Empower Hybrid Work with Dell APEX for VDI

Remote work is not a new concept, but it is becoming increasingly pervasive. People in a wide range of roles and organizations are now operating remotely, and 70% of employers believe a blend of in-person and remote working will be the new normal.

In this new world of hybrid work, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is king. And that’s a problem for many IT leaders, as organizations looking to adopt or expand VDI have typically faced several hurdles, including long planning and procurement cycles, management complexity and higher-than-anticipated infrastructure costs.

These hurdles can cause some hesitation, despite the many security and productivity advantages VDI provides. Nevertheless, organizations need solutions that simplify and accelerate the process of acquiring virtual desktop infrastructure for their growing remote workforces, while reducing complexity and costs.

So how do you get there? In short, head to the APEX with Dell Technologies.

The APEX Answer

Dell APEX for VDI delivers real workforce transformation by giving your organization what you need to create your own on-demand environment with infrastructure and services customized to order, accessed via a pay-per-use consumption model or an enterprise-scale managed utility – all without sacrificing flexibility and choice.

Here are a few ways APEX for VDI can empower your “anywhere workforce” by streamlining and optimizing the VDI implementation:

◉ Reduce operational complexity and costs. Simplify and centralize IT management with flexible consumption and payment options to rapidly – and affordably – respond to varying infrastructure demands for your ever-changing VDI environment.

◉ Secure your environment. With hosted desktop infrastructure, your organization’s data remains protected behind the corporate firewall, helping maintain security without sacrificing performance.

◉ Accelerate productivity. Speed time to results by giving people access to the virtual desktops and applications they need, when and where they need them.

Benefits like these help deliver real workforce transformation, enabling employees to be productive on their own terms.

To stay flexible and resilient in times of uncertain demand, secure remote management should remain top of mind as a business requirement. Dell APEX Custom Solutions for VDI consist of products and services designed to enable organizations to reap the full benefits of desktop virtualization and modernize the design and deployment of VDI optimized for performance, cost-effectiveness and security.

For customers looking for a more turnkey infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution, Dell APEX Private Cloud for VDI streamlines and optimizes the implementation of VDI to enhance work and learn-from-anywhere initiatives on-premises, while providing the agility and scale of public cloud providers at a lower cost. This way, customers can leverage the benefits of cloud-based VDI – such as rapidly deploying virtual workspaces for employees in a remote environment or accommodating changes in seasonal demand spikes and personnel – while keeping data secure on-premises.

Either way, Dell APEX for VDI provides the path toward taking IT and workforce transformation to the next level.

Benefits of APEX for VDI: A Customer Perspective

Montage Health, through its multiple entities in Monterey County, California, delivers extraordinary care to half a million individuals annually. The family of organizations includes Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Montage Medical Group, MoGo UrgentCare, Aspire Health, Montage Wellness Center and Montage Health Foundation.

The organization relies on an extensive VDI environment, with terminals on each clinical floor to provide the applications and information required for patient care and staff collaboration. Unfortunately, several VDI latency issues were decreasing productivity and threatening to impact care levels.

“Our mission is top-notch care, from birth to end of life,” says Tahir Ali, chief technology officer and chief information security officer at Montage Health. “Our biggest delivery mechanism for the entire hospital is our VDI environment. The operating system sits in our data center and is delivered through the wire. We wanted to ensure we have a top-of-the-line infrastructure to run our VDI solution. We chose Dell APEX Private Cloud.”

In the past, it would take physicians, nurses and other clinicians an average of 100 seconds to log in to a VDI terminal. By deploying VDI on APEX Private Cloud, Montage Health was able to reduce login times to an average of 30 seconds, saving 70 seconds per session.

“We have 600 unique VDI sessions per day,” Ali comments. “APEX Private Cloud saves us up to 11.66 hours daily, or a little under $300,000 per year in saved time on VDI logins. It was also very easy to just put it together and then start delivering VDI.”

He continues, “Most importantly, the low latency of the APEX solution saves lives in the emergency room, where patients may arrive bleeding and every second counts.”

Key Takeaways

Here’s the bottom line: Today’s enterprises and public organizations need to find ways to enable their remote employees to maintain the highest levels of productivity while maintaining control to accessibility and costs. That’s APEX for VDI. With Dell APEX for VDI, you can provide remote access to virtual desktops and company applications anytime, anywhere. And you can do it all with a best-in-class cloud solution that puts the user experience first.

Source: dell.com

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Extend Endpoint Security Beyond the Boundaries with XDR

Today, organizations rely on next-generation anti-virus (NGAV) with an endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution to help protect end users’ devices against a barrage of cybersecurity threats. But that just covers the endpoint. With the increasing challenge of managing a hybrid workforce, there’s so much more to consider when we think of endpoint security. Attacks are growing in sophistication and now affect not only the endpoint, but also their rapid extension to the network and cloud. How do you make sure your upward, lateral and cloud environments are also protected? What happens if your endpoints are breached? And how do you ensure threats don’t permeate your entire network and cloud environment? 

I provided an overview of the different types of modern endpoint threat management solutions IT and security teams are exploring today. While point solutions like security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) are still in use today, customers increasingly require more comprehensive approaches to protect against today’s threat landscape. That’s where Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions come into play. XDR provides the prevention, detection and response capabilities needed as remote and cloud-based work widen the attack surface.

Let’s drill a little deeper. With XDR, organizations can gain better visibility into the entirety of the attack surface in their endpoints, networks and cloud. They improve the ability to:

◉ Detect known and unknown threats

◉ Detect vulnerabilities across the IT environment

◉ Prevent, contain and respond to incidents

◉ Streamline collaborative investigations

At the same time, IT and SecOps are looking to scale their threat management capabilities as security threats continue to grow and evolve. Unlike traditional EDR, XDR solutions use AI and machine learning to help automate threat prevention, detection and response, contributing to overall cyber resilience. Not only can XDR help close the security and IT gap many organizations struggle with today, but it can also result in significant cost efficiencies in leveraging security AI. According to the latest Cost of a Data Breach report published by Ponemon Institute, when AI and automation are fully deployed, breaches cost $3.05 million less than those at organizations with no security AI and automation deployed – up to a 65.2% difference in cost savings.

