Ride the Ansible Revolution with Dell EMC OpenManage

The server management market is moving more and more to automation, and so too is Dell EMC, with the release of OpenManage Ansible Modules. Ansible is software that automates provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. It is one of the fastest growing DevOps tools in the industry with over 50 percent user base growth in 2017 and over 5000 repositories of content on GitHub.

With OpenManage Ansible Modules, Dell EMC PowerEdge users can easily automate updates of all your PowerEdge servers in a cluster without losing any workload productivity.

With the ever-increasing utilization of hybrid and private cloud services, web-scale architecture, and the growth in Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) type operations, a revolution is underway. Some say that this is the biggest transformation in IT since the mainframe era. Enabling new and agile models such as Cloud, Web-Scale or SDDC architectures requires a seamless interconnect of management solutions, tools, and processes to rapidly deliver scalable, on-demand infrastructure, while at the same time ensuring the high security, standards compliance, and reliability.

Delivering enterprise IT services on-demand and at-scale requires automation that is enabled and pervasive from day one. However, the reality is that traditional data centers are operated in a silo’d manner which makes IT processes resource-intensive. The result is that the dynamic workloads cannot scale without significant, manual efforts spent on re-provisioning and configuration of hardware infrastructure.

Moving to Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)

To move beyond past historical data center management practices, enterprises are embracing DevOps-inspired initiatives: processes, tools and toolchains for faster deployment and easier management of their data center infrastructure. Management automation builds the path to SDDC by capitalizing on agility, elasticity and open interfaces provided by Next-Gen RESTful APIs that can seamlessly integrate with leading DevOps tools.

Further down that path, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) is gaining prominence globally as it defines the configuration of compute, network or storage infrastructure through source code that can be treated just like any software. Dynamic infrastructure can be provisioned in a matter of seconds rather than days by just running the software commands, guaranteeing a consistent and compliant infrastructure every single time. Rinse and Repeat comes to the data center.

With the advent of vast numbers of servers operating at scale, this has been an effective way for institutions to efficiently use their staff, and this practice has spread rapidly from and through cloud service providers to all manner of industries, activities, and practices. One such solution which has gained significant usage in the last five years or so is Ansible (ansible.com), a solution that allows an IT administrator to define a given configuration once and then execute/automate at tremendous scale. Ansible lets IT admins treat their OS and applications as code, so that many typical IT tasks can simply be written up one time and then executed as needed.

What’s new from Dell EMC then?

Dell EMC has released OpenManage Ansible modules that now allow our customers to treat their PowerEdge server infrastructure in the same way as applications or an operating system: as code. The desired state of server firmware and configuration settings can be described and deployed using the OpenManage Ansible modules.

The modules tap into the powerful automation capabilities of the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) that is embedded in every PowerEdge server. That automation includes iDRAC REST APIs, based on the Redfish standard,  for server configuration, deployment, and updates. Each PowerEdge server’s BIOS settings and configuration are stored in a Server Configuration Profile (SCP) that is also available through iDRAC to the OpenManage Ansible Modules.

Now, using Ansible and these OpenManage tools, Dell EMC customers can easily describe and deploy a desired state management every single time and vastly simplify the automation of complex configuration tasks such as BIOS settings, RAID configuration, or firmware updates.

For current Ansible users, these Dell EMC modules will be a natural extension of what they are already doing.

What now?

Dell EMC OpenManage Ansible Modules are open-source and offered to customers and community as stand-alone software. If you want to take advantage of the new features when they are implemented and want to contribute to the ongoing development, then you can go to Dell EMC Github repository using the following URLs and either clone or download the modules.

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Get Ready for Data Center Modernization That’s Easier Than Ever

Dell EMC Ready Stack Certified Reference System and Program

Are you talking to your customers about data center modernization—including possible “DIY” or “Build Your Own” infrastructure approaches? At Dell EMC, our mission is to build partner profitability in that new segment of our converged go to market, while also enabling your customers to improve their business agility, competitive advantage and more.

That’s why Dell EMC has launched Ready Stack. Available exclusively from Dell EMC partners, this certified reference system helps partners to confidently and quickly build converged infrastructure solutions based on current and future Dell EMC best-of-breed technologies, with support for multiple hypervisors, bare metal and containers.

Ready Stack is a perfect option for organizations that prefer the flexibility to build full-stack systems themselves, or with assistance from their partners, rather than buy a turnkey CI or HCI system.

As new Dell EMC technologies become available across the stack, a growing library of Dell EMC-based converged content, including best-practice design and deployment guides, will help partners lower risk and simplify deployments backed by their own trusted professional services. Channel customers will gain even more assurance from having Dell EMC as their single source for all the best-in-class building blocks, including integrated support across the stack.

The Ready Stack reference architecture helps you confidently and quickly build converged infrastructure solutions while helping improve profitability and customer loyalty.

1. Extend the data center modernization discussion. Go beyond a conversation about servers, storage or networking and engage customers with a solution that spans the entire stack comprising the modern data center, including virtualization, protection and management.

2. Give customers the flexibility they’re after. While many customers will still prefer to buy a CI or HCI solution for turnkey outcomes and maximum agility, Dell EMC Ready Stack gives you a huge opportunity to build the infrastructure for your customers, giving them maximum flexibility—including any combination of Dell EMC storage and servers; a broad range of Dell EMC storage (e.g. Unity, SC Series, XtremIO, Isilon); Dell EMC PowerEdge servers; Dell EMC data protection; optional Dell EMC open networking; and even support for industry-leading hypervisor options (including VMware, Red Hat and Microsoft), bare metal deployments or containers.

