SAN FRANCISCO – VMware teamed with Dell/EMC this week to deliver an SD-WAN service that promises to greatly simplify setting up and supporting wide-area-network connectivity.
The Dell EMC SD-WAN Solution is a package of VMware software with Dell hardware and software that will be managed by Dell and sold as a package by both companies and their partners.
The package, introduced at the VMworld event here, includes VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud software available as a subscription coupled with appliances available in multiple configurations capable of handling 10Mbps to 10Gbps of traffic, depending on customer need, said Sanjay Uppal, vice president and general manager of VMware’s VeloCloud Business Unit.
“The package is a much simpler way for customers to quickly set up a modern SD-WAN, especially for those customers who don’t have a lot of IT personnel to handle setting up and configuring an SD-WAN,” Uppal said. “Branch office networking can be complex and expensive, and this package uses subscription pricing, and supports cloud-like capabilities and economics.”
Dell EMC and VMware also announced SmartFabric Director, software that can be part of the service offering. Director enables data-center operators to build, operate and monitor an open network-underlay fabric based on Dell EMC PowerSwitch switches.
Accoding to Dell, organizations that have embraced overlay software-defined networks need to make sure their physical, underlay networks are tuned to work with the SDN. “A lack of visibility between the two layers can lead to provisioning and configuration errors, hampering network performance,” Dell stated.
The Director also supports flexible streaming telemetry to gather key operational data and statistics from the fabric switches it oversees, so customers can use it in security and other day-to-day operations, Dell said.
