Tuesday, 29 August 2023

A Simplified Way to Update PCs

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While we all may agree in theory that it’s important to keep your devices updated, it’s advice we don’t always follow, like exercising every day or eating healthy. We know we should, but we’ll get to it tomorrow… if we remember. It’s a common sentiment. A survey conducted by Kaspersky in 2021 found that 50% of remote workers postpone the installation of updates, with 63% reporting they see no harm in this delay. Dell Trusted Update Experience is a new way to make the device update process easier – to deliver more security, optimize performance and give users a seamless experience.

There are immediate, tangible benefits to a smoother update process, like keeping data safe from security threats, potentially improving device performance and avoiding downtime and costly replacements. While all this may be true, it’s not always enough to inspire users to act. Knowing exercising is good for your physical and mental health doesn’t always compel people to run to the gym. That’s why we’ve worked to make our update experience as painless as possible for both IT and users.

For users, let’s put things in less IT-centric terms. Imagine you have one day before you leave on your long-awaited vacation, and you have a lengthy to-do list: You still need to pack your bags, water your plants, board your pets and send off that one last report for work. However, you also discover the laundry room window doesn’t lock. Not good. You know it will be days before a locksmith can come and fix it, and it would take hours and multiple trips to your local hardware store to fix it yourself.

Now, imagine the faulty lock on this type of window is a well-known vulnerability – so well-known, in fact, that people across the world are aware of it. Anyone could show up at your house and try opening all your windows to gain access and steal your belongings.

This analogy makes two facts clear. First, we’re all busy, making it harder to stay up to date on security. And second, putting off security updates still isn’t worth the risk. After all, 80% of security incidents involve exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. Cyberthreats are constantly and rapidly evolving to find and exploit any vulnerability in your devices. It’s no easy task to keep every component of your devices — including firmware and BIOS — correctly configured and secured with the latest patches.

It can be a hassle for users to manage their own devices, but for IT, managing a fleet of devices is a full-time job. Organizations must keep track of emerging threats, confirm compatibility with existing configurations and hardware and beyond all that, ensure any updates pushed out do not disrupt employees’ ability to work.

This is where Dell Trusted Update Experience can help.

Dell Trusted Update Experience is a simplified way of providing the latest fixes and updates (BIOS and drivers). Through Dell Trusted Update Experience, Dell provides efficient and streamlined updates that are pre-validated against hardware models, aligned with industry release dates and configurable to roll out with minimal interruption, with support every step of the way.
    
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The Dell-supported update processes to which you’re already accustomed provide the Dell Trusted Update Experience, and it’s available for all Dell PCs Dell currently supports.

While the processes may be familiar, Dell Trusted Update Experience enables a more centralized, customizable approach to updates. IT admins can give end users an automatic and silent update experience, while still maintaining the control to configure updates or allow users control and flexibility where preferred.

We release each update on a regular schedule that makes it easy to align with your rhythm of business. This ensures users can be secure and productive throughout every workday without disruption, while IT can rest assured devices are updated and their organization is protected from known-vulnerabilities — all while freeing up their time to focus on other priorities.

Source: dell.com

Thursday, 24 August 2023

Scalable Transformation with VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 on VxRail

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Navigating the nebulous world of cloud transformation can seem like a daunting voyage. However, here at Dell Technologies, we’re ready to be your strategic partner, guiding you every step of the way. Our mission? To simplify your cloud journey, offering flexible and modern infrastructure solutions that can transform at your pace.

Your digital transformation is not a “set it and forget it” activity but a continuous journey. With your evolving business needs, the journey to a cloud operating model, along with the need to optimize the management of full-stack HCI-based cloud, becomes more pronounced. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Our team of experts can work with you every step of the way to ensure you have the latest technologies and know how to optimize your operations, increase efficiency and ultimately drive growth for your business.

VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail


This is where VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.0 on Dell VxRail enters the picture. As a part of our VMware HCI portfolio, VxRail delivers an integrated, automated, turnkey HCI platform that becomes the infrastructure foundation for a private, hybrid or multicloud VMware environment. As a building block of your cloud transformation, our VxRail HCI System Software provides highly differentiated features and benefits, including automated and validated full stack updates, cluster health checks and simplified IT operations that pave the way for innovation and secure a “multicloud by design.” Built for VMware, with VMware, to enhance VMware, VxRail provides the fastest and simplest path to transform operations and modernize data center infrastructure.

VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail delivers a fully integrated and curated full stack VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) on a VxRail solution, allowing IT to become a strategic business enabler in your cloud transformation initiatives.

Dell APEX Hybrid Cloud Platform for VMware delivers VCF on VxRail as a subscription-based consumption offer that enables you to rapidly adapt to fluctuating workload needs and promotes the efficient use of resources.