3. Deliver converged solutions faster. Speed your ability to build infrastructure stack solutions and sell your own incremental services—including deployment services as an accredited Dell EMC partner.

4. Leverage Dell EMC best-of-breed technologies. Built on a validated, all-Dell EMC infrastructure stack, Ready Stack reference architectures are based on modern data center design tenets such as flash, scale-out, SW-defined, cloud-enabled, protection and trust.

5. Get rewarded. Ready Stack rewards partners for positioning Dell EMC technologies in converged outcomes through incentives that increase as you incorporate more elements of the Dell EMC portfolio in your converged offering.

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Rapidly Scale Workloads to Boost Your Business Across the Private Cloud

Deploying scalable modular server such as the Dell EMC PowerEdge FX can deliver over 9.5x faster results

Today’s business is dynamic. Companies strive to maintain the traditional operating model that served them in the past, while at the same time aiming to provide continuous value to customers.  But as market needs change, IT departments realize that this traditional model is no longer effective. In fact, refusing to adapt can stunt an organization’s growth.

IT transformation should follow the lead of the business, and modern infrastructure must keep pace with today’s ongoing digital transformation.

For expanding enterprises with a global presence and growing workforce, stepping up to the cloud is a next-step alternative. With multiple time zones, varied peak hours of usage, and different compute availability, the infrastructure must be ready and available for continuous use. Moving applications and workloads to the cloud enables the access and flexibility of on-demand compute.

Can a cloud strategy scale workloads securely?

While a public cloud approach is enticing, businesses need to consider the downside: cost for on-demand compute and other resources as well as security aspects. Turning to private cloud can reduce costs and data security risks, but how can it quickly scale according to business direction and needs?

Can a private cloud host all the workloads you need and do so efficiently?

An ideal platform to host a variety of workloads, a private cloud strategy can readily power your infrastructure to serve your business needs, customers and global workforce. The task of then finding a hardware platform which has the portfolio breadth to also support a variety of workloads as well as one that is quick to setup, deploy and manage can be challenging. A compact, modular server platform approach can lend itself well to fast scalable node growth with a variety of mix-and-match options. It also removes the need for operational silos, allowing IT to deploy the configurations they need for each application.

Principled Technologies conducted a variety of studies demonstrating a variety of workloads in an on-premises, private cloud environment. They chose to deploy Dell EMC’s PowerEdge FX platform to determine if it could meet the needs rapid business growth and IT agility.

From distributed database workloads to ease of configuration and management, reports showed how an effective private cloud strategy can increase business results and help you with IT transformation which keeps pace with business needs.

Flexibility and density to scale workloads to the cloud

Using the latest 14th generation Dell EMC FC640 server sled, the PowerEdge FX easily delivered almost 9.5x higher performance running database workloads in a private cloud. Big data processing tasks in a private cloud also showed great benefits, including 36 percent more throughput and 26 percent reduction in time versus a public cloud setup. Managing a private cloud also provided savings of up to 34% faster management, enabling IT to configure and deploy faster.

The PowerEdge FX 2RU (rack-unit) platform allows IT to grow quickly while helping scale business performance. It features a choice of server node types, from one-socket to four-socket processors and up to 28 cores per processor. IT administrators can readily mix and match processors, storage and networking, customized to their workload needs. Boost compute power for demanding workloads (up to 144 cores per rack unit) and storage (up to 48 drives in 2RU) easily in 2RU.

The FC640 proved its ability to drive these demanding workloads and help IT scale operations to support on-demand growth. With the onboard Chassis Management Controller (CMC), IT administrators can manage all components in each FX chassis with a simplified user interface and up to 10 chassis in a single group. The PowerEdge FX architecture is purpose-built to be extremely configurable and customizable, as well as ready for pay-as-you-grow operating models that enable you to be flexible without being locked into traditional silos.

Lastly, the PowerEdge platform features a cyber-resilient architecture, integrating security into the full server lifecycle. The PowerEdge FC640 provides new security features as part of the overall architecture, including secure firmware operations and data integrity. These additional layers of security enable data to not only stay within the business but also within the infrastructure, and even within the chassis, for secure, contained deployments.

As businesses grow to support digital transformation, IT must keep pace with infrastructure and operating models to serve demanding workloads and global growth. A private cloud approach can readily help, supported by an architecture suited for fast expansion while helping the business maintain data security. Principled Technologies highlighted the Dell EMC PowerEdge FX and 14th generation FC640 server as a solution to help IT address the challenges of transforming the infrastructure.

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The Zoom Zoom Box: Introducing the New Four-Socket PowerEdge Servers

According to the 2016 World Economic Forum report, the following jobs did not exist in 2006:

◈ Big Data Analyst / Data Scientist
◈ Cloud Computing Specialist
◈ Driverless Car Engineer
◈ IOT Developer
◈ Social Media Manager

It is no stretch to say that these jobs are the result of a massive jump in the production, curation and consumption of data. A large digital ecosystem is continuously expanding to support these trends. Large multi-billion dollar industries have sprung up in this digital era and are, perhaps, irrevocably changing how we interact with the real world.