Another important benefit of XDR is the ability to combine security analytics and threat intelligence to further bolster your security posture and proactively shore up your defenses. Capabilities include correlating and enriching security-relevant data from endpoint, network, cloud and business systems, as well as prioritizing vulnerabilities and threats with a risk-based understanding of your unique environment. With this data-driven approach, organizations can maximize security effectiveness by spotting adversarial behavior early on and disrupting attacks before they do damage.

With XDR, customers get a holistic and comprehensive view through security analytics – across endpoint, network and cloud. This is a big step forward from the legacy approach of manually stitching together data and bouncing across multiple points solutions.

As a security and technology partner, Dell delivers not only the trusted hardware organizations need to improve cyber resilience, but also software, like XDR, for protection against advanced threats. Through our threat management portfolio SafeGuard and Response, Dell and our partner Secureworks offer Taegis XDR. Reach out to your sales rep to learn how Taegis XDR heightens IT and SecOps agility and strengthens your security posture.

Source: dell.com

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Leveraging Integration as a Service (INaaS) for Your Business

Integration as a Service (INaaS) has become a critical internal product for developers and business users when it comes to integration services. Currently, INaaS allows developers and even business users to build, migrate, monitor and manage their integration services. This fiscal year FY23, INaaS has enabled over 3,000 self-service requests per month across all integration platforms.

Consider the last time your organization set up an integration to transfer 500GB of files each month. With multiple business transformation and north star transformation efforts, the initial size assumption of 500GB changes drastically. Now, that integration could be actually transferring 1TB of files. Let’s add to that scenario more than 50,000 integrations running. Suddenly, managing all these pieces of information becomes multifaceted.

Within Dell Digital (Dell IT), INaaS has created the capabilities to help profile the data changes and make the necessary adjustments to reconfigure the integration optimally.

Providing Visibility into “Total Cost of Ownership”

The integration services that made INaaS a critical tool within Dell Digital in recent years are the same services that have pushed INaaS to grow and provide additional “smart features.” In FY23Q3, INaaS launched a set of new dashboard services that bring visibility to the actual cost of running integration services.

◉ Integration owners can now see the traffic each integration is producing by displaying transaction data. Leveraging the CapEx and OpEx on each platform and the volume information, actual cost to run each integration is calculated.

◉ Platform owners are now equipped with new platform infrastructure utilization and license consumption by each instance across all integration platforms, which enable them to optimize the spend.

◉ Integration owners can also monitor any integrations that are not active and mark them for decommission, which helps to keep the platform lean.

◉ With these additional insights, platform teams can make the right decisions by finding opportunities and lowering the cost of operations.

For INaaS, we knew we had to go a step farther in understanding cost for each integration so our consumers can factor in this consideration to their costs and determine the total cost of ownership for their respective products. It’s a win for Dell IT and our consumers and partners, but how do organizations take the data they have and make it useful information for their business partners?

Scalable and Extendable

This new framework not only brings benefits to an internal Dell tool such as INaaS, but it can also bring value to similar software tools for our external partners. Organizations can adopt this model thanks to the four-step “plug-and-play” model INaaS created.

1. Inventory Self Discovery. We performed an initial data load from each platform to collect all inventory details. After the initial load, INaaS pulls integration inventory data daily from all platforms. Whether it’s APIs, Splunk or direct database calls, INaaS is automatically collecting new integration details near-real time to keep the inventory up to date.

2. Tracking Transactions. After INaaS collects inventory data, each integration’s transactions are the next data points to collect. INaaS schedules tasks to pull transaction information through Splunk, Elasticsearch and API calls, with no manual effort required to collect either inventory or transaction information.

3. Rate Card Update. Once INaaS creates a complete integration inventory and transaction landscape, INaaS is able to calculate the cost of each transaction using an averaging technique of total OpEx and CapEx by platform over the total volume each platform supports.

4. Cost Management. With the transaction details and the unit price of each transaction, INaaS can generate the billing process and populate total cost. With this data, INaaS can build the “Transaction Cost Metrics” Dashboard and display these details according to leaders, applications and more.

The Product Model Benefits

At Dell Technologies, the Dell Digital (IT) organization has started to embrace the product model. What does that mean for INaaS? Other products can now leverage these new features that have proven to provide cost-saving benefits.

While it’s tempting to say it took INaaS 12 months to build these new smart features, the building blocks and data already existed. Similarly, the data your current software tools are producing can bring value to your stakeholders by providing similar insights our consumers are appreciating. As we continue to expand on INaaS smart features for Dell Digital, we are simultaneously providing additional information for its products. Leveraging the steps we took, your tools and software can also provide financial benefits to your organization and company.

Source: dell.com

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Getting Personal About Employee IT Needs

Employees in today’s fast-paced, global environment need reliable technology to communicate quickly and easily with colleagues worldwide. They also need to be able to access company information from anywhere. When their technology works well and is easy to use, employees are positioned to be productive and engaged. They’re also more likely to interact with other people in the company, which can help build a strong company culture. In the era of hybrid work, how can you best accomplish this?

Anticipate the Unique Needs of Different Employees

By creating workforce personas, you can ensure your employees are productive and have a positive user experience. Persona-based technology kits help new employees feel like part of the team from their first day on the job. The kits, tailored to each employee’s role, provide everything they need to hit the ground running with the latest technology.

For example, a major health plan provider recently worked with the Dell Lifecycle Hub (LCH) team to develop persona-based technology kits that enable the company to support its 15,000 employees and onboard as many as 150 new employees per week (Read more about the Health Plan Provider’s collaboration with Dell LCH).

The health plan provider’s principal architect captured the benefits of the approach when saying, “LCH enables us to enhance the user support experience with a dedicated team that shaved our 15-day deployment cycle down to two days. Employees receive their devices faster than ever and can be productive from day one.”

