Dell EMC, Lenovo Add Support for Microsoft Azure Stack

**Editor’s Note: Click here for our recently compiled list of new products and services.**

Both Dell EMC and Lenovo on Thursday showed support for Microsoft’s Azure Stack – Dell EMC unveiled Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack on its new PowerEdge 14^th generation (14G) servers, and Lenovo announced that its ThinkAgile SX Microsoft Azure Stack will support the new Intel Scalable Xeon processors.

Back in July, at Microsoft Inspire 2017 held in Washington, D.C., Microsoft announced that the Azure Stack was ready to order from its large hardware partners – Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo – to be followed by Cisco and Huawei. Certified systems were expected to begin shipping in September. Azure Stack is an extension of Azure and core to Microsoft’s hybrid cloud strategy.

The Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack on the Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation (14G) servers is powered by Intel Xeon scalable processors. The newest generation of PowerEdge servers, Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure stack offers improved price performance, increased capacity – including up to 156 percent more workload density over a 13G large 4 node PowerEdge server – and scalability to run more Azure Stack workloads down the road, providing customers investment protection, according to Dell EMC.

The vendor plans to take orders beginning in November with global shipments starting in December.

This announcement follows on news late last month when the vendor announced broadened support of Microsoft data-center environments with updates across the Dell EMC XC Series, Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack and Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Microsoft SQL Server.

At the same time, Dell EMC also announced that the company received approval from Microsoft to deliver Azure through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Direct and Indirect Microsoft partner model, worldwide.

Since demonstrating the Microsoft Azure Stack at Microsoft Ignite in July (Lenovo officially announced ThinkAgile SX for Microsoft Azure in June), Lenovo has deployed production-ready Azure Stack solutions. Thursday, Lenovo took another step announcing that ThinkAgile SX for Microsoft Azure Stack will support the new Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Availability is scheduled for later this year.

According to Lenovo, Intel’s Xeon processor boosts performance and increases memory bandwidth and enlarges virtual machine density. Microsoft has recognized the ThinkAgile SX as the first and only Intel Select Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack offering Intel Select early next year. Intel Select Solutions ensure that joint solutions are verified, workload-optimized and tuned at the system level, Lenovo said.

Lenovo’s ThinkAgile Advantage, a support service offering customer deployment, configuration and training assistance, also supports Lenovo ThinkAgile SX for Microsoft Azure Stack.

“Delivering the Intel Select Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack will help organizations accelerate utilization of hybrid-cloud infrastructure. We’ve worked closely with both Microsoft and Lenovo to deliver a solution that is tuned and ready for customer deployments and takes advantage of the full capabilities offered by all companies. We look forward to working with Lenovo as the first to deliver the value of this solution to the enterprise,” said Lisa Davis, vice president for the data center group, and general manager, IT transformation, with Intel.