Dell EMC PowerEdge + VMware: The Ultimate Hybrid Cloud Combo

We are constantly searching for the right balance to enable us to achieve our best possible life, whether in our professional priorities, diet, exercise regimen, relationships, or myriad other areas of our lives. Similarly, companies are searching for the right balance in their IT infrastructure across physical and virtual machines, storage, networking, security, and lifecycle management whether it be on-premises, public cloud or the edge. IT decision makers and administrators know that the right balance can lead to the capability to harness intelligence from huge amounts of data, driving competitive advantages and better outcomes.

Along with an exponential amount of data comes a growing number of clouds. Ninety-two percent of organizations have both public and private cloud environments installed, but the dynamic nature of these clouds, driven by ever-changing business demands, requires maximum flexibility, agility, manageability and security. More and more companies are turning to the world’s #1 global x86 server provider, Dell EMC PowerEdge, to give them flexible and secure infrastructure on which to build, run and manage their hybrid cloud, with the latest VMware stack including VMware vSphere® 7 with Kubernetes, VMware vSAN™ 7, and VMware Cloud Foundation™.

Thousands of companies across the world use VMware vSphere for server virtualization, but the new capabilities in vSphere 7 bring to market some great opportunities for both IT and app developers alike, with native support for Kubernetes built into vSphere 7. Now, applications can be deployed using any combination of virtual machines, containers and Kubernetes. In addition, one of the most exciting new features in vSphere 7 on PowerEdge servers specifically is the new vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), which enables IT to deploy, manage and update both hardware and firmware drivers using a desired state model, when combined with OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV). OMIVV is the systems management plug-in from Dell for vCenter. Customers have maximum flexibility and control when patches and updates are deployed, with unified software and firmware lifecycle management. And they can do it simply within vCenter, a familiar and comfortable tool. Save time as cluster images are replicated automatically, at your desired pace, once an ESXi host or baseline cluster profile is established. Monitor for compliance and drift automatically, and schedule updates from within vCenter.

Dell Technologies is one of only two OEMs at this time that offer vLCM. For our Dell EMC vSAN Ready Node customers, this is an exciting step to offering simple, reliable and consistent lifecycle operations in vSphere and HCI clusters. If you’re wondering what a Dell EMC vSAN Ready Node might be, it’s a PowerEdge server that has been configured and jointly certified to run VMware vSAN™, which is one of the fastest-growing hyperconverged software offerings today. Think of a vSAN Ready Node as an HCI building block, and Dell Technologies is proud to offer customers flexibility to design their hybrid cloud for optimal performance and agility with one of the broadest vSAN Ready Node portfolios on the market.

To round out the full software stack, VMware has introduced VMware Cloud Foundation 4, the simplest path to hybrid cloud. It serves as an integrated software platform that automates a complete software-defined data center (SDDC) on a standardized hyperconverged architecture, such as Dell EMC PowerEdge MX. Access this Tolly report to learn how you can deploy your private cloud in days rather than weeks with PowerEdge and VCF 4.*

Flexible, scalable and manageable hybrid clouds are nothing without security. Together, PowerEdge and VMware deliver enterprise-grade security from chip to server to VM to cloud-native applications, starting with cyber-resilient PowerEdge architecture and extending through built-in intrinsic security in the VMware stack, including vSphere Trust Authority, network-level micro segmentation in VMware NSX®, distributed firewalls and VPN, storage-level encryption for data at rest and clusters, and much more.

Whether you’re an established vSphere customer, just beginning to look at HCI solutions like vSAN Ready Nodes, or looking to flexibly architect a better hybrid cloud to support traditional and modern apps, the new VMware stack plus PowerEdge can help you strike the right balance of flexibility, agility, manageability, and security. Simplify and accelerate your hybrid cloud journey from the core to the cloud to the edge, with Dell EMC PowerEdge and VMware.

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Dell EMC PowerFlex – Software-Defined Storage to Harness the Power of Change

Three years ago, Dell Technologies embarked on a journey to simplify our infrastructure portfolio, delivering significant innovation designed to help customers address current IT challenges while ensuring they’re prepared to tackle what lies ahead.

We have made incredible strides, building on our industry-leading PowerEdge server portfolio by introducing products like PowerSwitch in networking, PowerOne autonomous infrastructure and PowerProtect in the data protection space. On top of that, we have streamlined our storage portfolio, introducing PowerMax and PowerStore primary storage and PowerScale unstructured storage, joining PowerVault for entry-level customers. And of course, VxRail remains the premier HCI platform for VMware environments.

Today, we have officially fulfilled our portfolio simplification commitment with the introduction of Dell EMC PowerFlex software-defined storage (SDS).

In the data era, it’s more critical than ever for IT to adapt quickly to meet changing workload, scalability and performance requirements. The PowerFlex family, previously known as VxFlex, is now part of our Power portfolio, helping companies harness the potential of software and embrace change while delivering consistent, predictable IT outcomes that drive business forward.

Harnessing the Power of Software

PowerFlex delivers sophisticated high-performance, scalable, resilient storage services, and its unmatched flexibility allows customers to use it in disaggregated, bare metal or multi-hypervisor deployments. It unlocks massive performance with the ability to scale capacity, IO performance and throughput linearly to 1000s of nodes and achieve six-nines (99.9999%) availability.

PowerFlex easily handles demanding business-critical applications while delivering simple scalability for rapid service roll-out. With PowerFlex, customers can deliver application SLAs, scale services on-demand to meet business requirements and ensure uninterrupted seamless service delivery under any conditions. For customers, that means better business execution, increased revenue opportunities and more productive teams.

Thanks to PowerFlex’s software-defined architecture, disruptive and costly data migrations are a thing of the past. Nodes are easily swapped out with no downtime or performance/availability impact. This means no more fork-lift upgrades and brute-force data migrations. Customers can evolve their infrastructure as needed to meet key business objectives while freeing up IT organizations to focus on business-critical applications.

This release also brings a number of new data services that help our customers achieve predictable outcomes and greater availability. Notable new features include:¹

◉ Replication and Disaster Recovery: Native asynchronous replication and fully operational disaster recovery with RPO as low as 30 seconds.

◉ Secure Snapshots: For industries with specific corporate governance and compliance requirements, including healthcare and finance.

“We are seeing more revenue opportunities because of how the applications are running on Dell EMC PowerFlex. We have more visibility into what we’re doing,” said a customer in the transportation industry. “As a result, we are seeing an increase in performance. People can do things quicker from a performance perspective because of the applications and that leads to more revenue.”²

Exceptional Agility and Flexibility to Embrace Change

PowerFlex provides an agile, flexible foundation for IT infrastructure, enabling businesses to embrace change. It supports a wide variety of traditional and modern applications, ranging from bare-metal databases and virtualized workloads to modern cloud-native containerized applications, all on a single platform.

