Want ScaleIO virtual SAN software? You'll need to buy Dell servers

Integral part of VxRack FLEX hyperconverged kit henceforth

Dell will only sell its hugely scalable ScaleIO virtual SAN software product inside its VxRAck FLEX hyperconverged system from now on – the software-only version has been canned.

ScaleIO was founded in Israel, 2011, to build hugely scalable virtual SANs, aggregating local storage on server nodes into a single, logical block resource usable by all the servers and apps running in them. EMC bought it in June 2013 for $200m-plus.

ScaleIO scales from three to more than 1,000 nodes and is generally viewed as a VSAN on steroids. EMC sold it as software-only, to be installed on customers' own commodity servers, or as an EMC ScaleIO node. It became the software in EMC's VxRack FLEX hyperconverged system around February 2016. This supports multiple hypervisors, not just vSphere.

ScaleIO.Next arrived in May 2017, introducing inline compression, thin provisioning and flash-based snapshots. It added support for Dell PowerEdge 14G servers and NVMe drives plus volume placement on all-flash, hybrid or disk-only media at any time.

ScaleIO moved organisationally inside Dell a few weeks ago, when Chad Sakac's hyperconverged and converged systems division was divided between the existing server, storage and networking organisations. The server unit was ScaleIO's new owner, along with the HCI gear.

Now Dell is rolling ScaleIO exclusively into VxRack FLEX, where it will be an integral component going forward.

Dell will continue to support existing ScaleIO software-only customers and says it will carry on developing the software. But, from now on, Dell ScaleIO software will not be used to help Dell's server competition to sell their kit.

No planned employee reductions are associated with this change. ®