Connecting from Edge to Cloud, with Dell Enterprise SONiC

SONiC, Software for Open Networking in the Cloud, an open-source network operating system, has revolutionized the networking ecosystem. An increasing number of users, a vibrant open-source community and a growing ecosystem of vendors have nurtured its growth.

Enterprises are emulating the best practices of cloud service providers and rapidly adopting this technology to create a modern data center fabric that supports their current and emerging technology and business use cases. Industry analysts predict SONiC data center switching to exceed $5 billion in revenue in 2026. With its move to the Linux Foundation, SONiC is seeing more widespread adoption and integration with other open-source tools, enabling ease of network management and monitoring. 

Dell Technologies offers a finely tuned, enterprise-ready and globally supported distribution of SONiC called Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies to help bring the benefits of hyper-scale-focused SONiC contributions to the rest of the enterprise and telecommunications markets and use cases. Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies is the first commercial version of SONiC to provide enterprise-ready features, a dedicated roadmap and global support for large-scale environments.

We’ve added additional feature capabilities and hardened it with extensive real-world testing and validation. Enterprise SONiC builds on Dell Technologies long history of collaborating with and contributing to the open-source SONiC community with new features and capabilities ranging across the protocol stack and management applications, including a centralized management platform and a growing ecosystem of partner automation and orchestration applications. 

Since our announcement and launch of the Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies in June 2021, we’ve continued to evolve SONiC with new use case enablement, feature additions and enterprise hardening, creating a more open and flexible infrastructure for our customers and partners.

Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.1

Today, we’re introducing Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.1, which enables a unified network operating system (NOS) across cloud, core and edge use cases and is supported across multi-vendor platforms. Here are some key highlights of this product release. 

• Build high-performance fabrics with optimal choice and flexibility and no vendor lock-in. We’ve continued the expansion of our Enterprise SONiC offering and supported portfolio to bring improved performance with better scale and more choice in hardware switching options. Additionally, this release brings support for qualified non-Dell platforms supported with Dell Enterprise SONiC. We believe open-source is the future of networking, and we want to ensure organizations can benefit from the flexibility and scalability of SONiC, regardless of the platform they choose. With our Enterprise SONiC offering, customers will get a “true” multi-vendor NOS offering, providing more freedom of choice and flexibility for their infrastructure development.
• Gain ease of management and greater insights with expanded partner solutions and more customizable options for edge deployments. We’ve launched a new portfolio of edge switching platforms, the Dell PowerSwitch E-Series, that provide a more robust and scalable hardware platform to support Enterprise SONiC for the edge, including features like streaming telemetry and user container support for greater visibility and programmability. This provides a unified fabric through a single NOS, from core to edge, allowing customers to streamline network deployment, operations and monitoring, all while using the same familiar network management tools they’ve grown accustomed to in their data centers. We’ve also expanded our partner ecosystem to provide better performance, simplified network lifecycle management and network design. These partner solutions simplify infrastructure orchestration across compute, storage and networking and provide an end-to-end view ranging from multisite data centers to remote branch edge use case all in a single dashboard GUI instance. 
• Build a more feature-rich enterprise-level fabric with enhanced data center capabilities. We’ve added new data center capabilities focusing on telecom carrier and large enterprise use cases. Enterprise SONiC now includes support for QinQ and VLAN translation. These features are particularly important for environments where there is a need for complex multi-tenant and large-scale network fabrics. With the addition of these new features, organizations can expand their VLANs and achieve a higher level of network segmentation and isolation, while also simplifying their network management. This is a significant benefit for organizations that are looking to improve their network efficiency, scalability and security.

Moreover, the addition of RoCEv2 (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) addresses storage use cases, where there is a need for lossless, low-latency, high-bandwidth transmission requirements. With the addition of this functionality, organizations can achieve a high level of performance and reliability for their storage applications, which are growing in use cases across financial trading, scientific research, AI/ML and big data analytics. 

Taking SONiC Mainstream

At Dell Technologies, we’re thrilled to witness this revolution in the networking industry and excited to contribute, collaborate and partner in taking SONiC and the benefits of open-source networking mainstream to broader industry verticals and use cases. This helps us to continue delivering on our promise of open-source, freedom of choice and flexibility to help accelerate innovation and digital transformation for our customers and partners.

Source: dell.com

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Embrace the Age of Edge with Dell Private Wireless

Across industries, the widescale move to edge computing is transforming the way organizations access, analyze and act on data. This transformation is leading to shifts across the information ecosystem. As business workloads become inundated with exponential data growth from an expanding number of autonomous edge endpoints, network connectivity is taking on a critical new role.

Edge applications require a robust connectivity solution – one that ensures reliable quality of service (QoS), high-speed throughput, zero-trust security, low latency and flexible scalability to support massive device connectivity. These robust features are best delivered with private wireless solutions. Private wireless networks can support advanced and compelling edge use cases that are often not suited for public networks.

Wireless Networks Are Not Created Equal

While Wi-Fi networks provide adequate connectivity for non-business-critical use cases, private wireless delivers a more secure solution with predictable performance at scale, including the lower latency and higher throughput edge applications require. It also supports large geographical coverage areas, which is optimal for a variety of edge environments.

As advanced edge applications like machine vision, industrial automation and digital twin technologies become prevalent, as well as applications running in dispersed and rugged environments, private wireless is becoming the connectivity option of choice for running edge applications.

Yet, making the move to private wireless can be a complex undertaking, with multi-vendor infrastructure and application challenges to overcome, as well as complex support issues in the short and longer term. Most enterprises today lack the resources internally to design, deploy and maintain the private wireless networks they need to support a truly mature edge application strategy. For these reasons, many enterprises are unable or unwilling to implement a private wireless solution regardless of the benefits it delivers.