Enterprises, big and small, are having to deal with a digital overload within (and without) their businesses. While they always had traditional IT infrastructure to support traditional financial, CRM or Logistics applications, they are quickly getting overwhelmed with the deluge of data. There is a huge computational capability issue. Take, for example, retailers who are striving determine:

◈ Who is shopping?

◈ What do customers prefer to buy?

◈ How to positively influence customer buying patterns?

◈ How to make a customer more loyal?

Retailers are employing sophisticated machine-learning approaches to answer some of these thorny questions. These retailers not only need a vast, interconnected system but also need a secure, powerful IT infrastructure that has the computational horsepower and efficiency to employ machine learning algorithms to provide these insights.

More and more of the functional processes in large enterprises are undergoing digitization. This results in higher volume of data coming into the traditional systems at a higher velocity. Just being able to manage large data is no longer sufficient. It is about using all that data to answer questions that deliver insights into business operations, customer preferences or marketing opportunities. It is about performing insightful data analytics faster.

Emerging workloads such as machine learning or data analytics require high computational capability combined with large capacity. This combination helps drive consistent but rapid results. However, traditional IT systems are struggling just to keep up, let alone deliver insights in an adequate amount of time. Business leaders are increasingly frustrated with these traditional systems that are not scalable with current business demands.

Enter the “Zoom Zoom” box.

Dell EMC has been working with customers for many years to help solve their pressing IT challenges and improve business outcomes. As enterprises drown in data, Dell EMC has come up with an innovative yet simple approach to this problem – Make faster servers with more capacity. Four sockets. And more accelerators. More zoom zoom!

Today, Dell EMC is announcing the availability of two new four-socket servers – the PowerEdge R940xa and PowerEdge R840, part of the 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio.

The servers allow customers to:

◈ Rapidly transform data insights into business outcomes with the Dell EMC PowerEdge R940xa, which is designed to accelerate databases for business-critical applications.

◈ Drive faster insights to better engage with customers and accelerate innovation with the Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 server, which is designed for in-database analytics.

With extensive performance density (up to 112 processing cores) and massive memory (up to 6TB of memory and NVDIMM options), these new servers deliver the necessary powerful performance. In fact, the PowerEdge R840 holds the four-socket world record for SAP SD standard benchmark of 65,900 users+.  The PowerEdge R940xa lets you accelerate critical workloads with a 1:1 CPU to GPU ratio and up to four double-width GPUs. The R840 offers up to two double-width GPUs in addition to up to 24 NVMe drives for some “serious” speed. Additionally, these servers also support field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which excel on data-intensive computations. The R940xa offers up to eight FPGAs while the R840 offers up to two FPGAs, so you can tailor your workload acceleration requirements.

Beyond offering accelerated performance and high capacity, both servers feature OpenManage Enterprise to monitor and manage the IT infrastructure. An agent-free Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) provides automated, efficient management to improve productivity. Additionally, Dell EMC PowerEdge’s Integrated Security features such as the Cyber Resilient Architecture come standard within every server.

See how Richard Heyns, CEO of Brytlyt looks at these complex computational challenges and how his company is using PowerEdge R940xa to provide better business outcomes faster.

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Get Your Customers Ready for VR

Once the preserve of the gaming industry, VR is creating serious waves in sectors such as manufacturing, travel and education. Forward-thinking companies are investing in making VR work for them. And while there are some hurdles to clear, the possibilities are great – if they have the hardware to make it happen.

The Making VR Real report, from Qualtrics, presents the findings of a broad industry survey, where 500 professionals — all of whom had worked on commercial VR projects — were questioned about the real-world business implications of VR. These survey results are released alongside six in-depth interviews, featuring VR experts from companies including EDF Energy, Jaguar Land Rover and Framestore.

In the report, we discuss the top trends for VR use, the challenges and benefits, and how our VR-ready workstations are the perfect platform for your customers’ next-generation projects.

Identifying the VR Opportunities

Looking past its use in the entertainment industry, the research as highlighted in Making VR Real suggests that VR has masses of potential across many sectors. From creating immersive experiences in the classroom to showcasing new product designs in 3D.

It’s no wonder companies are grappling to get on-board. But they face numerous options when it comes to the technology. Around 35 percent of BDMs surveyed said there were too many competing VR technologies on the market, making the decision of which to use a difficult one. And this uncertainty goes well beyond VR headsets and peripherals. Companies need to know its workforces have the client devices to handle the demands of VR workloads today and in the future.

Precision Devices Power a World of Potential

The Dell Precision 7000 Series workstations — and the most recently announced 7530 and 7730— are designed with VR in mind. They have faster memory, professional-grade graphics, and 8th-gen Intel® processors, providing the foundation for VR content creation and advanced commercial visualisation.

Understanding your customers’ pain points in launching their VR projects is the first step in helping them make the right investments in VR. The Making VR Real report will give you the insight to do this.

We’ve also put together a set of marketing assets to help expand your revenue potential by creating effective customer communications focused on the benefits of the new Dell Precision mobile workstations. And don’t forget you can use your Marketing Development Funds to boost your pipeline through targeted marketing programmes using our concierge agencies and these assets.

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Expert Insight on How to Make VR Real

I shared how National Geographic Explorer Martin Edstrom brought the world’s first virtual reality (VR) experience with lions to life, but you may be wondering how VR could be used in the business world.

To help reveal real-world implications of using VR within your business, Qualtrics – in association with Dell – has surveyed 500 business decision makers around the world who were either currently working on a VR project, or who had already completed one.