For those deployments that require non-VMware hypervisors or bare-metal OS support, PowerFlex allows customers to mix and match and scale with two-layer disaggregated infrastructure, suitable for data-intensive workloads or any deployment that requires the ability to scale compute and storage requirements separately. With PowerFlex, customers can evolve their applications and infrastructure as business needs change.

PowerFlex is available in appliance and rack consumption options. The appliance offers massive scale potential and flexible networking options. PowerFlex Rack is a fully engineered rack-scale system with integrated networking and professional support. It’s designed to uncomplicate planning and deployment and ensure smooth operations from Day Zero through upgrades and system expansion.

Achieve Predictability and Consistency

PowerFlex empowers organizations to achieve consistent, predictable outcomes in the face of changing IT and business conditions.

The platform provides a robust framework for automating IT processes and workflows that help drive consistency across infrastructure. PowerFlex Manager provides a simple, comprehensive toolset for IT operations and lifecycle management that updates PowerFlex and automates operational workflows for the entire infrastructure – from firmware and BIOS to nodes, networking and hypervisors – across storage and compute. PowerFlex Manager also offers open APIs that easily integrate PowerFlex with cloud automation and container management platforms, including Dell Technologies Cloud (DTC), driving further consistency across deployments and improved IT agility.

“PowerFlex supports the entire infrastructure our school needs in order to operate,” said David Lee, Director of IT Infrastructure and Development, Nexus International School. “The platform’s massive performance and availability allowed us to seamlessly transition to working from home and off-campus learning.”

PowerFlex is validated and optimized for a broad ecosystem of enterprise workloads and cloud automation platforms, enabling IT to confidently consolidate any workload. Across workload categories, PowerFlex has demonstrated consistently superior application performance and better operational outcomes, enabling reduced infrastructure footprint and simplified operations while delivering consistent application SLAs. The ecosystem includes enterprise databases like Oracle and SQL Server, enterprise applications like SAP HANA, analytics workloads like Splunk, SAS and Elastic Stack, and cloud automation platforms that include Red Hat OpenShift, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), Dell Technologies Cloud, Kubernetes, and Google Anthos.

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Taking HCI to Extremes

Admittedly, I miss the opportunity to get out and meet with customers to discuss how they are using VxRail and share our latest innovations and roadmaps. However, I am beyond impressed by how IT organizations have stepped up to enable organizations to remain productive. Our goal is to continuously innovate to empower IT and I am excited that  our team has come up with some great ways  to share all of our VxRail announcements, and engage everyone in our VxRail – Taking HCI to Extremes virtual launch.

The launch covers how VxRail brings the power of HCI to the extreme edge with a rugged version that can withstand the harshest conditions, how new platforms and eco-system enhancements deliver extreme performance for demanding workloads and how software upgrades continue to deliver extreme operational efficiencies. We will also touch on how our latest Tanzu enabled hybrid cloud helps deliver extreme modern applications to the market. Here’s a quick review of all of the exciting announcements.

I’ll cover some of the highlights of our announcements, spanning new hardware platforms, ecosystem options as well as the latest in software innovations for use cases across the edge, core and cloud.

HCI at the Extreme Edge

We are introducing two new platforms to meet the demand for more compute, performance, storage and more importantly operational simplicity- at the edge and remote locations. First, we are excited to announce a brand-new Dell EMC VxRail Series – the most extreme yet – the D Series. The D560/D560F is a ruggedized, durable platform that delivers the full power of VxRail for workloads at the edge, in challenging environments, or for space-constrained areas. ​

Bottom line, you can’t just put a device built for a data center in extremely harsh environments — from manufacturing plants to oil rigs to submarines — in remote locations where dust is blowing or in sub-zero temps, and expect it to operate. We built the D-series to go to the extremes — extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme altitudes — so customers can get the power and simplicity of VxRail no matter where they need it.

◉ Resilience to extreme heat, sand, dust and vibration​ – VxRail D Series is certified to take heat up to 45C/113F and can even go up to 55C/131F for up to 8 hours, and have a certified cold start down to -15C/5F

◉ Light-weight, short depth, durable form factor that allows for flexible deployment options​ — at only 20” deep, it’s our smallest form factor

◉ Rugged build and rigid cover to withstand sudden shocks ​– certified to withstand 40G of operational shock and for operation at up to 15K feet of elevation

Providing even more platform flexibility, we are also announcing a new VxRail E Series model based on, for the first time, AMD EPYC processors. The single socket, 1U nodes offer dual socket performance making them ideal platforms for desktop VDI, analytics and computer aided design. As our second lightest and second shortest depth chassis (only the D560 is lighter weight and shorter depth) with a high efficiency dual redundant power sipping 550W power supply, this an ideal option for edge deployments.

Extreme Performance and Operational Efficiencies

More than ever, new workloads require extreme IO and graphics performance, and we continue to provide new ecosystem options to meet those demands while at the same time continuously enhancing our VxRail HCI System Software to deliver extreme operational simplicity.

The addition of Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory to the E560 and P570 platforms offers high performance and significantly increased memory capacity with data persistence at an affordable price. VxRail is the first, fully integrated VMware HCI system to support Intel’s new groundbreaking technology innovation, Intel Optane persistent memory.

Our testing showed VxRail with Intel Optane persistent memory in app direct mode delivers 90 percent lower latency and 6x higher IOPs for small I/O workloads compared to those same VxRail models with NVMe, making it ideal for in-memory intensive workloads and use cases such as SAP HANA.

We have also added the latest NVIDIA® Quadro RTX™ 6000 and 8000 GPUs to the V570F bringing the most significant advancement in computer graphics in over a decade to professional workflows. Designers and artists across industries can now expand the boundary of what’s possible, working with the largest and most complex graphics rendering, deep learning, and visual computing workloads.

VxRail continues to set the pace in delivering operational simplicity with our HCI System Software, the core differentiation of VxRail regardless of your workload or platform choice. Our integrated, value added software extends VMware native capabilities to deliver a seamless, automated, operational experience, including automated  full stack lifecycle management that keeps the infrastructure in continuously validated states to ensure workloads are consistently up and running. In our latest software release supporting vSphere 6.x – VxRail 4.7.510 – we continue to add new automation and self-service features enabling customers to schedule and run upgrade health checks in advance of upgrades to ensure clusters are in a ready state for the next upgrade or patch, and offer more flexibility in getting all nodes or clusters to a common release level.

Extending the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform to New Extremes

This launch is jam-packed. In addition to new platforms, the Dell Tech Cloud Platform, VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, now enables extreme simplicity so IT can enable developers of modern applications and extreme flexibility with an entry level cloud configuration.

Furthering our commitment to supporting the latest VMware technologies, customers can now run vSphere Kubernetes on the Dell Tech Cloud Platform, VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 on VxRail 7.0.

VMware recently introduced the highly anticipated vSphere 7.0. In keeping with our synchronous release commitment, we introduced VxRail 7.0 with support for vSphere 7.0 in late April – within 30 days of VMware’s release. VCF 4.0 on VxRail 7.0 delivers a simple and direct path to Kubernetes at cloud scale with one complete automated platform. Unique integration across the stack enables developers and operators to quickly and easily support modern application development with infrastructure managed as a single automated private cloud.