Introducing Dell Private Wireless with Airspan and Druid

Today, Dell introduces Dell Private Wireless with Airspan and Druid, a new enterprise-class solution that uses 5G technologies to deliver a standalone private wireless network – with dedicated bandwidth and infrastructure – that meets the diverse connectivity needs of enterprises edge applications across industries.

Powered by Dell VxRail and PowerEdge servers, this private wireless solution is built in partnership with leading mobile technology providers Airspan and Druid. It is an easy-to-deploy solution for standing up private 5G connectivity across distributed edge resources, working with Dell Technologies as a single, trusted technology provider. The solution leverages the Airspan AirVelocity 1901 and AirVelocity 2700 5G radios and the Druid Software Raemis™ 5G core for a complete end-to-end solution.

Dell Private Wireless allows enterprises to gain the benefits of 5G wireless capability across edge deployments without the need to move data outside the enterprise network. This means users can experience the speed, low latency, reliability, security and efficiency of 5G wireless across the edge without compromising data control, sovereignty or governance requirements.

A standalone Dell Private Wireless 5G solution with edge computing supports multiple enterprise edge applications. These applications play a crucial role in advancing critical business outcomes, such as workforce productivity, operational efficiency, quality control, cost management, workplace safety and sustainability. By combining the capabilities of edge computing with the benefits of private 5G, Dell offers customers a solution that delivers on today’s edge strategy, while putting in place a robust foundation to support the longer digital transformation journey.

Experience the Benefits of Dell Private Wireless

Innovation at the edge is happening rapidly, as is the growing complexity of deploying and managing edge applications. To run your most innovative edge applications securely, reliably and with minimal complexity, Dell Private Wireless delivers these compelling benefits:

◉ Connect predictably. Dell Private Wireless ensures seamless mobility and ubiquitous reach across extremely wide coverage areas, penetrating indoor and outdoor environments and providing precise position tracking of assets within the entire distributed edge. It lets you scale wireless connectivity predictably and visualize your edge with data from thousands of sensors per coverage area, with speed and throughput unmatched by traditional wireless technologies. Experience uninterrupted business operations with stable edge connectivity, enhanced handover protocol for devices in transit and the ability to prioritize ultra-low latency network traffic for critical workloads to avoid performance degradation.

◉ Deploy easily. The integrated solution reduces private wireless complexity with open standards and a global network of support services to ensure an ultra-low-latency experience. Tested, validated, ready multi-vendor integration with Dell edge solutions accelerates time to value and ensures fast, pain-free deployment of even the most innovative use cases across industry verticals. Built-in security via role-based access control (RBAC) and user provisioning simplifies the protection of enterprise data flowing from edge to cloud and gives you the ability to restrict data within the enterprise boundaries.

◉ Manage with security and resiliency. High-availability, compute acceleration, low-latency storage and high-speed connectivity capabilities built into the underlying Dell VxRail platforms and PowerEdge servers ensure fast, resilient 5G performance. Seamless integration with Dell Streaming Data Platform enables mission-critical and real-time response applications. High-speed data ingestion and unlimited persistent data storage at the edge enable real-time analysis of all data streams connected via 5G. This end-to-end solution reinforces edge security at every level, from hardware supply chain, application runtimes and edge-to-cloud data-pipelines.

Accelerate Your Edge Strategy with Dell Private Wireless

By removing the complexity factor in deploying private wireless networks, Dell offers you a fast track to transforming your business and achieving optimal edge application performance.

Because consumption preferences vary, Dell Private Wireless is available as a standalone solution, a managed service and in a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model. It can be purchased directly from Dell or through one of our Dell Communication Service Provider partners.

Source: dell.com

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Your Gateway to Success in the Dell EMC E20-065 Exam and Data Science Career

The Dell EMC E20-065 exam is a crucial step in your journey toward becoming a certified Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist. This exam evaluates your knowledge and proficiency in various areas of advanced analytics, including statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and big data analytics. By successfully passing this exam, you demonstrate your ability to leverage advanced analytics technologies to derive valuable insights from data, enabling data-driven decision-making.

In this detailed article, we will provide all the necessary information and insights to help you prepare effectively for the exam and embark on a rewarding career in advanced analytics. Let's dive in!

What is the Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist?

The Dell EMC E20-065 certification validates the skills and expertise of professionals in advanced analytics. As an Advanced Analytics Specialist, you demonstrate your proficiency in leveraging advanced analytics techniques, tools, and technologies to derive valuable insights from data. This certification showcases your ability to apply statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and big data analytics to solve complex business problems and make data-driven decisions.

By earning the Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist certification, you establish yourself as a trusted expert in advanced analytics and enhance your career prospects in the rapidly growing data science industry. Employers value the certification as a validation of your skills, and it can significantly boost your employability and open doors to exciting job opportunities.

Understanding the Dell EMC E20-065 Exam Format

To excel in the Dell EMC E20-065 exam, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the exam format. Familiarizing yourself with the structure and requirements of the exam can help you plan your preparation strategy effectively. Here is an overview of the exam format:

Exam Type: The Dell EMC E20-065 exam is a proctored, multiple-choice exam.

Number of Questions: The exam consists of approximately 60 questions.

Time Limit: The duration of the exam is 90 minutes.

Passing Score: To pass the exam, you must achieve a score 63%.

Exam Topics: The exam covers various topics related to advanced analytics, including MapReduce, Hadoop Ecosystem and NoSQL, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Social Network Analysis (SNA), Data Science Theory and Methods, and Data Visualization.

It is crucial to thoroughly review the exam blueprint provided by Dell EMC, which outlines the specific topics and subtopics covered in the exam. Pay close attention to the weighting of each topic to prioritize your study efforts accordingly.

The Benefits of Dell EMC Certification

Achieving the Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist certification offers numerous benefits for your career growth and professional development. Let's explore some of these benefits:

Validation of Skills: By obtaining the Dell EMC certification, you validate your expertise in advanced analytics and gain recognition for your skills and knowledge in the industry.