The resulting “Making VR Real” report showcases the potential of virtual reality in 2018 and provides a unique insight into one of the world’s most innovative industries.

“In this report, we hope to paint a true picture of the varied business cases for VR, by undertaking the broadest piece of business-focused VR research to date, whilst also shining a light on how VR is being used in the real-world today,” said Jack Davies, head of content at Qualtrics EMEA.

They found that VR is contributing a huge amount to the economies of the different countries they surveyed, but that 52 percent of those working on VR projects still see it as emerging tech.

Why are they choosing to use it? Fifty-eight percent said they agreed or strongly agreed that VR offered benefits that no other medium did. The majority also felt that it showcased their own innovative capabilities and demonstrated leadership in their industry.

Some of those surveyed include our customers Jaguar Land Rover and Framestore. Framestore uses Dell Precision workstations to bring their customers’ stories to life, including our own Dell Technologies story. And Jaguar Land Rover launched their first fully electric SUV, the Jaguar i-Pace at a VR press conference powered by Dell Precision workstations.

That event was so well-received that technology analyst Rob Enderle said it even led him to sign up to buy one. He added: “Dell, HTC, and Jaguar are changing not only how you buy cars but how you design, build, and buy them.”

That’s because Jaguar Land Rover also created a VR experience for the sales process in their showrooms and 58 percent of retailers they surveyed said it added value.

“Having VR more integrated into the sales process is something we need to work on for future projects,” said Mel Simkiss, global retail environment manager at Jaguar Land Rover, in the “Making VR Real” report. “What would be great is a customer comes in, having configured the car at home, and they are then issued a code which we can use to demo the car they’ve configured using VR. Then we can help them order it, there and then, in the showroom. We’re a way off just now, but ultimately that’s the goal.”

The “Making VR Real” report also includes case studies from Make Real, a UK-based team that makes immersive digital products, and 10 lessons they learned working with several clients.

I won’t give them all away here (download the report for that), but the first lesson was to start small. Begin with a small budget — that is more acceptable to those who have financial sign-off — to create a prototype or proof of concept piece of content that has one or two clear business objectives, or learning outcome goals defined.

This survey found that just over 25 percent of the projects respondents worked on had a budget of $100,000-$250,000. But as you can see in the chart below, many more were accomplished for less than that.

And while Framestore has experience with Hollywood-size budgets, and VR being used for primarily marketing and public relations purposes, they’re starting to see a lot of products being developed (for profit) outside of the entertainment industry – especially in healthcare.

“Personally, I’m excited about how VR can be used in areas like education and healthcare,” said Christine Cattano, global head of VR at Framestore, in the report. “We’ve been dabbling a bit here – but some of the products and R&D projects that are currently out there are pretty mindblowing, I think those are the types of things that will start to move the needle for the general public on the true potential of AR and VR tech.”

For more survey results, and insights from interviews with a broad cross-section of VR experts, from artists, to agencies, to clients, and startups, download “Making VR Real.”

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Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) Even Easier to Sell

We launched the Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) last year with our channel partners in mind.  IDPA is a converged, all-in-one data protection solution that is fast to deploy and converges protection storage and software, search and analytics, and cloud tier for long-term retention—in a single appliance.

We have now made IDPA even easier to manage and upgrade – all things that make it easier for our channel partners to sell IDPA.  Specifically, we are announcing the addition of IDPA System Manager, a centralized and intuitive management and monitoring user interface, increased cloud readiness, and improved data protection for VMware workloads.

With these new improvements, IDPA takes a massive step forward by providing enhanced simplicity, ease of use and more powerful data protection for your customers and helps them take better advantage of the cloud as part of their data protection.

IDPA now has even more to offer—providing an exciting opportunity for our partners to help the existing customers refresh their protection solution as well as offer new customers’ simple and powerful Dell EMC data protection. Check out Dell EMC Data Protection portal page to access sales and marketing resources available for your leverage.

Ease of Use with Centralized Management & Monitoring via Modern New UI

The new IDPA System Manager UI provides centralized monitoring and management, with easy-to-use intuitive navigation. A majority of daily activities, such as reporting, setting policies and initiating backup, can be handled directly from the IDPA System Manager.  IDPA System Manager also provides customizable dashboards for easy real-time monitoring of customers’ data protection environment.

Watch the video:

Modern and Comprehensive Cloud Readiness

Modern and efficient cloud readiness is the centerpiece of Dell EMC products and strategy. We continue to evolve our products to support all aspects of our customers’ cloud journey. IDPA was launched with native Cloud Tier for long-term retention and archiving to public or private cloud.

Now, with this announcement we are introducing Cloud Disaster Recovery for IDPA. This add-on feature enables virtual machine images protected on IDPA to be copied to object storage within Amazon Web Services for a modern, cost-efficient disaster recovery solution that takes advantage of the cloud. This service can be used to orchestrate and automate disaster recovery (DR) testing, DR failover and failback to/ from the cloud in a disaster scenario. No data protection infrastructure is needed for the failover/recovery within AWS, and no compute resources are needed until a failover occurs – greatly reducing costs. With Cloud Disaster Recovery, IDPA enables customers to leverage cloud across diverse cloud use-cases and benefit from the cloud economics and efficiencies for data protection with minimal additional learning or operational costs.

Plus…better VMware data protection and operational improvements

New VM file-level recovery enables recovery of multiple files, single files or folders.  And, operational enhancements make IDPA even easier to maintain.

