APEX Flex on Demand

With APEX Flex on Demand, you can obtain the technology you need to support your evolving company while paying only for what you need.

Today's fast-paced corporate climate necessitates the availability of on-demand IT solutions. Many firms acquire extra capacity ahead to assure availability, risking paying for technologies they don't utilize. Overprovisioning depletes the budget and jeopardizes financing for other vital initiatives.

We work with you to right-size capacity for your workloads as they diminish and rise over time, provided through Flex on Demand. You obtain rapid access to buffer capacity if necessary while just paying for the technology you use. Your payment is adjusted up or down based on your actual consumption.

PowerStore, PowerMax, PowerFlex, PowerScale, and ECS storage, PowerEdge servers, VxBlock and VxRack CI, certain HCI solutions, and PowerProtect DD and PowerProtect DP data protection appliances all support Flex on Demand.

APEX Flex on Demand provides extra peace of mind by restricting total monthly payment at 85% use of the entire installed capacity - an offer unmatched by other infrastructure providers.

How Does Flex on Demand Work?

1. Select your technology. Determine the gear, software, and services that best fulfill your requirements.
2. Estimate payments. The 85% billing threshold and simplified pricing for specific setups allow you to budget and estimate payments even when consumption is fluctuating.
3. Determine the deployed capacity. We collaborate with you to determine the Committed Capacity you need now and the Buffer Capacity you will require in the future. On day one, all technology is deployed and ready for use.
4. Meter reading. Each payment includes a set Committed Capacity amount as well as a variable Buffer Capacity amount. Buffer Capacity consumption is assessed on a regular basis at the component level utilizing automated instruments installed with your equipment.
5. Make savings. Reduce expenses by choosing larger levels of committed capacity and longer use periods, and trigger reduced usage rates when workloads exceed the original committed capacity.

Flex on Demand Billing Metrics

As the chart above shows, charging for real consumption is determined by the kind of product and the exact technology usage being assessed.

We assess and bill for processor use on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers using Activated Node Hours. Our Utility Configuration Collector (UCC) retrieves use information from the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC), which provides CPU consumption many times per hour. This information is then utilized to determine the number of Activated Node Hours; a node is deemed active when its consumption is 5% or above.

Depending on the product, we measure consumed raw capacity or consumed useable capacity for Storage, Data Protection, and Converged and Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions. The overall capacity of the storage medium in the system is referred to as raw capacity.

Usable capacity is the amount of data stored in the system before data reduction (compression and deduplication) but after RAID protection capacity is given. RAID is used to defend against data loss and to boost speed.

Download Dell Technologies' whitepaper to learn more about APEX Flex on Demand only on Whitepapers Online.