Additionally, VCF 4.0 networking advancements have made it easier than ever to get started with hybrid cloud. With a more accessible Consolidated Architecture, Dell Technologies Cloud Platform can now be deployed starting with a 4-node configuration, lowering the cost of entry level hybrid cloud.

Enabling IT to Deliver Extreme Results

As you can see, we never stop innovating. Whether you are accelerating data center modernization, extending HCI to harsh edge environments or deploying an on premises Dell Tech Cloud platform to create a developer-ready Kubernetes infrastructure, VxRail delivers a turnkey experience, extensive platform configuration options, automation, orchestration and consistent hybrid cloud operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern workloads across the core, edge and cloud- taking HCI to Extremes.

We miss getting the chance to see everyone face to face; however, we have some great virtual platforms that you should check out — you can attend our virtual launch event and crowd chat, visit the post event page to watch the event replay, register for deep dive Meet the Expert Q&A breakout sessions, or interact with our VxRail augmented reality virtual tour (it’s a super cool way to look under the hood of a VxRail without needing a screwdriver!).

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GPU Acceleration Shifts Into High Gear

Dell Technologies is adding the latest NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core graphics processing unit (GPU) in PowerEdge server solutions starting later this summer. These GPUs deliver unprecedented acceleration and flexibility for artificial intelligence, data analytics and high performance computing to meet ever-growing processing needs. The A100 expands Dell Technology’s wide range of solutions with NVIDIA GPUs, software and technologies enabling customers to accelerate workloads from edge to core to cloud.

Faster time to discovery, insight and innovation

Data scientists, researchers and engineers are focused on solving tough analytics, scientific and industrial challenges. They are driven to find the answers, to make new discoveries and to innovate in quests for personalized medicine, conversational AI, recommendation engines and more. As a result, the demand for GPUs continues to grow rapidly. Recent projections from Orbis Research indicate the value of the GPU market will increase 31 percent per year, rising from $20.6 billion in 2019 to $104.7 billion by 2025.

At the same time, the world’s top selling Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio just keeps getting better with valuable systems management, security, performance and scalability for customers’ most demanding workloads. Incorporating the latest NVIDIA technologies in Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and solutions can boost performance in numerous AI, HPC, and analytics applications.

Accelerating workloads big and small

While many workloads continue to scale, both in size and complexity, some acceleration tasks are not as demanding, such as early-stage development or small batch inference. So, an ideal data center accelerator doesn’t just accelerate big complex workloads. It also accelerates many smaller workloads. The NVIDIA A100 accelerates workloads big and small with its multi-instance GPU feature. Each A100 can be partitioned into as many as seven isolated GPU instances to boost workload performance. This apportioning capability enables optimal resource utilization, while effectively expanding GPU access to a wider range of users and applications.

With its third-generation Tensor Core technology, the A100 now accelerates more levels of precision for diverse workloads, speeding time to insight, as well as time to market. For some workloads, NVIDIA reports more than 2X performance/watt improvement.

NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs power the NVIDIA data center platform, which includes NVIDIA Mellanox HDR InfiniBand, NVSwitch, and Magnum IO software with GPUDirect RDMA and GPUDirect Storage. This set of technologies can efficiently scale to tens of thousands of server GPUs to train the most complex AI networks at unprecedented speed. All of this is now being introduced with the A100 in a PCIe form factor in Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Ready Solutions.

GPU acceleration in award-winning Dell EMC PowerEdge server solutions

At Dell Technologies, we are excited to offer NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs in PowerEdge servers and Ready Solutions. Dell EMC Ready Solutions for HPC, AI and Data Analytics feature award-winning accelerated server platforms such as the Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140, DSS 8440 and R7525.

◉ The PowerEdge C4140 is an incredibly dense rack server designed to handle the most demanding technical computing workloads in financial services, life sciences, machine and deep learning, oil and gas exploration, and more. This 1U 2-socket server packs a punch with up to four NVIDIA GPUs, PCIe or SXM with NVLink direct GPU-to-GPU interconnect.

◉ The DSS 8440 is a 4U 2-socket accelerator-optimized server that meets the performance demands for increasingly complex computing challenges. With support of up to 10x double-wide or 16x single-wide accelerators, the DSS 8440 server delivers exceptional flexibility for AI, machine and deep learning workloads.

◉ The PowerEdge R7525 server featuring 2nd gen AMD EPYC processors offers performance improvements for traditional and emerging workloads. This 2U 2-socket server has more processing cores and more memory performance with faster data transfer speeds. With up to 3x double-wide GPUs, or 6x single-wide accelerators, this next generation server is a great fit for workloads such as accelerated databases and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Dell Technologies and NVIDIA at the leading edge

With continued investment in research and development to create leading edge technologies, Dell Technologies and NVIDIA maintain a strong relationship. Dell Technologies was among the first to work with NVIDIA to certify NVIDIA EGX platform-based systems for edge computing. Dell’s NGC-Ready servers, first powered with NVIDIA V100 and T4 GPUs, will be offered with the NVIDIA A100 GPUs. These systems are built to run deep learning and machine learning workloads and are tested for functionality and performance of the AI stack with GPU-optimized software from NVIDIA’s NGC registry.

And this is just the beginning. So, stay tuned for the upcoming TOP500 races, which are sure to show NVIDIA GPU-acceleration kicking into the next gear.

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Race to the Edge: Dynamic Solutions for Demanding Edge Applications

Edge is here. And it is here to stay. However, there is great ambiguity in how to define it.  Well, Dell Technologies defines it as the unbounded and ephemeral place where the digital and physical worlds intersect and data is securely collected, generated, and processed to create new value.

But what type of server works best at the edge? And what industries are key use cases for the edge? Let’s take a closer look.

Technology in an edge environment is faced with multiple constraints: They may be hot, cramped, dusty, noisy, or more. What type of compute infrastructure can survive these parameters? Here are some constraints that impact the edge deployment:

◉ Dimensional: Edge locations typically do not have enough space to support servers with traditional form factors.
◉ Environmental: Extreme temperature toleration, optional filtered bezel may be required.
◉ Remote management: Servers and key services need to be deployed and provisioned remotely.
◉ Security: New nodes outside the data center require the same level of protection that IT infrastructure inside the data center enjoys.
◉ Latency and bandwidth: Accelerated performance with storage, memory, and low latency at the edge is key for applications at the edge.

It is critical that the hardware deployed at the edge must account for these constraints and must be diligently designed to mitigate the effects of these constraints. Now let’s take a look at key industries currently suited for the edge:

◉ Telco: With the 5G revolution already here, the question remains—can telco keep up? The current telco edge network is comprised of legacy infrastructure unable to meet the demanding digital challenges of the present. High bandwidth applications that are consumed by mobile devices puts great stress on the IT infrastructure. This makes it ripe for new edge infrastructure.