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The People, Businesses and Technology Making AI a Reality

Can you imagine going under the knife only to find out afterwards you didn’t actually need surgery? I recently heard a story of a woman who had a lump removed from her breast that was benign. I was shocked. But after some research, I discovered it’s not uncommon.

Even today, with all the technological advancements, unnecessary surgeries happen. About 90 percent of breast lump removals are discovered to be unnecessary. The good news is that technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) now exist to help solve these problems. Doctors like Manisha Bahl at Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that these unnecessary surgeries could be reduced by nearly one-third by using machine learning.

It’s true. AI is real and widespread.

AI innovation is happening everywhere, not just in healthcare. Approximately 71 percent of companies said they had already implemented AI or were planning to implement AI in the next 12 months. The chart shows the responses from 2,106 data and analytics technology decision makers at global organizations.

Source: Forrester Data Global Technographics Data & Analytics Survey, 2017.

We wanted to better understand how AI impacts companies, their lines of business, and the IT department. So, we commissioned Forrester Consulting to help us answer these questions with primary research. The details and findings formed the basis of a Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper on the topic.

What’s clear is that the world is no longer waiting for Silicon Valley to develop an all-in-one solution to solve their problems. Individuals and organizations are using new foundational technology to innovate with AI on their own. Foundational technology such as 3D printing is democratizing manufacturing and improving product development. Connected IoT devices are now ubiquitous, and generating lots of raw data. Powerful new 4-socket servers with serial and parallel processing are used to digest massive amounts of data to compute insights in real-time. These technologies are now accessible to everyone, not just the huge research institutions or Fortune 50 companies.

Organizations are using AI to better understand their customers and develop better products. In the next 12 months, 54 percent of companies are planning to use AI to deliver a better customer experience. Across the globe, in every vertical, individuals and organizations are innovating with AI and its applications – machine learning and deep learning.

HEALTHCARE

Could AI replace your doctor? Maybe. AI isn’t replacing everything your doctor does. The hospital of the future isn’t going to run itself. Similar to manufacturing, the advancements in healthcare appear to be focused on repetitive tasks and variability reduction. Let’s look at an example.

The human eye is fallible. Doctors have human eyes. Even a handful of the best doctors can look at the same medical image and come to different conclusions. The question is how often does this happen? In 1959, a ground-breaking article cited that radiologists missed approximately 30% of positive findings. More than five decades later, numerous studies still confirm the discrepancy of radiologic interpretations.

Enter the digital eye powered by AI. The digital eye is already better than the human eye in many areas. In fact, the accuracy of the digital eye is expected to further extend its lead on the human eye. These improvements will continue to advance radiology, pathology, dermatology, and ophthalmology precision.

At Stanford University, researchers are using the digital eye. They have created an AI algorithm to identify skin cancer. Human skin is full of lesions that are non-cancerous. Lesions like freckles, moles, and skin tags are very common and benign. It can be difficult to spot the cancerous ones. The Stanford researchers trained their deep learning algorithm with 130,000 images. What they found was that their algorithm’s efficiency at diagnosing skin cancer is similar to a doctor’s.

MANUFACTURING

When Henry Ford radically changed how cars were built, humans performed almost every task, sometimes with mind-numbing repetition. Today, robots perform many of these sequences in a pre-programmed path. They do it with precision and without complaints. But, there are still problems to solve and efficiencies to gain, leading some to believe the days of the “dumb” factory are numbered.The factory of the future will be smart and run itself with predictive maintenance, yield enhancements, and automated quality testing.

The benefits of AI go beyond manufacturing operations. AI used in manufacturing business processes can have dramatic impacts, too. In fact, McKinsey believes there are huge advantages to an AI-enhanced supply chain:

◈ Forecasting errors can be reduced by as much as 50 percent

◈ Lost sales from out-of-stock products can be reduced by up to 65 percent

◈ Inventory stockpiles can be reduced by 20 percent to 50 percent

HOSPITALITY

In 2005, Ritz-Carlton launched a central system to help deliver flawless and memorable customer service. They named it “Mystique” and it made staff observations about guests at one hotel available to all of its properties. Mystique solved a problem of information sharing across its 60 hotel properties. When hotel staff learned something new about a guest (like their preference for Diet Coke), they would enter it into Mystique. The company’s goal was to note five preferences about each guest. When the guest returned to any Ritz-Carlton, the hotel staff would satisfy at least three or more of these preferences.

More than a decade after the launch of “Mystique,” today’s traveler demands this across the hospitality industry. They expect hotels to know everything about them – what they like and what they don’t – and to accommodate and tailor messages around it. This goes beyond the size of the bed, preferred floor, and feather or foam pillows. Promotional emails no longer have to offer golf packages to those who don’t play golf. Customers want to see offers that appeal to their tastes, not the one-size-fits-all messages of the past. AI is helping do that by tapping into data sources like social media.

Is your company completely ready for AI? Probably not.

CIOs must emerge as the leader on AI for the entire business. The AI research we commissioned Forrester to execute revealed that there are numerous uncoordinated AI projects happening across the company. Lines-of-business leaders initiated most AI deployment efforts. Often, they engage IT for support. But, approximately 15% to 20% of time, IT is completely in-the-dark. Why?