Enhanced Employability: Dell EMC certifications are highly regarded by employers, and holding the Advanced Analytics Specialist certification significantly enhances your employability prospects in the data science and analytics field.

Career Advancement Opportunities: With the rapid growth of data analytics, certified professionals are in high demand. The Dell EMC certification opens doors to a wide range of career advancement opportunities in various industries.

Industry Recognition: Being a certified Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist positions you as an expert in the field, providing you with industry recognition and credibility among peers and employers.

Preparing for the Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist Exam

To excel in the Dell EMC E20-065 exam, it is crucial to have a well-planned and structured preparation strategy. Here are some essential steps to help you prepare effectively:

Step 1: Understand the Dell EMC E20-065 Exam Blueprint

Familiarize yourself with the exam blueprint provided by Dell EMC. This blueprint outlines the topics and subtopics covered in the exam. Pay close attention to the weighting of each topic to prioritize your study efforts accordingly.

Step 2: Review Relevant Study Materials

Utilize a combination of official Dell EMC study materials, recommended textbooks, online resources, and practice exams to enhance your understanding of the exam topics. Ensure you cover all the key concepts, theories, and practical applications of advanced analytics.

Step 3: Hands-on Experience

Practice is vital when preparing for the Dell EMC E20-065 exam. Gain hands-on experience by working on real-world data science projects, experimenting with various tools and techniques, and applying your knowledge to solve analytical problems. This practical experience will strengthen your understanding and boost your confidence.

Step 4: Leverage Training Courses

Consider enrolling in training courses offered by Dell EMC or other reputable institutions. These courses provide structured learning, expert guidance, and hands-on exercises to help you grasp the concepts and technologies relevant to the exam.

Step 5: Collaborate and Seek Support

Join online communities, forums, or study groups to interact with fellow exam takers and experienced professionals. Collaborating with others can provide valuable insights, resources, and support throughout your exam preparation journey.

Step 6: Practice Time Management

Develop effective time management skills to ensure sufficient time for studying each topic. Create a study schedule for regular review, practice, and revision. Practice time management techniques during practice exams to ensure you complete the exam within the allocated time.

Step 7: Take Practice Exams

Take advantage of practice exams to assess your knowledge, identify areas of improvement, and familiarize yourself with the exam format. Analyze your performance in practice exams to identify weak areas and focus your studying efforts accordingly.

Step 8: Revision and Reinforcement

Dedicate ample time to revise and reinforce your understanding of key concepts, formulas, and methodologies. Review your study materials, notes, and practice questions regularly to ensure the information stays fresh in your mind.

How the Dell EMC E20-065 Certification Helps You Become a Better Leader?

Building a Successful Career as a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists

Once you have successfully passed the Dell EMC E20-065 exam and earned your certification, you are ready to embark on a fulfilling career as a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists. Here are some valuable insights to help you navigate your career journey:

1. Continuous Learning and Professional Development

The field of data science and advanced analytics is ever-evolving. Stay updated with the latest trends, technologies, and methodologies by participating in conferences, attending workshops, and pursuing continuous learning opportunities. Consider acquiring additional certifications or advanced degrees to deepen your expertise and broaden your career prospects.

2. Networking and Collaboration

Network with professionals in the data science community, both online and offline. Attend industry events, join relevant professional organizations, and engage in discussions on social media platforms. Collaborate with peers, share knowledge, and seek mentorship opportunities to accelerate professional growth.

3. Showcasing Your Skills

Create an impressive portfolio of data science projects to showcase your skills and expertise to potential employers. Highlight your problem-solving abilities, the impact of your projects, and the value you have delivered through data-driven insights. A well-structured and visually appealing portfolio can significantly enhance your chances of securing exciting job opportunities.

4. Building Domain Knowledge

Develop a deep understanding of the domain or industry you wish to specialize in. Combining your data science skills with domain expertise can provide more meaningful and actionable insights to businesses, making you an invaluable employer asset.

5. Embracing Collaboration and Communication

Data science is a team sport. Collaborate effectively with stakeholders, including business analysts, decision-makers, and subject matter experts. Strong communication skills are essential to translate complex analytical findings into actionable recommendations to drive business success.

6. Professional Ethics and Data Privacy

Maintain the highest standards of professional ethics when working with sensitive data. Adhere to data privacy regulations and best practices to ensure the ethical use of data in your analysis and decision-making processes.

Conclusion

Congratulations on taking the first step towards becoming a Dell EMC Advanced Analytics Specialist for Data Scientists. With comprehensive preparation, you are well-equipped to excel in the Dell EMC E20-065 exam and kickstart a successful career in the dynamic and rewarding field of advanced analytics. Remember to stay curious, embrace continuous learning, and leverage your certification to impact the world of data science significantly.

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Dell NativeEdge: the New Frontier in Edge Operations

Across industries, the move to edge computing is accelerating. Businesses are looking for new ways to improve efficiency, reduce errors and better leverage data where and when it is generated.

Yet, a gap exists between edge investment and edge success, with 94% of organizations saying that they are investing in edge applications yet only 10% reporting that they are receiving benefits from those investments. For most, this gap is due to complexity – complexity of infrastructure, expanding operations at scale, operating without skilled people at remote locations and basic maintenance, security and data integration challenges.

As part of Dell’s mission to simplify the edge, in October 2022, we launched Project Frontier, an initiative to deliver an edge operations software platform that would simplify, optimize, and secure edge operations.

Today, we are excited to introduce the next phase of Project Frontier: Dell NativeEdge.

Dell NativeEdge is the culmination of our experience building solutions that reduce complexity and deliver new value at the edge. With NativeEdge, enterprises across industries can securely power any edge application, anywhere, to achieve business goals:

◉ Simplify. Eliminate operational complexity at scale via centralized management, zero touch deployment, onboarding and automated operations of infrastructure and applications from edge to multicloud.

