Elevate Your Azure Stack HCI Experience with Dell Solutions

In today’s fast-paced world, innovation and success are crucial for staying ahead. At Dell Technologies, we believe in meeting customers where they are—empowering them with cutting-edge technology and offering choices that suit every budget.

Read More: D-PDD-DY-23: Dell Technologies PowerProtect DD Deploy 2023

That’s why we’re excited to expand our Dell Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI by offering Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI on the latest generation hardware. That means you can now choose between two powerful options: the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI for a smartly priced and reliable hyperconverged infrastructure, or the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure for even more automation, enhanced value and productivity.

No matter which option you choose, Dell is redefining what it means to deliver a Microsoft Azure experience on-premises. Let’s look at what each solution offers.

Dell’s Factory-ready Azure Stack HCI – Efficiency Out of the Box

For those seeking a Microsoft-native management experience, the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI provides preconfigured, hyperconverged infrastructure backed by Dell’s engineering expertise. This solution offers several key benefits, including easy deployment and management through Azure Management and Governance Services, along with Dell OpenManage Integration for Microsoft Windows Admin Center. It also ensures reliable updates with compatibility checks for both software and infrastructure, and maintains optimized performance through regular system assessments, offering two to four validations each year.

APEX Cloud Platform for Azure – A Microsoft Premier Solution

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is a robust choice for those seeking enhanced value, productivity, and automation. As the first Premier Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, it’s continuously validated in collaboration with Microsoft. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software, an integral part of the platform, provides deep, cross-layer integrations and intelligent automation that simplify initial deployments and cluster creation, in addition to ongoing operations across the complete technology stack. IT admins can use familiar tools, such as Windows Admin Center and the Azure Portal, for a simple, consistent and centralized way of operating dispersed Azure deployments.

A recent ESG report highlighted that the unique value provided by APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software translates into significant benefits for customers, including:

• 50% more productive administrators. Enhanced automation simplifies tasks, from node addition to cluster expansion.
• 50% reduction in availability issues. Automated, non-disruptive upgrades and validated state assurance keep workloads running smoothly.
• 80% lower testing costs. Continuous joint CI/CD testing with Microsoft ensures each release is backed by extensive engineering hours.
• 40% lower support costs. Proactive, call-home support through Windows Admin Center reduces support costs and boosts reliability.

Why Choose Dell Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI?

Whichever solution you choose, Dell offers unique benefits that set us apart from other providers:

• Unique integration and automation. Opt for the Microsoft-driven management experience of the Dell Integrated System or the enhanced productivity of the APEX Cloud Platform with Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software.
• Built on the latest PowerEdge platforms. Our solutions are purpose-built for their environments, featuring intelligent systems management, cyber-resilient security, and sustainability.
• Flexible consumption options. Purchase through CapEx or modern consumption through APEX Subscriptions
• Expert support with ProSupport. Enjoy comprehensive system-level support from a single source, covering hardware, software, and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, with Dell managing collaboration with Microsoft support.
• Available with Azure Stack HCI OEM License. Gain significant price advantages with a one-time upfront cost for Azure Stack HCI 23H2, Windows Server Data Center 2022 and Azure Kubernetes Service

In summary, Dell Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI deliver unmatched integration, automation and expert support, all built on the latest PowerEdge technology to meet your on-premises Azure needs.

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Advance Productivity: PowerScale Storage Certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD

In this era of exceptional technological advancements, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force across industries. The rise of generative AI, in particular, has unlocked tremendous potential, enabling machines to synthesize and create valuable content. Announced at the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference, Dell PowerScale file storage is the world’s first Ethernet-based storage certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. This solution helps enable businesses to harness the full potential of AI-enabled applications.

Rise of Generative AI

Generative AI has marked a turning point in the technology landscape, enabling machines to create, replicate and learn from patterns in extensive datasets, with minimal human intervention. From healthcare and manufacturing to finance and entertainment, generative AI has the power to transform industries like never before. As a result, the demand for advanced storage solutions capable of handling the sheer volume of data required by AI workloads has skyrocketed.

Certification

Dell has always been at the forefront of innovation, striving to offer cutting-edge solutions that address the evolving needs of businesses. As Dell announced earlier this year, the certification of Dell PowerScale as the first Ethernet-based storage for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD marks an advancement in storage compatibility. This solution simplifies AI infrastructure, empowering organizations to unlock the true potential of their AI initiatives.