Enable a Long-lasting Relationship

The rapid deployment of persona-based technology will make employees feel valued and contribute to job satisfaction. In the case of the health plan provider, the company was able to get ahead of the challenge of getting its entire workforce onto systems upgraded to Windows 10 while implementing personas. By taking the time to create employee personas, you can create a workplace that can span spans the globe while remaining tailored to the individual requirements of your employees.

In addition to feeling valued and supported, employees who receive persona-based technology kits can make an immediate impact for your company. This helps create an immediately positive employee experience, setting the stage for a productive and long-lasting relationship.

Accelerate IT Service Requests

IT departments are under constant pressure to provide fast, efficient service. They need to handle employee requests quickly and efficiently to keep the workplace running smoothly. By having automated service requests from your company’s IT Service Management (ITSM) flow directly to Dell Lifecycle Hub, it is possible to ensure turnaround times are fast and employees receive their shipments on time. This can help improve workplace morale and productivity.

In addition, better work environment management can lead to improved workflow for the IT department. Automating service requests can make it easier for IT managers to keep track of what needs attention, and it can help improve the department’s overall efficiency. As the health plan provider’s IT director says, “Rather than attending to concerns about device provisioning and delays, I can address upstream challenges that I can actually fix.”

The First Step in the Chain

IT departments should be engines for delivering continuous positive employee experiences. Ensuring each employee has the right technology when they need it, moving technology between employees as roles change and keeping technology up-to-date are essential. Your company relies on what is, in effect, an internal technology supply chain. Like any supply chain, the tighter the coordination between the component stages, the more effective the chain will be at keeping your company running at peak efficiency.

Managing device lifecycles is important because it helps companies build fulfilling, productive work environments that produce high levels of satisfaction among employees – something IT can impact with efficiency by handling the replenishment process correctly and providing great service when introducing new devices or refreshing existing inventory.

With Dell Lifecycle Hub, companies gain access to a world-class managed service with seamlessly integrated warehousing, inventory management of multi-vendor hardware, configuration services, deployment expertise and device return, repair, exchange and refurbishing services. 

Source: dell.com

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Accelerating Transformation Anywhere with Next Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers

As technology evolves and we enter a multicloud era, IT environments are growing more complex, requiring IT leaders to adapt. This means adopting the latest technologies to meet the needs of their businesses and working to ensure the security of their data and networks, all while overcoming limited human resources and budget constraints while dealing with unpredictable growth. Modern IT environments also require managing compute assets in a diversity of locations while also becoming more energy efficient and managing energy costs.

This modernization requires expanding artificial intelligence (AI) from the core to the edge, accelerating automation, adopting Zero Trust principles and advancing sustainability – all without breaking the budget or overtaxing IT teams. But getting from here to what’s next can be a daunting task.

At Dell Technologies, we understand the need for easy-to-implement server innovations to power digital transformation that drives better business outcomes. That’s why we’ve expanded our PowerEdge server portfolio, introducing new purpose-built products for specialized AI/Machine Learning (ML), Edge and CSP workloads. We’ve also refreshed our general purpose platforms with a focus on acceleration to support customer transformation needs at the core, at the edge and at scale. Each PowerEdge server is backed with industry-leading security and systems management and includes advanced technologies designed to reduce emissions and energy use while maximizing performance.

Our next-generation rack, tower and multi-node PowerEdge servers are built on fourth generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and fourth generation AMD EPYC processors and include Dell software and engineering advancements, as well as innovations developed in close partnership with members of our rich partner ecosystem, such as NVIDIA and Broadcom. They offer more performance, security, versatility and management capabilities for complex workloads like AI/ML, HPC and Oracle DB/SAP large-scale databases. These systems also offer purpose-built features to advance innovation for edge/telco deployments and cloud service providers (CSPs).

Our latest Dell PowerEdge servers can help you:

◉ Transform your core: Deploy AI and ML at the core to find new opportunities and operational efficiencies. PowerEdge servers, powered by fourth generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processors, provide AI horsepower that enables businesses of all sizes to harness its power, including multiple sockets and GPUs along with smart cooling capabilities to improve energy efficiency.

◉ Transform at the edge: Go beyond your boundaries with new PowerEdge Rugged Servers. They fit into smaller spaces and keep performing when subjected to extreme heat or cold, dust, shock and vibration. This makes them ideal for telco outposts, factory floors, construction sites, retail locations, mobile command centers and other extreme environments.

Transform at scale: The PowerEdge portfolio includes servers purpose-built with essential features and configurations that easily scale, available through the Hyperscale Next program. With the optional Open Server Manager built on OpenBMC™, CSPs can simplify management across large-scale multi-vendor SaaS, PaaS and IaaS datacenters. The refreshed PowerEdge portfolio delivers quantifiable benefits.

Accelerate AI-driven innovations

◉ Up to 10X faster model generation

◉ 60% less time spent on AI architecture management

Accelerate automation

◉ One console for managing up to 8,000 PowerEdge servers

◉ 3M metrics measured daily using telemetry streaming provided by iDRAC6

Accelerate Zero trust adoption

◉ 91% less time for complete system lockdown

◉ 52% faster deployment of security configuration templates with Dell OME

Accelerate sustainability

◉ 3x performance improvement while reducing the power consumption by 43%

◉ EPEAT Silver and Bronze registered servers along with ENERGY STAR® rated products throughout most of the portfolio

Power Your Digital Transformation with PowerEdge Servers

The latest generation of PowerEdge servers and solutions are designed and optimized to help you execute on your goals for AI-driven innovation, automation, a Zero-Trust approach to security and sustainability – while empowering people to focus less on infrastructure and more on turning their ideas into competitive advantage. Excel with today’s business outcomes and be ready for what’s next with PowerEdge Servers that are purpose-built, intelligent, cyber resilient and energy-efficient to accelerate transformation anywhere.

