Storage Center OS 7.3 Brings Big Performance Boost to SC Series Arrays

Dell EMC just released for general availability the latest in beef-up and bulk-out SC Series storage performance. This new firmware release doubles the maximum IOPS achievable across every array model.

That, by itself, is great news. But it gets better — if you already have an SC Series array 2, you get all this goodness at no cost. It’s a simple software upgrade to your existing SC Series arrays. There are several new enhancements that come with the Storage Center OS (SCOS) 7.3 release, two of which include: maximum capacity increases and the introduction of 100/25Gb iSCSI.

Read on to learn more about some of the huge benefits of this upgrade, and find links to more detailed information on each of those benefits.

Let’s talk performance

Every environment appreciates more performance. The SCOS 7.3 release changes how many array processes are performed, and as mentioned above, results in increased performance.

Distributed spare

Another source of increased performance with SCOS 7.3 is through the addition of the distributed spare feature. Distributed sparing increases performance in two ways: First, by distributing the spare drive capacity over all drives in use, the RAID rebuild time required when the spare space is required has been dramatically reduced by as much as 500%.

Distributed spare space (blue) reserved on each disk drive

In addition, since all the drives in the system are now participating in data storage and activities with that data, what used to be an idle device (disk or SSD) is now included in the overall performance capabilities — more active drives equals more performance. Find more detailed information and benefits in the distributed spare white paper and distributed spare video.

Live Volume

Live Volume enhancements have arrived with SCOS 7.3 as well. ALUA (Asymmetric Logical Unit Access) functionality has been included in Live Volume to enable a more robust path selection through preferred path policies — keeping storage traffic on the local higher-performing paths when available, for both VMware and Microsoft environments.

Uniform Live Volume with ALUA and Round Robin PSP

Additionally, using the new Storage Replication Adapter, Live Volume can now be implemented in conjunction with VMware Site Recovery Manager. You can find a lot more details surrounding Live Volume, including the new enhancements like an increase in scalability, in this Live Volume white paper.

Investment protection with SC4020 data-in-place upgrade

Here’s a scenario most don’t look forward to. You bought a great new array a couple years ago, and it was filled with high-performance flash storage. It’s working great, but you really want to move to a newer model with even better performance or increased capacity. If that new array you bought a couple years back was the SC4020 array, you’re in good shape now. We now offer data-in-place upgrades from the SC4020 to the SC5020 or SC7020.

Data-in-place upgrade moves disks and enclosures to the new array

The data-in-place upgrade solution brief covers the details on your upgrade options, upgrade limitations and what to expect when performing the upgrade.

Management and monitoring

Starting with SCOS 7.3, SC Series storage arrays can now be managed using Unisphere for SC Series and Unisphere Central for SC Series — both of which are HTML5 applications. Yep, no need for Java for day-to-day management of your SC Series arrays.

To clarify, if you are accustomed to using Dell Storage Manager to connect directly to an array for management, you would now use Unisphere for SC Series. If your environment utilized the Dell Storage Manager Data Collector, you would now use Unisphere Central for SC Series. Here is a Unisphere for SC Series video that walks through the interface.

Additionally, Dell EMC Cloud IQ can now be used for monitoring SC Series environments; enabling central monitoring, predictive analytics and proactive health for both Dell EMC Unity and SC Series storage platforms — in one window.

Huge performance increase with zero hardware changes

Again, aside from the SC4020 data-in-place upgrade, you get all of these enhancement and performance boosts with no required hardware changes. They are all unlocked with a simple firmware upgrade. Talk to your Dell EMC sales team or contact Dell EMC Support to get your array upgraded to the latest SCOS 7.3 code today. And in the meantime, be sure to check out the wealth of information you can find online at Dell.com/StorageResources.

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New Dell EMC Unity OE 4.4 Blends Midrange Vision with Innovative Enterprise Features

New Software Update to Dell EMC Unity Blends Midrange Vision with Innovative Enterprise Features

Innovation plays a significant role in Dell EMC’s midrange product strategy as we solve customer problems, lower costs, and drive customer satisfaction. Innovation is the reason customers helped grow Dell EMC Unity to more than $2B in sales and officially shipping over ONE Exabyte of raw flash capacity since its debut in May 2016. Customers recognize Dell EMC Unity helps their businesses grow in today’s competitive markets.

At Dell EMC, we understand that product quality, reliability and investment protection are critical attributes to our customers and partners. We remain committed to address these attributes and help customers accelerate their IT Transformation goals. The technology capabilities in Dell EMC Unity consistently enable businesses to rapidly respond to change and grow without interruption. Whether your company is coping with availability, performance, data protection, security, multi-cloud agility, or a variety of other challenging business demands, Dell EMC Unity is built to address all of these and more!

Complete Array-based Replication Solutions

With the new Operating Environment (OE) 4.4 software release, Dell EMC Unity provides a complete complement of array-based replication with MetroSync for File. All synchronous and asynchronous block & file replication options are now included with every Hybrid and All-Flash configuration. Nothing else is needed to ensure continuous operations of applications with rapid recovery and automated failover for both planned and unplanned events. These replication options combine to improve transactional application data RPO and RTO. Whether the operational need is for file or block, synchronous, or asynchronous replication, Dell EMC Unity supports it.