Martin Glynn, Senior Director of Product Management for Dell Technologies, affirms, “The world’s first Ethernet storage certification for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with Dell PowerScale combines Dell’s industry-leading storage and NVIDIA’s AI supercomputing systems, empowering organizations to unlock AI’s full potential, drive breakthroughs and achieve the seemingly impossible.”

“To harness the transformative power of generative AI, organizations are seeking robust and scalable infrastructure that can help unlock insights and drive innovation,” said Tony Paikeday, senior director of AI systems at NVIDIA. “The certification of Dell PowerScale as the world’s first Ethernet storage to operate with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD gives enterprises greater choice and flexibility in their implementations of scalable AI infrastructure.”

PowerScale – Extreme Performance for Next-Generation Workloads

Dell PowerScale has gained trust and recognition for its exceptional scalability, performance and security built on over a decade of experience. Its certification for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD further strengthens Dell’s storage solution for organizations seeking to harness the power of generative AI. Here’s why PowerScale stands out:

• Enhanced network access. Technologies like NVIDIA Magnum IO, GPUDirect Storage and NFS over RDMA are natively integrated into NVIDIA ConnectX NICs and NVIDIA Spectrum switches, accelerating network access to storage. These advanced features further minimize data transfer times to and from PowerScale storage, ensuring faster storage throughput for AI training, checkpointing and inferencing tasks.
• Maximizing performance. Dell PowerScale offers a new Multipath Client Driver that optimizes data throughput and allows organizations to achieve the high performance required by DGX SuperPOD. This innovative feature enables businesses to accelerate AI model training and inference, facilitating seamless integration with the powerful NVIDIA DGX platform.
• Scalability. PowerScale’s unique design enables effortless scaling by simply adding new nodes, delivering unparalleled agility to businesses. This flexibility ensures that organizations can adapt and grow their storage infrastructure as their AI workloads expand, avoiding any potential bottlenecks for even the most demanding AI use cases.
• Federal-grade security. PowerScale has been recognized for its exceptional security capabilities, earning the U.S. Department of Defense Approved Product List. Successful completion of this rigorous process underscores PowerScale’s suitability for mission-critical applications and bolsters protection of critical data assets.
• Efficiency. PowerScale’s innovative architecture is designed to optimize efficiency. Utilizing advanced technologies, it maximizes performance and minimizes power consumption while reducing operational costs and environmental impacts.

To accelerate the deployment of PowerScale with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD solutions, Dell developed the following reference architecture. The whitepaper illustrates the seamless combination of PowerScale with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD.

The certification of Dell PowerScale as the world’s first Ethernet-based storage solution certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD represents a significant milestone in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Dell’s collaboration with NVIDIA is helping to pave the way for organizations to leverage generative AI with scalability and performance. By embracing these leading technologies, businesses can unlock the full potential of AI and transform their operations, propelling themselves into an era of accelerated innovation and remarkable growth.

Source: dell.com

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Five Ways Dell Can Help Telecom Increase Cloud Sustainability

Sustainability is a non-negotiable for communication service providers (CSP). A recent study by the GSM Association tells us that CSPs spend 20 to 40% of OpEx on energy. With increasing pressure to reduce their carbon footprint, CSPs need to find innovative ways to manage their network infrastructure while keeping it reliable and efficient. Dell Technologies has a variety of products and solutions to help the telecom industry achieve their sustainability goals. And we aren’t talking about recycling – although we do that (that’s table stakes).

Dell Technologies Bare Metal Orchestrator (BMO) is a powerful software platform that automates the deployments and lifecycle management of bare-metal servers (or infrastructure network) at massive scale. BMO helps CSPs manage their network infrastructure all the way out to the edge in a more efficient and automated way, which can help reduce the time and effort required to manage infrastructure and improve overall performance.