◉ Retail: Retailers are evaluating new applications that provide AI services and customer insights, smart inventory management, and new methods of tracking supply chain deeper. Their worlds have become extremely data-driven. Traditional hardware is often no longer appropriate for these space-constrained locations which tend to lack onsite support.

◉ Manufacturing: In order to capture the advantages that come with low-latency data, manufacturers are shifting applications and underlying compute resources to the edge. Insights gained are posed to optimize current processes and lower operational costs. However, for manufacturers to work at the edge, they need servers that can handle the environment on the factory floor.

Our new eBook, Find Your Edge: Robust Solutions for Dynamic Edge Applications, can help you navigate the edge and figure out which server is right for you if you are ready to take the plunge or if you have already done so and are ready to expand. Edge may be the key to making major improvements to your business and bottom line. Forrester has found that “43 percent of global telecom decision makers whose firms are using edge computing believe it will give them the power to harness present and future AI demands.” Don’t let your organization get left behind this wave of tremendous progress. Harness the edge today.

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Fighting COVID-19 With the Power of Genomics and HPC

Researchers at Cardiff University are using the power of genomic sequencing and high performance computing to unlock the secrets of COVID-19.

In scientific laboratories around the world, efforts are under way to put the power of genomic sequencing and high performance computing (HPC) to work in the fight against COVID-19. At Cardiff University in Wales, a team of scientists is working with the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK), to unlock the secrets of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

This team is led by Dr. Thomas Connor, a distinguished researcher of the Cardiff sequencing center under the umbrella of COG-UK. The COG-UK organization brings together experts from across the UK National Health Service (NHS), academia and public health agencies for large-scale, rapid genomic sequencing and analysis of the coronavirus. This information can then be quickly shared with hospitals, the NHS and the government to help inform their responses to the pandemic.

“Genomic sequencing will help us to understand coronavirus and its spread,” Dr. Connor says in a Cardiff University news release. “By analyzing samples from people who have had confirmed cases of COVID-19, scientists can monitor changes in the virus at a national scale to understand how the virus is spreading and whether different strains are emerging. Having this information available will help in the clinical care of patients — and ultimately help to save lives.”

COG-UK also benefits from another project where Cardiff University has played a key role: the MRC CLIMB project. Dr. Connor leads the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cloud Infrastructure for Microbial Bioinformatics (CLIMB) project at Cardiff University with support from Supercomputing Wales to supply COG-UK with the computational resources needed to share and analyze the large volumes of COVID-19 genomics data now being generated across the UK.

Working with Dell Technologies

In these efforts, Dr. Connor and his colleagues are building on a longstanding relationship with Dell Technologies. The team works to enable CLIMB’s capacity to share and analyze large volumes of COVID-19 genomics data. With this solution in place, the University has the potential to sequence samples within 24 hours, allowing for real-time responses.

“CLIMB has become an essential national capability for microbiologists in the UK,” Dr. Connor says in a Dell Technologies case study. It serves more than 1,000 users and over 300 research groups from 89 research institutions, including universities, public health agencies and governmental organizations. In addition, CLIMB has provided training in bioinformatics to thousands of academics, students and clinical microbiologists across the UK and as far afield as Palestine, Gambia and Vietnam.

A look under the hood of MRC CLIMB

The core infrastructure for CLIMB is a Dell EMC cloud system running the open source OpenStack operating system. To enhance resiliency, CLIMB is spread over four sites, each with 500 TB of local scratch storage.

At the heart of the CLIMB environment is a large shared object storage system that provides about 2.5 petabytes of HPC data storage, which can be replicated between sites. This storage system is based on Red Hat Ceph Storage running on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers with Intel® Xeon® processors. This community system provides a place where researchers can store and share very large microbial datasets.

In addition, the CLIMB cloud environment offers access to a huge amount of memory — more than 78 terabytes of RAM. With all this muscle under the hood, CLIMB can run more than 1,000 virtual machines simultaneously, and each of these VMs can be preloaded with software, customized by end users and saved as snapshots for reuse by others on the infrastructure.

“For seven or eight years, I’ve had a really great relationship with the HPC team at Dell,” Dr. Connor notes. “They answer our questions and help out whenever we need help. They have been really accommodating in terms of helping us to get the solution that we need to do the work that we do. That’s a really positive thing that has come from my interactions with Dell.”

Another positive outcome is the results of the research powered by the HPC clusters that drive the high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics used to fight infectious diseases and enable personalized healthcare.

“In the last 12 months, we have sequenced around 8,000 to 9,000 patient samples across our genomics programs,” Dr. Connor says, “and all of that has been processed through our hardware supplied by Dell.”

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Unlock the Potential of Unstructured Data with DataIQ

Data determines the winners and losers in the digital age

If we examine the top trends many organizations are focused on today—harnessing big data and analytics, embracing the Internet of Things, investing in artificial intelligence—they all have a common foundation. Data.

It’s data that powers digital transformation and the digital economy. The organizations best positioned to win in this data era are those who have superior strategies for collecting and harnessing the untapped potential locked away in this ever-growing ocean of data.

Unstructured data driving data sprawl

Unstructured data is driving much of this growth. Gartner analysts estimated that nearly 80% of the data footprint for an organization is unstructured, and that enterprises will triple their unstructured data stored as file or object storage from what they had in 2019. Adding to this complex equation is the fact that unstructured data growth is not consigned to the core data center, but is spreading across geographically dispersed and edge locations. According to Gartner, by 2022, more than 50% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud, up from less than 10% in 2019.

The end result is a growing, complex and increasingly siloed data landscape that must be managed with relatively flat IT budgets. This reality decreases the pace of innovation across teams and hampers their ability to collaborate effectively as more organizations are forced to focus on keeping the lights on, rather than driving real business value.

PowerScale and DataIQ: Designed for the data era

Today, we introduced Dell EMC PowerScale, a new family of unstructured data storage systems that builds on the legacy that Isilon and OneFS have carved out in scale-out NAS. Customers can deploy PowerScale across edge, core and cloud environments, empowering organizations to capture data, wherever it’s being generated, at scale. But unstructured data storage alone isn’t enough to establish a strategy which puts data first. To truly solve the challenges detailed, organizations require tools that help them discover all the unstructured data strewn across the enterprise landscape, understand its characteristics and act on novel insights to accelerate the data lifecycle and optimize the environment.

Enter Dell EMC DataIQ.

DataIQ is multi-purpose dataset management software which delivers a unique method for managing unstructured data stored across multiple, heterogenous file and object storage platforms either on-premises or in the cloud. An advanced filesystem scan, index, classification and fast search platform, it provides single-pane-of-glass visibility into all unstructured data assets under management. This includes Dell EMC unstructured storage products such as the new PowerScale family (including Isilon), ECS, PowerStore and Unity. It’s also capable of providing a holistic data view across third-party and public cloud environments. DataIQ’s core dataset management capabilities are included with PowerScale, so customers can quickly start capturing value from their unstructured storage.