Complete Data Services & Data Efficiency

How much data services software is needed to store, manage, and protect data, or move data to the cloud? Dell EMC Unity’s all-inclusive software provides everything you’ll need – at no additional cost. While some vendors have expensive add-on software licenses, Dell EMC Unity includes all software, including RecoverPoint for VMs and AppSync. Inline compression and deduplication are included too, providing maximum data efficiency.

Cloud-based Storage Analytics

Dell EMC Unity includes CloudIQ, a native cloud-based application that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to proactively provide a comprehensive health score for each array. This helps customers identify and understand potential issues in their storage environment. We know that array element managers are essential for routine operations such as configuring and managing your storage. Unisphere for example provides deeper layers of information that support the daily management of data and physical infrastructure. CloudIQ can take proactive array monitoring to new heights, and is updated monthly to bring you a regular cadence of new capabilities.

CloudIQ collects performance, capacity, system, configuration, and array protection data to instantly analyze and provide information about the health and status of the array. Information such as performance anomalies, capacity planning statistics and efficiency ratios are just a few of the insights you’ll get from this zero footprint, highly intuitive, browser-based application. CloudIQ provides administrators technical details about what is happening in their storage environments and how they can optimize for the best return on their investment.

Of Course, Architecture Matters

Your Dell EMC Unity investment is architected to always work 24×7 for your business. Being a a true active-active architecture means both controllers are active and serving IOs and accessing the drives concurrently from each controller. This simply means continuous access and optimizing your investment while you access the data without concern for availability or performance. As a customer, we’ve even made it easy to upgrade your Dell EMC Unity fully online when you need more capacity and performance through data-in-place upgrade support. After all, architecture matters!

What Else is New in Dell EMC Unity OE 4.4?

Midrange customers have evolved to a point where they need much of the same sophisticated and innovative solutions that large global enterprises use to store and manage data. Dell EMC Unity has been designed to be a complete enterprise-class solution with exceptional economics and flexibility to help our customers modernize their data centers and transform IT.

Our product development is focused on solving your business challenges, and we’ll provide solutions that are automated, intelligent, flexible, and economical. Unrelenting attention to our customers keeps us #1, guides our development, and ultimately unleashes a product portfolio that’s hard to beat.

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Productivity Plus with New Dell P Series Monitors

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all: The World’s favorite monitor brand1 is back with a range of new and innovative features aimed at revolutionizing productivity. Introducing the new Dell P Series Monitors.

Boasting multiple productivity-boosting features, including a compact design that frees up desk space, simplified USB-C connectivity, great usability and trusted reliability, now your customers’ workforce can experience and accomplish more faster on powerful monitors specifically designed to let them work the way they like in a clutter-free environment.

Seeing is achieving – more

When considering the needs of the transforming workforce, a dual-monitor setup with a large screen estate and minimized clutter are key to maximized productivity. With an upgraded design that’s perfect for evolving workspaces requiring more compact desks and components on the desk, the new P Series Monitors offer a slimmer profile and reduced base that’s ~23% smaller than its predecessor.2 Advance your customers’ workforce experience with 3-sided, ultra-thin bezels for seamless viewing, then move them to a dual-monitor setup. Dual monitors, together with Dell’s MDS19 Dual Monitor Stands, deliver maximum viewing comfort and productivity – up to 18% greater productivity than with a single monitor3 – perfect for those workers who spend most of their working day at their desk.

Users can also multi-task with ease with Dell Display Manager’s Easy Arrange feature. They’ll be able to quickly tile and view multiple applications across screens, selecting from up to 38 predefined templates.

Single cable solution

Let’s face it: Excessive cable clutter and lack of desk space are major setbacks in the workplace. As the need for more efficient workspace steadily increases, the demand for versatile, seamless monitors and viewing experiences has never been greater.

With USB-C connectivity, offered on select new Dell P Series Monitors, users will enjoy reduced cable clutter and simple, easy connectivity. The single cable connection from the monitor to the laptop not only transmits data and video, but also delivers up to 65 watts of power to the laptop.4 It’s the ideal solution for hoteling or hot desk environments, where users need to transition from desk to meeting and back quickly. Plus, thanks to DisplayPort 1.2, your customers can easily and efficiently connect multiple monitors – minus the inconvenience of excessive cables.

Great usability, trusted reliability

Boasting outstanding built-in cable management design, the new P Series Monitors allow users to swivel, pivot, tilt and height adjust the screen to work the way they want. In addition, ComfortView and a flicker-free screen optimize eye comfort for long hours at work. You can further assure your customers that they are in good hands by letting them know our monitors are backed by Advanced Exchange Service5 and Premium Panel Guarantee.6 Upgrade them to optional ProSupport7 for added peace of mind knowing they have 24×7 access to tech support from highly qualified in-region8 ProSupport engineers.