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Continuous Innovation Makes Hybrid Cloud Management Easier


VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 on Dell VxRail 8.0.100 is a testament to our commitment to provide a scalable and flexible cloud platform that is built on the only jointly engineered HCI solution with VMware. VCF 5.0 on VxRail includes the latest version of VMware’s vSphere 8 hypervisor and introduces a variety of exciting new automated updates and lifecycle management capabilities.

New features include:

  • Enhanced flexibility to apply, and track, asynchronous VxRail release patches independently, providing administrators the ability to proceed with critical updates before full VCF on VxRail releases are available.
  • Upgrade directly to VCF 5.0 from earlier versions (4.3 and higher) through direct skip-level upgrades powered by SDDC Manager and VxRail HCI System Software.
  • Greater scalability and adaptability with expanded workload domain maximums that flexibly scale from 15 to 25 domains.
  • Simplified views of configuration drift with the ability to apply them using SDDC Manager.
  • Support for NVMe over TCP connected supplemental storage.
  • Improved security for workload domains through the addition of isolated domains, each equipped with individual single sign-on (SSO) capabilities and NSX instance.
  • Ensure validity, trust and proper installation of certificates through improved VCF certificate management workflows.

Start Your Cloud Journey Today with VCF on VxRail


In essence, VCF on VxRail ensures you reduce risks and increase operational efficiencies with automated full stack operations and end-to-end lifecycle management. With a turnkey hybrid cloud-ready solution at hand, you can get started quickly, navigating through your cloud transformation journey with ease, agility and investment protection.

Join us at VMware Explore 2023 in Las Vegas to talk to our specialists about multicloud solutions featuring VCF on VxRail and APEX Hybrid Cloud for VMware, and visit us at booth 201, where we will be hosting in-booth sessions and theater presentations.

Source: dell.com

Tuesday, 22 August 2023

Explore the Multicloud World with Dell and VMware

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This year at the VMware Explore conference, VMware is asking attendees to “Map Your Multicloud Journey” and for good reason. Multicloud is as popular as ever, with 87% of organizations reporting they’re utilizing multiple clouds to support the needs of their business according to Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud report. The same report shows 72% of organizations utilize hybrid cloud, combining the best of private cloud along with public cloud to provide a more holistic set of cloud services to their end users.

The findings from that report match the reality we see when we help customers with multicloud adoption. Most have grown organically over the years and adopted various cloud platforms as needed in a siloed approach, or what we refer to as multicloud by default. Our goal is to help customers achieve multicloud by design, using a model that enables them to get rid of the shackles of silos to have a platform that enables them to run the right workload in the right cloud with common governance, security and financial transparency across all cloud environments.

Many of our customers have standardized on VMware infrastructure to serve as the foundation for their on-premises cloud platform. VMware’s infrastructure and cloud products are a staple in data centers from the enterprise all the way to small business and can serve as a powerful foundation for multicloud by design. Dell and VMware have a long history of collaborating in this space, including on products like Dell VxRail and Dell APEX. This enables Dell to have deep subject matter expertise in both our own solutions and those from VMware.

Our Consulting Services team offers services to meet a customer wherever they are on their multicloud journey with VMware technologies. We do this across our four consulting journeys (practices): Multicloud, Applications & Data, Resiliency & Security and Modern Workforce. Within each of these, Dell offers a comprehensive set of consulting services for VMware technologies. Our services are well-aligned to our product portfolio, enabling us to offer more complete transformational outcomes for our customers. Our consulting team goes beyond simply helping a customer to install and configure VMware software, focusing on customer outcomes and solving business problems.


Within our Multicloud journey, we offer key services for VMware’s entire Aria suite of products, enabling us to help customers build out a true multicloud infrastructure across solutions like Dell VxRail. These services include the important automation and integration components that turn a solution from something that’s just blinking lights in a data center into a true multicloud solution that delivers outcomes the business needs. We wrap all of that together with the organizational and process changes needed to properly transform and adopt multicloud.

Our Applications & Data services support a customer’s cloud native journey, with services across VMware’s Tanzu suite of technologies. This includes Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, Tanzu Kubernetes Operations and Tanzu Application Platform, delivering a container infrastructure that promotes productivity and innovation. This helps customers take steps to transform their applications and gain the agility of true cloud native applications.

Critical to the success of any organization’s multicloud journey is protecting what matters most to the business, and that is where our services for Resiliency & Security come in. Our goal here is to help customers secure their VMware virtual infrastructure through powerful security capabilities of VMware NSX. Once those workloads are secured, the next natural step is to protect them with site resiliency –and our services for VMware Site Recovery Manager do just that.

