Dell Technologies Inc. (DELL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Coffee with Dell weekly sessions of technology discussions from Dell Technologies' experts. Today's session is on our ambition to transformation through data capital. And we have our -- a senior leadership person SrinivasRao Lingamneni, who is our Senior Director for Systems Engineering at Dell Technologies. So he's the one who will take us through his journey of -- his all the experience on data capital. So Srinivas, he's an accomplished and dedicated technical data expert, who brings more than 24 years of experience in developing and establishing strategic relationships with key decision makers and influencers within accounts. He is very skillful in managing individual opportunities and including project development, pricing strategies and he understands pretty well the competitive landscape. So he's the expert whom you need to kind of, I mean will be eagerly looking to listen to. So we have a few good engagement components today. We -- so please participate in the polls and quizzes and stand a chance to win YETI Rambler Tumbler, which was nearly INR 2,500. So before further delay, we will start the session. And let us have one small icebreaker before Srinivas takes over the session. What do you think, as per IDC, what will be the projected data growth by 2025, we are in 2020 now, so another next 5 years, what do you think, as per IDC, what will be the projected data growth? So do you have the options over there? Is it 1,344 terabytes or 163 zettabytes or 163 gigabytes or 1,400 zettabytes? So please do participate. And as I mentioned, today, we have some giveaways for you. You will have a chance to win YETI Tumbler worth INR 2,500. Well, we can see good participation from the team members, the correct answer is 163 zettabytes. So that's the icebreaker, dear team. So let's start the session with Srinivas now. And you can please participate on some of the polls, and we have some free data center assessments. If you are interested, please let us know your choice of solutions so we can -- our expert team member will connect with you. And yes, please post your quiz answers on the Q&A tab, we will be happy to take up them during the course of presentation. Over to you, Srinivas.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for introducing -- for the quick introduction. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, welcome to Dell Technologies' webinar session. And more importantly, thank you for taking time out to attend this Coffee with Dell session. Hope everybody is safe at home, and we thought it's the best time to really reach out to you guys to talk about some of the emerging technologies and the new announcements of what we have made in last couple of quarters and the new announcements -- and we'll also continue these sessions to talk to you guys on the new technologies and new announcements what we have been making. So before I talk about some important technology trends and what has been happening in the industry and why it is so relevant and all those things, let me give you a quick -- very quick brief about the digital future of any organizations today. That is very, very crucial for any organization to really leap forward to the next evolution. So with the global economy going digital, it is critical that organizations also transform, and it is becoming a need of the hour for every organizations to transform. And as per IDC, they estimate almost 60% of the global GDP will be digital by 2022. Let me repeat this, 60% of the global GDP will be digital by 2022. Not a small number, really, for the overall GDP across the world. And this means that, a, even for physical goods, 60% of the revenue in the value chain will be derived via digital means. So every -- most of the transactions and most of the business value proposition will definitely be in the digital means. So that is one of the reasons why it is important for everybody to look into the digital era and look how we can leap forward in the various businesses, which have been doing all that. So when we talk about going digital, IDC also predicts that by 2025, the global data spear will reach an unprecedented 163 zettabytes of storage. Let me again repeat this number, 163 zettabytes of storage. For people who are, I mean to give you a little flavor about the zettabytes, 1 zettabyte is equal to 1,000 exabytes and 1 exabyte is equal to 1,000 -- exabytes actually, 1 exabyte is equal to 1,000 petabytes. So we are talking about close to 1,063 zettabytes wall of data by 2025, which is not a small number. So with this choose data growing in, organizations are not only challenged with management of massive amount of data, they're also under tremendous pressure to realize the value of this data as well. It's not about data, which has been growing this organization, it is all about taking the business value out of this data there. That is the reason we believe every organization needs to be a digital organization powered by data, running one form or the other hybrid as a multi-cloud environment in the data centers. So that is because the need of the hour today. So what is this digital transformation, which we are talking about today? Let's quickly run you through a quick -- very quick insights about what we are talking about this digital transformation. So the combination of, the right combination of data and software enables the digital transformation. Again, I repeat this, I said that the combination of the data and applications, which we are building in our data center environment enables the digital transformation journey. So these ingredients assembled in the right way can fuel competitive advantage for every organization by maximizing the data, which we are generating from various resources there. So digital transformation leads to enhanced customer relationships, developments of new products and services. I mean it's not only about development, it's about developing in a quick time, which is more relevant in today's world. And discovery of new ways to leverage and monetize the data as well. So we always need to find a way to really monetize the data and increase the revenues as well. So digital transformation enables to achieve that part by going digital on that. And the important part here is -- so what is the key thing, which would really enable the digital transformation. The prerequisite for the digital transformation is IT transformation. Simply put, this is the evolution of the tradition to modern IT infrastructure. This will be the foundation of the entire IT transformation what you're putting in the data center there, with a capability to seamlessly integrate next-generation application and workflows within this -- a data center environment. So modernizing the IT infrastructure is becoming a key need for any organization to enable the digital transformation journey. Now let's look at the pillars of the digital IT transformation. Okay. We discussed about what is the need for the digital transformation and we discussed about what does -- how does the IT transformation plays a very, very important role in the overall digital transformation. So when we talk about IT transformation, I probably believe there are 3 important pillars for any organization to do this IT transformation. One, it's a modern infrastructure. This is very, very important, which will allow you to really provide the enough capability and capacity to scale and meet the capacity and the performance requirement of your business environments. And not only by putting the modern infrastructure as a way forward to achieve this, but you also need to provide then consistent and the modern operations as well. Just putting this very good infrastructure and if we don't provide the consistent operations across the entire IT environment, again, that might, again, derail the entire process, which we are doing there. And at the same time, when you're talking about service delivery, you need to have that modern service delivery to these -- your end customers as well. That is very, very crucial and important when we are talking about the IT transformation. Okay. So the 3 pillars, which I spoke there in my previous slide, I spoke about the modern IT infrastructure that is very, very crucial, and that has formed the foundation for the entire IT transformation there, so whatever infrastructure which you decide, it has to cater to 2 things: you have to really take care of their existing business applications or the traditional applications, which you see on the left-hand side of your slide. You need to take care of the virtual machines, displays, records environment, you might be having CRM applications. You have to take care of those applications on this modern IT infrastructure, what you put in there; at this same time, this infrastructure should be capable to scale, both in terms of capacity and performance to meet the next-generation applications like digital expertise, data analytics, artificial intelligence and IoT and all those components there. These are the next-generation applications, which plays a very, very important role in the overall IT transformation and digital transformation journey there. So whatever infrastructure today you decide should take care of the traditional applications along with the next-generation applications. That will become -- that has become very, very crucial when we decide the right kind of infrastructure. So in Dell EMC, I think most of you guys are aware of this, I don't want to repeat this. But you see -- on the first row, you see the entire -- the IT infrastructure portfolio that is being provided by Dell Technologies. So right from the networking to compute, and we also talk about the storage and even the data protection there as well. So the top row is the representation of our product business units, ranging from the best of big server technologies, networking technologies, storage and also the data protection technologies. Along the bottom row, we are displaying the solution that represent the collaborating efforts, which spans multiple line up for our businesses to provide not only the 3-tier storage solutions, but also the converged or hyper-converged storage solutions and also the hybrid and multi-cloud environments as well. With that, let me take a quick break. And then see there is any kind of feedback or questions, which you want to really do that, we'll be happy to do that. Or I can get on to the -- my next section of the presentation as well. So while you're seeing the complete portfolio that has been offered by Dell Technologies, my today's focus is more on the storage solutions and within the storage solutions, I will be focusing on the Unity XT storage subsystems, which is then very, very important technology and at the same time, provides a lot of scalability and virtual IT transformation journey there. So before we go with that, okay, let me -- so Kishan, you want to talk about this question here? Poll?