Accessories for every work style

If that’s not enough, your customers will love our tailored range of accessories designed to help them and their end users get the most out of their Dell Monitors. Those working remotely will benefit from the Dell Pro Stereo Soundbar – an innovative sound system that optimizes conference calls and multimedia streaming with exceptional audio clarity. For those who spend the majority of their time at their office desk, they can turn their cubicle into a multi-tasking, performance-enhancing idea factory thanks to the Dell Dual Monitor Stand and the OptiPlex Micro PC.

Spread the word

We’ve built a set of marketing assets that will help expand your revenue potential by putting you at the forefront of your customer communications when explaining the benefits of the new P Series Monitor portfolio.

You can add your own personal touch to these marcom assets for deeper engagement, while the quick-reference call scripts provided will equip your sales force with the right answers when engaging customers.

Find out how you can cross sell these amazing new monitors by reading up on all the benefits our new line of OptiPlex and Latitude products offer.

1 Based on publicly available market data, 2013-2017

2 Based on Dell internal analysis comparing the area of the monitor base on P2719H/P2719HC vs. P2717H.

3 Source: “Dell Displays, Productivity and Satisfaction Single vs. Dual Monitors,” conducted by SURL, Wichita State University and commissioned by Dell, October 2015.

4 Dell adheres to standard USB-C specifications and protocols and the P-series USB-C monitors deliver up to 65W of power. Functionality with non-Dell USB-C systems may vary.

5 Advanced Exchange Service replacement part/unit ships, if needed, after phone/online diagnosis. Fee charged for failure to return defective unit. See Dell.com/servicecontracts.

6 Dell Premium Panel Guarantee – Even if only one bright pixel is found on our select range of monitors, a free panel exchange is guaranteed during the Limited Hardware Warranty period.    For a copy of Limited Hardware Warranty, write to Dell USA LP, Attn: Warranties, One Dell Way, Round Rock, TX 78682 or see Dell.com/warranty.

7 Advanced Exchange Service replacement part/unit ships, if needed, after phone/online diagnosis. Fee charged for failure to return defective unit.  See dell.com/servicecontracts.

8 In some countries, hours for in-region support may vary. Support after local business hours may be provided in a language other than the local language.

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Dell EMC OEM Marine Solutions Help Power Defense Vessels

With advanced vessels ranging from patrol boats to multi-purpose frigates and amphibious ships plus a fleet of high-tech helicopters, navies need reliable, high-performance technology solutions that fit into the tightest of spots, can cope with tough conditions and keep the crew smiling!

Presenting the marine-grade PowerEdge XR2

Take the latest marine-certified addition to the Dell EMC OEM PowerEdge family – the XR2. Part of our latest family of 14th generation servers, the XR2 offers the latest and greatest industry-first security features and enhanced systems management. This server is ideal for naval vessels, where you can’t use a standard-sized server due to space limitations or tough conditions, but you still need reliability and a lot of compute power, close to the action.

Light, tough and resistant

Let’s look at the physical side first. The XR2 measures just 52.5 cm (20.67 inches) rack depth and is lightweight at a maximum weight of 13kg (28lbs). It is resistant to shock and vibration plus capable of operating in temperatures of up to 45 degrees C° (113F°). In fact, it can tolerate 55 degrees C° for up to eight hours. Compliant with DNV, IEC 60945, and MIL-STD-810G, the XR2 has optional, rugged sliding rails for installation in standard four-post racks or in transit cases.

All in a day’s work

Of course, navies use the world’s most sophisticated surveillance and intelligence gathering systems to identify threats and maintain strategic superiority.

Perhaps, you’re running covert naval surveillance operations while having to contend with vibrations caused by waves and high winds? Alternatively, you might be part of the navy’s regional security and international peacekeeping or disaster-relief operations. Maybe, you’re rescuing people at sea, protecting shipping or preventing illegal fishing and drug-running?

Analytics at the Edge

Without a server, you have no way of filtering data, making calculations on the fly, or conducting analytics at the edge. Everything must go back to the data centre, resulting in delays, possible security concerns and negative impact to cost, bandwidth, latency and storage. The good news is that in all these scenarios, the XR2 rises beautifully to the challenge.

Additional authentication

In addition to the standard PowerEdge security features, a common access card reader on the XR2 provides additional authentication. All you need do is simply remove the common access card reader and the server is immediately rendered useless with all the data automatically encrypted.

We all know a picture paints a thousand words so let’s look at a couple of real-world examples of technology in action.

It’s good to connect

One customer offers a VoIP-based switching solution for naval communication, delivering future-ready voice and data communications. In this instance, all of the switching functions are implemented in software, hosted on the Dell EMC PowerEdge XR2 and Dell EMC Storage Virtual Rack MD3 OEMR platforms.

Monitoring the vibrations

Carried on some naval vessels, Delta RIBs are 7m long high speed boats, used to board other ships. For health and safety reasons, one of our naval customers monitors the vibrations its team is exposed to when working on the RIB. Each individual wears an individual sensor pack, which connects wirelessly to a Dell Edge Gateway, which is located on the RIB and powered by the boat’s battery. The Gateway collects the vibration metrics from each sensor pack, logs it and calculates the vibrations experienced by each individual.