Controlling the data lifecycle and accelerating time-to-insights

DataIQ helps control the data lifecycle by giving both IT and business users a toolset which enables them track data through its lifespan, ensuring the location of the data is known, determining if it is stored on the right platform and if it is accessible by the right stakeholders. Using custom tagging functionality, users can also logically group data from disparate systems together and manage it according to relevant business context. This capability is useful for correlating related folder and file assets which might be stored on different volumes, across multiple platforms, according to how actual project teams are organized within a business. Summary reports can subsequently be built which display total storage consumption by project name, team designation, or even project stage of completion, rather than being limited to reports based on simple file extensions.

DataIQ also enables users to move data on-demand via its plugin ecosystem. This gives IT and content creators a means to transfer data to the right storage platform and performance tier, improving collaboration and meeting TCO objectives.

By empowering employees to rapidly locate data, organize it based on unique context and move it as needed, organizations accelerate time-to-insights and can make smarter decisions on how data should be moved through the lifecycle. From creation to analysis, deletion to rehydration, DataIQ speeds time-to-value at each phase.

Using DataIQ, organizations can break down data silos, make more informed decisions about data assets, speed up dataset management and unlock the potential hidden away in their unstructured data.

Source: dellemc.com

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Make Artificial Intelligence Real

Every day, engineers, researchers and designers are using the power of AI to change our world. Organizations of all shapes and sizes are leveraging AI to help them answer bigger questions and make more amazing discoveries – faster than ever. There’s nothing artificial about making the world a better place with these discoveries, and there is nothing artificial about the real insights achieved through AI that can help both communities and businesses overcome some of their biggest challenges.

Dell Technologies is dedicated to getting AI into the hands of businesses and institutions of all sizes so that they can harness the power of their data to make the world a better place. As P.J. Camm, IT Director of OTTO Motors states, “As a leader in innovative technology, it was critical to find the right partner who provided a flexible, reliable, and scalable infrastructure to allow us to run our AI workloads. Our partnership with Dell EMC and VMware enables our medium business to make artificial intelligence a reality.”

That’s why Dell Technologies is expanding its AI offerings to empower customers to make artificial intelligence real. We are announcing new Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI and HPC and improvements to our OpenManage portfolio to make AI easier to adopt and use. Dell Technologies provides infrastructure solutions that deliver AI anywhere, with continuous insights, and at real scale to enable customers to harness insights from the edge to the core to the cloud.

AI anywhere

Progressing AI use cases from proof-of-concept to production can highlight latency and portability challenges, especially when moving these workloads across hybrid clouds. In fact, industry insiders report that “hybrid latency prevents companies from running AI workloads in the cloud with data on-prem.” Moreover, there is a lack of skilled in-house resources to design, deploy and manage systems capable of running AI in production and across the hybrid cloud.

To address these issues, Dell Technologies has partnered with VMware on the recent announcement of VMware vSphere 7 to create the following Ready Solutions for AI and HPC:

The Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI: GPU-as-a-Service were designed for those who are just starting their AI journey or who already run smaller AI operations. VMware vSphere 7.0 incorporates Bitfusion technology that enables virtualizing accelerators located on-premises or in the cloud. Giving developers self-service access to elastic pools of accelerator resources increases utilization and efficiency for valuable accelerator resources. Using Kubernetes containers, AI can be deployed more rapidly across hybrid cloud environments with high accuracy, performance and efficiency.

The Dell EMC Ready Solutions for vHPC were designed for those who want to advance their AI journey by virtualizing their high performance computing workloads easily using the latest version of vSphere. To optimize solution performance, engineering teams have created ready solutions for the two most common types of HPC workloads, Parallel Distributed Applications (MPI)  and Throughput Workloads. MPI applications are used in things like weather forecasting and molecular modeling. Throughput workloads can be seen in Monte Carlo simulations in financial risk analysis, digital movie rendering, and genomics analysis. Both designs increase your agility and operational efficiency in data intense applications. Furthermore, complexity is reduced because they run on the familiar VMware virtualization platform.

While the latest version of VMware vSphere is already factory-installed with these Ready Solutions for AI and HPC, it will also soon be available factory-installed on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers.

Finally, Dell Technologies, Intel, and the University of Cambridge collaborated to create the Data Accelerator (DAC) to enable the next generation of data‑intensive workflows. The DAC alleviates data intensive bottlenecks, enhancing customers’ ability to seamlessly achieve AI insights. It was so successful that it reached #1 in the June 2019 IO500 world HPC storage ranking.

Continuous insights

Modern IT infrastructures are often complex and challenging to manage. The Dell EMC OpenManage systems management portfolio helps IT managers implement advanced computing solutions with the same tools they use for their traditional workloads. Using predefined scripts or management consoles, customers can improve operational uptime and deliver critical information to keep insights flowing using OpenManage Enterprise and OpenManage Mobile. While, enhancements to OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter enables  management of physical and virtual hosts from a single interface. These features along with recently announced streaming telemetry capabilities and enhancements to CloudIQ, prepare our customers for AI-guided operations across their infrastructure.

AI at real scale

Dell Technologies is already helping customers explore and reap the benefits of AI with scalable, flexible solutions designed to help solve complex problems faster than ever. As Robert Walden, CIO of Epsilon explains, “In order to provide our customers personalized marketing content, we needed a scalable infrastructure to run AI workloads. The partnership with Dell EMC and VMware enables us to make artificial intelligence real.” Whether you are sampling data with Dell laptops or workstations, proving out your AI concepts with bare-metal PowerEdge servers, or taking these to production at full scale through virtualization, the Dell Technology portfolio makes AI real for customers every step of the way.

Source: dellemc.com

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The Human Story Behind Our Digital Marketing Campaigns

Growing up in rural Ireland, one of my dad’s favourite sayings was “Necessity is the mother of invention,” usually in the context of some newfangled farming equipment! At the time, I didn’t always appreciate what he meant. But Dad, as usual, was 100 percent right. In fact, I’ve seen his words come beautifully to life in recent months amongst my own marketing team at Dell Technologies OEM | Embedded & Edge Solutions.

Communications void

To explain, we have a long and successful track record of engaging with customers and generating business via face-to-face events, including huge, global shows like Mobile World Congress for the telecom market and Hannover Messe for industrial automation and manufacturing customers.

This year, world circumstances led to both shows being cancelled at short notice, leaving a huge communications void in two major business areas. We also had to cancel our involvement in industry, customer, partner and internal engagement events.

Our rapid response

In response, we had to quickly re-imagine how we could meaningfully reach out to customers through digital communications. As part of our rapid response strategy, we adapted and enlarged our existing digital campaigns to become the main platforms for both shows.

By the end of April, over a period of weeks, we had two full-scale, completely digital campaigns in place to increase awareness plus drive lead generation and site traffic. We used both paid media and organic social promotion of telecom and industrial themed webinars, eBooks, podcasts & vEvents. I’m happy to report that customer engagement has been very positive.