Yes. Yes, yes, Srinivas, sorry. So we have a quiz question over there on the screen, dear participants. As per IDC quarterly releases, Dell EMC is #1, in which of the following categories? Do you think that Dell EMC is #1 in storage technology, data protection technologies or hyper-converged and converged infrastructure? The question quiz is very simple, it's there on the screen. As per IDC, Dell EMC is #1 in which of the following categories? I'll just repeat, in the storage technology or in the data protection technologies or hyper-converged and converged infrastructure or all of the above. Well, we'll give the answer a little later -- or I'm sorry, I will announce the winners a little later, but the correct answer is all of the above. So I would, once again, request all of you, dear participants, please do participate in the quizzes and polls, you will stand a chance to win YETI Tumbler worth INR 2,500. We'll come back with the winners a little later. Over to you, Srini, and you can continue the presentation.

Okay. Thank you, Kishan. Thank you very much. And I'm really, really excited to see almost 70% of the entire audience giving the right answers. That means they're keeping track about how Dell Technologies data storage solutions and the data protection solutions have been performing in the market. And who knows, most of them might be using those technologies as well. So thank you for -- very much for that poll. With that, let me quickly move on to the Unity XT platform. As I said, within the storage platform, I'm going to focus more on the Unity storage platform, which provides the basic foundation for the IT transformation in the data center. So this is then very, very interesting launch from us, where we have not only improved the performance of the storage platform by almost 2x of our predecessors, but at the same time, we've also announced the 5-to-1 data reduction capabilities within the storage platform. That's a big, big claim, which I'm making on the storage platform, which means you get it from kind of 5-to-1 data reduction capability as well. And another thing is, when you want to deploy it in cloud environment and really want to do some kind of data tiering to the multi-cloud environment, I mean this storage platform is also capable of doing those activities as well. You -- we have the connectors, which have been built-in to connect it to the most of the public cloud providers as well, which is a great, great advantage when you deploy the storage platform in this -- your IT transformation journey there. In that -- okay, let me talk about the different kinds of storage subsystems, which you see in the market. And as I said, I will be focusing more on the Unity XT in my subsequent slides, but I think let me give a quick gist about what are the different types of storage subsystems what you see in the market. When you look at the type 1 kind of storage infrastructures, we generally talk about block-only kind of storage infrastructure with an active/passive kind of controller, just meeting the basic storage requirement for the servers. But this will lack the scalability in terms of capacity and performance. This is the biggest challenge in the type 1 kind of storage. The type 2 storage, which is generally, we call it an active-active storage -- controller storage subsystem, which provides unified block and file storage environment. And our Unity XT falls into this platform. We call this the type-2, kind of, storage platform. And most of the modern data center requirements talk about the type-2 storage infrastructure because 70% to 80% of the business needs have been met by type-2, kind of, storage infrastructure. And you will see something called a type-3 federated storage infrastructure along the multi-protocol support as well. This is the kind of a scale-out architecture, but it is federated with the multiple controllers there. We -- our SC Series provides the federated storage technologies to meet the scale of data requirements. And our iEN, we have our PowerMax series this season. A nonblocking architecture with a multi-controller architecture, meeting high performance, high capacity kind of requirements, it is really suited for the enterprise customers, and scale-up and scale-out kind of workflow requirements. So these are the typical different, different architectures, which you see in the market. So it is important that, okay, due to the right architecture to your business requirement, and today, as I mentioned earlier, I'll be focusing more on the Unity XT kind of platform to -- well deep into those platform and talk about some of the key features and functionalities and how we can meet your data center requirements. So here, a bit just about the specifications, which I want to highlight here. Okay, the Unity XT comes in 2 variants: one is the hybrid model; and second is the all-flash array models as well. Today, all-flash is also taking very, very -- the requirement for all-flash is becoming very, very permanent, and most of the customers are looking also to deploy the all-flash arrays to their business-critical applications. However, at the same time, there are requirements of the hybrid-storage arrays as well, where they want to move the core data into the 9 different spaces, while they want to move -- have they hard data in the flash kind of media so that they get the right kind of performance. So if you look at our models, we have 4 models, which has been announced as a part of the Unity XT platform. One, we call it the 380, yes, 380, Unity XT 380, which is a hybrid model. And similarly, we have 380F, which will provide the all-flash array in the specific model itself. I'm not going to read out the detailed specifications. These are available on our website itself. I'm not going to get into the details about those things. Similarly, we have Unity XT 480 model as well, which is available in both hybrid as well as the all-flash array. Similarly 680, again, hybrid and all-flash array, and 880 are the highest model within the series, which will provide both hybrid as well as all-flash arrays. But the beauty of this storage subsystem is, from 480 and above, you can do a data in-place upgrade, which is a very, very important feature because you can always start with the 480F kind of architecture and slowly upgrade to 680F and the 880F as and when you need more and more performance and even scalability of the capacity as well. That's where your investment will be protected when you start with the 480 upgrade of architecture. So let me again