Ensuring maritime security

In the marketplace, we are also seeing that navies are increasingly using the power of IT technology to ensure maritime security. Countries like Italy and France are upgrading their fleets and investing in the European multi-purpose frigate (FREMM), which provides the latest in navigation systems and weaponry.

In Italy, for example, our systems integrator partner, Irene is using our Embedded Box PC 5000 to help naval technology experts use the latest x64 technology in state-of-the-art radar and navigation systems. Recognising the limited space available on board, our combined solution is four times more compact than the standard naval-grade option while still delivering over four times greater workstation performance.

Dell EMC OEM is proud to work with navies around the world to help secure staff safety, improve communications and support maritime security.

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An Easy Way to Drive IT Transformation Engagement

Use our free ESG online assessment tool to help customers to assess their IT Transformation maturity

Organizations of all sizes need to transform their IT to remain competitive, but many haven’t yet taken any action to do so. You can become the go-to partner for IT Transformation, helping them to get to grips with the issues and acting as a trusted advisor to guide them through every stage of the process.

To help you convince your customers and prospects of the benefits of modernizing and automating their IT, we’ve developed a dedicated low-cost campaign strategy that you can use to drive engagement and demonstrate the value of IT Transformation.

Tap into a massive market opportunity

IT Transformation represents a huge business opportunity for Dell EMC partners – and we’re committed to supporting and helping you to stake your claim to a share of the market.

When influential industry analyst ESG surveyed more than 4,000 companies in 16 countries worldwide to ask about their approach to and progress with IT Transformation, it found that 81% of the survey respondents agreed that if they fail to embrace IT transformation, their company will not be able to remain competitive.1

While many organizations reported having IT Transformation initiatives underway, only 6% had already achieved fully transformed status1 – leaving a massive market opportunity open to you.

Whatever their current awareness of the need for change, you’re uniquely positioned to support and guide customers on their journey as they start to make the fundamental move of modernizing and automating their IT.

Connected content to drive engagement

Our over-arching IT Transformation campaign comes with a full range of supporting resources and marketing materials for you to use with your customers and prospects. Each asset is aligned to a specific stage of the buyer’s journey – from explore to decision – to deliver connected content at every step. These are all available on your Digital Marketing Platform.

Campaign strategy 3 within our IT Transformation campaign enables you to adopt a low-cost, consultative approach to promoting the business benefits of IT Transformation. You can leverage our free ESG assessment tool to drive engagement – in a 1-2-1 environment, via a digital marketing campaign or perhaps by running a dedicated customer event.

Help customers to assess their IT Transformation maturity

Thanks for significant upfront investment by Dell EMC, you’re able to take advantage of free access to an ESG online assessment tool that shows where an organization ranks along the IT Transformation Maturity Curve.

The free ESG online assessment tool is based on the quantitative data gleaned from the aforementioned ESG research and this can be filtered by specific region or industry to show a customer their company’s IT Transformation maturity level based on that benchmark study.

Customers and prospects alike will be able to compare their score to industry peers and get a customized analysis with the results identifying recommended next steps to accelerate IT Transformation – all in about 5 minutes.

You can also offer access to the tool to any organizations that have already embarked on their IT Transformation journey – use it to confirm their transformation status against recognized ESG benchmarks, provide ideas for how they could transform further and help them position their company ahead of key competitors.

Demonstrate the value of IT Transformation

While the act of modernizing and automating IT systems and software holistically to improve operations and processes is a major endeavor, ESG’s research shows that IT Transformation delivers real business benefits. The full findings are detailed in an ESG Research Insights Paper2 that’s also available for you to download and share with your customers.

> Watch the short summary video here

It’s easy to leverage the online assessment tool to demonstrate the value of IT Transformation to customers at all stages of their exploratory and decision-making journey.

5 steps to access and activate the ESG assessment tool:

1. Log into the Digital Marketing Platform, click ‘Build a Campaign/Get Started’ and go to the IT Transformation campaign – you’ll find all the assets that can be activated through the platform.

2. Under Web Plugins you will see ESG Maturity Tool. Highlight this and de-select all other assets, then select Continue at the top of the page.

3. Review all the components of the assessment tool and co-brand it to make it your own.

4. Follow the step-by-step wizard in the yellow box at the top of the page and it will show you to how to either copy the link to share it or embed the tool into your own website, social or emails.

5. You can find further guidance on how to activate a web plugin in this quick step-by-step video

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Advancing Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack with Greater Performance, Management and Flexibility

Last year at Inspire, Microsoft announced the availability of Microsoft Azure Stack, a true hybrid cloud platform. At the time, Dell EMC had already announced that we were partnering with Microsoft to bring the value of a combined Dell EMC and Microsoft Azure Stack offering to market. Since then, we’ve seen a tremendous response to the offering.