Here are five ways BMO can help you achieve telecom achieve its sustainability goals:

1. Energy Efficiency: CSPs can use BMO to monitor and manage server utilization. By optimizing server utilization, CSPs can reduce the amount of energy required to run their data centers and, in turn, reduce their carbon footprint.
2. Resource Management: BMO can help CSPs manage their resources more effectively, which can help reduce waste and improve the sustainability of their operations. BMO can define consistency in processes around how the backup, data erase happens correctly and hence enable security and data breaches and feedback to the organization they need to plan the server procurements. For example, CSPs can use BMO to automate the provisioning and decommissioning of bare-metal servers, which can help reduce the amount of waste these servers generate. Servers that are no longer being used still use the energy and network bandwidth.
3. Data Center Optimization: CSPs can use BMO to optimize the performance of data centers, which can help reduce the amount of energy required to run these centers. This can include optimizing the utilization of bare-metal servers, improving the cooling and ventilation systems based on the telemetry collected from the servers and reducing the amount of energy required to power the data center.
4. Increased Agility: BMO can help CSPs be more agile in their operations, which can be especially important in a rapidly changing market. By automating the management of their infrastructure, CSPs can respond more quickly to changes in demand and ensure they have the resources they need to meet the changing needs of their customers. Examples include reduced downtime by enabling IT staff to respond quickly to issues and faults in the data center, deploy renewable infrastructure and adapt to changing sustainability requirements due to its flexibility and scalability. Furthermore, since BMO is software-based, CSPs can deploy servers remotely without traveling to the site, eliminating the carbon footprint of commuting.
5. Future-proofing: By implementing sustainable practices and using tools like BMO, CSPs can ensure they are well-positioned for the future. As sustainability becomes increasingly important, CSPs that have implemented sustainable practices will be well-positioned to meet the changing needs of their customers and remain competitive in the market.

Using Dell’s Bare Metal Orchestrator can help CSPs optimize the utilization of bare-metal servers, manage resources more effectively and improve the performance of data centers, thereby reducing their impact on the environment and ensuring the long-term sustainability of their operations.

Source: dell.com

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For CSPs, the Chatbot Discussion Heats Up Around AI

Let’s talk about chatbots for a moment. We’ve all used them before and, by now, most of us have accepted their limitations as the lesser of two evils (the greater evil being stuck in an endless IVR loop). Many users report at least some level of satisfaction with chatbots, particularly when handling common issues such as password resets, basic account information and other frequently asked questions. Yet the fact remains that traditional chatbots struggle with replicating a human interactive experience when the conversation goes off script. In those cases, it’s often necessary to call in the live troops to resolve a customer’s issue.

And that would be the end of our conversation about chatbots, except for the disruptive potential that AI brings to the discussion.

AI-powered chat agents have the potential to take automated customer service to another level. The ability to apply dynamic, human-like intelligence and real-time machine learning to customer experiences (CX) is what every chatbot has always dreamed of being. It is not, however, just a simple matter of bolting AI onto your existing chatbot app and waiting for better outcomes. There’s a lot of business process integration and customization around industry-specific large language models (LLMs) that need to take place before a chatbot becomes an AI chat agent. Fortunately, that work is being done right now in an industry that can desperately use it: telecommunications.

Dialing Up AI for better Customer Experiences

Dell Technologies is honored to be part of an initiative led by SK Telecom to develop an AI chat agent application for communications service providers (CSPs). In addition to SK Telecom, which is developing the application, there is a critical middleware component being developed by Compax (on the business integration side) and Matrixx Software (on the billing integration side) to bring everything together. Dell’s contributions center on three solution aspects: the cloud foundation for the application (via Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks), the underlying AI infrastructure (via Dell and Nvidia’s AI Factory) and the multivendor solution integration and validation, which is being hosted in Dell’s Open Telecommunications Ecosystem Lab (OTEL).

Part of the challenge of building an LLM-based AI chat agent for CSPs is the language itself. Telecommunications has its own set of industry-specific terms, from roaming fees to family plans. SK Telecom is currently building a customized LLM for CSPs that is capable of understanding the nuances of telco terminology. Beyond that, there is the challenge of integrating these conversations with back-office and billing systems that are often highly complex and, in some cases, have been in place for decades. And, finally, the entire solution needs to be deployed in a cloud-native architecture featuring AI-ready infrastructure. It’s these individual components that brought SK Telecom, Dell, Compax and Matrixx together, with Dell’s OTEL being the logical place to integrate and validate the entire solution.

Once completed, SK Telecom plans to roll the solution out to other CSPs around the world. For an industry that thrives on communication, AI chat agents are a potential game changer for telcos. Imagine, for example, being able to get real-time recommendations on plan changes and shop for new devices with an intelligent shopping assistant. Or get AI advice on choosing the best roaming plan right before you leave for your European vacation. These are the kinds of complex tasks that AI chat agents can perform and—here’s the key—get better at over time by learning your preferences. Even human agents often struggle to connect on that kind of personal level.