repeat for the people who have maybe joined late. Unity XT is a storage infrastructure platform only, which is available both in hybrid as well as all-flash arrays. This is not a hyper-converged or a converged platform. This is a pure storage platform, which basically goes into your 3-tier architectures, which is still a huge requirement in the data centers today. So the other important feature of this 480 -- yes, of the Unity platform is, these are NVMe-ready kind of platforms. Just by updating the microcode or the firmware of the storage platform, you can install either NVMe drives or the SCM drives into the storage platform, which is a big, big advantage. You'll see -- you might be seeing some of the similar storage platform from the competitors, but still they are not NVMe ready. Why it is important for the people like you who make additions in the data center is, if you look at the media types, we are not talking about, yes, SAS media is there. Yes, we are talking about SSD disk drives, but the new disk drive technologies, the NVMe and the SCM drives as well. So it is important for you, when you choose the platform, it is important to choose a platform, which can support the NVMe and SCM drives as well. So that is a very, very important parameter. I would suggest you keep this in your mind when you're choosing the right storage platform for your data center, which will not only support the magnetic media, which is the SAS disk drive, it also need to support the SSD disk drive, it also needs to support the NVMe and the SCM drives as well. Today, I'm proud and confident to say that the Unity XT, which has been launched by Dell Technologies supports all kinds of media, which is a very, very good sign. So that it will protect your investments in future where there new technologies are developing. So quickly, in terms of the front-end drives, if you look at the Unity 380 front-end chassis, I would say, you can put up to 25 disk drives. And the good thing is, it all gets accommodated in a 2U space. I mean today, again, I'm proud to say that we are the one who can accommodate maximum storage capacity in less number of -- less amount of U space. Okay. And similarly 480 here, this also comes with a basing of 25, you can start with the 4 or 6 drives, but the base chassis can accommodate up to 25 SAS drives, which can be in SAS disk drives or it can be in SAS flash drives as well. And more importantly, this is all -- the entire controller of this disk drive fix into the 2U chassis itself. Okay. For people who are interested in understanding how does the back-end look here? You can see the color coding very clearly mentioned there. The red color clearly indicates that those are the 12-Gbps SAS back-end interface ports, where each port has in 4 lengths, again, into the individual ports. And similarly, we have -- you can see the blue color coding there. We are talking about the 10-Gbps ports -- IP ports, 4 number of 10-Gbps IP ports as well. And on the light green color, you see the fibers and the ports, which gets -- as a part of the base-storage subsystem itself. And obviously, for people who wants to put additional back-end ports or the additional front-end ports, we have an additional slot available in the back-end of the storage subsystem to put additional back-end space or the front-end. On the yellow, you see the management IP ports built into this storage platform itself. Similarly, similar kind of color coding for the Unity XT 480 and 880 up to 880F. This is the way the entire interfaces will look like. Though the number of ports and all those will increase, but the form factor for the base controllers is 2U only, but the additional disk enclosures gets added to the storage platform, providing more and more connectivity ports for our customer environment, for our applications and servers environment. So there have been questions regarding what are the additional options one can order beyond the base enclosures. So on the left-hand corner, you see the disk-array enclosures, the DAE enclosures, which has been highlighted here. You can add -- with base array, you can add 2U or 25-drive disk enclosure along with that. Or you can also add a 3U, 15-drive 3.5 inch disk enclosure as well, which will be an NL-SAS disk drive to meet the high-capacity requirements there. Similarly, on the right side, you see the 2.5 inch, again, enclosure in the 3U rack space, which can accommodate almost, I mean as high as 80 drives in this disk enclosures. So these are the add-on disk enclosures, which can be added beyond the base box, which I have referred in my previous slides. So based on the capacity requirements, one can choose to go with either SAS- or the flash-associated drives within the 2U, 25-drive chassis or you can either decide to go with a 3.5 inch NL-SAS drives chassis. Or if you want to look at a higher capacity, low-disk kind of environment, you can also go with a 3U, 80-drive disk enclosure as well, which gets added to the base storage controller itself. And apart from that, you also have option to add additional iSCSI port, the partition ports and even the disk size based on the customer requirements as well, based on their requirements. Okay. Now while I talk about the hardware controller, I spoke about the additional upgrade options, what are available in this disk storage platform for you to really build up in your data center for your IT transformation journey, we also have this software version of this entire storage platform as well. For people who are very, very keen to using commodity hardware and wants to implement -- wants to take a software from Dell Technologies and implement that in their data center, we have the software version of the Unity operating environment here, which will allow you to install it in any of your commodity hardware. There's a community edition, which you can download and then install it in your traditional hardware. But where we are seeking support and other things as well, you can also go with our professional edition, where we will charge you for only the subscription license, but you can install it in a commodity hardware where the support and everything has been provided on the software by Dell Technologies. So this is a good news for people who don't want to buy the fully integrated storage subsystem, which includes the hardware and the software. If you want to try our -- only our software versions, we also have that options for the customer environments. Okay. Now time for poll. Kishan, can you quickly bring up the poll, please?

