Dell wants more customers to use DPUs, so it’s bringing the accelerators to its legacy servers. This should particularly appeal to VMware customers.

Despite the potential of DPUs (Data processing units), the accelerators are not really well received by Dell customers. This may be due to the fact that things are present in the latest servers from Dell’s portfolio, which were released earlier this year, but not in older ones. Dell is now changing that.

More efficient data processing

DPUs are specialized chips that handle network-related tasks such as encryption. This relieves the load on the processor, which can then carry out more important tasks. A server with a DPU is more efficient than one without, but that doesn’t mean customers will suddenly want to throw away all their suitable local hardware and replace it with the latest Dell servers.

To give DPUs a chance, Dell is now allowing previous generation servers (launched in 2021) to be upgraded via a so-called upgrade Customer kit. A DPU is a PCIe expansion card, so the integration is not that complex. Dell is currently not clarifying what the kits will look like and in what context the investment will be worthwhile. However, customers who equip their older servers with a DPU and run vSphere 8 can use this directly after installation.