TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

Deploy a platform for modern

application development
Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel provide a proven reference architecture for an enterprise container environment.

Across industries, evolving customer and employee behaviors and preferences, increased competitive pressure, and growth
opportunities in new markets are causing organizations to pursue digital transformation initiatives.1 Applications are at the
core of modern, digital business operations and innovative software can both differentiate your company and streamline
business operations.

1 “The 2017 State of Digital Transformation.” Altimeter. October 2017.

Deploy a platform for modern application development

© 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
 To be successful in a digital world, you need to be able to rapidly
create and deliver applications. Traditional application development
environments can slow operations and impede developer productivity.
Cloud-native and container-based technologies, combined with new
application development approaches, can help you modernize your
application infrastructure.

Container application platforms like Red Hat® OpenShift® provide a flexible,

A CHANGING BUSINESS
LANDSCAPE
Organizations are digitally
transforming to adapt to:3
• Evolving customer and
employee behaviors and
preferences (64.6%)
• Increased competitive
pressure (54.2%)
• Growth opportunities in
new markets (46.0%)
efficient foundation for modern application development and deployment.
These platforms simplify, speed, and orchestrate application development
and deployment. They also provide pre-built and packaged developer tools,
runtimes, and automation for faster feedback and implementation cycles.
As a result, 45% of surveyed IT professionals say they use container
technologies today.2
Container application platforms provide benefits across your organization.
Developers can rapidly produce higher-quality releases with greater application
scalability and isolation. IT and enterprise architects can scale applications and
services faster, shorten test cycles, and deploy with fewer errors. IT operations
can rapidly deliver superior applications and services, use resources more
efficiently, and manage applications more easily. Finally, line of business
managers can actively collaborate with developers and IT and deliver new
products and services to market faster and across more platforms.

Deploying a modern application environment can be challenging.

Modern application environments require many components and technologies.
Choosing the right ones and then testing, integrating, and operating them
requires time, resources, and expertise.

Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel offer a reference architecture to help you deploy
a proven, reliable containerized environment faster. This enterprise-grade
container platform streamlines application development, deployment, and
management, allowing you to release new applications and services quickly,
efficiently, and at scale.

2 “2017 Container and Cloud Orchestration Report”. SDxCentral. 2017.

SDXCentral.com/Reports/Container-Cloud-Orchestration-DevOps-Download-2017.
3 “The 2017 State of Digital Transformation.” Altimeter. October 2017.
4 “The Business Value of Red Hat OpenShift.” IDC. October 2017.
RedHat.com/EN/Resources/The-Business-Value-of-Red-Hat-OpenShift.

2 | Deploy a platform for modern application development

© 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
CONTAINERS SUPPORT
MODERN APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT
Organizations using Red Hat
OpenShift for application
development experience:4
• 66% faster development
life cycles.
• 35% less staff time per
application developed.
• 38% lower infrastructure
and platform costs.
3 | Deploy a platform for modern application development
© 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
A proven reference architecture for enterprise container environments
The Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel reference architecture provides a how-to
guide for on-premise deployment of a containerized environment that is backed,
tested, and certified by industry leaders. This reference architecture helps you:
• Deploy a stable, fault-tolerant, enterprise-grade container environment
quickly and successfully.
• Take the guesswork and risk out of deploying a modern application
development environment with tested, known configurations.
• Increase reliability and scalability with integrated, enterprise-class
components.
• Take advantage of the OpenShift Web Console to deploy predefined
services, applications, and pods quickly and easily.
• Validate and test the performance and proper operation of your
environment with specific, predefined workloads from the OpenShift
Service Catalog.
The Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel reference architecture includes several
components, each delivering essential capabilities.
• Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 servers scale easily and deliver optimized
performance to master, infrastructure, application, and bastion nodes.
• Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd servers serve as high-performance
storage nodes.
• Dell EMC Networking S5148-ON switches provide programmable. high-
performance, open networking top-of-rack switching with native 25GbE
server ports and 100GbE network fabric connectivity.
• Intel Xeon Gold 6138 and 6140 processors supply up to 22 cores and
6 memory channels—and memory speeds up to DDR4 2666 MHz—to
provide mission critical performance with 99.999% server uptime for
demanding application and hybrid cloud workloads.
• Intel SSD DC S4500 Series delivers high-performance, highly available
storage and an easy, cost-effective path to upgrade legacy infrastructures.
• Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapters supply 40GbE and 25GbE
high-speed, low-latency networking.
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.10 provides an enterprise-
grade, Kubernetes-based container environment with native architecture,
process, platform, and service integration.
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage, based on Red Hat Gluster®
Storage, provides a high-performance, persistent storage platform with
granular control over every component of the storage landscape.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux® provides an efficient, reliable, and security-
focused operating foundation for your container environment.
• Red Hat Ansible® Automation streamlines installation and bare-metal
provisioning for fast, predictable setup of both predefined and customized
architectures.
 Build a fault-tolerant Red Hat OpenShift cluster on PowerEdge servers.
The Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel reference architecture provides guidance for
building a complete Red Hat OpenShift environment based on a cluster of 15
server nodes. Five types of nodes are used in this environment:

• The bastion node serves as a dedicated deployment and management

system for the entire cluster.