We’ve come a long way from switchboard operators, and the best is yet to come. Want to talk about developing your AI app for telecommunications? Talk to Dell or check out more on the AI Chat Agent we are working on with SK Telecom. We’re here to keep the AI conversation moving forward.

Source: dell.com

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Dell Technologies at Black Hat 2024

Dell Technologies is thrilled to announce our participation in Black Hat USA 2024, the premier global information security event, August 7 and 8 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. As a leader in cybersecurity solutions, Dell takes security very seriously. We embed security capabilities into every solution we build and are dedicated to empowering organizations to defend against ever-evolving cyber threats. This year, we are excited to showcase our security strategy aimed at helping customers to reduce the attack surface, enhance threat detection and response and ensure swift recovery from cyber incidents.

Reducing the Attack Surface

In today’s digital landscape, reducing the attack surface is a critical component of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy. With the proliferation of devices, applications and networks, the potential entry points for attackers have increased exponentially. Dell’s solutions are designed to minimize these vulnerabilities through robust endpoint protection, secure access controls and advanced threat prevention mechanisms.

Endpoint Protection: Dell has the world’s most secure commercial PCs, and our endpoint security solutions provide multiple layers of defense, including anti-malware, intrusion prevention and application control. By securing endpoints, we help prevent attackers from gaining a foothold in your network.

Secure Access Controls: Implementing strong access controls is essential to limit unauthorized access. Dell’s identity and access management (IAM) solutions ensure that only authorized users can access critical systems and data, significantly reducing the risk of breaches.

Threat Prevention: Utilizing advanced threat prevention technologies, Dell’s solutions help to detect and block malicious activities before they can cause harm. This includes real-time threat intelligence, machine learning-based anomaly detection and behavior analysis.

Detection and Response to Cyber Threats: Despite best efforts to reduce the attack surface, some threats inevitably penetrate defenses. Rapid detection and response are crucial for mitigating the impact of these breaches. Dell’s integrated detection and response solutions provide organizations with the tools they need to quickly identify and neutralize threats.

Advanced Threat Detection: Leveraging AI/ML, threat detection systems can identify sophisticated attacks that traditional security measures may miss. By continuously analyzing network traffic, user behavior and system activity, we help detect anomalies that could indicate a breach.

Incident Response: When a threat is detected, swift action is necessary to contain and eliminate it. Dell’s incident response services offer immediate support from our team of cybersecurity experts. We work closely with your organization to investigate incidents, mitigate damage and restore normal operations.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Our SIEM solutions aggregate and analyze security events from across your network, providing comprehensive visibility into potential threats. This centralized approach allows for faster detection and more effective response to security incidents.

Recovering from Cyber Attacks: While prevention and detection are vital, organizations must also be prepared to recover from cyberattacks. Dell’s recovery solutions ensure that your business can quickly bounce back from disruptions, minimizing downtime and data loss.

Data Backup and Recovery: Regular data backups are essential for protecting against data loss. Dell’s backup solutions offer automated, secure backups that can be quickly restored in the event of an attack. Our solutions support a variety of environments, including on-premises, cloud and hybrid setups.

Disaster Recovery Planning: Having a robust disaster recovery plan in place is crucial for ensuring business continuity. Dell’s experts can help you develop and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy tailored to your organization’s needs. This includes risk assessments, recovery objectives, and regular testing to ensure readiness.

Incident Recovery Retainer: Our Incident Recovery Retainer service provides organizations with pre-defined hours of recovery assistance, ensuring that expert help is available when you need it most. This proactive approach not only helps with immediate recovery efforts but also strengthens your overall resilience against future attacks.

We invite you to visit Dell Technologies next week at Booth 2168 during Black Hat 2024 – August 7 and 8 – to learn more about our cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. Our team of experts will be on hand to provide live demonstrations, answer your questions and discuss how we can help your organization achieve a robust security posture.

In addition to our booth activities, Dell will be hosting a series of informative sessions and workshops on key cybersecurity topics. These sessions will cover best practices for reducing the attack surface, effective threat detection and response strategies and how to ensure swift recovery from cyber incidents. Don’t miss the opportunity to gain valuable insights from industry leaders and network with other cybersecurity professionals.

Black Hat 2024 promises to be an exciting event and we look forward to sharing our latest innovations with you. Together, we can build a safer, more secure digital world.