Yes. Srinivas. So dear team, there is one more poll on your screen right now. So what are the use cases of Unity XT? Is it for block? Is it for file share? Or is it for VMware or all the above? It's quite a simple question. And the answer also is very simple, considering the fact that Srini has already explained this. So the question is there on your screen. What are the use cases of Unity XT? We'll have one more quiz immediately after this. We'll give 5 more seconds and wrap it up. Srini plans to -- fantastic. And the correct answer -- Srini would like to just add a small summary on this. What are the use cases of Unity XT, so that our audience...

Absolutely. And I think I have mentioned that in my slide as well. This platform can provide the block storage and the file storage, and if you still have your workflow volumes from any of these environments, from any of the VMware environments, even those can be hosted on the entire storage platform. So the people who have answered all of the above have done pretty well. I think also 72% answering that, good to see that actually.

Yes. So we'll have one more quiz Srini because we'll take up questions at this stage. The second quiz, in fact, since Srinivas has already covered, the quiz is there on your screen, dear participants. What is new with Dell EMC Unity XT storage? This is quite an interesting question. What is new with Dell EMC Unity XT storage? Is it best midrange storage is now NVMe ready? Is the best NVMe -- midrange storage, which is NVMe ready? Or is it 2 active-active controllers? Or it can tier data to public cloud? Or all of the above? Very interesting and tricky question. So I hope you can recall the information, which Srini shared a few minutes back. What is new with Dell EMC Unity XT storage? It's the best midrange storage, which is now with NVMe ready or 2 active-active controllers? Can tier data to public cloud or all of the above? So Srini, again, I request you to share a few information about this question, and I'll just stop the poll now. Yes, over to you, Srini, and...

Yes. I will add and I think I have covered this topic. One definitely, it is the best midrange storage, which will support the NVMe and the SCM kind of disk technologies, which is, again, very, very unique in the industry. At the same time, it is also an active-active controller. That means you can have the -- I mean both the controller type 2 for the line and start doing the load balancing and everything there. And at the same time, it can also provide tiering to the public cloud available in the environment. So with doing all of those functionalities, I would say the correct answer would be the option number 4, which is all of the above. And that we're at 51%, which is enough.

Yes. That's good to see that they have chosen the right answer. And we'll continue the presentation now. We will have a few more quizzes, dear participants. So please be with us and keep listening to Srini's technology information, and you can stand a chance to win YETI Rambler worth INR 2,500.

Okay. Thank you, Kishan.

Yes. Srini, one thing. There is one interesting question here. You spoke about Unity VS here, right? So there's a question, can they first try the community addition and then later upgrade to a premium edition?

Yes, very much. That is the whole objective of being -- providing that option to the customers who want to try it out. Of course, the few functionalities, such as support, you will not get it. But you can always try it out into your own systems. And then definitely, upgrade it to a professional edition, not a worry at all.

