While attending the Dell Enterprise Forum last week, Dell announced the PowerEdge VRTX.  The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was the scene in Thor where Natalie Portmans say “Oh….My….God” (Youtube)
So, what is this Dell PowerEdge VRTX that has me, and many others, all in a giddy?  Well, it is server that can hold up to 4 blades, has an 8-port L2 gigabit switch, and can support up to 25 – 2.5in HDD (or 12 –  3.5in HDD) drives — that is the potential for 48TB of storage!!  It can be configured in a tower (like pictured above) or in a rack and take up  5 RU of space.  So what you have is a server that utilizes blades, hard-drives, and has 8–port L2 gig switch blade! Oh, best of all, this runs on 110v and is whisper quiet! Talk about perfect for a home lab –  oh yeah!!!!  The only bad part here, the street price is said to be less then $10k, bit out of home-lab money.  But then again, when one thinks of all the hardware and storage that we have in our basements/closets/offices –  that might be close to our pre-existing investment.
Looking over my notes from the Dell Enterprise Forum where this device was announced, here is a quick bullet list of what I have:

–  Converged solution with up to four servers with shared storage and I/O
–  Uses 2–socket M520 and M620 Server blades
–  Single console management for the VRTX
–  110v Power!!!
–  Office quiet (they said our projector was louder)
–  About the same size as a typical tower
–  Designed with the remote office in mind
–  Current support for Microsoft and VMWare Hyper-visors
–  Potential for external storage (future)
–  Project Name was Frankenstein
Check out this video from Dell on the VRTX
[youtube=http://youtu.be/16IlDQnIMrk]
As the video said, this is targeted at the Small Office to allow them to reduce their server footprint and consolidate from a rack to a single physical server –  basically a local private cloud at the site.
Oh, and how quiet is it?  Watch this video by Blades Made Simple and see for yourself!
[youtube=http://youtu.be/A9L1Y7DeCpc]
I suspect that this is the start of a VRTX line –  even though Dell is saying this is NOT a data center in a box, I am guessing “not yet” should be added to that.  This server might have the potential to change the data center again!
 

Disclaimer

Dell sponsored my trip to Dell Enterprise Forum and as such they were responsible for my travel expenses and hotel accommodations.  At no time did they ask for nor were they assured any kind of consideration in the writing of this review. The thoughts I have shared are given freely and without reservation whatsoever.

Dell has not provided me with a VRTX to use myself  (but they can if they want –  hint hint), but I was able to see one in real life at the Dell Enterprise Forum and fell in love.