Source: dell.com

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Introducing Llama 3.1: Pushing the Boundaries of Open AI

The AI community is abuzz with anticipation as Meta announced the launch of Llama 3.1, their most advanced and capable AI model collection to date. Building on the success of its Llama 3 predecessors, Llama 3.1 includes Llama 3.1 405B, a model that represents a leap forward in natural language processing, machine learning and open-source AI capabilities, and rivals the best closed-source models in the field. We at Dell Technologies are committed to making these cutting-edge models available on-premises by demonstrating the practical deployment of Llama models on enterprise-grade infrastructure. Here’s a closer look at what makes these models a game-changer and how it is set to transform the landscape of AI.

Unmatched Versatility and Performance

Llama 3.1 models expand context length to 128K, add support across eight languages and include Llama 3.1 405B that boasts an unprecedented 405 billion parameters, making it the largest openly available foundation model. Llama 3.1 405B rivals the top models in AI when it comes to state-of-the-art capabilities in general knowledge, steerability, math, tool use and multilingual translation. This massive scale enables it to understand and generate human-like text with remarkable accuracy, nuance and contextual understanding. Whether writing essays, answering complex questions or engaging in natural conversations, Llama 3.1 405B excels in delivering responses that are not only accurate but also contextually relevant. This release is poised to have a profound impact on various aspects of AI research and development, particularly in the areas of:

• Synthetic data generation. The creation of robust and diverse synthetic data sets, enabling the training and evaluation of AI models in a more efficient and controlled manner.
• Model distillation. The compression and simplification of complex models, facilitating the transfer of knowledge and expertise to smaller, more efficient models.
• Model customization. The instruction-tuned model can be used for further customization using tools including Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (P-tuning, Adapters, LoRA, etc.)

Responsible Development and Safety Measures

The development of Llama 3.1 405B has been guided by Meta’s strong commitment to ethical AI practices and safety. They are continuing to build out Llama to be a system by providing more components that work together with the model, including reference implementations. The aim is to empower developers with the tools to create their own custom agents and new types of agentic behaviors by bolstering the models with new security and safety tools to help build AI responsibly.

Dell PowerEdge and Llama models: Powering the Future of AI

Strengthening our continued collaboration with Meta, Dell engineers have successfully deployed Llama 3.1 405B model on Dell’s leading compute platforms, both the single node PowerEdge XE 9680 server and a distributed system comprised of two PowerEdge XE9680 servers, connected via InfiniBand (IB) or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) for high-speed data transfer and efficient scaling.

The Llama 3.1 Community License Agreement gives organizations the freedom and flexibility to adapt the model to almost any application. The Llama 3.1 405B models will soon be available on Dell Enterprise Hub on the Hugging Face platform at dell.huggingface.co for download as ready-to-use containers, optimized on Dell PowerEdge XE9680. The Dell Enterprise Hub is an innovative portal designed specifically for Dell customers, offering a streamlined approach to on-premises deployment of popular large language models (LLM) on Dell’s robust infrastructure.

Use Cases and Deployment Flexibility

The release of Llama 3.1 405B includes two categories:

• The pre-trained general LLM
• The instruction fine-tuned LLM

Each version is released with model weights in BF16. In addition, each category includes a version supporting model parallelism of 16 (for running on two nodes) and supporting model parallelism of 8 running with FP8.

Enterprises can fine-tune the instruction model on proprietary or domain-specific data to create chatbot applications, coding assistants and assistants for customer service agents. Further applying model compression and distillation techniques opens additional environments for serving applications by decreasing the memory needed while benefiting from the accuracy of the 405B model. This enables customers to deploy the distilled model on smaller edge devices and in applications to meet different latency requirements. Moreover, combining retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques with the distilled models can enhance response quality. Notably, the large context length support enables more extensive context handling, further improving the effectiveness of RAG techniques and leading to even more accurate and informative responses.

In the upcoming weeks, Dell Technologies will share test results, practical applications and deployment guidelines demonstrating the seamless deployment of the Llama 3.1 405B models on Dell infrastructure. This ongoing collaboration between Dell and Meta highlights our dedication to driving innovation in the open-source AI community and enabling businesses to leverage AI capabilities within their own IT infrastructure. By leveraging Llama 3.1 models and the open-source AI frameworks, researchers and practitioners can explore new avenues for advancing state-of-the-art AI research and applications.

Source: dell.com

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