Thanks, [ Vipin ], for bringing that -- and that question was from Mr. Ramakrishna. Thank you very much, Ramakrishna. If you have any questions or do you want to have detailed conversations with Dell Technologies' experts, so please do participate in the poll or write to us on [email protected]. That's the email Id, which you'll find it in one of our windows. [ Vipin ] is answering most of the questions, and we will definitely take a few more questions at the end of this session. Thank you very much, [ Vipin ], and over to you, Srini.

Thank you, Kishan. Thank you, [ Vipin ]. Okay, the -- it's -- I mean when you look at any storage platform, it is just not about the hardware appliances and the -- along with the available storage platforms, not only about that, it's all about the kind of value-added software that comes with this storage platform, which is very, very important and crucial for any IT transformation journey in your data center. Okay. Here are the whole lot of softwares, which are available. They will be coming with the Dell Unity storage platform. But in the interest of time, I will not be spending time on all these softwares type. But what I will do is in my next maybe 10 to 12 minutes, I'll pick out some of the important software features, which are bundled with this platform and try to give you a little bit of overview about that. Okay? So with that, let me get into my next slide. We've discussed about this. We spoke about the data storage efficiency, which will be data reduction guarantee, which will be provided by the Unity XT. And here, I would like to announce one thing. We provide something called a loyalty program for the customers, while there is a storage efficiency of close to 5x, today, we are giving a guarantee in writing that the future loyalty program, which we sign up with our customers, who will buy for Unity XT, we guarantee a minimum of 3x kind of data reduction -- data -- I would say, reductions are guaranteed, which will be provided with our storage platform. What it means is, is if we are provided with, if you would say, 50 terabytes of data, you will end up wishing to store up to close to 150 terabytes of data in your platform. Of course, there is then a future-proof guarantee document, which you will shift into with the storage platform as well. There are prerequisite conditions, saying that it should not be encrypted data, it should not be in hardened data and all those restrictions are there. But when you put in normal data, you're being guaranteed up to close to a 3x kind of data reduction on our platform. That is the best and very, very important feature built into the storage platform. I would suggest and ask everyone to really, really capitalize on this kind of compression and deduplication, which has been built into this storage platform. So as I spoke about the data deduplication, I'm not going to repeat at this in this new platform. What we have also done is, apart from the compression and the data reduction, which we are talking about, there's a data deduplication feature, which is a very, very interesting thing. If you see the repetitive patterns, which has been happening in these datasets, which are coming in, they're designed to store only 1 copy of the data, which is the reason why we are able to provide these kind of advanced data deduplication capability in this platform. I'm not going deep into the technology, but the point, which you need to take away from this slide is, yes, Dell Technologies can provide up to 3:1 data reduction guarantee, where Dell EMC is willing to sign that guarantee to your -- in your environment there. So dynamic pools. When you go up on all-flash arrays, Dell Technologies has something called as dynamic pools, where you can always start with 15 or 18 kind of project-type pools. And tomorrow, you want to add -- increase the capacity to -- increase the capacity and performance of your applications. Unlike other generic storage vendors, where they ask you to purchase at least minimum 1 rate group and all this thing, you can go with 1 or 2 kind of disk drives there to increase the capacity and the performance of the pool as well. This is the kind of flexibility, which Dell EMC is providing for the customer. So again, the point I'm repeating here, we don't have to really go ahead and upgrade the sets of disk space as the rate groups into the storage subsystem, you can take 1 or 2 disk space and then upgrade the entire dynamic pool in your all-flash arrays to improve the capacity and performance. Okay. Now when it comes to the data security. This is a very, very important parameter, where I've seen a lot of customers also demanding this as a part of a storage platform. The key important thing is they want the entire data, which has been stored in this platform, should be encrypted. So that even if the media goes out for whatever reasons, as UBA support and you clean up the region, nobody should be able to read that data from the disk media, which is going out of the storage subsystem. So that is one of the reasons we have something called as data and trust encryption built into this storage platform. We will harvest the data and trust encryption, where every [Audio Gap] so that even if the media goes off-line for whatever reason, people will not be able to read this data using any of the tools or the applications. And this has become very, very crucial in the banking kind of environment and very crucial in the health care and the transportation kind of environments as well. So this is a very important feature one needs to really look for in any of the storage platform, which you are trying to procure. Now so creating copies is a common thing in the data center environment today. Okay? Today, we can -- what we can do is, we can create a snapshot of any of the block storage data there, okay, and whenever there's a block, which -- wherever there is a block -- assume that is the block A, which has been updated, that will be stored an ADAS and the entire file system table will be pointed back into the ABC -- sorry, BCD and ADAS, which has been updated block. Similarly, when you take a snap and you can mount the snap in any of the other servers as well, and you can make the changes of the snaps as well, and that will be stored as a different file system table altogether. So that way, you can have a source volume where you can enable the copy on drive snapshot. And similarly, as the snapshot, also it can enable that to mount it as writable volume and make the changes of the snapshot volumes as well. Similarly, the snapshot levels can go up to 10 levels at the logical unit numbers or, where you're talking about the file systems, it can go up to 10 levels of the snapshot and the file-level data as well. So that's the key message, which I want to deliver in this slide. The depth of our snapshot, we can go up to 10 levels for any single logical unit number, or up to 10 levels of the files to tell where it can start creating the snapshot after snapshot and let each and every file to run them. Okay. We -- as we discussed on this topic. What we also have is something called the AppSync kind of applications along with our Unity XT platform. What it does is it integrates with your -- any of your business applications and allows you to take a snapshot, which can be initiated from your application environment itself. You don't have to go through your storage subsystem management utility and start enabling the snapshot there. We have an AppSync application, which integrates with your business applications and that application can initiate the snapshot that is required for these business purposes. This is what we call as automated, integrated copy data management solution using our AppSync software. So the key takeaway from this slide is, it completely integrates with the applications, which will allow you to take a copy of the data from your business applications itself. You don't have to do any manual intervention there or your administrator don't have to go and initiate those snapshots. This is a very, very interesting feature. And the last feature of this unified storage platform. What we can do is we can enable the write 1, 3, many kind of capability -- 1 capability on the NAS filer here. What it means is you can set your retention policies at the file level or at the volume level and tell it that, okay, nobody should tamper the data for data integrity purpose. So you can define the retention policy as 3 days, 1 week, 1 year based on your business requirement. You can go then define that retention policy there. So very, very important feature. And we have seen a lot of customers who have been asking this file-level retention feature, both at the file level and the volume level. Today, Dell -- I'm proud to say that Dell Technologies have incorporated that feature to really in -- even at file-level retention there. By doing this, we can make sure that neither the administrator nor the applications, nor any of the product can tamper the data, which has been stored in the NAS filer. One, it can work as a normal NAS operations. But if you want any of the business application not to tamper with the data, it can enable the retention policies at the file levels as well. I think we'll be -- I think, we have covered this topic. We, I mean not only block and file, we also can hold the VMware we want as well to the storage platform, which will allow you to take snapshots at the VVol level rather than taking the snapshots at the VMDK level. So even this integration, VMware virtual volumes integration, has been done with this platform, so it can be rest assured that the entire integration and testing has been completed with the VMware as well. So okay, moving on. So we spoke about the data reduction capability. We spoke about the snapshot kind of technologies. We spoke about file level capabilities. We spoke about dynamic pools, which can be created at this platform. Let me talk about -- quickly, about the replication as well because we have seen a lot of customers, not only hosting the data in the data center for their IT transformation journey, but they also want to protect the data by doing the replication to -- in different data centers as well. So today, we can go in both asynchronous and synchronous data replication, both at the block level and even at the file level as well. That's a key and important takeaway from this slide. We support both synchronous and asynchronous replication for both block and file data as well. So when you talk about native asynchronous replication, either it can do one-to-one replication or one-to-end replication, one-to-many replication is also possible. Similarly, many-to-one replication is also possible with our asset classification that has been built into this product. When you talk about async file replication, again, this has been enabled to one-to-end kind of replications. And this is what we call as one-to-end kind of topology. And good thing is from any site to -- they load to any site to meet the business continuity requirements as well. We have already captured the synchronous and asynchronous replication. Let me quickly go around. This is a very, very important feature. We have something called a MetroSync Manager for an asynchronous file replication, where what we can do is using the software you can have within the metro distances, what it can do is you can have an active-active site on the NAS environment. And when 1 site goes down, automatically a MetroSync Manager ensures that the entire I/O request has been detected into the near line site to provide the continuous access of the data as well. This capability is built into the Unity XT platform, but you need to have the license of the MetroSync Manager to enable this functionality on your platform. But the good thing is, today, you can have one-to-end, one to -- or into one kind of replications and implement along with the MetroSync Manager to redirect the I/Os for any kind of disaster that might happen in any of the platform so that the business continuity can be -- so that the users can have the continued operations to access the data. So Kishan. Time for the poll, again.

