Dell EMC PowerFlex R640
Software-Defined Infrastructure for Modern Datacenters

Overview:

PowerFlex empowers organizations to move faster and respond effectively to rapidly changing business needs. It provides unprecedented freedom to deploy and scale the critical workloads that drive your business, while ensuring exceptional simplicity and manageability.

A Unified, Modern platform

Software-defined approaches provide compelling choices to deliver this organizational agility. They combine industry-standard hardware with software to pool and manage resources. When selecting a software-defined platform there are some critical aspects to consider:

• It must deliver stringent SLAs predictably, and do so at scale. It also must be able to offer enterprise reliability, security, and critical data services.
• The platform must offer extensive flexibility by supporting broad architectural choices, workload objectives and scaling needs.
• It must enhance simplicity and agility of the environment by empowering administrators to automate and orchestrate infrastructure workflows.

PowerFlex: A New Breed of Software-Defined Infrastructure

Dell EMC PowerFlex meets all of these key IT objectives, enabling organizations to harness the power of software and embrace change while achieving consistently predictable outcomes for mission-critical workloads. PowerFlex is a modern foundation that delivers extreme flexibility, massive performance and linear scalability while simplifying complete infrastructure management. It’s the ideal foundation for organizations to modernize their mission-critical applications, consolidate heterogeneous workloads and build agile private and hybrid clouds.

Deliver Stringent SLAs Effortlessly	Embrace Change	Deliver Predictability
PowerFlex is designed for mission-critical, SLA-sensitive workloads. It supercharges these demanding workloads by delivering extreme performance, massive scalability, and 99.9999% availability.	PowerFlex enables customers to respond quickly and seamlessly to changing business needs. PowerFlex provides unprecedented architectural freedom to support heterogeneous workloads ranching from bare-metal and virtualized, to modern containerized.	PowerFlex is designed to deliver predictable outcomes for mission-critical deployments. It enables organizations to achieve consistent outcomes for their most demanding workloads, with extensive automation and a broad ecosystem of validated enterprise workloads.

Deliver Stringent SLAs Effortlessly

PowerFlex leverages software to unlock the full potential of rapid advances in industry-standard hardware and deliver extreme SLA outcomes. PowerFlex aggregates resources across a broad set of nodes, unlocking massive I/O and throughput performance while minimizing latency. Its self-balancing architecture eliminates any hotspots and ensures consistency and simplicity over time. You can scale the system while linearly scaling performance from as few as 4 nodes to 1000s of nodes, on-demand and non-disruptively. And with its self-healing architecture, PowerFlex is able to handle outages, upgrades and maintenance without downtime, resulting in 99.9999% availability. Additionally, PowerFlex is available in a broad range of resource configurations, allowing you to reach your performance objectives precisely with extensive GPU choices, varied drive types including SAS, NVMe, and Intel Optane Memory, and a range of networking options that include 25GbE and 100GbE networking options.

Embrace Change

PowerFlex delivers transformational agility that enables organizations to rapidly respond to changing business needs. PowerFlex offers flexibility to mix and match storage, compute and HCI nodes in a dynamic deployment, allowing you to scale storage and compute resources together or independently, one node at a time, and as your needs dictate. The platform can also support a broad range of operating environments simultaneously – bare metal operating systems, hypervisors, and container platforms – with a unified underlying infrastructure platform and management. With this, you can support heterogeneous workloads with varying requirements on a flexible shared infrastructure platform and modernize your application architectures on your schedule.

PowerFlex infrastructure can be rapidly reconfigured as needed to meet changing workload requirements quickly and effortlessly. It offers a choice of consumption options: PowerFlex rack is designed to simplify deployment and accelerate time-to-value. With PowerFlex appliance, customers can start small and scale as their needs grow. PowerFlex offers full-stack IT Operations Management (ITOM) and Life Cycle Management (LCM) with PowerFlex Manager. And to fully embrace change while managing cost, you can implement PowerFlex by choosing an OpEx consumption model from Dell Technologies’ APEX Custom solutions: APEX Flex on Demand or APEX Datacenter Utility options.

Deliver Predictable Outcomes

PowerFlex is designed from the ground up to deliver consistent predictable outcomes at large scales for your most-demanding missioncritical environments. It is optimized for a wide range of validated workload solutions ranging from traditional relational databases and modern cloud-native NoSQL databases to throughput-intensive analytics workloads.

PowerFlex offers a large ecosystem of cloud automation and container management platforms. It provides extensive automation capabilities with PowerFlex Manager REST APIs and custom Ansible modules to integrate with your infrastructure, application and DevOps workflows. PowerFlex Manager enables automated deployments and expansions with minimal hands-on time for the IT team, letting them focus on other strategic initiatives. Advanced capabilities like native replication, compression, and integrated encryption, and FIPs-140-2 compliance simplify data management and protection, and provide security compliance. When combined with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), PowerFlex offers compelling disaster recovery & business continuity. Native CloudIQ support simplifies infrastructure management at large scales, while integration with AppSync provides Copy Data Management and application data protection.