There is little doubt that IT is best positioned to lead all AI projects across the company. In fact, involving IT has compounding AI benefits. Companies that involve IT are 3x more likely to adopt machine learning platforms and 2x as likely to adopt deep learning platforms. On the other side of the equation, firms with lines of business who go it alone explore and adopt about half the number of AI building blocks.

At least part of the reason why lines-of-business are bypassing IT is the lack of a modernized data center. IT owns the technology infrastructure, data, and software applications. IT is best positioned to serve as a hub for all AI initiatives and can connect to outside data sources and interconnect internal data sources across business units. But, the reality is that most data centers are not ready for AI initiatives. Respondents stated that some of their most challenging infrastructure issues for AI strategies were around server automation and security. Plus, 61% said they lacked servers with purpose-built processors like GPUs and FPGAs.

How to prepare for AI initiatives in the data center

We asked Forrester to put together a checklist to help CIOs lead AI in their company. It’s a great place to start because it includes strategic, tactical, and practical guidance backed by data. Some of the recommendations focus on the organization. Some focus on modernizing the infrastructure.

Modernized infrastructure to support AI usually starts with new servers. It’s critical that these new servers support GPUs and FPGAs. CPUs are great for serial processing. GPUs and FPGAs are great for parallel processing. When computational tasks can be performed in parallel, the server offloads them to the GPU or FPGA. This frees up the CPU and is the key to cut learning times down from days and weeks to minutes and hours.

Just a few short years ago, servers with specialized parallel processing capabilities were limited. These server platforms were expensive and so were the GPUs they needed. Today, things are different. The Dell EMC PowerEdge portfolio is packed with servers that are purpose-built to handle AI and machine learning. Late last year, we rolled out the PowerEdge C4140, which is an ultra-dense, accelerator optimized platform that can support 2 CPUs and 2 GPUs in a 1U space. Today, we further extend our commitment to AI with the announcement of two new 4-socket servers.

◈ The PowerEdge R840 is a dense, 2U platform with support for up to 4 Intel CPUs and up to 2 GPUs or up to 2 FPGAs. It’s geared to turbocharge data analytics with its flexible performance and capacity options including a 24 NVMe drive configuration and significant storage space.

◈ The PowerEdge R940xa is a 4U platform built for extreme acceleration. It supports a 1:1 CPU to GPU ratio with up to 4 Intel CPUs and up to 4 GPUs or up to 8 FPGAs. Large internal storage (with up to 32 drives) provides an alternative to rising cloud fees and security risks.

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Architectural Tenets of Deep Learning

Lately, I have spent large swaths of my time focused on Deep Learning and Neural Networks (either with customers or in our lab). One of the most common questions that I get is around underperforming model training with regard to “wall clock time.” This has more to do with focusing on only one aspect of their architecture, say GPUs. As such, I will spend a little time writing about the 3 fundamental tenets for a successful Deep Learning architecture. These fundamental tenants are: compute, file access, and bandwidth. Hopefully, this will resonate and help provide some thoughts for those customers on their journey.

Overview

Deep Learning (DL) is certainly all the rage. We are defining DL as a type of Machine Learning (ML) built on a deep hierarchy of layers, with each layer solving different pieces of a complex problem. These layers are interconnected into a “neural network.”

The use cases that I am presented with continue to grow exponentially with very compelling financial return on investments. Whether it is Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for Computer Vision or Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) for Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Deep Belief Networks (DBN) for Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs), Deep Learning has many architectural structures and acronyms. There is some great Neural Network information out there. Pic 1 is a good representation of the structural layers for Deep Learning on Neural Networks:

Orchestration

Orchestration tools like BlueData, Kubernetes, Mesosphere, or Spark Cluster Manager are the top of the layer cake of implementing Deep Learning with Neural Networks. These provide scheduler and possibility container capabilities to the stack. This layer is the most visible to the Operations team running the Deep Learning environment. There are certainly pros and cons to the different orchestration layers, but that is a topic for another blog.

Deep Learning Frameworks

Caffe2, CNTK, Pikachu, PyTorch, or Torch. One of these is a cartoon game character. The rest sound like they could be in a game, but they are some of the blossoming frameworks that support Deep Learning with Neural Networks. Each framework has their pros and cons with different training libraries and different neural networks structures (s) for different use cases. I regularly see a mix of frameworks within Deep Learning environments and the Framework chosen rarely changes the 3 tenets for architecture.

Architectural Tenets

I’ll use an illustrative use case to highlight the roles of the architectural tenets below. Since the Automotive industry has Advanced Driving (ADAS) and Financial Services have Trader Surveillance use cases, we will explore a CNN with Computer Vision. Assume a 16K resolution image that stores around 1 gigabyte (GB) in a file on storage and has 132.7 million pixels.

Compute

To dig right in, the first architectural tenet is Compute. The need for compute is one of those self-obvious elements of Deep Learning. Whether you use GPU, CPU, or a mix tends to result from which neural network structure (CNNs vs RNNs vs DBNs), use cases, or preferences. The internet is littered with benchmarks postulating CPUs vs GPUs for different structures and models. GPUs are the mainstay that I regularly see for Deep Learning on Neural Networks, but each organization has their own preferences based on past experiences, budget, data center space, and network layout. The overwhelming DL need for Compute is for lots of it.

If we examine our use case of the 16K image, the CNN will dictate how the image is addressed. The Convolutional Layer or the first layer of a CNN will parse out the pixels for analysis. 132.7M pixels will be fed to 132.7M different threads for processing. Each compute thread will create an activation map or feature map that helps to weight the remaining CNN layers. Since this volume of threads for a single job is rather large, the architecture discussion around concurrency versus recursion of the neural network certainly evolves from the compute available to train the models.