◉ Optimize. Make the most of edge investments using an open design that works with software applications, IoT frameworks, multi-vendor operations technology solutions and multicloud environments, reduce proof of concept development time and deliver a consistent experience across multiple hardware form factors and price points.

◉ Secure. Ensure security from design to deployment and all along the supply chain to protect applications, data and infrastructure across the edge estate using Zero Trust security principles.

Reinventing Edge Operations: How it Works

Imagine a large retailer wants to roll out an edge solution across hundreds of stores to run a new retail experience application.

With current IT practices, specialists must provision each store with a hardware solution, pre-stage and deploy infrastructure, software and applications and provide local teams to implement at every site – a process that can take months to complete. Then, they must establish a central management process across all stores, usually separate for infrastructure and applications, introducing a variety of risks to ongoing operations, from degrading customer experience to becoming vulnerable to a security breach or system failure. In many cases, they do the same for each unique use case they add to the store experience.

Fast forward to Dell NativeEdge and these simple steps. First, the optimal technology solutions to run the application are quickly sourced in the platform’s application catalog, a commercial solution or a homegrown application synchronized with their continuous integration/continuous deployment pipeline. Next, each store receives a drop shipment of NativeEdge-enabled devices, which require no specialist support to install. Simply plug in network and power to get started. Then, pre-configured applications are automatically deployed on the new devices. Finally, the entire system is up and delivering benefits within a matter of days or weeks, not months. More importantly, it is monitored and managed remotely throughout the lifecycle.

This new paradigm eliminates supply chain risks and integration failure. It ensures the entire solution is installed consistently in the correct way and helps consolidate multiple applications and use cases into one architecture. Users can apply automated workflows simultaneously to thousands of devices, across all locations.

By the Numbers: NativeEdge Means Value

In an internal analysis consisting of return-on-investment modeling, nearly 100 customer interviews, and a third-party environmental consultant review for methodology validation, we examined the potential economic impact of running NativeEdge across 25 facilities of a composite manufacturing company. The study found that after three years, the company could expect to see the following benefits:

◉ Up to 132% return on investment for Dell NativeEdge platform costs

◉ An average of 20-minute time saving per month for every edge infrastructure asset managed with NativeEdge

◉ Savings on transportation costs by decreasing the need for site-support dispatches, helping to reduce travel time and cutting up to 14 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions

Welcome to the Edge Generation

Dell NativeEdge is a game changer, not just for reducing edge complexity and time to value, but also for eliminating cost barriers and advancing broader innovation at the edge. We are excited to share this innovation with the world and to ensure Dell customers are moving forward with a simpler, more effective edge.

Source: dell.com

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Innovate across Multicloud: Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware

This week at Dell Technologies World, we introduced our new portfolio of Dell APEX Cloud Platforms, built on a common set of infrastructure building blocks including our latest-generation servers and our highly scalable software-defined storage designed to support workloads with a broad range of performance profiles.

I’m excited to share the news that as part of this portfolio, we’re announcing Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware. Our goal is to deliver consistent multicloud operations to customers across on-premises and edge environments through common infrastructure and integrated automation while maintaining the familiar ease of use of vSphere and vCenter.

Dell and VMware, Engineered for Innovation

In preparation for this launch, I’ve spent a lot of time reminiscing about the history of the groundbreaking partnership and innovation Dell Technologies and VMware have shared developing integrated offers simplifying HCI and multicloud. We introduced VxRail about seven years ago, creating the only jointly engineered VMware HCI system, built to enhance customers’ VMware experience. We followed that up with the VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail solution, curating the hybrid cloud experience for vSphere customers. And just last year, we made these available through Dell APEX as Dell APEX Private Cloud and Dell APEX Hybrid Cloud. Delivering predictable outcomes, as-a-Service options and with a 14-day commitment to full deployment from the time the order is placed, Dell Technologies has the industry’s fastest hybrid cloud deployment.

Additionally, we introduced VxRail compute-only dynamic nodes, giving IT teams the flexibility to leverage Dell storage arrays or PowerFlex SDS in combination with the proven operational efficiency of VxRail. This separates compute and storage, accommodating scaling workload requirements and providing additional rich data features while still realizing the automated operations and orchestration of VxRail.

Through these innovations, we recognize that our customers value the simplicity, agility and control provided by integration and automation of a complete ecosystem stack solution, while also wanting choice as to how to deploy VMware in their multicloud environment. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware follows in the same footsteps, meeting customers where they are in their multicloud journey.

IT teams and leaders have trusted the reliability, innovation and virtualization of VMware for decades and are looking for ways to extend it more flexibly to support their multicloud environments. Dell is uniquely positioned to address barriers to innovation like management complexity, skills gaps and inconsistent security and compliance for VMware customers modernizing infrastructure and embracing container environments.

Bridge the Cloud Divide

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware is ideal for customers who want the flexibility to deploy vSphere fully integrated with highly scalable, software-defined storage designed to support workloads with a broad range of performance profiles for seamless data mobility between on-prem and Dell APEX Block Storage for Public Cloud deployments, or for customers prioritizing consistency across their multicloud deployments.

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware is built on a common set of infrastructure blocks, integrated with VMware tools your teams already know. Common hardware based on our newest PowerEdge servers featuring 4th Generation Intel Xeon Processors reduce “one-off” solutions with unique management requirements. Common Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software provides seamless operations across multicloud ecosystems, automating deployment, configuration and full-stack lifecycle management. And common software defined storage (SDS) shared between private and public cloud deployment provides data mobility and consistent enterprise SLAs in-cloud and on-prem.

Unleash Application Value

Developers and IT teams need infrastructure that allows them to develop anywhere and deploy everywhere. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware takes advantage of the rich VMware ecosystem to extend IT and application modernization, simplify management and streamline the CI/CD pipeline. And the shared enterprise software-defined storage enables identical storage architectures across your multicloud environments, ensuring compatibility between private and public cloud deployment options.