PowerFlex delivers exceptional SLA outcomes while enabling you to embrace change and deliver predictability across a broad range of mission-critical workload deployments. PowerFlex supercharges your modern datacenter so your IT is the enabler and the cornerstone of your business innovation.

Features:

Uncompromising performance and density for data center productivity and scale

The PowerEdge R640 is the ideal dual-socket platform for dense scale-out data center computing and storage. Benefit from the flexibility of 2.5” or 3.5” drives, the performance of NVMe and embedded intelligence to ensure optimized application performance in a secure platform. With embedded diagnostics and SupportAssist, the R640 delivers maximum uptime in a worry-free environment.

Ideal workloads:

• Dense software-defined storage
• Service providers: application tier
• Dense private cloud
• Virtualization
• HPC

PowerFlex Software-Defined Infrastructure

PowerFlex empowers organizations to harness the power of software and embrace change while achieving consistently predictable outcomes for mission-critical workloads. PowerFlex is a modern foundation that delivers extreme flexibility, massive performance and linear scalability while simplifying complete infrastructure management and boosting IT agility. It’s the ideal foundation for organizations to modernize their mission-critical applications, consolidate heterogeneous workloads and build agile private and hybrid clouds.

Extreme Flexibility for Agile Enterprises

PowerFlex offers extreme flexibility to meet the diverse and rapidly evolving needs of modern enterprises. It offers unprecedented choice for customers to architect their mission-critical IT environments. Mix and match storage, compute and HCI nodes in a dynamic deployment, allowing users to scale storage and compute resources together or independently, one node at a time, as needs dictate.

The platform can also support a broad range of operating environments – bare metal operating systems, hypervisors as well as container platforms – simultaneously with a unified infrastructure platform and management. By allowing you to flexibly mix these architectures in a single deployment, PowerFlex enables you to deploy, scale, and evolve all your applications to meet your business objectives.

Consistent Predictable Outcomes

PowerFlex offers a robust toolset for simplifying IT operations for the entire infrastructure with PowerFlex Manager, which automates complex LCM and IT operations tasks, boosting IT productivity and infrastructure predictability. PowerFlex Manager also offers standards-based open APIs and custom Ansible modules, making it simple to integrate with third party tools and custom workflows. Further, with CloudIQ, PowerFlex leverages an AI/ML-based approach to infrastructure monitoring and management, ensuring simplicity and consistency at scale. PowerFlex is also optimized for a broad range of enterprise workloads with documented best practices, so you can deploy the most mission-critical workloads with ease while ensuring extraordinary outcomes.

PowerFlex Consumption Options

With PowerFlex, you have choice and flexibility in how you choose to consume the PowerFlex architecture:

• PowerFlex rack is a fully engineered system with integrated networking. It is designed to simplify deployment and accelerate time to value.
• PowerFlex appliance is a flexible solution with a small starting point and massive scale potential. PowerFlex appliance provides a broad choice of supported networking.
• PowerFlex is also available with OpEx-based consumption options with APEX Custom Solutions. Customers can choose between APEX Flex on Demand and APEX Datacenter Utility based on their unique requirements.

Technical Specifications:

	PowerFlex R640	PowerFlex R740xd	PowerFlex R840
Compute, Storage and Memory (per Node)
Chassis	1 RU	2 RU	2 RU
CPU	Intel Xeon Scalable Gen 1 and Gen 2 Processors
CPU sockets	Two	Two	Four
CPU cores (total)	8 – 56	8 – 56	16 - 112
CPU frequency	2.1 GHz - 3.8 GHz	2.1 GHz - 3.8 GHz	2.1 GHz - 3.8 GHz
RAM1	96 GB - 3072 GB	96 GB - 3072 GB	384 GB - 6144 GB
All flash storage capacity	up to 76 TB SAS up to 38 TB SATA up to 76 TB NVMe	up to 122 TB SAS up to 92 TB SATA up to 122 TB NVMe	up to 122 TB SAS up to 92 TB SATA up to 122 TB NVMe
Drive bays	10 x 2.5”	24 x 2.5”	24 x 2.5”
NVDIMM + RDIMM Support	Yes2	Yes	Yes
Boot/OS solution	240 GB SATA M.2 (RAID1) “BOSS”
GPU Options	T4	Nvidia V100S, RTX 6000, RTX 8000, A40, A100	Nvidia V100S, RTX 6000, RTX 8000, A40, A100
Node network connectivity	Intel X710/I350 NDC Intel X7103 Mellanox CX4 NDC Mellanox CX4 Mellanox CX6
Management port	iDRAC 9 Out of Band Management
PowerFlex Clustering, Scaling and Management
Min Nodes Per Cluster (integrated rack, Two Layer Configuration)	4 Storage Only Nodes Minimum (6 or more recommended), 3 Compute Only Nodes
Min Nodes Per Cluster (integrated rack, HCI Configuration)	4 HCI Nodes minimum (6 or more recommended)
Min Nodes Per Cluster (appliance, Two Layer Configuration)	4 Storage Only Nodes, 1 Compute Only Nodes (6 or more Storage Only Nodes, 3 or more Compute Only Nodes recommended)
Min Nodes Per Cluster (appliance, HCI Configuration)	4 HCI Nodes minimum4
Scaling Increments	1 Node (HCI, Compute Only or Storage Only) 5
PowerFlex Manager Management Node Requirements6	PowerFlex Manager: 8 vCPU, 32G RAM, 300GB disk space minimum PowerFlex Gateway: 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM SRS: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM Jump server: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM (These may reside on physical servers or as VMs)
Networking (per node)
Appliance Connectivity7	4x10/25 GbE SFP28 or 4x10 GbE RJ458	4x10/25 GbE SFP28 or 4x10 GbE RJ458	4x10/25 GbE SFP28 or 4x10 GbE RJ458
Management Ports	2x 1GbE (via rNDC)	2x 1GbE (via rNDC)	2x 1GbE (via rNDC)
PowerFlex Manager Supported Switches
Management Switches7	Cisco Nexus 3172, Cisco Nexus 31108TC-V, Dell EMC S4148T-ON
Access or Leaf Switches	Cisco Nexus 3132QX, Cisco Nexus 3164Q, Cisco Nexus 93180YC-EX, Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX, Cisco Nexus 93240YC-FX2, Dell S5048F-ON, Dell S5248F-ON, Dell S5296F-ON9, Dell S5224F-ON9, Dell S4148F-ON9
Aggregation or Spine Switches	Cisco Nexus 9236C, Cisco Nexus 9336C-FX2, Cisco Nexus 9332-PQ, Cisco Nexus 9364C, Cisco Nexus 9364C-GX, Dell EMC S5232F-ON
Power and Dimensions	PowerFlex R640	PowerFlex R740xd	PowerFlex R840
High-efficiency dual redundant PSU	1100W -48V DC 750W 100 - 240V AC 1100W 100V – 240V AC 1600W 100V – 240V AC	1100W 100 - 240V AC 1600W100 - 240V AC 2000W 200V – 240V AC 2400W 200V – 240V AC	1600W 200V – 240V AC 2000W 200V – 240V AC 2400W 200V – 240V AC
Redundant cooling fans	8	6	4 or 6
Physical dimensions	42.8mm/1.68in H 434.0mm/17.09in W 733.82mm/29.61in D 21.9kg/48.28lb	86.8mm/3.42in H 434mm/17.09in W 678.8mm/26.72in D 28.1kg/61.95lb	86.8mm/3.42in H 434mm/17.09in W 678.8mm/26.72in D 28.1kg/61.95lb
Environmental and Certifications
Ambient operating temperature	10°C to 30°C 50°F to 86°F	10°C to 30°C 50°F to 86°F	10°C to 30°C 50°F to 86°F
Storage temperature range	40°C to +65°C -40°F to +149°F	40°C to +65°C -40°F to +149°F	40°C to +65°C -40°F to +149°F
Operating relative humidity	10% to 80% (non-condensing)	10% to 80% (non-condensing)	10% to 80% (non-condensing)
Operating altitude with no deratings	3048m approx. 10,000 ft	3048m approx. 10,000 ft	3048m approx. 10,000 ft

¹ Adding NVDIMM changes max RAM configuration: 736GB for R640 & R740xd
² R640 does not support both NVMe and NVDIMM together
³ 10Gb NIC only supported on PowerFlex rack
⁴ In 2-layer environments where existing compute nodes are to be utilized or compute nodes are running an operating system not supported by PowerFlex Manager, the minimum requirement is for four storage nodes only.
⁵ A single node is the minimum scaling required to expand an existing Storage Pool. Creation of a net new Storage Pool requires the addition of a minimum of 3 Storage or HCI Nodes.
⁶ A PowerFlex Management Node will be required for new appliance installation at customer sites that do not have an existing management server. A Management Node is not required with PowerFlex integrated rack, as PowerFlex Manager is installed onto the controller nodes.
⁷ For PowerFlex appliance, the management switch can be “bring your own”.
⁸ RJ45 only supported on PowerFlex rack
⁹ PowerFlex appliance only

Solutions & Services:

Dell EMC offers complete end-to-end services

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Documentation:

Dell EMC PowerFlex Solution Brief Datasheet (.PDF)

Dell EMC PowerFlex Spec Sheet (.PDF)