Delivering new applications and IT services to support enterprise growth remains of paramount concern to data center leaders. Achieving the required levels of agility, efficiency and IT service quality can create clear business advantages while increasing organizational productivity. Failing to do so can limit execution on revenue-driving initiatives and diminish end user satisfaction.
Dell’s new converged infrastructure family, called Active Infrastructure, helps IT organizations more rapidly respond to business demands, improve data center efficiency and strengthen IT service quality. This family encompasses our existing Dell vStart offerings, as well as Active System, a new converged infrastructure system from Dell.
Active System offers an intuitive, highly flexible and comprehensive approach to converged infrastructure. Central to all Active Systems is the new Active System Manager, a single intuitive tool for the most common infrastructure administrative tasks. It delivers substantial operational benefits such as helping to eliminate up to 75% of steps needed for “power on to production.”
So what makes Dell’s systems and solutions “active”?
[Callout: Active [Ak-tiv]; adjective; having the power of quick motion; nimble]
Being active is about having the power of quick motion, to be nimble. In response to growing demands, IT must become and remain active at every phase of the IT lifecycle – spanning design, integration, configuration, operation and support. Let’s examine how Dell Active Infrastructure helps IT become more responsive and supportive to application and IT service needs:
- Gain rapid time-to-value for infrastructure – Dell Active Infrastructure systems and solutions are different. By delivering pre-integrated systems, Dell can speed time-to-value by 6X for new infrastructure. Dell also provides platform reference architectures and a DIY Active System matrix for maximum flexibility.
- Streamline delivery, deployment and integration – Dell’s Active Infrastructure mitigates slow integration processes by delivering systems and solutions that are pre-engineered, pre-assembled, optimized and tested. And because Dell leverages an open architecture, Active Infrastructure systems integrate easily into existing data center fabrics. Finally, to further ensure successful deployments, Dell offers turnkey enterprise services with best-practice deployment and integration services.
- Automate infrastructure discovery simplifies set-up of the environment – With Active System Manager, an infrastructure management solution that collapses tools and automates common tasks, IT teams can leverage template-based configuration to ensure consistency at the initial phases, while ensuring simplified downstream problem identification and remediation. And Active System Manager’s template-based solution allows customers to re-configure servers much more quickly than alternative solutions.
- Single control point for key configuration and management needs –With Active System Manager, standard configurations allow for consistent management. Not only is it easier to deploy servers based on best practices, but this model also significantly reduces strain when operational issues occur. Less time is required for problem identification and resolution.
- One call for solution-wide support minimizes finger pointing & time wasting handoffs – Pre-integrated solutions from Dell’s Active Infrastructure family first minimize problems with pre-engineered, pre-validated and pre-tested configurations. Dell also provides a single, global support model for the entire system or solution, helping drive rapid problem identification and resolution.