In less than 12 months, we have customers of all sizes, across multiple verticals including finance, manufacturing, public sector and cloud service providers. Not only have we seen such a great response to our offering, we’ve also heard from our partners and customers on what they’d like to see moving forward.

While standardization is key to any successful hybrid cloud deployment, we recognize the need to allow for some flexibility built into our offering including configurations and integrations, as well as how the solution can be more flexibly acquired. With the feedback we’ve received, we’ve further strengthened our offer over the past few months. Our goal is to ensure that Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack helps provide an IT transformation path for our partners and customers by boasting the following enhancements:

◈ All-flash:  We now have an all flash VxRack Azure Stack (AS) configuration option, which includes 25G ToR (top of rack) switches. Predictable performance and low latency are just the beginning. Customers will also benefit from a smaller footprint, lower power and cooling requirements and more. We will continue to offer hybrid offerings, as well, allowing you to choose the storage components of your VxRack AS platform.

◈ Automated Infrastructure Patch and Update: Automated HCI Patch and Update is available in preview now! This is an industry exclusive feature—no other Azure Stack vendor offers this.  Why is this important? Remember, there are two separate processes for Patch and Update on Azure Stack.  The first is the Azure Stack software, which is handled via updates on a nearly monthly cadence from Microsoft through the Azure Stack Administrator Portal. That still leaves the hardware components, which need to follow a similar process as the Azure Stack software to avoid unnecessary disruption to the Azure Stack services. When manually done, this can be extremely time consuming as each node needs to be brought in and out of maintenance mode individually with multiple steps per-node. Each hardware vendor provides step-by-step guidance on how to do this, and the process takes several hours to complete. Dell EMC’s exclusive orchestration tool allows customers to update the firmware on their entire VxRack AS scale unit in one step.  This is the “easy button” that customers have come to expect of all Dell EMC HCI products and allows customers to spend more time focusing on business-value initiatives.

◈ SecureVM and Geo-fencing:  SecureVM is now integrated with Azure Stack and available through the Azure Stack Marketplace! You can run your key management in public Azure or Azure Stack, and the VM extensions for Linux and Windows VMs allow customers to enforce policies that dictate the circumstances under which keys are released—and it even includes geo-fencing.

Our enhancements don’t stop within the infrastructure. We’ve also begun to add flexibility and choice to how our partners and customers can consume our Azure Stack offering:

◈ Flexible consumption: We now offer flexible consumption of hybrid cloud through Cloud Flex as a way to acquire Azure Stack, enabling partners and customers to leverage cloud-like economics by consuming Azure Stack as an operating expense. By extending Cloud Flex to the Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack, we are responding to our customers’ request for a consumption solution that drives lower costs, the ability to right-size technology and facilitates a smooth transition to hybrid cloud. The Cloud Flex Program for channel partners is simple to execute and provides partners with a predictable profit stream based on the duration of customer usage.

Already built on the industry-leading  hyper-converged infrastructure systems portfolio (with Dell EMC VxRack), Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is now even more robust than before, and we expect customers and partners to continue to find success as they continue their IT transformations.

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Getting Lost at the Edge

It’s hard to read any technology blog, research report, announcement or interview without seeing the word “edge.” It’s becoming almost as commonplace as “cloud,” and can be equally confusing. The concept isn’t necessarily new, however.

Before the term “edge” caught fire, we had a long history of decentralizing applications and services—Content delivery networks (CDNs), DNS proxies and DDoS systems are all founded on the principle that the laws of large numbers (“too much” or “too many” of anything) require distribution for efficiency.

I often see “edge” used in specific contexts, such as:

◈ A set of products: “Hey, look at our edge portfolio, specifically designed for the challenges YOU have at YOUR edge”

◈ A physical/geographic location: “YOUR facilities are not ready to enable the edge”

◈ Infrastructure transformation: “YOUR edge is dumb. We can make it SMART”

◈ A new business model or service offering: “Services and applications are moving to the edge”

None of these statements are wrong, per se—which is why the conversations continue—but none of them are necessarily right, either. What do these statements actually tell us about what the edge is and what problems the edge can solve?

First, in the interest of clarity, I think about “edge” in two different contexts:

◈ The access edge is a terminating point of one network (i.e., the SP) and another network (i.e., the enterprise). In this scenario, one network is using the other for access to content/services/applications. I would categorize SD-WAN and IoT as lead examples here.

◈ The network edge is an aggregation point within one network (i.e., the SP). In this scenario, the network is providing a platform for content/services/applications (including network functions) to be offered to others. I would categorize edge clouds (IaaS/PaaS) and data center transformations, such as Central Office Re-Architected as Data Centers (CORD) as initiatives here.

Secondly, I think about “edge” in terms of use cases:

◈ Dynamic content – “too much” localized content consumption yields new delivery model

◈ Highly interactive applications – “too many” paths yields decentralized aggregation points

◈ Big data business models – “too much” content yields distributed data processing

◈ Security – “too many” threat vectors yields localized enforcement points

◈ IoT – “too many” devices yields decentralized platforms

And there are many more (“too much” bandwidth = distribution of NFV user planes), and nuanced (“too much” power consumption = centralized Radio Access Networks) use cases.