Harden Security and Governance

No cloud platform can be complete without consistent security and governance. Automated full-stack lifecycle management ensures upgrades and patches can be applied quickly and non-disruptively to improve security posture. Consistent operating environments across multiple deployments enable teams to apply hardened security and governance across locations. And layers of protection, from the cyber-resilient features embedded in the Dell infrastructure to the vSphere security frameworks developed by VMware in the application layer, serve to inherently secure deployments.

As the leader in hyperconverged infrastructure, our experience has shown us that customers value the simplicity, agility and control that engineered integration and automation provide. The Dell APEX portfolio and the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMware match this engineering with the flexibility to choose the best VMware platform for your multicloud journey.

Source: dell.com

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Delivering Business Value While Cost of Capital Remains High

The rising cost of capital can have significant implications for IT investment strategies and business value optimization. As the cost of capital rises, it’s important for IT organizations to adapt their approach and focus on solutions that increase cost efficiency, productivity, digital resiliency and business acceleration to effectively address the changing economic landscape. By shifting from traditional CapEx to as-a-Service (aaS) and pay-as-you-go models, organizations can mitigate some of the challenges that come with cost of capital increases, all while creating value, increasing agility and scalability, enhancing risk management and leveraging partnerships and collaborations. This helps businesses navigate high-cost-of-capital environments and optimize value derived from their IT investments.

With its breath and flexibility of offerings, Dell APEX can help organizations navigate challenges associated with higher cost of capital by increasing cost efficiency, enhancing productivity, enabling digital resiliency and driving business acceleration.

• Increasing cost efficiency. Higher cost of capital typically leads to increased scrutiny of IT spending, pushing organizations to seek cost-effective solutions. Dell APEX can help organizations optimize their IT infrastructure costs by providing scalable, on-demand resources that can be consumed as needed, reducing overprovisioning and helping save organizations from high capital outlays.
• Enhancing productivity. When the cost of capital increases, organizations need to ensure their IT investments are generating a positive return. Dell APEX helps enhance productivity with solutions that can streamline IT operations and automate routine tasks, allowing IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.
• Enabling digital resiliency. In a high-cost-of-capital environment, organizations need to minimize downtime and ensure continuity of operations. Dell APEX offers solutions that address disaster and cyber recovery challenges, helping businesses maintain operations even in the face of unexpected disruptions.
• Driving business acceleration. As businesses look for ways to maximize returns on investment, they need IT solutions that can support growth and drive innovation. Dell APEX enables business acceleration by providing agile, scalable infrastructure that can quickly adapt to changing business requirements, allowing organizations to seize new opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.

The ways businesses pay for solutions can also help address challenges with cost of capital. Dell APEX’s flexible aaS and pay-as-you-go models can be particularly attractive in a high-cost-of-capital environment. These models allow IT to shift expenditures from traditional CapEx purchasing models to subscriptions, allowing organizations to align their IT spending with actual consumption. By only paying for the resources they use, businesses can better manage their cash flow and reduce financial risk.

With Dell APEX, organizations can choose from a variety of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions and tailor them to their unique requirements. Our multicloud solutions help enable seamless, secure and cost-effective experiences, providing organizations with the flexibility to adapt and grow with ease while mitigating cost of capital impacts.

Standing behind our solutions are a team of Dell experts and a robust partner ecosystem who are committed to offering exceptional customer support, ensuring that organizations receive the guidance and assistance they need to navigate the complexities of modern IT landscapes. Dell APEX stands by our mission to deliver innovative solutions that help businesses thrive in an ever-evolving digital world and changing economic environment.

Dell APEX solutions can help businesses navigate the macroeconomic environment by providing scalable, resilient and agile IT infrastructure that drives value across cost optimization, enhancing productivity, enabling digital resiliency and driving business acceleration, all while offering the financial flexibility of aaS and pay-as-you-go models. With Dell, businesses can effectively navigate the challenges a high-cost-of-capital environment present and optimize the value derived from their IT investments.

Source: dell.com

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Dynamic AppsON: a Better Together Story

IT teams are routinely forced to choose feature sets from one product over another to match workload requirements, increasing complexity across their business landscape. Imagine storage and virtualization admins sitting side-by-side asking, “why can’t I have it all?” With the introduction of Dynamic AppsON, Dell shortens the steps to bring them closer and have it all.

Dynamic AppsON is the combination of VxRail dynamic nodes and PowerStore that delivers simplicity, scalability and ease of management, with advanced storage capabilities and data management features. If you’ve already deployed these two products together, you’re likely enjoying the many benefits they offer. With our latest VxRail release, we’re making the lifecycle management of PowerStore simpler to manage.

Figure 1: Dynamic AppsON

With Dynamic AppsON, Dell is integrating the core strengths of both products to improve and simplify the IT management experience. We’re talking synergy by design.

This “dynamic duo” combines compute-only VxRail dynamic nodes with PowerStore in a tightly integrated solution that now extends Lifecycle Management to PowerStore via the VxRail HCI System Software to simplify operations. Dynamic AppsON increases deployment flexibility, giving VxRail environments access to PowerStore’s enterprise efficiency, data protection and resiliency features, while helping PowerStore environments quickly expand compute for CPU-intensive workloads with a simple integration to a solution-based lifecycle management from VxRail.

Dynamic AppsON delivers performance and expanded resource utilization for the changing needs of workloads, decreasing management effort and giving time back to IT teams. In cases where there are existing PowerStore investments in the data center and the compute is reaching a refresh cycle, there is an opportunity to introduce VxRail dynamic nodes for a strategic advantage. This includes 61% more efficient IT Infrastructure Management Teams plus all the operational benefits customers realize with VxRail HCI System Software. Conversely, as processing demand grows in VxRail environments, you can scale compute with ease by adding additional VxRail dynamic nodes to an existing cluster or creating additional VxRail dynamic node clusters leveraging PowerStore. In the scenario where storage demands soar, PowerStore allows users to scale capacity vertically in single drive increments or horizontally to add both capacity and horsepower to meet demand without compromise.