Virtual by design

Our upcoming Solutions Summit – taking place on the 17th and 18th of June – is proudly virtual by design. Over the course of two days, customers can virtually navigate their way through the summit, just like they would at a physical event – visiting exhibition spaces, attending a plenary session, taking part in live webinars, attending group sessions and one-to-one meetings as well as interactive networking breakout sessions. 

Necessity drove innovation

So, how did the team pivot so quickly? As my father would say, necessity drove innovation. We work in such a fast-paced environment – we simply couldn’t afford to get left behind or sit and wait to see what other teams or companies would do. We knew we had to deliver a 100 percent digital solution. There was no alternative. And it wasn’t just a tick box exercise – we wanted to make it creative and fun, providing an immersive, interactive and interesting experience for customers.

We were fortunate to have strong digital expertise onboard, but it was concentrated in pockets. For some of the team, there were understandable fears about their knowledge and experience of some of the digital marketing tools.

Developing new skills

As leader, I believe that my role was to provide a supportive environment, where the team felt comfortable taking risks, learning new skills and reaching out to each other for help. To support personal development, we provided a short but intensive course through the Digital Marketing Institute to increase people’s knowledge, capabilities and most crucially, their confidence.

Community of best practice

As there was a similar dynamic across all of Dell Technologies’ global marketing teams, a virtual community of best practice sharing emerged naturally, pretty much overnight. This facilitated rapid learning-by-doing, which in turn meant planning-to-execution timelines for large, global events have been drastically reduced from an average of seven to ten months down to a mere ten weeks!

It has been inspiring to see how the entire team stepped up to the challenge and I’m proud to say that we’re all now comfortable in thinking digital first!

Source: dellemc.com

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Empower Your Career with Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification

Finding a program that allows a certificate is a natural part. There are many data science specific programs that give Data Scientists certificates of completion. A quick google search will turn up dozens.

What can be more challenging is comparing all of these programs. You should consider into account the return on investment for enrolling in any of these programs and whether the Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists certificate is worth it.

Some things to examine when considering studying for a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification are:

• What you will learn in the program

• The cost of the program

• Any prerequisites or qualifications you will need

• The time commitment required

• Reviews from learners who have done the program

This Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification credential focuses on practical, hands-on experience that data scientists rely on in their day-to-day role.

Earning this certification will prepare you to jump into big data and other analytics projects immediately. It is also the first step to making the Specialist-level Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification, which more advanced data science needs experience.

Prerequisites:

• You should have a quantitative background, experience with SQL, and several years using scripting languages such as Java, Perl, or Python.

What You Will Learn:

• You will be presented to the data analytics lifecycle, basic data analysis systems using R, advanced analytics theory and methods, advanced data technologies, and tools.

• Training Course: Advanced Methods in Data Science and Big Data Analytics

Why Should You Earn a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification?

Earning a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification will help you master the sought-after skills employers are looking for, such as coding, machine learning, and cloud technology. The right certifications will increase your technical know-how, boost your salary, and give you greater confidence when you enter the job market.

In case you are still bogged by mistake when it comes to investing in Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification for professionals, the following are the top advantages you can obtain in terms of financial and professional growth as a future analytics officer in the field.

Shows Your Degree of Self-Motivation and Passion

Having a proper and renowned certification on your resume will show to your professional peers and possible employers that your dedication to taking your career to the next step. The digital age is growing at an impressive pace. Except you are ready to grow with it, your skillset will soon become unnecessary if not out-of-date. Even organizations are looking for people with the latest certifications under their belt. It shows your honesty about your job aspirations. You are regarded as a self-motivated individual who can take on the job as a qualified professional.

Credibility Stamp

Getting a certification in data science is the best method to prove your skills. When there is a vacancy for an analytics officer or a data scientist, the organization prefers individuals with a certification/degree from a reputed institution. Having an approved certification in data science guarantees the data of your types of skills and information about the work.

Improve Your Chance to Get the Best Professional Opportunities

In simple words, having additional certifications naturally improves your chance to land in better opportunities and job roles. It increases your likelihood of getting hired. Certifications and training play an essential role in the selection process. It needs dedication, money, and hard work to acquire a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification, which guarantees various lucrative opportunities in the field. It is one of the best methods to guarantee your resume standards out.

Updated Industry Trends

The data-driven domain is increasing with every passing minute. The best method to stay up-to-date about the industry trend is to learn something new and expand your knowledge base. As a professional, it can be asked to keep up with multiple resources. Therefore, you should opt for Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification, which builds your knowledge and skills based on the evolving industry trends and enhances your learning experience and gives you an edge on a professional level. It is like an asset that can be used for your future employer as you are offered career growth.

Progressed Eligibility Across Industries and Domains

Retail, entertainment, healthcare, defense, etc. are all leveraging the benefits that data science offers. Individuals with data science training open up a million avenues for them. Many countries around the world are employing data analytics officers at a steady pace.

Having a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification from a reliable and reputable place provides you the recognition that can be used across multiple industries and regions. In short, the opportunities are only going to get. Such certifications make you eligible for an analytics manager job, but others like data architect, project manager, data scientist, statistician, and business intelligence professional.

Some Other Benefits of Earning a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification include:

Higher Salary

The data scientist is one of the highest-paying entry-level jobs in the US. Certifications demonstrate to employers that you have the skills needed to do the job right, improving your earning potential and marketability.

Industry Credibility

Data scientist certifications validate your knowledge of leaders in the industry. Accredited certifications showcase personal ability and dedication to continuous learning.

Better Job Prospects

A study conducted by Microsoft indicated 91 percent of hiring directors looked for certifications through their candidate selection process. Earning certifications can make you stand out from the competition.

Valuable New Skills

Learning the latest methods in coding, machine learning, deep learning, and AI will keep you ahead Data Scientists.

Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certificate and Your Job Search
Certificates certainly would not hurt you in the job search as long as they are presented correctly on resumes for more details.

For a possible employer, the problem with data science certificates is that there is no universal standard and no accepted certification authority.

That means that at a glance, an employer viewing Data Science Certificate on a resume is not going to know what kind of training the site or school issuing that certificate offers.

From Tips To Crack Dell EMC E20-065 Exam In First Attempt.

In Concluding
The goal of this Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists certificate program is to make you career-ready in the Data Science industry. Created and delivered by industry experts, this program finds the perfect balance between theory and practice.

There is plenty of lab and project work for your practice. You will undertake two capstone projects to assist you in determining and showcase your newfound skills. Get globally recognized Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists Certification. Get started on your Data Science journey today.

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Dell Precision Workstations Get Smaller, Faster and Cooler

High-end application users working in mission-critical workflows have historically relied on desktop workstations to provide the power and performance they required. And back when “work” was viewed as a destination, it didn’t matter. However, the workplace is changing. Whether customers are working on ground-breaking healthcare research, designing innovative engineering solutions or editing the next big TV series, they shouldn’t have to sacrifice performance for portability.

