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VMware and Dell have revealed version 2.0 of their combined on-prem cloud, and upgraded it to handle meatier workloads.

VMware Cloud on Dell EMC sees the latter ship customers a rack full of servers based on the VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure products, running VMwares best private cloud bits vSphere, VSAN and NSX. Users are expected to let Dell techs into their data centres and watch as the hardware is installed switched on, then leave it all alone because Dell owns the rig and is responsible for managing every aspect of its operations including software updates. Buyers can pay as they go, as if it were a public cloud.

Users get a cloud console with which to manage workloads, and more-or-less the same experience as using a public cloud in terms of not having to worry about hardware ops or the underlying software. The product therefore includes dark nodes spare servers that kick in if one of the main nodes has a problem. The dark nodes are included as recognition that stuff sometimes breaks, techs cant teleport in to perform repairs and fixing stuff takes time.

Version 1.0 came in half-height rack and was aimed at the edge and/or important-but-not-enormous workloads.

Version 2.0 ups the ante with new and more powerful host types, full-height racks and the addition of a tech preview of the HCX cloud migration tool, all in the service of taking on more demanding applications, or just more applications. Theres a little more flexibility in that adding nodes is now a scaling option. Support for VMware Horizon VDI and Dells PowerProtect data management products are new additions, while Veeams backup wares have also been certified for the systems.

Also new is a tweak to the cloud console so that it can manage the on-prem VMware Cloud on Dell EMC and VMware Cloud on AWS.

As is VMware's wont, the product presents as vanilla vSphere, so can be stretched into hybrid clouds across the many clouds that run Virtzilla's stack.

Kit Colbert, veep and CTO of VMwares Cloud Platform business unit told The Register customers have asked for bigger rigs, so VMware and Dell has delivered. He said the product will keep evolving, envisaging future variants that employ GPUs or FPGAs.

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VMware, Dell level up their combined on-prem cloud with much more computing grunt - The Register