Source: dell.com

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Data Data Everywhere, Not a Byte to Use

The global data footprint is growing at an exponential rate. It’s expected to be a few hundred zettabytes (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes and counting) in the next few years. Meanwhile, a typical enterprise today manages petabytes of data – spread across on-prem, cloud, edge and multiple systems ranging from relational databases, warehouses, data marts and data lakes.

Recognizing that data access is often the first (and most cumbersome) aspect of activating data, Dell recently announced a partnership with Starburst Data, whose industry-leading platform offers answers to many problems organizations are facing with their data.

The Data-driven Enterprise

There is no dearth of tools and platforms that can help you manage your data. Yet, the rate at which we create data far exceeds the rate at which we convert it to insights. So, what has changed, and how can you better prepare your enterprise to be truly data driven?

A modern enterprise data architecture needs to embrace some key tenets:

◉ Data will remain distributed across multiple data centers, public clouds and edge – often resulting in data silos. You need solutions that can help bridge these data silos.

◉ Data movements are expensive and error prone. It is more efficient to move the consumption tools close to data, rather than moving data near the tools.

◉ We must balance the flexibility and ease of democratizing data into the hands of data citizens against the increasing need for security and governance.

◉ An open data architecture, composed of open data formats, decoupled compute and storage, ensures there is no vendor lock-in and provides interoperability with the ever-changing ecosystem of tools and platforms.

The Journey of a Data Use Case

A data use case goes through three broad phases: exploration, engineering and operationalization. The challenges around data access vary for each of these phases. Here’s an example.

◉ Exploration. James is a data analyst who wants to create a live report that shows revenue trends by product, region and week. As James starts his use case, he needs quick access to data across multiple systems to explore and experiment. This involves reaching out to the admins of each of the data sources to get individual access, which is often time-consuming. Once he receives access, there is no easy way to discover data relevant to his use case.

◉ Engineering. Once James knows exactly what data to use and the processing required, Sally from the data engineering team creates data pipelines to ingest this data into a data lake/ lakehouse, apply transformations and tune the workflow for high performance. The report is ready to be published.

◉ Operationalization. Once the report is published, Lee from the operations team ensures the data pipelines work reliably to refresh the data regularly, thus providing the latest insights to the business.

As you can see, activating a single use case often involves multiple user personas, environments, tools and outcomes. A modern data stack should embrace these interplays of people, process and technology and enable the most efficient path to access data and convert it into insights.

The Dell Technologies and Starburst Partnership

Together, Dell and Starburst bring you a Multicloud Data Analytics solution with the following key capabilities:

◉ Built on the highly popular open-source federated query engine Trino, Starburst simplifies data discovery and accelerates data access by enabling in-situ consumption of data – no matter where it resides on-prem, cloud or edge.

◉ With more than 50 data source connectors supported, you can instantly connect to your operational systems, data warehouse, data lakes and run lightning-fast queries to get instant insights.

◉ When required, data from remote sources can be persisted into a data lake/lakehouse to overcome network/system latency and deliver production-grade SLAs. Dell Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) provides best of breed object storage solutions for a modern-day data lake/ lakehouse.

◉ It provides a single point of access to data with unified security and governance to ensure the right authorization and access control.

◉ You can create and publish data products, which can be organized by domains – thus supporting a data mesh architecture.

◉ Power and scale enterprise-wide analytics and AIML experiences with industry-best Dell PowerEdge servers.

Source: dell.com

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Your Hardware, Now Cloud-enabled

Did you know you can now consume your bare metal as a service? And not just physical servers but networking and storage too? Cloud service providers, systems integrators and enterprise customers alike can now provide compute, storage and networking to end customers and business units as a service – all deployed at the click of a button.

We’re proud to announce Dell Technologies has partnered with MetalSoft, an industry pioneer, innovator and leader in the space of bare metal solutions, to create a joint solution that is unique to the industry that serves integrators, cloud providers and enterprise customers.

Read More: DES-1721: Dell EMC SC Series Specialist Exam for Implementation Engineer

Companies of all sizes and verticals, not just Cloud Service Providers, have bare metal infrastructure at their core. To offer this infrastructure as-a-Service internally or externally, a service provider or enterprise IT organization not only needs to make the investment in hardware, but also needs to have the engineering and operational staff to manage it, for which hiring and retaining can be difficult. What if there was a way to automate the entire hardware lifecycle, free those critical staff members from mundane tasks to focus on other revenue-generating – and probably more exciting – activities?

At the same time, users are now more demanding about the types of services they need with regard to their business requirements, and bare metal infrastructure is no longer able to compete with the public cloud in terms of flexibility and speed of delivery. Users are not content having access to a server in weeks because different teams need to configure networking and storage. In this new landscape of agile development and DevOps, customers want fully functional, ready-to-use infrastructure as part of day zero, ready to host their applications for their business solutions. It’s with that mindset they ask not just for provisioned servers, but also for storage capacity configured for those servers and networking to connect them, all at the click of a button. To have an entire platform of compute, storage and networking, along with a computing stack such as Kubernetes, is the overarching goal for service providers and enterprise IT organizations today. The service needs to be ready to run workloads at an instant.

Here is the list of features this solution enables using Dell hardware and the MetalSoft software:

◉ Full lifecycle automation. Reducing OpEx expenditures and automating deployments and reclamation of assets in their datacenters and co-locations.

◉ Self-service-based consumption. End users can build entire infrastructures complete with bare metal compute, private network segments and storage on their own.