Dell Technologies is focused on just about all of them, from joint innovation with component suppliers and solutions development with ISV partners, to industry-wide initiatives, and customer-specific architectures and engagements. The problem space is large, diverse and complex. So rather than trying to shoehorn everything into a single Dell Technologies edge strategy, we’re taking more of a market-centric approach to edge implementation.

However, rather than share (as some of our competitors have done) a proposed list of investments we plan to make or things we plan to do, I submit for your reading pleasure a (non-exhaustive) list of things Dell Technologies is actually DOING related to the “edge:”

◈ Dell EMC is a leader in modular data centers (MDCs), allowing our customers to re-define where the “Edge” actually is, and putting IT where it needs to be, rather than in facilities built for where it needed to be in the past. Dell EMC delivers MDCs in different scale and form factors to best meet customer needs. These MDCs also include complete remote management capabilities.

◈ Dell EMC offers a broad range of Power Edge Servers and subset of these servers are also offered in ruggedized and short-depth form factors for edge deployments, such as the Dell EMC PowerEdge XR2.

◈ Dell EMC also enables accelerators based on FPGAs and GPUs that can be used to accelerate network services, analytics and customer applications at the edge.

◈ Dell has an entire range of Edge Gateways specifically focused on IoT.

◈ Dell is a founding member of EdgeX Foundry, focused on building a common, open framework for IoT edge computing.

◈ Dell EMC Networking has launched the Virtual Edge Platform (VEP), a family of Universal CPE focused on the Access Edge, ideally suited for SD-WAN applications.

     ◈ VMware has also acquired VeloCloud to extend its NSX technology with SD-WAN functionality.

◈ Dell EMC Networking has a long history of partnering with leading wireless providers, including Aerohive and Ruckus Networks.

◈ Dell EMC is a Platinum member of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), focused on delivering open reference architectures for the network (or carrier) edge.

◈ VMware has introduced their Virtual Cloud Network, providing a ubiquitous software layer from data center to cloud to edge.

At Dell Technologies, “edge” is more than just a buzzword or a proposed investment, it’s part of our solutions-oriented approach. We’re ready to help you find out what problems the edge can solve for you.

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Boost SDS Performance and Cut Costs with Smarter Networking Solutions

Modern data centers are undergoing a transformation. What used to be an environment focused on client/server technologies and a mixture of closed and open system server, storage and networking devices is changing from both an IT and workforce perspective.

The new data center is focused around serving the unique needs of cloud computing, virtualization, automation and mobile computing. Much of this transition involves shifting away from a hardware-focused data center towards one now described as a software-defined-data-center (SDDC), which takes advantage of unique software-focused capabilities to help simplify the deployment, operation and management of devices in the data center. Organizations are embracing this transition toward software-based server and storage platforms, while also taking a closer look at the key underlying infrastructure that serves as the foundation for this modern data center – the network.

This new Dell EMC guide, “The 5 Surprising Ways Server Technology is Advancing Software Defined Storage” describes how global storage array capacity is quickly migrating toward deployment on software-defined-storage (SDS) or hyper-converged platforms. One of the key observations in this guide is how the underlying server hardware plays a critical role in this migration. As you are investigating a migration to SDS, now is a good time to revisit your underlying network infrastructure to ensure they are optimized to work together and deliver against your SLAs.

Modern data center networking solutions provide beneficial alternatives to older proprietary, closed networking systems that are costly to install and maintain. These new disaggregated “open networking” solutions give IT organizations a broader set of choices including high-performance, low-cost, fixed port switching platforms, a variety of network operating systems, highly efficient data center fabrics, and a wide selection of open source network automation and orchestration tools. These networking solutions empower you with the ability to implement the right technology and solutions that best meet your unique data center interconnectivity needs with platforms that also help lower cooling, power and footprint requirements. More importantly, these open networking solutions offer a variety of network virtualization technologies that can help you complete the vision of a SDDC with software-defined server, storage and network services.

Disaggregation through open networking

As you continue to investigate open networking solutions to ensure the success of your SDS migration, you should also take a closer look at the specific needs of the bandwidth hungry workloads and applications. If high-performance and quick response times are critical to your business, take a look at the latest offerings of 25GbE top-of-rack switches that offer 2.5x the bandwidth over existing 10GbE connections to servers and storage devices within the rack. However, if rack space is at a premium, then you can implement several new high-performance 1RU half-width switches that were specifically designed for SDS and hyper-converged environments.

Dell EMC has been a leading supplier of open networking solutions for over four years and has built up a broad ecosystem of 3rd party OS, network virtualization and management application partners. We also offer a holistic approach to SDS solutions with industry-leading SDS offerings like VxRail, vSAN Ready Nodes and XC which integrate hardware, software and networking components from a single vendor.