Embarrassingly Parallel

If we start with the use case, this paints a great story to start with for file access. We already discussed that a 16K resolution image will spawn 132.7 million threads. What we didn’t discuss is that these 132.7 million threads will attempt to read the same 1 GB file. Whether that is at the same time or over a time window depends on the amount of compute available for the model to train with. In a large enough compute cluster, those reads can be simultaneous. This scenario is referred to being “embarrassingly parallel” and there are great sources of information on it. Pic 2 denotes the difference between regular command and control on high performance computing workloads (HPC) with “near embarrassingly parallel” vs embarrassingly parallel in Deep Learning.

In most scale up storage technologies, embarrassingly parallel file requests lead to increased latency as more threads open the file. This eventually leads to a logarithmic asymptote that approaches infinity with enough file opens. This means that the more threads that open will often never complete until the concurrency level on the file open is reduced.

In true scale out technologies, embarrassingly parallel file opens are a mathematical function of bandwidth per storage chassis and number of opens requested per neural network structure.

Massive Bandwidth

I am often told that latency matters in storage. I agree for certain use cases. I do not agree with Deep Learning. Latency is a single stream function of a single process. When 132.7M files read the same file in an embarrassingly parallel fashion, it is all about the bandwidth. A lack of significant forethought into how the compute layer gets “fed” with data is the biggest mistake I see in most Deep Learning architectures. It accounts for most of the wall clock time delays that customers focus on.

While there is no right answer as to what constitutes “fast enough” for feeding the Deep Learning structures, there certainly is “good enough”. Good enough usually starts with a scale out storage architecture that allows a great mix of spindle to network feeds. 15GB per second for a 4 rack unit chassis with 60 drives is a good start.

Wrap Up

In summary, Deep Learning with Neural Networks is a blossoming option in the analytics arsenal. Its use cases are growing quite regularly with good results. The architecture should be approached holistically though instead of just focusing on one aspect of the equation. The production performance of the architecture will suffer depending on which tenet is skimped on. We regularly have conversations with customers around their architectures and welcome a more in-depth conversation around your journey.

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Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance is Now Even Better

The Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) has become more advanced with simpler management and monitoring, increased cloud-readiness with cloud disaster recovery and improved data protection for VMware workloads.

IDPA, launched last year, is converged data protection appliance that offers integrated protection storage and software, search and analytics, and cloud tier for long-term retention.

Powerful Ease of Use: Centralized Management and Monitoring

IDPA now boasts a new IDPA System Manager UI for centralized monitoring and management with easy-to-use intuitive navigation.

The IDPA System Manager helps organizations looking to modernize their infrastructure to simplify backups and automate tasks, including monitoring, management and reporting. Users are able to monitor and manage IDPA for the majority of their daily activities from a centralized, customizable dashboard.

Comprehensive reporting is also included to ensure visibility into the backup environment, and it is available on-demand with a single click.

Watch the video:

Modern and Comprehensive Cloud-Readiness Across Cloud Journey

Modern and efficient cloud readiness is the centerpiece of Dell EMC products and strategy. We continue to evolve our products to support all aspects customers cloud journey. IDPA was launched with native Cloud-tiering for long-term retention and archiving to public or private cloud.

With this release, we are introducing Cloud Disaster Recovery for IDPA. This new add-on feature enables virtual machine images protected on IDPA to be copied to object storage within Amazon Web Services for a modern, cost-efficient disaster recovery solution that takes advantage of the cloud. This service enables the orchestration and automation of disaster recovery (DR) testing, DR fail-over and failback to/from the cloud in a disaster scenario. No data protection infrastructure is needed for the failover/recovery within AWS, and no compute resources are needed until a failover occurs, greatly reducing costs. With Cloud Disaster Recovery, IDPA enables customers to leverage cloud across diverse cloud use-cases and benefit from the cloud economics and efficiencies for data protection with minimal additional learning or operational costs.

Wait, there’s more… VMware functionality and operational improvements

IDPA now also offers VM file-level recovery, enabling recovery of multiple files, single files or folders.

And, we’ve made many more operational improvements —making modern and simple IDPA even easier to maintain.

With this new version, IDPA takes a massive step forward by providing enhanced simplicity, ease of use and more powerful data protection for our customers and help them take advantage of the cloud as part of their data protection.

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Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance – Innovation Without Compromise

We are delivering a major leap in data protection with the new Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA), which will enable our customers to transform their protection environments.

IDPA is a new pre-integrated, turnkey appliance that is simple to deploy and scale, and delivers holistic data protection with comprehensive feature-set and broad workload coverage. IDPA is specifically designed to solve increasingly complex data protection challenges of modern enterprises.

So, why Integrated Data Protection Appliance and why now?

Business and technology landscapes continue to evolve. Data growth and democratization are enabling more powerful next gen applications. Businesses are increasingly leveraging cloud for flexibility, agility and economics. Business cycles continue to shrink and the pressure continues to mount for organizations to invest in future-proof technologies with faster time to value.

For most organizations today, trying to meet these challenges results in fragmented data protection environments with multiple point products and protection siloes for different applications and platforms.  The end result is significantly increased time to value, costs and complexity, and lower reliability.

Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) is purpose-built to solve the data protection challenges facing the modern enterprises.