Source: dell.com

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Thrive Amid the Chaos of the Digital Business Era

We all know the feeling of juggling multiple priorities and having too little time to accomplish too many tasks. Looking at your to-do list, you feel a slight pit in your stomach or throb in your head as you wonder, “How will I get this all done my own?”

Businesses seem to be experiencing similar scenarios these days, challenged to do more with less – less budget and fewer knowledgeable resources. As we transition from the era of digital transformation to digital business, there is a growing need for organizations to do things faster and better to remain competitive. Adopting innovative digital business models fueled by multicloud IT infrastructures will help, but the operational efficiencies and resiliency required leaves many businesses scratching their heads about how to manage it all.

A recent IDC survey analyzes these struggles and challenges, like a lack of technical skills in the IT organization that not only causes stress, but also impedes IT operations, revenue growth and digital business objectives. Organizations are prioritizing digital infrastructure resiliency, which requires adopting innovative new technologies while maintaining mission-critical legacy systems. This is a tricky balance – especially when resources are constrained – and the cost and complexity of managing hybrid, multicloud environments or the lack of automation and analytics to optimize workload performance create difficult barriers to overcome. Whether or not IT teams possess the skills required, they’re being tasked to cover multiple priorities, and they do still need to eat and sleep!

There is Light at the End of this Dark Tunnel

The bright light amidst the chaos is IT services providers. IDC found that third party Residency Services in particular deliver significant value, providing the skills, experience and extra hands companies lack. From adopting complex technologies and improving the operational management skills of IT teams, Residency Services maximize an IT staff’s capabilities and ROI. Every investment and every new technology introduction should add value, not stress and increased workload. IDC connected measurable benefits to Residency engagements. These included eighteen fewer incidents per month, reduction of one to three months during technology transitions and a 31% improvement in staff efficiency. Just add laundry and getting dinner on the table, and I’m bringing a resident home with me!

IDC also found Residency creates a positive impact on the relationship between the IT organization and business managers. Consider this scenario. You create a to-do list for you and your spouse. Your wife wants to rearrange the living room, but all you can think about is the big game viewing party you’re hosting tomorrow and believe this rearranging is unnecessary work that will get in the way of your fun. Your wife brings in a friend to help who recently did this in her house and it’s what gave your wife the redecorating itch. Her experience and help get the job done before your big party. Your wife loves the result, and you have to admit, it works out nicely for you too. There’s more room for snack tables and seating now, and there’s a better view of the television. In the end it’s a win-win!

The work resident engineers do creates a positive impact that can have a ripple effect throughout the organization. Implementing new features and functionality to technology improves utilization and value, ultimately delivering better performance for business managers. In fact, IDC found CIOs and IT managers recognize Residency Services in making the organization more efficient, increasing agility to react in real time and even improving the organization’s profitability.

Tell Me Where to Sign!

So, how do you navigate what will work best for your organization? IDC recommends being selective when evaluating Residency Services. Look for a provider that will address your specific needs, offering a range of capabilities aligned to business problems. Consider if the vendor provides the flexibility you require, and ask for testimonials and references aligned to your own struggles.

Dell Residency Services addresses not only technological data center needs, but also end-user environment and business outcome areas like multicloud, security, and modern workforce. Our engineers undergo extensive training and certification as Dell Proven Professionals, a top 10 industry rated technical certification program. And when backed by Dell Technologies’ extensive global network, we can align to your unique requirements, providing services in-person or virtually starting at one- and two-week durations for utmost flexibility.

But if you don’t believe me, consider the interviews IDC conducted directly with some of our customers. Dow Chemical needed to modernize a legacy storage environment to improve IT operations and better serve business managers. Dell residents worked side by side with their team, delivering process improvements to enhance technology and improve adoption. Dow stated, “Dell Residency Services gave us the expert, insider knowledge necessary to determine the best path for new technology in our organization.. IDC also spoke to a major European financial institution undergoing a significant legacy infrastructure migration. Focused on business-critical application data and processes that included important backup policies and procedures, Residency helped migrate and archive sensitive data aligned to regulatory requirements. The customer stated, “Dell Residency Services provided the expert assistance we needed to ramp up quickly and accelerate the project from day one.”

Dell Residency has you covered, and our experts can help you navigate the chaotic digital business era.

Source: dell.com

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Accelerate the Most Demanding Visual Computing Workloads

Emerging capabilities in graphics and AI are transforming 3D design and simulation workflows, fueling explosive growth in visual computing workload complexity and scale. Across industries, a transformation is underway thanks to an explosion of data, accelerated adoption of AI-augmented tools in existing workflows and demand for photo-realistic, real-time performance.

Read More: DES-7DE1: Dell EMC Data Engineering Specialist Exam For Data Scientist

Embracing and enabling this transformation requires platforms equipped with accelerated hardware capabilities to meet the needs of a broad spectrum of visual computing use cases.

Develop a New Infrastructure Approach to Visual Computing

Delivering a platform with native support for visual computing applications and workloads starts with a performance-optimized infrastructure, flexible enough to support a range of needs across the business and its users.

The Dell PowerEdge server portfolio enables enterprises and businesses to harness the power of GPUs and significantly improve performance with visual computing solutions using the NVIDIA L40 GPU, which is supported in the R750xa, R750 and R7525 servers.

And with today’s announcement of the next generation of Dell’s PowerEdge systems based on the latest 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor family, designers, developers and business users will be able to take visual computing performance to new heights with future configurations that include NVIDIA L40 GPUs, delivering a powerful platform with the agility, performance and scale to tackle the most demanding visual computing workloads.

Accelerate Visual Computing Workloads in the Data Center

Powered by the new Ada Lovelace architecture, the NVIDIA L40 GPU delivers breakthrough graphics, compute and AI performance for data center workloads. With the latest-generation RT Cores and Tensor Cores, coupled with 48GB of GDDR6 memory and new innovations within the Ada Lovelace architecture, the L40 GPU delivers a tremendous leap in performance and efficiency to accelerate large-scale, high-fidelity creative workflows, including AI-enabled, real-time interactive rendering, 3D design and physically accurate simulation.