Open networking alternatives for HCI configurations

There is a clear trend showing how the shift towards software-defined in data centers is gaining momentum, including SDSage. The clear benefits of cost savings, simplification and automation are helping to fuel this transition. When evaluating the server hardware choices and how they can help optimize SDS environments, it makes sense to also closely examine the underlying network infrastructure and change them together. Modern open networking solutions can help ensure the information flow both within your organization and with customers is optimal, while also helping to reduce expenses and increase efficiency. Dell EMC can help you with your migration to SDS with a broad selection of market-leading server, storage and open networking solutions combined with a global support and services organization.

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How to Bring Order to IoT’s Spaghetti Junction?

When I think about the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), just like pretty much everyone else, I get excited about its huge potential to transform our world through new efficiencies, reduced risk and enabling entirely new business models.

However, I must admit that the second thought that springs into my mind is a picture of spaghetti junction. If you’re designing, developing and deploying IoT solutions, you know exactly what I mean. It’s like that massive highway interchange with so many twists and turns that it seems way too confusing simply to get from point A to point B. The  sheer volume of fragmented M2M and IoT connectivity protocols (both standard and proprietary), or “protocol soup”, as I also like to call it, is one of the most frustrating challenges in realizing the clear benefits from deploying IoT solutions.

An inherently heterogeneous market

The IoT is inherently heterogeneous – a growing collection of technologies, rooted in embedded systems and machine-to-machine communications across countless verticals and use cases. It’s a myriad of hardware types, operating systems and development tools, not to mention a plethora of connectivity standards, many of which are dictated by existing installations that require a gateway to bridge data from sensors and machines to a broader network for analytics-driven ROI. This diversity provides incredible richness but also huge complexity to contend with.

Fragmentation is hindering adoption

In today’s market, selecting technologies and developing an Industrial IoT solution that can quickly deliver ROI can be so complex that it becomes paralyzing. The current fragmented landscape is confusing and has resulted in a patchwork quilt of custom solutions that’s slowing down the overall rate of adoption and general growth of the industry. Ultimately, this is likely to stifle innovation.

Unifying the village

So how do we get to a common center of gravity that allows developers to quickly and easily deploy working Industrial IoT solutions – while still enabling hardware, software and services providers to differentiate and monetize their value-add? At Dell, we’ve always been big believers in openness, choice and driving standards. In fact, we’re members of several IoT alliance/standards activities like the OpenFog Consortium, Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and the OPC Foundation.

These organizations are doing important work to promote reference architectures, facilitate standardization and generally make the solution developer’s job easier. However, as much as we should all be focused on narrowing in on a more manageable collection of standards, the practical reality is that the IoT market is way too complex for there to ever be one standard to rule them all. We therefore need to find a way to help IoT-relevant standards, hardware, operating systems and development tools work together.

Making sense of the spaghetti

Back in 2015, Dell began to think about how best to resolve the problem of rendering all of these fragmented solution ingredients more interoperable. Our take was that in order to speed up market adoption we needed to address key interoperability challenges at the edge of the network, where data flows “north, south, east and west between both standard and proprietary protocols and applications in an intertwined, distributed IoT fog architecture.  Due to the aforementioned spaghetti, the edge is where most of the key challenges in IoT are today.

The answer: an open source platform for edge computing

Fast forward two years and the newly-formed EdgeX FoundryTM Project, hosted by the Linux Foundation, promises to be a game-changer. Seeded by a code donation that was developed by Dell over nearly two years with feedback from hundreds of technology partners and end customers, the charter of this vendor-neutral open source project is to deliver a flexible, industrial-grade edge software platform that can quickly and securely deliver interoperability between things, applications and services across a wide range of IoT use cases.

Similar to Cloud Foundry, the platform leverages a loosely-coupled microservices architecture but it includes a required interoperability foundation that comprehends both IP and non-IP based connectivity and is surrounded by reference services that can be easily replaced with preferred alternatives.

Reducing the need to reinvent the fundamentals

Important to note is that that this is not a new standard – there are plenty of great ones already in existence – rather it’s an industrial-grade software framework that’s purposely architected to be deployed on distributed edge nodes including embedded PCs, gateways and servers and help unify existing standards with plug-and-play commercial value-add such as analytics, security and system management tools, and services. The primary goal of the project is to reduce the need to reinvent the fundamentals while enabling technology providers and end customers alike to focus on value-added differentiation.

Project launch

The project launches this week at the Hannover Messe conference with over 50 founding member organizations, spanning large enterprises to startups with expertise in silicon, sensing and computing infrastructure, analytics, security and system management, services and driving standards. The fact that this is the biggest project launch in the history of the Linux Foundation and that there are already many more companies interested in consuming the EdgeX code on the heels of the launch is testament to the project solving a real problem in the marketplace.

I believe that the EdgeX project will help unite the fragmented IoT market as it quickly matures in the open source community and am proud that Dell planted the seed and has been a part of driving this collaborative industry effort from the very beginning.

Win-win

Big markets are built on interoperability and it’s in everyone’s interest to see a robust ecosystem of companies offering plug-and-play commercial offerings that can be easily combined to create secure and scalable IoT solutions.