Yes, yes, Srinivas. So one more simple poll again, dear participants. it's coming on your screen right now. Here it is. You heard Srinivas covering this element, which is like CTA. What does CTA stand for? Is it Cloud Table Algorithm? Or is it Class Tier Appliance, or Cloud Tiering Appliance or Cloud Tabular Alignment? A simple one, but a little tricky, but it was covered by Srinivas a few minutes back, in fact. I'll just repeat. What does CTA stands for with respect to storage discussions, technology discussions, which we did now? So is it Cloud Table Algorithm? Or is it Class Tier Appliance? Or Cloud Tiering Appliance? Or is it Cloud Tabular Alignment? What I request is that, Srinivas, since we have a little mixed opinion being shared from our participants, if you don't mind, can you please share the answer and also a small comment on that.

Yes. I think we have discussed about Unity XT platform not only provides the block access, file access, but at the same time, we also spoke about doing the tiering for the cloud environment as well, right? So this is the capability of the Unity XT platform using the software version at the cloud level. We can also do the cloud tiering to the cloud -- public cloud environments as well. So the correct answer, though, I see an excellent picking, C as the -- which is the right answer. So the Cloud Tiering Appliance is the right answer for this question.

Thanks, Srinivas. So we also had a lot of questions. In fact, thanks to [ Vipin ] and [ Vikas ], who are taking up the questions in parallel. So we'll continue with the presentation, Srini. In the interest of time, we have a few more minutes. And at the end the session, we will again take up the questions, which are listed. Back over to you, Srini.