◉ Infrastructure as code. The bare metal infrastructure can now be part of the same CI/CD pipelines as the applications running on it improving the development and reliability.

◉ Instant server replace. By “moving” switch configurations from a failed server to a new server, clients can be up and running with minimal delay after a hardware failure.

CSPs and enterprises can now acquire Dell Technologies hardware via CapEx, term or other consumption models and, using the MetalSoft® software, provide it as a service to end customers and business units, with minimal staff requirements.

At the same time, service providers looking to leverage their footprint with edge-type offerings can leverage the MetalSoft software’s scalability and ability to stand up sites with zero touch and operate them remotely from a single pane of glass.

Another use case is emerging from the same talent shortage: cloud repatriation. Many enterprises that want the advantage of the public cloud’s scale find themselves in the impossible situation of having lifted and shifted workloads to the cloud only to discover they’re unable to optimize their workloads to take advantage of it ending up paying more than estimated.

Automated infrastructure, like the one Dell and MetalSoft now offer, provides an alternative to those companies looking to lower their cloud costs, bringing back some of those workloads on the hardware they own and operate.

We invite our customers and partners to explore this unique new opportunity to expand their business, create a new revenue stream and optimize their operations.

Source: dell.com

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Is Your Small Business Thinking About Backup and Recovery?

Small businesses are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks and ransomware. A report from Dell Technologies Innovation Index reveals that 66% of small business IT decision-makers acknowledge they aren’t securing their data adequately. Such attacks can wreak havoc on a company’s finances and disrupt its operations. The same report also indicates that 46% of IT decision-makers spend more time dealing with cyberthreats than enabling secure innovation. With the increasing sophistication of cybercriminals, it’s more important than ever to ensure you protect your business and customer data from these threats.

As a small business owner, you may face challenges in finding a backup and recovery solution that fits within your budget and IT resources. Managing hardware, data center costs or power and cooling can be time-consuming and expensive. You need a solution that is affordable, easy to manage and can grow with your business. That’s where simple and reliable SaaS-based Dell APEX Backup Services comes in.

With Dell APEX Backup Services as a hosted solution, you can forget about the hassle of managing hardware and the expenses of data center costs, power and cooling. This can save you significant time and money while ensuring your data is protected. Plus, our all-in-one protection includes backup, disaster recovery and long-term retention.

Comprehensive Data Backup and Recovery Solution

Dell APEX Backup Services provides a complete solution to protect your data across different platforms. It offers data protection for SaaS apps like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce, including automated compliance and legal hold. It also protects endpoint devices like desktops, laptops and mobiles, allowing IT admins to remotely manage cloud backup and restore operations. Additionally, it centralizes data protection for virtual environments, databases, file servers and network-attached storage (NAS). With Dell APEX Backup Services, you can manage everything from a single console and get started in just minutes.

What makes Dell APEX Backup Services the right fit for small businesses?

◉ Advanced security features. Our solution uses advanced encryption technologies to secure your data both in transit and at rest. We also offer multiple layers of security to ensure that only authorized users have access to your data. And with our 24/7 monitoring and support, you can have peace of mind knowing we’re always here to help.

◉ Compliance made easy. In addition to protecting against cyberthreats, Dell APEX Backup Services also helps you comply with industry regulations and standards. Our solution includes features such as automated compliance reporting and legal hold capabilities to help you meet your compliance obligations.

◉ Easy to use and manage. Perhaps the best part about Dell APEX Backup Services is its simplicity. We designed our solution to be easy to use and manage, even for non-technical users. You can set up backups in just a few clicks and easily restore data when needed. And with our flexible pricing options, you can choose the plan that best fits your needs and budget. That is why small businesses choose Dell APEX Backup Services to safeguard their valuable data.

In the current dynamic business landscape, small businesses frequently operate with constrained resources and may lack specialized IT personnel to handle their data security requirements. Dell APEX Backup Services provides a simple and affordable solution to protect your data against cyberthreats and ensure business continuity.

Source: dell.com

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Achieve Consolidated Data Insights Faster with Dell and Teradata

Harnessing the full power of your data assets can accelerate your business in profound ways by enabling deeper insights for enhanced decision making. But doing so can be complex and challenging.  Whether it’s data repatriation from public cloud deployments, data consolidation across multiple disparate assets, or exponential growth in data volume, enterprises struggle to contain costs and manage inefficiencies.

At Dell Technologies, we are bringing together an ecosystem of leading technologies in the data space that are helping transform the approach to data and analytics to work seamlessly alongside our infrastructure offerings. Coupled with Dell’s extensive network of value-added professional services and support, pre-validated solutions, and reference architectures, along with the expert knowledge of these partners, our joint offerings provide you with better control over how you extract insights from your data with the safety of best in breed governance and security from your trusted partner for essential infrastructure.

With this vision of delivering transformative outcomes for our customers, we are collaborating with Teradata, an industry leader in enterprise data management and analytics, and expanding it to unveil a new and exciting joint solution. Through this joint solution, we have worked together to deliver a seamless experience for Teradata Vantage Solutions powered by Dell Technologies.

“These solutions offer customers access to Teradata’s best-of-breed data and analytics software with Dell’s industry-leading enterprise infrastructure, enhancing agility, speed and performance,” said Hillary Ashton, Chief Product Officer at Teradata. “The integrated technology provides the control and security of on-prem to meet customers’ need for holistic, data-driven insights.”

Teradata Vantage Solutions Powered by Dell Technologies

Teradata Vantage is a modern data platform that unifies data lakes, data warehouses, analytics and new data sources and types. This means organizations ca access all their data from an integrated environment, reducing complexity while maintaining flexibility to support a wide range of deployment models based on their needs. These deployment options include multicloud, hybrid or on-premises for enhanced security and control.