Optimized to deploy at scale, the NVIDIA L40 GPU is tried, tested and certified for high-demand, 24/7 data center environments and includes enterprise-grade features like power-efficient hardware and Secure Boot with root of trust. Combining these capabilities with Dell’s next-generation PowerEdge systems delivers breakthrough performance, efficiency and scalability to accelerate a broad range of workloads, including:

Rendering and 3D Graphics

With third-generation RTX ray-tracing technology and 209 teraflops of RT Core performance, the NVIDIA L40 brings up to 2X the real-time ray-tracing performance of the previous generation to accelerate professional graphics workflows such as real-time, full-fidelity, interactive rendering, 3D design and virtual production.

AI and Data Science

The L40 packs a powerful punch to conquer AI-enabled graphics, training and inference, high-performance computing, and simulation workloads. With fourth-generation Tensor Cores and over 90 TFLOPS of single-precision floating point (FP32) performance, the L40 provides high throughput across a broad range of precisions, including FP8.

Streaming and Video Content

The NVIDIA L40 takes streaming and video content workloads to the next level. With three encode and three decode engines, the addition of AV1 encoding and support for 8K video streaming at 60FPS, the L40 delivers higher performance and improved total cost of ownership for broadcast streaming, video production and transcription workflows.

NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise

The metaverse is ushering in the next era of industries and AI, transforming customer experiences and revolutionizing how enterprises design, simulate and optimize products and processes. NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise includes the full suite of tools enterprises need to develop and operate metaverse applications and is optimized to take full advantage of the enhancements within Ada Lovelace architecture to accelerate the creation of physically accurate virtual worlds, large-scale simulations and digital twins.

The L40 GPU powers Omniverse Enterprise in the data center, delivering a multifold increase in performance for workflows like real-time ray-traced and path-traced rendering, physics simulation and the generation of physically accurate 3D data for training computer vision and robotic networks.

Adopt Visual Computing Workloads and Development with Confidence

With visual computing, 3D models and performance graphics as catalysts to drive and transform the internet, the metaverse and other advanced innovations forward, businesses are actively looking to stay ahead of the performance demands, while optimizing investments and harnessing visual computing innovation to meet their business and end-user needs.

Purpose-built solutions for visual computing are essential foundations to keep up with the pace of innovation. With a powerful foundation of solutions from Dell and NVIDIA, including PowerEdge servers along with leading-edge NVIDIA accelerators such as the L40 GPU and the NVIDIA Omniverse platform, customers can build and deliver a curated, efficient and performance solution for metaverse and 3D world development, from data center to edge.

Source: dell.com

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Dell Digital Transforms and Protects the Developer Experience

Dell Digital, the internal IT organization of Dell Technologies, wanted to create a resilient, high-performance, cost-effective environment that would help Dell developers boost efficiency and productivity. They selected VMware Tanzu Kubernetes and Dell data protection solutions to reimagine how they could meet future needs and spur innovation.

Kubernetes affords developers greater flexibility, efficiency and cost savings for application development. And while it is easy to say, collaboration between IT organizations and developers is key to making it happen.

To encourage collaboration, the Dell Digital team prioritized a frictionless infrastructure experience for developers and application teams, while at the same time delivering the same onboarding and transaction capabilities as cloud providers, with greater service, performance, cost efficiency and security.

Importantly, in making the shift to Kubernetes, Dell Digital recognized the need to make it easy to protect the container environments where valuable data resides.

This was the Dell Digital journey to a global, frictionless experience for their developer and application teams.

To simplify and securely protect their Tanzu Kubernetes environment, Dell Digital turned to Dell PowerProtect software and appliances. Dell PowerProtect data protection solutions for Kubernetes multicloud environments deliver simplicity, efficiency and end-to-end security.

PowerProtect Data Manager software gives Dell developers the self-service tools they want to do their jobs, resulting in reduced complexity through automation, while also giving them the ability to protect Kubernetes and other workloads across hybrid multicloud environments.

To improve resiliency, Dell Digital chose PowerProtect Cyber Recovery. This simple and cost-effective solution delivers isolation, with immutable and intelligent cyber recovery.

Using these data protection solutions, Dell Digital can now provide a simplified process for code development, delivery, quality and cybersecurity, while increasing developer productivity.

Dell PowerProtect solutions for Kubernetes allow Dell Digital to provide single-source VM, app and container protection throughout their diverse environment, take advantage of Transparent Snapshots to deliver crash-consistent backups and eliminate vProxies, bring application consistency and cloud-native mobility, deliver isolation, immutable and intelligent cyber recovery, plus, move quickly with self-service template-driven backups and Protect Tanzu guest clusters at scale and with performance.

Using Dell data protection and Tanzu Kubernetes, Dell Digital went from 70,000 containers to 170,000 containers in nine months without increasing staff. That’s almost a 150% increase.

That wasn’t all. Dell Digital built a resilient, efficient and scalable Kubernetes environment.

With PowerProtect data protection, Dell Digital can count on consistently reliable restores and, importantly, protect and isolate data from ransomware and cyber threats with Cyber Recovery.

The solution is simple and cost-efficient, delivering a 200% increase in product coding time and saving eight administrative hours per month with Transparent Snapshots. Plus, the solution is scalable, protecting 70 clusters with a single Data Manager instance and delivering automated protection policies to new clusters.

But the biggest benefit of all has been peace of mind.

Our Kubernetes environment is protected and secure—regardless of where the workloads are deployed.” – James Hall, Senior Consultant, Dell Technologies Digital

Read the full case study to learn more. Plus, read what ESG has to say about Dell data protection solutions for Kubernetes.

Source: dell.com

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Multicloud Data Protection Mitigates Risk for DevOps Teams

Many can relate to the frustrating experience of losing a set of car keys, a smartphone or a wallet, but imagine what it feels like to lose sight of your data.

In the Dell Technologies 2022 GDPI Snapshot survey, 72% of organizations reported they are unable to locate and protect dynamic and distributed data resulting from DevOps and cloud development processes.