I think, I have more than 3, 4 slides, if I remember well. Let me quickly go through that. Okay. As a management, while we talk about fantastic hardware appliances, providing unified block, file, and the cloud tiering kind of capabilities, we spoke about a whole lot of softwares in terms of data reduction capabilities, dynamic pools, synchronous and asynchronous replications, snapshots and everything, all these things are fine, but if you don't have a good management, I think, you will not be able to monitor this platform. Today, we have in web-based HTML-5-based vSphere available with the storage platform, which will allow you to manage the storage platform. And similarly, we have a Cloud IQ, which will provide you a lot of insights about the storage subsystem. And for the developers who want to integrate with their applications, we have the CLI as well to code that into that application as well. So in my next slide, let me quickly talk about the Cloud IQ. This is a cloud -- this is an application, which will be hosted on the cloud and connected to storage platform, which will give you a lot of insights about your storage subsystem platform. It is -- when you talk about a lot of insights, it might be in terms of capacity, it might be in terms of performance, in terms of how your processor in tradition has been happening and all those things. All the reports will be collected and stored in the centralized cloud portal. So that you can go ahead, log in with your user ID and password and just access all your data analytics that have been done on this storage platform. This is very, very important platform and gives you a lot of insights about your storage subsystem platform. So that we can do the capacity and the performance planning for your new business applications and even the new initiatives, which have been taken in your data center. Okay. Now while we spoke about maybe, both the CRM and ERP applications and the new-generation applications, I think, DevOps is becoming a new trend, which all the organizations are adopting in their environment. So today, I'm again proud to say that Unity XT also supports the automation and integration with the DevOps platforms, which has been developed. There have be communities, the -- numerous platforms, which are coming in. Today Unity XT also support those things. So if you -- any of your organizations are planning to deploy this DevOps kind of environment, Unity XT can be a right platform for providing the, not only the good integration, but end-to-end automation as well. So I would suggest that -- we do have a lot of white papers talking about this thing. But if somebody is really interested in understanding the DevOps and the end-to-end automation and integration what we have done, we'll be happy to provide this information there. So in summary, this is my last slide. Let me wrap it up by just talking about Unity XT and just summarizing those things. This is -- I would -- I'm very, very proud to say that this is a -- compared to our predecessor boxes, it is kind of highest performing box up to 2x more IOPS compared to our previous generation of boxes. And we spoke about data reduction capability as well. Today, we do future guarantee program with our data reduction program, with our loyalty program, which I think you should capitalize on this using the storage platform. Third thing is unit or dynamic pools. We've provided better capacity utilization. And that's a footprint, I mean within a 2U, we can host up to 25 disk space along with the fibers and ports and the [ cash ], which are the wholesale storage subsystems. And I can tell you that, I mean in terms of the data center, power and space, nobody is much, much denser than the Dell Technologies. The high drive capacities, we are talking about 10 terabyte disk space -- 2 terabyte disk space as well -- 12 terabyte disk space as well. And more importantly, this platform, if we choose to go with a 480 kind of platform, it will provide you the investment protection in terms of data in place of data as well, which is very, very important for every kind of environment there. And finally, we spoke about the replications, span-out and cascading kind of topologies in terms of replicating the data, synchronously and asynchronously as well. And this is not only available as a hardware appliances, if somebody wants to try out the software version, it's also available as a software version as well. So with that, I will end my session, and I will be happy to take up any questions if there are any. I know [ Vipin ] and -- [ Vipin ] might have answered a lot of questions at the back-end, but if there's any questions, I will be happy to answer those questions as well. Back to you, Kishan.

Good. We have a few more questions, which are there. I'll just read out. If we can change the layout...

Pardon?

Sorry, Srini, I was requesting the back-end team to change the layouts. In fact, most of the questions are answered by [ Vipin ] and [ Vikas ]. So we'll just do that. Yes. So the question is from Mr. Ramakrishna. What is -- which hardware is required to try community edition?

Yes. There is no hard and fast rule, but any minimum 4 core machines within a bunch of this price should be able to address the requirement. But I think if they can reach out to their local EMC person, I think, he should be in a position to deal with you, the prerequisites there. But I think we are not held back by those other restrictions there. It can be any commodity hardware there.

Okay. Thanks. Srini, there's one question from Mr. [ Murali Nadigar ]. What is the new [indiscernible]

On the previous question, I said, if you look at the SSD technology, so these are still based -- see, if you look at the NVMe and SSD technology, both are the flash chip system, I mean there's no difference in the way you are writing the data that is -- both uses the flash NAND chips there to write and read the data. But really what differentiates between an SSD drives and the NVMe drives is the interface. While the NAND chips are very, very fast, but the SAS interface was the kind of limitation to provide high-performance for the flash chips there. That is where the SSD drives with the SAS interface has been replaced with an -- flash chips with an NVMe interface, which has drastically improved the performance of the disk drive technology. So to answer your question in a simple word, it is the -- the interface of an SSD drive, which has been changed to an NVMe interface, which provides very, very low latency and high burst throughput, so SSD differs with the NVMe interface is called as NVMe version. But at the end of the day, both uses the same NAND chips located by the data there. It's the interface, which makes a big difference. Yes. On the NVMe, is the rate possible? Yes, the answer is yes, it is possible if you can implement rate 5, rate 6, so whichever is feasible. And typically, I would recommend to go to rate 6 because it will provide you the double display function there.