• Three master nodes perform control functions—like object creation,

management, and scheduling—for the cluster environment.

• Three infrastructure nodes run infrastructure-specific services like the

docker registry, HAProxy router, and Heketi management interface.

• Three storage nodes provide persistent storage for the environment.

• Five application nodes run containerized applications.

Expert technical services from both Dell EMC and Red Hat are also available to
help you deploy and customize your environment.

Node type Configuration

Bastion and master Dell EMC PowerEdge R640
nodes • 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6138 processors
• 6x 32GB RDIMMs (192GB total)
• 2x 240GB Intel SSDs S4600 Series
• 1x Intel X710 DP 10GbE/1GbE network adapter
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

Infrastructure nodes Dell EMC PowerEdge R640

• 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6138 processors
• 6x 32GB RDIMMs (192GB total)
• 2x 240GB and 2x 960GB Intel SSDs S4600 Series
• 1x Intel X710 DP 10GbE/1GbE network adapter
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage (registry and metrics
cluster)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

Storage nodes Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd

• 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6140 processors
• 12x 16GB RDIMMs (192Gb total)
• 24x 960GB Intel SSDs S4600 Series
• 1x Intel X710 DP 10GbE/1GbE network adapter
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage (pod cluster)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

Application nodes Dell EMC PowerEdge R640

• 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6138 processors
• 12x 32GB RDIMMs (384 total)
• 2x 960GB Intel SSDs S4600 Series
• 1x Intel X710 DP 10GbE/1GbE network adapter
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

Certification and testing

Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel have intensely tested this reference architecture
to ensure consistent, predictable, successful deployment. In addition, Dell EMC
PowerEdge R640 and R740xd servers have been certified to run Red Hat
Enterprise Linux consistently and reliably.

4 | Deploy a platform for modern application development

© 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
 Bastion node

Routing layer

Master nodes Application Application Application Storage

node node node nodes
Pod Pod Pod Pod Pod Pod
API / Authentication
Pod Pod Pod Pod Pod Pod

Data storage Red Hat Red Hat Red Hat

Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux

Scheduler Application Application Infrastructure

node node nodes
Health / Scaling Pod Pod Pod Pod

Pod Pod Pod Pod

Red Hat Red Hat Red Hat

Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux

Service layer

Physical Virtual Private Public

The Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel reference architecture helps you deploy an
on-premise container-based application environment faster.

Develop and deploy high-quality applications faster.

Based on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, this reference architecture
helps you develop and deploy innovative applications faster. Automated testing,
deployment, and scaling processes improve application quality and boost
operational efficiency. A complete set—and choice—of tools, components,
and runtimes lets developers immediately start working in OpenShift. Rapid,
automated provisioning of resources from predefined self-service catalogs
eliminates delays due to manual resource request processes. Prevalidated
microservices and reusable components help developers create new
applications faster and more easily.

Improve application security, consistency, and portability.

With a container environment from Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel, you
can improve application security and consistency across platforms and
infrastructures. Standards-based container hosts, images, orchestration,
and registry and discovery processes let you easily deploy, move, and scale
applications across infrastructures. Application and environment configuration
automation eliminates manual processes to increase consistency and security.
A consistent platform lets you deploy containerized applications across
environments and platforms with less risk and rework. Visibility into workflows
helps operations teams monitor and control the application development
process to ensure production requirements are met.

5 | Deploy a platform for modern application development

© 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
 Increase productivity with automation.
The Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel reference architecture provides built-
in automation technology that speeds application development, testing,
deployment, and scaling to improve developer and operations productivity.
Consistent, containerized environments let you promote applications
from development to test to production without delays from recoding or
troubleshooting. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD)
capabilities enable rapid, incremental development, improvement, and delivery
to streamline feedback and implementation cycles. Testing automation ensures
high application quality. The microservices-based architecture incorporates
development and operational functionality that allows cross-functional teams to
make more frequent changes to applications and increase the success rate of
those changes.

Prepare for the future.

The Dell EMC, Red Hat, and Intel reference architecture lets you build a
containerized environment that can be used initially as a proof of concept and
later expanded into a cloud-scale, on-premise production environment.
Additionally, it provides an ideal foundation for large-scale development
of innovative applications and services. Developers can experiment more
easily using streamlined development environments. They can also add new
features to existing applications and test new functionality in the market without
significant investment.

Learn more.
To stay successful, organizations need to modernize their application
development and deployment methods and environments. Dell EMC, Red Hat,
and Intel offer a validated reference architecture to help you build a consistent
and predictable application container environment.

Learn more at Dell.com/Learn/US/EN/05/Campaigns/Dell-and-RedHat-GA-

Partners and RedHat.com/OpenShift.

Download the reference architecture at DellEMC.com/Containers.

For more information, contact us at OpenShift@Dell.com.

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EMC partnerships with #containers

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