• Dell enables customers and the developer community through:
  • Promoting open development environments and collaboration with remote-accessible clusters of ARM-based servers via Dell Solution Centers and partnership with Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), which will be available to developers worldwide
  • Delivering Dell ARM-based servers to select hyperscale customers and partners

ROUND ROCK, Texas — (BUSINESS WIRE) — May 29, 2012 — Dell today announced it is responding to the demands of our customers for continued innovation in support of hyperscale environments, and enabling the ecosystem for ARM-based servers. The ARM-based server market is approaching an inflection point, marked by increasing customer interest in testing and developing applications, and Dell believes now is the right time to help foster development and testing of operating systems and applications for ARM servers.

Dell is recognized as an industry leader in both the x86 architecture and the hyperscale server market segments. Dell began testing ARM server technology internally in 2010 in response to increasing customer demands for density and power efficiency, and worked closely with select Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) hyperscale customers to understand their interest level and expectations for ARM-based servers. Today’s announcement is a natural extension of Dell’s server leadership and the company’s continued focus on delivering next generation technology innovation.

As part of this effort, Dell is enabling customers and partners to develop ARM server applications in three ways:

1. Continued delivery of the Dell “Copper” ARM server to select customers and partners.
2. Delivery of servers to key ecosystem partners such as Canonical and Cloudera, to support their development activities.
3. Enabling continued software and ecosystem testing and development by providing remote-accessible Copper server clusters deployed in Dell Solution Centers, and through its deep partnership with Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

Customers have expressed great interest in understanding ARM-based server advantages and how they may apply to their hyperscale environments. Dell believes ARM infrastructures demonstrate promise for web front-end and Hadoop environments, where advantages in performance per dollar and performance per watt are critical. The ARM server ecosystem is still developing, and largely available in open-source, non-production versions, and the current focus is on supporting development of that ecosystem. Dell has designed its programs to support today’s market realities by providing lightweight, high-performance seed units and easy remote access to development clusters.

The Dell “Copper” ARM server seed unit program will support software development and verification with a small number of customers worldwide ranging from the leaders in the hyperscale industry to smaller customers in focused web environments. At present, the Dell “Copper” ARM server is not generally available. Dell will continue to help enable ecosystem development, and bring ARM servers to general availability at the appropriate time.

Dell is working to enable software development for ARM-based server solutions, together with other leading industry partners such as Canonical and Cloudera. The partnership with these companies, and soon others in Dell’s Emerging Solutions Ecosystem, will help customers and the industry scope and test new applications.

Dell is staging clusters of the Dell “Copper” ARM server within the Dell Solution Centers and with TACC so developers may book time on the platforms. Dell also will deliver an ARM-supported version of Crowbar, Dell’s open-source management infrastructure software, to the industry in the future.

Supporting Quotes:

“Dell has a long history of addressing customer needs by delivering relevant innovation across the server portfolio and within its Data Center Solutions business. Today Dell is delivering this same innovation focus to the ARM server market, working hand-in-hand with customers and the community to enable development and testing of workloads for leading-edge hyperscale environments. We recognize the market potential for ARM servers, and with our experience and understanding of the market, are enabling developers with the right systems and access for the current state of the ARM server market maturity.” – Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager, Server Solutions, Dell

“Ubuntu is the prevalent OS for scale-out workloads such as Hadoop, Condor, Memcached and edge-of-the-network web servers. The latest release, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, is the first widely-certified enterprise platform with full support for ARM. That combination makes Ubuntu a great fit for the first generation of ARM servers. Canonical - the company behind Ubuntu - is delighted to support Dell in bringing hyperscale ARM server products to market.” – Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and leader of Canonical product and design