At the root of this problem is the age old disconnect between IT operations and application developers. Sometimes in the rush to get new application services to market, developers end up leaving IT out of the loop concerning their development activities in the public cloud. Consequently, valuable development data could go unprotected.

Read More: DES-6322: Dell EMC VxRail Specialist for Implementation Engineer

This is particularly concerning given that GDPI research reported double-digit increases in public cloud infrastructure consumption for application development. This means increasingly more value development data is living in the cloud.

So, unless developers are following data protection best practices for protecting and securing their data, many organizations could be at risk of losing days, weeks or even months of valuable development data.

One way IT can gain visibility into development data residing in the cloud and automate its protection is to give developers the tools they need for protecting the data themselves.

Modern data protection solutions don’t require developers or other data owners to be experts in data protection technology. They can either simply use a graphical user interface to point and click to which workloads they want to protect or – even better from a developers’ perspective – use APIs with their existing application deployment scripts to fully automate the data protection process.

Ideally, the solution would also auto-discover and auto-protect new workloads, whether they are deployed on-premises or in the cloud. That way, if something slips through the cracks, critical data will still be protected.

It’s critically important for these tools to provide protection for any workload – from bare metal and virtual machines to newer workloads like Kubernetes containers, which developers are increasingly using to develop new apps.

Likewise, developers should have the self-service capabilities to perform their own data recoveries. This takes the onus off busy IT teams to have to field these requests. Developers also typically want the autonomy to perform their own on-demand recoveries.

Importantly, the solution would enable IT admins to maintain visibility into the protected status of development data (as well as production workloads) anywhere it resides across hybrid multicloud environments, to ensure they are adhering to corporate data governance and compliance mandates.

As a modern data protection offering, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager gives application developers and IT admins a consistent and powerful way to protect and secure any workload in any cloud.

Through APIs and self-service capabilities, Data Manager empowers developers to automate the protection of their own workloads, while enabling IT admins to get a clear line of sight into the protection status of developer data anywhere it resides across edge, on-premises and multicloud environments.

Data Manager is available in the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplace environments, and users can rapidly deploy it to protect VMs, Kubernetes containers and cloud-native apps anywhere in the public cloud.

Data Manager is also available for on-premises deployments as a software solution or as an integrated appliance that combines data protection software with protection storage. Regardless of the deployment option, Data Manager gives developers and IT admins a consistent way to protect and manage applications and data anywhere they reside, so IT isn’t kept in the dark and developers can innovate without constraints.

Source: dell.com

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Under the Hood: Data Protection Platform

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager software provides a software-defined data protection solution, built from the ground up for proven and modern workloads.

In a previous blog post, we examined the high-level architecture of the Policy Engine and Catalog Service of the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager protection platform. We will now examine other core services of PowerProtect Data Manager.

Figure 1: PowerProtect Data Manager – Data Protection Platform

Data Services

In data protection software, the ability to replicate copies of data is not a “nice to have” but a must-have functionality. While every customer has his or her own set of unique needs and circumstances to maintain multiple copies of production data, replication of data is an essential component for recovery in the event of a modern or natural disaster. Some common types include:

Operational Recovery Copy. This type of replication entails creating a protection copy in the same data center or location, enabling you to quickly recover and instantly access data without pulling the data remotely. To reduce costs on production storage and tolerate against corruption or defects in production storage, users create a protected copy of their production data and keep the copy in deduplicated protection storage (i.e., different media). This enables users to keep operational copies for a longer duration because of deduplication.

Disaster Recovery Copy. In this situation, the user replicates a copy to a remote data center to protect against disaster. This replicated protection copy could be stored in the user’s own data center or in public cloud. When replicating, users want the WAN bandwidth to be optimally utilized, replicate only the changes, tolerate higher latency and throttle the replication bandwidth. Users also want the ability to restore in the replicated site or restore back into the production site. Depending on the business need, these replicated copies could have longer or shorter retention than the operation recovery copy.

Cloud Disaster Recovery Copy. For virtual machines, users want the ability to replicate copy to public cloud object storage (with or without requiring compute in public cloud) and restore the copy into public cloud.

Long-term Retention Copy. Users want to keep the long-term retention copy for long duration (e.g., seven years) with low cost. Object Storage and deduplication can reduce costs for long-term retention.

Figure 2: PowerProtect Data Manager – Data Services

In PowerProtect Data Manager, we have added a set of data services to address the above requirements. PowerProtect Data Manager policies are flexible and allow users to choose the protection level needed for their organization.

PowerProtect Data Manager configures these services in protection stages in the policy engine at the platform layer, and they work consistently across all protection workloads. The protection applications handle the initial protection copy creation, and data services agnostic to the workload handle subsequent copies. These data services provide finer control to operate on the protection copies (e.g., which copies to replicate, how long to retain, when to operate on the copy, etc.)

Replication Service. Replication Data Service (see Figure 2) coordinates with PowerProtect DD series appliances to replicate all the files associated with a protection copy to the remote site. PowerProtect DD series appliances use the replication networks link very efficiently by sending only the unique data over the network. Replication service orchestrates replication of backup copies between DD series efficiently without overloading the target appliance.

To meet replication network bandwidth and RPO requirements, the DD series provides various scheduling options, including “Replication upon completion,” by automatically replicating the backup copy on completion of backup. Replication service works with catalog service to track the replicated backup copies and retention. It also ensures the catalog on the remote site is updated after replication. This enables the remote system Backup Admin to quickly recover copies in case of disasters.

PowerProtect Data Manager has tight integration with PowerProtect DD series for replication management, leveraging years of PowerProtect DD series’ strengths in eliminating tapes for disaster recovery (DR).