“Vantage helps organizations use analytics to deliver proven value and superior business outcomes,” stated Ashton. “Vantage offers high impact results with cost-based query optimization, massive multiway joins, support for real-time data streaming, management of complex analytic pipelines directly within the database and more.”

Together, Teradata and Dell have developed three fully integrated and optimized solutions that bring together the market-leading Vantage data management and enterprise analytics software from Teradata and the award-winning compute, storage and networking infrastructure from Dell, with VMware providing the private cloud layer. These solutions, shown in Figure 1, address a wide range of data analytic use cases, from a quick start package to enterprise-scale solutions for analytic archives and enterprise data warehouses.

Figure 1: Teradata Vantage Solutions Powered by Dell Technologies

Teradata Vantage Quick Start is optimized for ease and speed of deployment, with fast and efficient processing to power development. Quick Start is designed to enable customers to start small and scale up to larger deployments, all within the consistent Vantage software environment. The Dell PowerEdge R740xd Server, which is designed to address application performance and acceleration, powers Quick Start.

Teradata Vantage Analytic Archive offers an active archive for querying and reporting use cases for historical data. Analytic Archive allows companies to store a large amount of data cost-effectively while still being able to use it for analytics. Analytic Archive is powered by the Dell PowerEdge R640 server together with Dell PowerSwitch and Dell Unity XT Storage that provides flexible hybrid flash and disk storage for high capacity and cost-effective archival applications.

Teradata Vantage Enterprise Data Warehouse is a purpose-built, highly available data and analytics solution for enterprise production-scale deployment with optimized performance and reliability. It unifies and consolidates silos of enterprise data from multiple sources, facilitating broad access in the organization while enabling advanced analytics for complex and mixed workloads with prioritization capabilities. Vantage Enterprise Data Warehouse is powered by the Dell PowerEdge R640 server together with Dell PowerSwitch, Dell PowerVault and ECS Object storage featuring capacity, performance and operational simplicity.

Driving Value for Your Business

Drive value for your organization with a broad range of outcomes, including product innovation, enhanced customer experience, financial transformation, operational excellence, asset optimization, risk mitigation and more. Whether you want to expand your existing capabilities or get started with your first project, Teradata Vantage Solutions powered by Dell Technologies address a variety of data analytic use cases with rapid time to value. We are excited for this new stage in our collaboration with Teradata and look forward to helping our joint customers achieve their business goals by harnessing the power of their data.

Source: dell.com

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Accelerate Innovation with a Collaborative Approach to Applications and Data

The rapid pace of innovation in enterprise IT shows no signs of abating. The requirement for agile delivery of new capabilities is driving the adoption of new application architectures and deployment flexibility. The need for intelligent innovation drives an ever-increasing need to collect and analyze data. Dell and Microsoft are working together to optimize data center infrastructure so companies can focus on application modernization.

This is the second in a series of blogs that highlight the collaboration between Dell and Microsoft to modernize IT with a consistent hybrid cloud experience. In this blog, we discuss how we are helping organizations address evolving application architectures with cloud-native patterns including the adoption of containers with Kubernetes orchestration and hybrid deployment models.

The Engines of Innovation

Applications are the engines that power innovation for enterprises. The modernization of application architectures has driven the need to support cloud-native constructs such as containers with Kubernetes orchestration alongside existing ones. Run-the-business transactional systems may utilize traditional application architectures in virtualized environments, while new capabilities may be architected as microservices and deployed in containers. Private, on-premises infrastructure is being augmented with public cloud capacity, and more applications are being run at edge locations than before. These developments indicate the need for the continued evolution of IT platforms in today’s enterprises. They point to the requirement to add support for a container runtime alongside existing virtualization environments. It also underscores the need for consistent application execution across distributed on-premises and public cloud locations.

Dell and Microsoft have been working together for decades to deliver solutions that optimize outcomes for our customers, including hybrid cloud solutions. Our respective strengths optimize these complex application environments and their operations. Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI provides organizations with the ability to implement a cohesive strategy that supports both VMs and containers with Kubernetes that is hybrid-by-design. Azure Arc and Azure Kubernetes Service power consistent application environments across clouds that enable organizations to build and run portable, microservices-based applications. These systems provide numerous configuration options that help you precisely address diverse application and security needs, including Windows Defender Application Control and Microsoft Defender.

We are also working collaboratively to simplify and optimize the delivery of Azure Arc-enabled services to these dispersed application environments. These hybrid, on-demand services simplify application environments and accelerate app modernization and DevOps while reducing infrastructure requirements. Examples include Azure Arc SQL Managed Instance (MI), Azure Arc-enabled ML, Azure Kubernetes Service, Arc-enabled VM management and Azure Virtual Desktop. Dell rigorously validates these services on its industry-leading platforms while providing best practices and blueprints that help our customers implement these capabilities predictably and efficiently. An example is the Dell validated designs for the Microsoft data platform that utilizes Azure Arc-enabled SQL MI.

The collaborative approach that Dell and Microsoft take helps enable an efficient and agile enterprise IT architecture that supports diverse application architectures simply and efficiently.

Data Powers the Engines

If apps are innovation engines, data is the fuel that powers them. The challenge of diversity in application architectures is compounded by exponential growth in data and increasingly distributed sources of that data. Organizations are rapidly turning to public cloud infrastructures to analyze and derive insights from these ever-growing dispersed data sets. However, data has mass and gravity – the larger it grows, the more challenging it is to move, process and protect. As application deployment location options proliferate, managing data in a hybrid deployment environment becomes even more important.

Dell, collaboratively with Microsoft, continues to optimize its infrastructure and storage solutions to meet modern data requirements in terms of performance, scalability and availability, as well as providing enterprise data services. We recognize the need for a consistent data fabric across various on-premises locations and public cloud. We are continuing our innovation by helping enterprises realize consistent storage capabilities and simpler data workflows across their on-premises and public cloud deployments.

Source: dell.com

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