Today, we announced the biggest updates to Dell’s mobile workstation line since we first introduced the award-winning Dell Precision M3800 in 2013. Our product and engineering teams continue to redefine the mobile workstation category. With this mobile workstation lineup, we believe we’ve found the perfect combination of power and style. We’re bringing award-winning Dell design and combining it with the latest thermal innovations, professional graphics and powerful CPU technologies into sleek devices to deliver heavy-duty performance wherever your work takes you.

◉ Designed for professional creators and engineers in mind, our smallest and thinnest mobile workstations¹ are the Dell Precision 5550 and the brand-new Dell Precision 5750. These 15- and 17-inch workstations feature stunning 4-sided InfinityEdge 16:10 aspect ratio displays and a top bezel Infrared camera for maximum screen real estate and an improved video conferencing experience. Starting at 4lbs and 4.7lbs², with a 92 percent & 94 percent display/body ratio respectively, they perfectly balance power, style and mobility in a lightweight aluminum package. The Dell Precision 5750 also joins the 7000 series in the NVIDIA® RTX Studio program, with the availability of NVIDIA® Quadro RTX™ 3000 graphics.

Photo courtesy of @SavageGeese

◉ Even the world’s most powerful 15” and 17” mobile workstations³, with impressive scalability, the Dell Precision 7550 and 7750, are now around 20 percent smaller and 6 percent lighter than previous generations.4 Now available with new top-firing speakers, ambient sensing and low blue light displays provide a more immersive feel and sound. With the latest Intel® Core™, vPro® and Xeon® processors combined with up to NVIDIA® Quadro RTX™ 5000 professional graphics, these workhorse devices can handle VR/AR, AI, complex 3D CAD as well as creative editing workloads and data science computing applications with ease.

◉ The new Dell Precision 3550 and 3551 mobile workstations offer workstation-class reliability and performance at an accessible price point. They are ideal for users with less intensive graphic needs, like those working on 2D CAD, heavy Excel workbooks or entry-level creative applications.

Photo courtesy of Dell Client Technologist, Amit Bhaga

The cool factor – intelligent design inside and out

Rigorous tasks and high-performance applications often result in the creation of more heat. Dell engineers have developed thermal design solutions to overcome the challenge of balancing the high performance of CPU/GPU concurrency and higher wattage graphics power despite the reduction in footprint the new mobile workstations. Examples include the adoption of dual opposite outlet fans that dissipate heat quickly, alongside thinner vapor chambers in the place of some heat pipes. Software-based thermal management solutions, high-tech Gore technology insulation layers, plus graphite spreaders and copper materials provide impressive thermal performance.

New Space-Saving Compact Solutions

Our expansive professional portfolio allows you to customize your workstation for your unique needs, workloads and budget. Dell’s innovative engineering and design isn’t limited to our mobile workstation portfolio. Today, we’re also announcing upcoming additions to our entry-level tower workstation line up, including a brand-new ultra-small form factor (USFF) workstation, the Dell Precision 3240 Compact.

Designed for the tightest workspaces and Edge Computing workloads, this small (2.3L) yet powerful system can push up to seven 4k displays and will be ready for VR, with NVIDIA Quadro RTX™ 3000 professional graphics. Available from Q3 2020, this ultra-small form factor workstation is perfect for use in schools, factories, retail, and trading floor environments, where space is a premium.

We’re also introducing the new Dell Precision 3640 Tower workstation and Dell Precision 3440 small form factor (SFF) workstation, available from July. They are perfect for content creators and engineers working with 3D or complex 2D graphics, as well as power users working with large data sets and complicated analysis that require ISV certification. These scalable and affordable systems offer a range of high-performance options for productivity and accessible ports for connectivity.

Optimized for your unique workloads

 As with all Dell Precision workstations, we collaborate with Independent Software Vendors (ISV) to test and optimize these systems to give you the best user experience possible. Additionally, the new Dell Optimizer for Precision, exclusive to Dell, is now included on these platforms. Dell Optimizer for Precision is the only AI-based optimization software in the industry that automatically tunes your application performance using machine learning.

We’re excited to share our latest innovations with you – Dell Precision customers are doing some of the most ground-breaking, innovative work out there, and we can’t wait to see what you create with these new products!

Source: Dellemc.com

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Supercharging Performance using NVIDIA vComputeServer on Dell EMC Servers

A new Reference Architecture for NVIDIA vComputeServer on Dell EMC infrastructure provides a solution to enable server GPU virtualization.  

A recent study that analyzed GPU utilization metrics across different customer sites running AI workloads revealed that GPU resources were underutilized in most cases. Here we present the study’s two key findings, along with recommendations for solving them.

1. Nearly a third of the users are averaging less than 15% utilization. Average GPU memory usage is quite similar. Given that the users are experienced deep learning practitioners, this is very surprising. GPUs are getting faster and faster, but it doesn’t matter if the applications don’t completely use them.

Recommendation: Improve utilization by sharing the GPU across multiple users by using virtualization. Those who use optimal batch size, learning rates and hyper-parameters to fully utilize the GPU memory and compute core capabilities can be allocated a dedicated virtualized GPU instance or multiple GPUs inside a single virtual machine (VM).

1. There’s another, probably larger, waste of resources — GPUs that sit unused. It’s hard to queue up work efficiently for GPUs. In a typical workflow, a data scientist will set up many experiments, wait for them to finish, and then spend quite a lot of time digesting the results while the GPUs sit idle.

Recommendation: GPU pooling and disaggregation can solve this problem by providing the ability to dynamically re-assign and spin up resources, allowing idle resources to be used by other data scientist applications. Using VMware® vSphere® vMotion™ to dynamically transfer GPU-accelerated VMs and workloads will reduce GPU resources.

New NVIDIA A100 offers GPU partitioning

NVIDIA® recently announced hardware partitioning with the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU as a complementary solution to virtualization. The A100 in multi-instance GPU (MIG) mode can run any mix of up to seven AI or HPC workloads of different sizes simultaneously. GPU partitioning is especially useful for AI inferencing jobs as well as early-stage AI development work that typically do not  consume all the performance that a modern GPU delivers. With GPU virtualization software, a virtual machine (VM) can be run on each of these MIG instances so organizations can take advantage of management, monitoring, and operational benefits of hypervisor-based server virtualization.

For many years, data centers have used server CPU virtualization to increase IT agility and improve the utilization of their compute hardware. Today, this focus on virtualization is expanding to encompass the GPUs that accelerate many compute-intensive workloads, such as AI training and inferencing as well as data analytics. With virtualization, data centers can make GPUs available to more users, while increasing the overall utilization of these valuable assets.

Virtualizing GPUs inside Dell EMC servers

At Dell Technologies, we’ve worked closely with our technology partners to make GPU virtualization available in our line of GPU-accelerated Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. We took a big step in this direction in August 2019 when we rolled out support for NVIDIA vComputeServer software to enable hypervisor-based virtualization on GPU-accelerated servers equipped with NVIDIA Mellanox® ConnectX-5 or newer network interface cards (NICs). NVIDIA vComputeServer allows data centers to accelerate server virtualization with the latest GPUs so that the most compute-intensive workloads can run in virtual machines.

