automated features for topology compliance, quality of service and autonomous healing for peak network performance with the MX single management interface. The infrastructure offers end-to-end 256GbE and 32Gbps fibre channel host connectivity, and combined with 100GbE and 32G fibre channel uplinks, Dell MC promises up to 55% reduction in switching latency for highly scalable, multi-chassis fabric architecture.
The PowerEdge MX ships from September 2018.