Dell EMC IDPA is a pre-integrated, modern, holistic and future proof solution that is:

Converged and Comprehensive

IDPA offers next-generation of data protection convergence by converging across four key vectors:

◈ Protection storage, software, search, and analytics integrated into a single appliance, accelerating the time to protect by 10X.

◈ Protection across a wide and diverse application ecosystem, both physical and virtual, and support for multiple hypervisors (vSphere and HyperV).

◈ Efficient protection and accelerated recovery leveraging the power of flash

◈ Extends data protection seamlessly from data centers to private and public clouds with native cloud-tiering for long term retention

And IDPA offers customers one-stop support for the entire appliance eliminating the overhead and risks associated with working with multiple vendors and support organizations

Fast and Modern

IDPA is specifically designed for enterprise needs for IT transformation. It delivers support for modern applications like MongoDB, Hadoop, MySQL, provides boosted application direct protection, is optimized for applications and VMware with faster performance and instant recoverability – up to 20 percent faster than our closest competition, and is built on industry-proven data invulnerability architecture (DIA) for encryption, fault detection and healing.

High-Value and Low-TCO: IDPA delivers an average of 55:1 data reduction with the leading deduplication technology for on-premise and cloud. Furthermore, it enables customers to start small and grow as they need, and scale without overhead.

Flexibility and choice to fit your needs

Dell EMC IDPA will be in 4 different models to fit the needs of enterprise and mid-size businesses, with capacity for the entry level IDPA (DP5300) starting at 34 TB usable capacity with the highest end IDPA (DP8800) scaling up to 1 PB usable capacity.

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The Legacy Continues with the OptiPlex XE3

I don’t think you can ever truly imagine the future without reflecting on the past. The brand-new OptiPlex XE3 – powered by Intel – is a great case in point. Building on the legacy of its predecessors, it expands our industrial rugged portfolio and reinforces our commitment to client-embedded platforms.

The next installment of the story

Fast forward to 2013 when we welcomed its successor, the OptiPlex XE2. With the change from the desktop chassis and a riser card to a mini tower with four full height slots, the XE2 was more expandable and less complex to add legacy PCI and PCIe add-in cards.

This second-generation product certainly reassured customers that we were in the industrial rugged desktop space for the long haul. Customers loved the longevity and the ability to use the product under tough environmental conditions.

A slew of rugged announcements

Building on this success, we had a slew of rugged announcements with our Dell Edge Gateway 5000  range launching in 2015, followed a year later by our entry into the Embedded PC market.

For me, 2017 was a stand-out year for our rugged portfolio. In February, we celebrated the launch of the Dell Edge Gateway 3000 series – powered by Intel – and closed the year by launching the small but mighty PowerEdge XR2 (Intel Xeon SP based,) part of our family of 14th generation servers.

Industrial grade features from a tier one vendor

Two Dell Optiplex XE3 desktop computersToday, the legacy continues with the launch of the brand-new OptiPlex XE3, the highest performing and most expandable industrial grade PC yet from a tier-one vendor. Available in a smaller mini tower and small form factor chassis with integrated wireless LAN, the OptiPlex XE3 offers OEM industrial grade features, allowing the product to be integrated into larger equipment solutions.

Key markets

Think medical equipment (mass spectrometry, liquid analysis and oncology solutions), retail (banking ATM/cash machines, photo processing kiosks, point of sale terminals) and industrial automation (industrial control systems for manufacturing lines or oil and gas exploration). If you could zoom into the innards of these machines, you would see the OptiPlex XE3, using the new 8th Gen Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor integrated as part of the total solution.

Marine-certified

And if your equipment solution is at sea, there’s no need for a special air-conditioned room. The OptiPlex XE3 has earned its sea legs with marine certification under its belt. In addition to the medical, industrial automation, marine, retail and hospitality markets, we’re also seeing growing interest in the product from video surveillance experts, particularly for use in outdoor stadiums.

Tough and reliable

Why is this product so ideal for these scenarios? The OptiPlex XE3 is a robust, fan-cooled system, offering high performance, reliability and scalability. Resistant to shock and vibration, this little beauty is capable of operating in temperatures of 0C – 45c° (113F°) and rises to the challenge of being enclosed in a tight space like a kiosk with little air flow and no easy access for service. For ultra-tough environments, optional dust filters are also available.

Failure is not an option

For customers in these scenarios, failure is a no-go. After all, a doctor needs to rely 1000 percent on the availability of diagnostic tools to support patients. We all expect ATMs to dispense cash 365 days of the year. If you’re running a manufacturing plant, the last thing you need is unexpected downtime.

Long life platform

As a result, performance, durability and a guaranteed long life up to five years without technology churn are all critical factors for these customers. Why is long life so important? The reality is that some customers don’t need or want to deal with updating their specialist, high-cost equipment every two years.

Moreover, many of these industries are highly regulated with any new products or components having to undergo lengthy validation and certification. Instead, these customers need a partner and a stable platform they can rely on to retain essential services or bring new solutions to market. If that’s the case, we’ve got you covered!

Tough without sacrificing on performance

I believe that the OptiPlex XE3 is the ideal solution if you’re looking for an industrial-tough desktop with business class performance, security and manageability, backed up the reassurance of our award-winning ProSupport service and support, powered by the new 8th Gen Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor.

The legacy of the OptiPlex XE series continues while we continue our march on the industrial rugged market!

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