Last week I was watching the highlights from Tech Field Day 10 and saw some details emerge of the Dell VRTX.

The VRTX is an integrated solution that brings together compute, storage and (fast) networking all under one chassis. It comes as both a tower or rack configuration.

The chassis comes with four nodes, and the compute specs are certainly impressive. A number of options are available including both 2-socket and 4-socket configurations.

For storage the VRTX takes either twelve 3.5″ or twenty-five 2.5″ drives, which is shared amongst all the nodes. With SSD drive sizes rapidly on the rise (Samsung now do a hefty 2TB model), that could offer some serious storage performance if coupled with a solution such as VMware’s VSAN.

The chassis comes with built-in 10GbE, so if you are thinking of implementing software-defined storage like VSAN or Atlantis USX, then this is a must.

Whilst the hardware itself looks impressive, the biggest thing that draws me to this kit is the noise – or lack of it. Rumour has it the hardware is extremely quiet… making it ideal replacement for my existent Dell hardware in the home lab. Cost however, might be the biggest barrier to home lab adoption (certainly for me anyway).

Aside from home lab, this could possibly be an ideal solution for ROBO environments looking to offer a powerful server virtualisation or VDI offering.

For more information on the VRTX platform, check out http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/poweredge-vrtx/pd.