In August of 2018, Dell EMC announced the launch of its new high-performance, modular infrastructure, the PowerEdge MX7000
The 7U MX7000 is the next evolution of the Dell EMC's PowerEdge M1000e modular blade chassis. With the M1000e, users are able to quickly add blades depending on their needs e.g. add more storage, compute, or networking. This technology allows users to easily scale if their workloads need to expand in storage or compute. Dell EMC customers love this flexibility but had been asking Dell EMC for a platform that can better take advantage of new technologies as they come to market be it CPUs, storage, or high-speed interconnects. After several years of research and development, Dell EMC released a new blade chassis and PowerEdge server sleds with the MX platform (though not a replacement for the M1000e) to better adapt to the ever-changing technological landscape allowing for faster deployment and adoption of newer storage, server and interconnect technologies.
Rack-based modular chassis for PowerEdge MX kinetic infrastructure
The Dell PowerEdge MX7000 chassis is the next step in modular server design. This new method moves beyond modular to what Dell EMC calls kinetic or kinetic composability. The design has no midplane, allowing for future technology to be leveraged the day it comes out. With PowerEdge MX7000, users can scale compute, networking and/or storage needs while having future proofing built in. The composable nature of the MX makes it difficult to describe but it has a chassis and several different blades that can be used in different combinations for a given workload or use case.
The Dell EMC PowerEdge MX700 kinetic infrastructure is an ideal solution for companies that need high performance but at the same time want to be able to engage with new technology as it comes to market. The MX platform also has tremendous potential in the software-defined and HCI worlds as organizations look for a flexible hardware platform. As one might expect, Dell EMC has VMware vSAN Ready Nodes for the PowerEdge MX. Looking at converged infrastructure, Dell EMC has Ready Stack designs like VMware IaaS on PowerEdge MX Servers and PowerMax Storage. There's no doubt that for organizations looking to leverage the latest innovations while being able to easily scale compute and storage, the PowerEdge MX is an excellent choice.
MX System Management
As with all PowerEdge servers, they come with a variety of management options and all come with Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9, iDRAC9. The MX7000 Chassis Management Module (MM) and iDRAC9 provide overall chassis management and control. With the iDRAC's dashboard one can easily see the health of the PowerEdge compute nodes within the MX7000, its information, recent logs and notes, and a virtual console.
For overall systems management on the PowerEdge MX, The Dell EMC OpenManage Enterprise Modular Edition enables comprehensive management for the PowerEdge MX from a single web or API interface console managing compute, storage and networks simply, with no extra software to install. It is a simple-to-use, one-to-many systems management console. It cost‑effectively facilitates comprehensive lifecycle management for Dell EMC PowerEdge servers in one console allowing for systems configuration, monitoring, alerting, and updating.
Overall, the MX platform is perfect for companies that are looking for a flexible platform and need room to scale.