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Distributed Analytics Meets Distributed Data

In a poignant example of the power of the concept of distributed, yet collaborative, analytics in-place on a worldwide scale, Patricia Florissi, PhD, Dell EMC, will begin with an example from the healthcare industry, and then take us through a detailed discussion of the World Wide Herd (WWH), a global virtual computing cluster. To understand the concepts and the possibilities, read more in, “Distributed analytics meets distributed data.”

Distributed analytics meets distributed data

To illustrate the power of the concept of distributed, yet collaborative, analytics in-place at worldwide scale, it sometimes helps to begin with an example. In this case, I will start with an example from the healthcare industry, and then dive down into discussion of the World Wide Herd (WWH), a global virtual computing cluster.

Hospitals around the world are moving to value-based healthcare and achieving dramatic reductions in costs. One way to achieve these goals is to make more effective and efficient use of expensive medical diagnostic equipment, such as CT scanners and MRI machines. When a hospital maximizes its utilization of these devices, it increases its ROI and potentially reduces its costs by avoiding the need to buy additional devices. In principle, it is contributing to more affordable care.

With a focus on value-based healthcare, Siemens Healthineers, the healthcare business of Siemens AG, is developing a global benchmarking analytics program that will allow its customers to see and compare their device utilization metrics against those of hospitals around the world. The goal is to help hospitals identify opportunities to gain greater value from their investments.

This global benchmarking analytics program will be offered via the Siemens Healthineers Digital Ecosystem, a digital platform for healthcare providers, as well as for providers of solutions and services, aimed at covering the entire spectrum of healthcare. The platform, announced in February 2017, will foster the growth of a digital ecosystem linking healthcare providers and solution providers with one another, as well as bringing together their data, applications and services.

Global benchmarking analytics in the Siemens Healthineers Digital Ecosystem will be powered by the innovative Dell EMC World Wide Herd technologies, enabling the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) for several healthcare modalities. Dell EMC’s collaboration with Siemens delivers the ability to analyze data at the edge, where only the analytics logic itself and aggregated intermediate results traverse geographic boundaries to facilitate data analysis across multi-cloud environments—without violating privacy and other governance, risk and compliance constraints.

How it works

The WWH concept, which was pioneered by Dell EMC, creates a global network of Apache™ Hadoop® instances that function as a single virtual computing cluster. The WWH orchestrates the execution of distributed and parallel computations on a global scale, across clouds, pushing analytics to where the data resides. This approach enables analysis of geographically dispersed data, without requiring the data to be moved to a single location before analysis. Only the privacy-preserving results of the analysis are shared.

Let’s take a closer look at how the WWH enables distributed, yet collaborative, analytics at a global scale. First, WWH distributes computation across a virtual computing cluster and pushes analytics to its virtual computing nodes. In the case of Siemens, each virtual computing node is implemented by a cloud instance that collects and stores data from Siemens’ medical devices in local hospitals and medical centers.

Second, computation takes place, in real-time, where the data resides.

Third, only the privacy-preserving results are sent back to the initiating location, where they are aggregated, and a global analysis is performed on these results. In the case of Siemens, each virtual computing node calculates a local histogram and sends it back to the initiating node, which combines all histograms together to provide global benchmarking. A hospital administrator looking at the global histogram can immediately gain insights on the performance of this one hospital compared to all the other hospitals in the world.

A WWH can have multiple configurations. The virtual computing nodes can be clouds in a multi-cloud environment or an Internet of Things (IoT) gateway in a multi-IoT gateway environment, where analytics is pushed directly to the gateways themselves.

In its ability to pair distributed processing and analytics with distributed data, the WWH overcomes several pressing IT issues. It helps organizations address the challenges of:

◈ An explosion in the numbers of connected devices and the volumes of IoT data that defy the scalability of centralized approaches to store and analyze data in a single location

◈ Bandwidth and cost constraints that make it impractical to move data to central repositories

◈ Security concerns for data in transit

◈ Regulatory compliance issues that limit the movement of data beyond certain geographic boundaries

The bigger picture

When you study these and other challenges, you see that we are in the middle of a perfect storm that is disrupting the status quo. Increasingly, we need to take the processing power and analytics to the data, rather than vice-versa. This is very much the future for many industries as we look to a world that is projected to have 200 billion connected devices in 2031. Data will increasingly be inherently distributed and inherently federated with limited data movement.

While the example I have used here focuses on a specific use case in the healthcare industry, the WWH concept can be applied across a wide spectrum of industries. I explored the potential to use a WWH to advance disease discovery and treatment by enabling global-scale collaborative genomic analysis research. And, of course, WWH approaches can and will be used to help companies gain value from data spread across the IoMT and IoT in general.

At the end of the day, rich insights can be obtained when the domain of the data analyzed transcends geographical, political, and organizational boundaries, and can be analyzed as one virtual cohesive dataset. That’s the World Wide Herd in action.

◈ For a closer look at the Siemens Healthineers Digital Ecosystem and its many partners.

◈ To explore Dell EMC solutions for data analytics challenges.

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