Today, we’re taking another big step forward with a new Dell EMC reference architecture for NVIDIA vComputeServer. With this solution, your IT administrators can allocate partitions of GPU resources within VMware vSphere, as well as support the live migration of virtual machines running NVIDIA CUDA™ workloads.

There are many valuable benefits in the move to GPU virtualization with vComputeServer with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. For example, virtualization helps your IT administrators:

- Democratize GPU access by providing partitions of GPUs on demand
- Scale GPU resource assignments up and down, as needed and
- Support live migration of GPU memory

If your IT organization is considering GPU virtualization in your data center, the Dell EMC reference architecture for NVIDIA vComputeServer is a great place to get started. It walks you through the use cases for vComputeServer and your options for NVIDIA GPUs in Dell EMC PowerEdge servers.

Putting vComputeServer to the Test

Dell Technologies engineers investigated how GPU virtualization with vComputeServer impacts overall performance. These tests initially compared an NVIDIA GPU running on bare-metal Linux to a virtualized GPU. After establishing that baseline of performance, the team conducted additional testing with multiple virtual GPUs and virtual GPU partitions.

Test results show that in most cases, users can expect a small difference in performance, in the range of two to five percent, compared to bare metal when using virtual GPU profiles for machine learning and deep learning workloads. And in an interesting twist, there are scenarios where the performance difference is favorable. For example, when VMs running a mix of workloads, you might see faster time to result using multiple fractional GPUs in parallel than you would using a full GPU and scheduling the tasks to run serially. This can occur when workloads across virtual machines aren’t executed at the same time, or aren’t always GPU-bound. Choosing the appropriate GPU scheduling policy can impact performance, and the team compared performance of different scheduling policies.

For full details on the performance tests conducted in the Dell EMC Server CTO lab, along with detailed configuration information, see Virtualizing GPUs in VMware vSphere using NVIDIA vComputeServer on Dell EMC infrastructure.

Source: dellemc.com

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Protecting the Telecom Network

Telecommunication networks are becoming more and more essential every day and, in the process, gaining new opportunities. These opportunities will drive new business growth and create exciting areas for revenue generation. However, as with all opportunities, challenges exist. And for communication service providers (CSPs), these challenges include cyber threats, increasing network decentralization, timing requirements, and more.

To help our customers meet these challenges, Dell EMC Ready Solution for VMware NFV brings together industry-leading technologies optimized for telecommunication networks, yet customizable for any unique need. This solution continues to offer new value with the latest release including newly integrated Data Protection capabilities for streamlined and trusted performance.

Fortifying your Data Protection Strategy with Dell EMC Data Protection Solutions

Cyberattacks, can have far-reaching effects resulting in downtime and data loss. Since CSPs are at the center of the modern transformation controlling and operating critical infrastructure, it is even more important to have a robust data protection strategy built around the principles of high availability to ensure service continuity. These trends and the continued evolution of cloud environments are causing CSPs to fortify their data protection strategy.

Dell EMC’s data protection suite offers network administrators a simplified approach to control backup, recovery, and replication management with over 2.7 EB (exabytes) of data in the cloud. It is optimized for virtual environments, with a unique, client-side, global deduplication technology that eliminates redundant backup data before it is sent over the network and stored.

Designed for the unique requirements of CSPs, this data protection suite seamlessly integrates with VMware Cloud Director (vCD) through Dell EMC Data Protection Extension (DPE) for vCD. Dell EMC DPE for vCD provides unified end-user NFV infrastructure management. This facilitates tenant self-service access through vCD’s tenant user interface (UI), allowing for tenant-level policy configuration and setup of tenant repositories. Additionally, for those with VMware Integrated Openstack (VIO), we have also validated and documented the integration of VIO with Dell’s Data Protection Suite.

Dell EMC’s data protection suite includes both Avamar (source-based deduplication software) and Data Domain (target deduplication software) integrated through DD Boost (solution for optimized software interaction). These leading components provide fast, reliable, and flexible data protection that scales to the needs of the largest CSPs while allowing for expansion to the public cloud. Additionally, Dell EMC data protection suite provides encryption and file locking for data security, protecting critical infrastructure from cyber threats.

Key features of the data protection suite include:

◉ VMware Cloud Director UI integration

◉ Tenant self-service access

◉ Client-side global deduplication

◉ DD Boost enhanced backup speed

◉ Multi-cloud environment

◉ Encryption and file locking

◉ Non-disruptive policy-based enforcement

◉ CBT and FLR for efficient data restore

Dell EMC Ready Solution for VMware NFV Platform

With Dell’s powerful data protection suite integrated with Dell EMC’s VMware NFV solution, there has not been a better platform to position CSPs for success. Built using NFV best practices for disaggregation and validated for carrier-grade performance, this solution ensures the flexibility and capability to execute on strategies with complete peace of mind.

This integrated solution is built on top of leading Dell EMC hardware and VMware software, providing an exceptional NFV foundation. With a broad offering of components from Dell Technology, customization is made simple for a prescriptive and optimized network. Benefits include:

◉ Enabled agility with peace of mind through validated and disaggregated infrastructure

◉ Operate with performance and efficiency, leveraging ideal tools for assurance, automation, orchestration, and analytics

◉ Stacked to win with a co-engineered solution built on top of leading Dell EMC assets and VMware software for NFV use cases

◉ Investment protection with a carrier-grade solution meeting SLA requirement via features such as Long-life Intel® Xeon® processors in PowerEdge R-Series servers

What’s New?

Dell EMC reference architectures for VMware vCloud NFV are central to delivering the value of this solution. The most recent reference architecture, Dell EMC Ready Architecture for VMware vCloud NFV, includes the latest VMware release with vCloud Director 9.7.  This architecture facilitates a unified deployment from the core to edge with VMware’s vCloud Director plus data protection.

◉ Enhanced data protection using Dell EMC Data Protection Extension, Avamar, and Data Domain

    ◉ DPE Plugin seamlessly integrates Dell’s data protection capabilities with VMware through vCD UI

    ◉ Up to 47% lower monthly cost of in-cloud data protection

    ◉ Up to 1.5x faster backups on Day 1

    ◉ Up to 3x faster incremental backups

◉ Single integrated solution for network Edge and Core

    ◉ Facilitating end-to-end deployment

    ◉ Edge architecture designed for unique requirements

    ◉ Core offload of edge site overhead

◉ Based on vCloud NFV 3.2.1

    ◉ vSphere performance and security improvements

    ◉ Additional NUMA balancing feature

    ◉ Edge-centric features

    ◉ IPv6 support

Our reference architectures facilitate faster deployments, simplified management, and optimized performance. We are excited to be able to provide a single end-to-end solution for VMware Cloud NFV that includes data protection.

Dell Technologies is committed to offering telecommunication-optimized, modular, and open standards-based solutions to deliver infrastructure that is designed for CSP clouds and accelerates 5G monetization.

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