Cloud Disaster Recovery Service

Cloud DR provides a disaster recovery site in the cloud (AWS, Google Cloud). PowerProtect Data Manager takes copies of protected VMs from DD series and copies it efficiently to become object storage in the public cloud by replicating only the modified data. No additional compute resources are required in the public cloud. It provides failback, failover and test DR capability. In case of a site disaster, Cloud Disaster Recovery Server (a recovery service in the cloud) orchestrates the recovery of VM in the cloud and uses the public cloud compute/storage/network resources to run the workload. Cloud Disaster Recovery Server can restore data from Object Storage to the public cloud block storage and orchestrates the necessary format conversions to power up the VM in the public cloud.

PowerProtect Data Manager and Cloud DR not only significantly reduce DR data center costs, but they also allow customers to move to an OpEx model for storing/recovery VM protection copies in public cloud. In addition, they simplify auto of orchestration of recovery in public cloud.

Cloud Tiering Service

Cloud Tier enables the option to tier protection copies to Object Storage (on-prem or public cloud) for long-term retention. PowerProtect Data Manager leverages the PowerProtect DD Cloud Tiering capabilities for this and orchestrates the Client Tiering. The DD series keeps the data deduplicated in the Object Storage, thereby reducing further the Object Storage costs. PowerProtect Data Manager catalog is designed to keep these long-term copies and orchestrates the recovery/recall from the Object Storage (only changes are recalled). In addition, no compute is required in the public cloud.

PowerProtect Data Manager and PowerProtect DD series appliances have the best integrations for tiering data to the public cloud, significantly reduce the OPEX costs by minimizing bandwidth to public cloud and reduce object storage costs by deduplicating.

PowerProtect Data Manager empowers you to start your journey towards modern data protection with efficient performance, secure operational and cyber resilience and a simple, unified user management experience.

Source: dell.com

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Modernizing IT for Agility, Simplicity and Cost Control

The pandemic and current market turmoil have shown the future can be highly unpredictable. To succeed, businesses must prioritize agility and flexibility to pivot quickly and adapt to world events, supply chain dynamics and cyclical business demands. Technology, which drives much of business operations today, must pivot in lockstep to support fluctuating business needs.

This presents a notable challenge for technology. Traditional CapEx technology planning approaches can be inflexible. For example, long planning and approval cycles can delay IT modernization, resulting in prolonged business inefficiencies, higher costs and elevated risks. In addition, CapEx technology purchases require large upfront investments, which can tie up cash and resources that could be used for other business priorities. Additionally, to ensure adequate IT capacity, many businesses must overprovision – at higher monetary and resource costs – to handle spikes in demand and facilitate business growth.

Paving a New Way Forward

Businesses need a new approach. That’s why consumption-based technology, which mitigates these challenges, is in high demand. A recent IDC survey* indicates 61% of organizations worldwide are interested in shifting to a consumption-based model for IT investment.

Flexible consumption models are designed to deliver agility and simpler deployment, and they allow for greater financial control. In turn, these attributes help increase operational efficiencies, drive business growth, are cost-effective and accelerate future scalability. Dell APEX Flex on Demand is a leading pay-per-use consumption solution answering the needs of businesses of all sizes with agility, simplicity and control.

Agility is a key competitive advantage and business resiliency requirement. Dell APEX Flex on Demand allows businesses to move 33% faster to prepare IT for business expansion, according to IDC*. Results like these helped create the case for change at NG Bailey, a leading engineering and services company in the U.K.

Attaining IT Agility

NG Bailey wanted to better align its technology infrastructure to its business needs. Faced with aging IT infrastructure, NG Bailey could not react quickly enough to industry changes and struggled to optimize team productivity and avert rising costs. Its goal was to better serve customers within a highly cyclical and often unpredictable business environment while providing a path for future growth. Working with Dell Technologies and its partner Constor Solutions, NG Bailey chose to proactively modernize its technology using Dell APEX Flex on Demand with Dell Technologies VxRail.

As an engineering company, NG Bailey understands the importance of a strong foundation. While technology underpins its business, the pace and magnitude of market changes are escalating. Thus, attaining technical agility is a top priority. NG Bailey needed flexibility to better navigate the increasingly dynamic building industry and more effectively meet the cyclical needs of the major infrastructure projects and sophisticated customers it serves.

Dell APEX Flex on Demand’s hybrid cloud model provides NG Bailey with on-premises speed, the flexibility of built-in buffer capacity and the ability to spin up virtual machines very quickly. Collectively, the solution helps to manage NG Bailey’s variable needs. “APEX Flex on Demand has revolutionized the way my team works. It stopped us from being reactionary. We can now supply the business with what it needs from an IT infrastructure and support perspective and do so very quickly,” says Stephen Firth, Infrastructure Manager, NG Bailey.

Watch NG Bailey’s two-minute video about its technology-led business transformation.

Controlling Technology Costs

While consumption-based IT increases agility, it simultaneously decreases costs and enables more control with predictable IT monthly spend. For example, Dell APEX Flex on Demand users only pay for the capacity used, including buffer capacity at an 85% billing cap.* IDC estimates* that Dell APEX Flex on Demand saves 39% in annual infrastructure costs with a 34% reduction in required buffer capacity. 

For NG Bailey, Dell APEX Flex on Demand provided much greater cost control.

NG Bailey deployed the solution during the pandemic when capital investments were on hold. By offering the innovative OpEx payment model, the solution enabled NG Bailey to adopt the IT capabilities needed without requiring upfront CapEx expenditures. Additionally, Dell APEX Flex on Demand helped reduce NG Bailey’s data center footprint by 50%, aiding in lower costs and decreased power consumption to support net-zero sustainability strategies.

“We control our costs much more now, we pay for what we use, know how much we’re paying and there are no hidden charges,” says Stephen Firth, Infrastructure Manager, NG Bailey.

Simplifying Infrastructure Management

IDC’s research* indicates Dell APEX Flex on Demand also generates business value through simplicity, generating 37% more efficient IT infrastructure teams and 54% more efficient help desks. Results at NG Bailey are even more significant. Specifically, Dell APEX Flex on Demand helped NG Bailey decrease infrastructure-related support calls by 75% and reduce IT restore time for critical business systems from eight hours to 30 minutes.