Okay. We are almost on time, Sri. So most of the -- As I mentioned earlier, most of the questions were answered by [ Vipin ] and [ Vikas ]. So dear participants, what we request is please provide your feedback. It's there on your screens right now. We will be really happy to take your feedback and optimize our future sessions. And if you have any questions, please write to us on the e-mail ID, which is shown over there, [email protected]. And at the same time, people can participate in the poll. If you have any specific solution, which you are interested, then you need Dell Technologies' experts to contact you for one-on-one conversation. So please participate in the poll, which is there on your screen. And we'll make sure the expert team member connects with you. And we also have a free data center assessment, absolutely free of cost. If you are interested, please do participate over there by saying yes. We'll try to understand your applications and also workload and suggest a suitable optimization required for your data center. Coming back to Q&A, Srini, there is one question. Mr. [ Amit Panday ], says that this server working like -- sorry, this storage works in the...

Yes. We need to understand. I mean so this is the storage subsystem platform. If you really need to make this as in true like an AWS kind of experience or Google Cloud kind of experience, yes, you need to go with our entire Dell cloud strategy and just start there, which will provide similar to the AWS kind of experience. But you need to go with the entire Dell Technologies Cloud platform. This is -- the storage, which I spoke about, is only part of the Dell Technologies Cloud platform. But if you want to have this kind of experience, you need to go with a DTC platform, which is called as Dell Technologies Cloud platform.

Thanks, Srini. And we've one more question from [ Vivek Ashtolkar ]. What is the life of flash drives that...

I don't remember the absolute number, [ Vivek ], but I can tell you that it is -- I can say, it is almost 5x more than the normal market disk drives. However, I will put a caveat here. At the end of the day, we've been managing disk drive, our DVMT Class V, it all depicts number of [indiscernible] what it do and when the media [indiscernible], okay? So that dictates the life of the entire business. But if you look at the spec sheet, definitely, it is not much, much more reliable and higher than the normal market disk drives.

And just to add to Srini, we have a warranty on the flash drive, unlike most of our competitors who do not give 100% warranty, they say, wear and tear is not covered and these things are not covered. We provide 100% warranty on flash drives. So even if there is a failure of flash drive due to whatever reasons, we replace it.

Yes. That's an important point, actually, which [ Vipin ] brought up. You don't have to worry about the disk drives failing or the flash drives being -- or just as going bad, as long as it is a part of the warranty of the Dell Technologies, we replace with a fresh drive to replace the failed drive. So you don't have to really worry about those things.

Thanks, [ Vipin ] and Srini. There is one more question that Mr. [ Amit Panday ] is asking. Dear sir, can we use with [ plusing ] it with Dell server R720, or can we use with any other server.

That should be possible, but I would recommend Mr. Amit to contact the local EMC representative so that he will clarify and give more details on that. I mean yes, it should be possible to my knowledge, but I want to revalidate this information again before we give you any information on this.

Okay. Great. So Mr. Amit, what we will request is please write to us on [email protected]. We'll make sure that we'll put you across to the concerned person, and you can have the conversation taken forth from there. So yes, Amit, as mentioned, please write to us on at [email protected]. The e-mail ID is there on your screen, and we'll connect you with the right people. So there is a question in terms of manufacturing, okay. [ Yogesh Patel ] is asking the hardware is manufactured in India or China. So...

[ Vipin ], do you want to take this question?

Srini, do you want to take up that?

Yes. It is manufactured in Ireland for us and it is supplied from Ireland for India.

Okay. [ Yogesh ], I hope you got the answer. The product is manufactured -- it is manufactured in Ireland, neither in India or in China. So -- yes, Ireland, I-R-E-L-A-N-D. Sorry, if I didn't pronounce. So dear participants, if you have any further questions, I request you to write to us on [email protected]. We thank you all for taking out time at this hour and joining us in this exclusive session on storage solution powering the digital transformation through data capital. And we thank, Srinivas, we thank [ Vipin ], we thank [ Vikas ], who are part of the -- who were part of this presentation team. And I hope all our participants enjoyed it. We thank you, once again.

Yes. Thank you everyone. Stay safe and enjoy the evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Srini. Thanks [ Vipin ] again. Thanks, Srinivas. Dear participants, I would like to request, once again, please share your feedback. We'll always appreciate that, and we optimize our future sessions based on that. And as I mentioned, we have a poll over here. Please do participate if you are looking for any of the solutions offered by Dell Technologies, and choose the solution, which you are interested in, which you're in need and an expert team member will connect with you. And yes, if you are looking for free data center assessment, we do it free of cost, and you can just participate in the poll for that. So we're a little overshot of 4 p.m. and yes, this concludes today's session of Coffee with Dell. We'll be coming up with a new session very shortly in coming days. So please look forward for our invite. And very shortly, we will communicate about the winners of today's quizzes and polls, and they will be definitely getting the giveaway, which was announced, YETI Tumbler worth INR 2,500. Once again, thank you, everyone, for participating in the Coffee with Dell session. Thank you, [ Vipin ]. Thank you. [ Vikas ]. Thank you, Srinivas. This is your host, Kishan LCV, signing off. Thank you. Stay safe. Enjoy. Have a nice weekend.