What is Dell APEX?

Despite the unprecedented levels of enterprise public cloud adoption over the past few years, going all-in on the public cloud is seldom a realistic option for most organizations. In fact, the majority have yet to move past the physical network perimeter. Instead, many organizations opt for a hybrid cloud approach or only rely on public cloud services for software as a service (SaaS) applications. Their specific reasons may vary — suffice to say, not all workloads were meant for the public cloud. Some require being on-premises for regulatory reasons or to meet customer requirements, while others may require dedicated physical infrastructure for performance and latency concerns or security reasons.

In response to these scenarios, many technology vendors have developed a service offering fabric that covers the enterprise IT landscape, from on-premises to the cloud. These solutions combine traditional hardware (e.g., servers and storage) with fully managed IT services offered to organizations via a metered consumption model and cloud-based management interface. All this and more can be found in Dell APEX, an infrastructure offering that combines on-premises, pay-per-use infrastructure servers and storage with cloud-based managed resources.

What is Dell APEX?

While consumption offerings aren't new for Dell, they were customized to each purchase, meaning there were a lot of steps to put one in place. Announced in late 2020 as Project APEX, Dell APEX started with storage as a service offering, soon followed by servers, networking and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) offerings. APEX was designed to support various data and workload requirements with scalable, metered infrastructure services that can be rapidly provisioned across multiple clouds, edge and data center environments.

Since 2023, APEX has morphed to encompass Dell's full ecosystem of cloud offerings, from hybrid cloud systems, like its APEX Cloud Platforms, to consumption models and its AIOps portal, APEX AIOps Observability (formerly CloudIQ). This article will focus on the infrastructure portions only.

Dell APEX Subscriptions

Dell APEX Subscriptions consist of on-premises infrastructure designed to be consumed as a service and purchased on a per-use basis. This scalable, elastic consumption model for servers, primary storage, backup storage and CI/HCI, uses physical hardware deployed on-premises. However, the actual IT assets remain owned by Dell. If you want to focus on the use and not the care and feeding of a platform, a light touch managed service can be added to the purchase. This managed service was included in the original APEX offering, but Dell made it optional due to customer feedback.

These are outcome-oriented solutions based on workload characteristics, rather than starting with a particular platform. You'll choose whether you want unified (block/file), file or a VM platform and then your workload needs. They're optimized for quick delivery so you get rapid time-to-value from the minute you click go.

APEX Cloud Platforms

As its name implies, APEX Cloud Platforms (ACP) provide simplified and consistent multicloud services based on market-leading software stacks. Delivered in a turnkey fashion, these solutions couple Dell's server hardware, optional storage platforms and common IaaS/hybrid cloud platforms.

Dell APEX Cloud Services are available today via the following two options:

1. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for RedHat OpenShift: Built with RedHat OpenShift, ACP for RedHat is jointly engineered with RedHat to transform how you deliver not only containers but also virtual machines on-premises. This is a great choice for those looking to focus on containers as the go-forward strategy and an infrastructure-as-code model for your VM estate.  Finally, a common theme amongst the ACP options is Dell PowerFlex, which can provide the common storage platform for your data center, whether on-premises or in the public cloud.
2. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure: Based on AzureStack HCI, APEX Private Cloud for Azure is jointly engineered with Microsoft and offers hybrid cloud capabilities consistent with Azure's operating model. It is also available with Dell PowerFlex as the underlying storage, giving you a common storage platform you can use for standalone hosts in your environment, or as you extend your workloads into the public cloud.

Both platforms can be consumed by the drip or acquired outright in a traditional capital purchase.

Dell APEX Custom

Intuitive naming aside, everything that doesn't exist in the Subscriptions or ACP offerings can be wrapped in a consumption model. The fundamentals are still the same, with committed capacity, burst capacity and term length, but with a much larger toolbox of infrastructure.

Ideal Dell APEX use cases

Dell APEX allows organizations to leverage the convenience, scalability and cost-effectiveness of cloud deployment models, even if they haven't fully migrated their IT infrastructures to a cloud operating model. Backed by its comprehensive portfolio of infrastructure products, APEX supports and accelerates digital transformation in the following use cases, to name a few:

• Artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML): For developing AI-optimized solutions that scale and perform across clouds, on-premises and to the edge.
• High-performance computing (HPC): For aggregating computing power to perform better when handling computationally intensive workloads.
• Virtual data infrastructure (VDI): For running applications or full desktops anywhere, securely, on any device, with all the necessary files and applications.
• Containers: For deploying and managing modern, cloud-native apps and DevOps workflows.
• Databases: For supporting traditional relational database management system (RDBMS) solutions and complex database environments and landscapes.
• SAP: For deploying SAP-certified infrastructures and validated designs via APEX custom solutions.
• Oracle: For supporting mixed OLTP, OLAP, and analytic workloads from the world's leading RDBMS.
• Microsoft: For modernizing and managing an organization's entire Microsoft data estate.

Learn more about Dell APEX

Organizations large and small have grown accustomed to the convenience, scalability and management ease of the cloud — even if they are managing strictly on-premises or hybrid work workloads. Dell APEX allows firms to fully leverage IT as a service through its battle-tested portfolio of hardware and software, all consumed via a metered consumption model. To learn more about how your enterprise can benefit from Dell APEX as-a-service offerings, please visit WWT's top Dell Technologies labs.