“The APEX Flex on Demand for VxRail solution is great because it’s simple, easy to use and it works. The solution is all-in-one stack so we don’t have to manage three elements of hardware. It does its job and requires very little management from us, making upgrades simple and seamless. The solution does exactly what we need it to do,” states Neil Florence, Head of Systems and Infrastructure for NG Bailey.

For NG Bailey, the Dell APEX Flex on Demand solution answered multiple needs and delivered impressive business outcomes.

Source: dell.com

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Dell Technologies Introduces More “World’s First’s” Collaboration Tools

Regardless of where you work, technology remains a staple in facilitating productive and collaborative employee experiences. At the center is the overarching PC experience driven largely by an entire ecosystem of devices bringing employees closer to their teams, customers and clients.

With more than 50% of employees surveyed rating monitors as the most important device to improve productivity across different workspaces in a recent Dell-Forrester study, our newest additions to the UltraSharp family promise to uplevel the performance and experience on which you’ve grown to depend.

Raising the Bar for Innovation

Dell ups the ante with another game changer in display innovation with the world’s first 6K-resolution monitor with IPS Black panel technology that provides higher contrast and deeper blacks. Fully compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems, the Dell UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor (U3224KB) raises the bar with exceptional details, sharpness and color accuracy in stunning 6K resolution and VESA DisplayHDR 600 for detail-oriented professionals like graphic designers, engineers and data scientists where every pixel counts. With 150% more pixels on 6K resolution compared to 4K, the new UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor brings extra details and additional clarity to your data sets and graphics.

But it’s not just about 6K resolution. The inclusion of IPS Black technology means an increase in depth for dark objects – even in dark environments – and accurate colors viewed from virtually every angle. Dell’s recently commissioned Hot Tech study revealed monitors with IPS Black technology offer up to 41% deeper black levels and up to 1.2 times better color accuracy than conventional IPS especially in displaying low grays.

The UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor is also ideal for users looking for excellent video conferencing capabilities, especially under low light conditions. It features a built-in dual gain HDR 4K webcam and provides auto framing, light adjustments plus enhanced clarity, automatic SafeShutter, echo cancellation mic and dual 14W speakers for an intelligent and more secure collaboration experience.

Putting less stress on cables to keep your office clean and neat, the integrated front-facing pop-out feature provides intuitive easy access to ports so you can connect your accessories and devices easily. Enjoy effortless transferring capabilities for images with DisplayPort 2.1 that helps ensure seamless image transmission without compression. Lastly, ThunderboltTM 4 connectivity, together with Extended Power Range, provides up to 140W power delivery, letting you charge and connect to more powerful workstations. 

More Productivity Powerhouses

For creatives and business users who don’t require 6K resolution, we’re also introducing two new UltraSharp monitors to suit your everyday needs.

◉ Our first curved WQHD monitor with IPS Black technology, the Dell UltraSharp 34 Curved USB-C Hub Monitor (U3423WE) allows you to connect and display content from two PCs using Picture-by-Picture (PBP) and Picture-in-Picture (PIP) features, while enjoying clear audio with the integrated dual 5W speakers.

A photo editor desk setup with the Dell UltraSharp 34 Curved USB-C Hub Monitor (U3423WE).

◉ A productivity powerhouse and a collaboration dream wrapped into one, the Dell UltraSharp 43 4K USB-C Hub Monitor (U4323QE) allows you to connect one PC to the monitor and split it into multiple (up to four) screen partitions, as well as the ability to connect up to four different PCs to the monitor, view all four inputs and switch between them using KVM.

A data analyst desk setup with the Dell UltraSharp 43 4K USB-C Hub Monitor (U4323QE).

Sustainability on Dell Monitors

In staying true to our mission and purpose, when building the designs of our monitors we take a three-prong approach to 1) what’s within the packaging, 2) what’s around the packaging and 3) meeting Environmental Eco Labelling Standards as we march toward our 2030 Goals. These monitors contain up to 85% post-consumer recycled plastics and up to 90% recycled aluminum. They also ship in select packaging components made with up to 90% recycled materials. Dell will continue our commitment to be ENERGY STAR®, EPEAT and TCO Certified Edge.

Next Up, Innovative Peripherals for Maximized Collaboration

2022 was a big year for us. 2023 will be even bigger as we focus on bringing more peripherals to market to improve the overall PC experience. We’re kicking off the year with the world’s first Zoom-certified collaboration keyboard, the Dell Premier Collaboration Keyboard (KB900). Its sleek design features dedicated touch controls to easily managed Zoom calls, allowing you to mute and unmute the microphone, toggle between video on and off, easily screen share and bring up the chat panel. Stay on track with features like smart backlighting with hand-proximity detection, 15 programmable keys and fast one-minute USB-C charging for a full day7 of battery life or up to 20 days7 on a single charge.

Pair the keyboard with the new Dell Premier Rechargeable Mouse (MS900), featuring a thoughtfully crafted design with a comfortable palm grip. This mouse has a track-on-glass sensor that allows you to work seamlessly on virtually any surface, while smooth-gliding advanced four-way scrolling provides a more intuitive navigating experience. You can switch between three devices and fine tune speed, tracking (with up to 8K dpi) and precision with Dell Peripheral Manager – all while not worrying about battery life. The mouse provides half a day of use with one-minute USB-C quick charging and up to three months of battery life on a full charge. Both devices are seamless and more secure with Dell Pair one-click connectivity, and transmission is encrypted to help keep your data safe. 

Final Words

Feel inspired and motivated with these new devices that increase productivity and collaboration. The Dell UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor (U3224KB) will be available in the first half of 2023, while the Dell UltraSharp 34 Curved USB-C Hub Monitor (U3423WE) and Dell UltraSharp 43 4K USB-C Hub Monitor (U4323QE) will be available on January 31, 2023. The Dell Premier Collaboration Keyboard (KB900) and Dell Premier Rechargeable Mouse (MS900) will be available January 31, 2023, or as a bundle on May 11, 2023. 

Source: dell.com

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