Last but certainly not least, our services in the Modern Workforce space are all focused on helping customers adopt the future of work. That comes in the form of services for VMware’s Horizon suite to provide virtual desktops and remote access, a key enabler for teams to work remotely and enable hybrid workforces. And we enhanced that by offering many services for VMware’s Workspace ONE suite to support customers to access their applications on device of choice while providing a welcoming and performant user experience.

VMware’s message of “Map Your Multicloud Journey” aligns perfectly with Dell’s comprehensive portfolio of consulting services for VMware technologies. That’s exactly what we do each day by helping our customers adopt multicloud solutions, go cloud-native with their applications, protect and secure what matters most and provide the best end user experience possible.

Source: dell.com

Saturday, 19 August 2023

IT Modernization with Next-generation Dell PowerEdge Servers

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Transitioning to new server technology requires organizations to closely consider the costs and benefits when investing in new infrastructure, including hardware, software and the operating environment. Imagine the performance gains of a data center using this new or upgraded hardware and software. Along with raw performance gains, organizations will enjoy the latest in security protection, systems management capabilities, faster processing speeds, reduced downtime and faster results. In addition, an updated infrastructure will enhance scalability to accommodate future growth without major disruptions and improve cluster performance per watt.


All of this points to how upgrading your hardware, software and operating environment may improve the overall output of your data center. However, aligning all three elements simultaneously is a challenge, as past decisions can hinder progress.

Dell, Intel and VMware offer an upgraded ReadyNode infrastructure solution called vSAN 8.0 with Express Storage Architecture (ESA). This release delivers enhanced performance and efficiency to meet customers’ evolving business needs. Customers using Dell’s PowerEdge R760 server can leverage the benefits of vSAN 8.0 but must decide between the existing vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) Ready Node or upgrading to the new ESA ReadyNode architecture. vSAN ESA ReadyNodes are x86 servers that have been pre-configured, tested and certified by Dell and VMware. Each vSAN ESA ReadyNode is optimally configured for vSAN ESA or OSA with the required amount of CPU, memory, network IO and storage NVMe devices. In total, Dell offers more than 250 configurations to suit any customer requirements, begging the question: Which one should you choose, and how do you migrate?

Engineers from Intel, supported by engineers from Dell, tested multiple vSAN offerings to conduct a thorough understanding of performance and use case characteristics. The tests were conducted in Intel and Dell performance labs between November 2022 and March 2023, using NVMe drives from Solidigm. The ultimate goal was to identify the performance improvements of vSAN 8.0 ESA compared to the previous vSAN 7.0U3 OSA architecture over multiple generations of different hardware offerings. The tests resulted in showing over 6x higher performance and up to 4.9x lower latency using the latest-generation Dell servers and 4th generation Intel Xeon Processors with higher PCIe bandwidth and enhanced network capabilities.

Since the vSAN 8 ESA storage framework has more specific hardware requirements than OSA, most customers will be transitioning to the ESA on a per-cluster basis through a new installation of vSAN running on vSAN ReadyNodes certified for use with the ESA. The OSA to ESA transition is a one-time migration occurring on a per-cluster basis. Each step requires careful consideration of factors like hardware replacement, data migration, performance benefits and available capacity in other clusters.

In the end, IT teams’ primary responsibilities are improving total cost of ownership (TCO), reducing downtime and increasing performance and scalability by optimizing infrastructure. As technology continues to evolve, engineers at Dell, Intel and VMware are focused on optimizing new solutions to deliver greater value to customers. Deploying new technologies into old environments can risk – or sometimes even eliminate – this value.

Combining Dell PowerEdge Servers with 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Processors and the latest VMware hypervisor/vSAN ReadyNodes can dramatically improve performance, reduce latency and provide more timely business insights. With storage devices forming a large portion of TCO, reconfiguring existing hardware to optimize the capabilities of vSAN8.0 ESA requires a significant capital investment. Yet, servers will still not deliver maximum performance due to the reduced performance of legacy NVMe and servers. In addition, this approach significantly increases the workload on existing IT staff.

Source: dell.com

Thursday, 17 August 2023

Supporting the Shift to Renewable Energy with Virtualized Architecture

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With the global shift toward electrification and renewable energy, the energy grid is transforming from a controlled, top-down approach for load balancing to a dynamic, multi-directional balancing act of various renewable sources, battery storage and load-shifting strategies. This shift is forcing grid operators to take a new, more intelligent approach to leveraging substations as grid intelligence hubs and rethink the traditional ways of supporting those operations. While traditional substation systems have been reliable, they suffer from lack of data utilization, long equipment deployment times, lack of flexibility and high operations and maintenance costs.

Substations and Virtualization


To meet these demands, substation operators are increasingly turning to virtualization for substation automation, control and management. A virtualized platform provides the flexibility required to quickly respond to new challenges in the face of a volatile, evolving grid. By converting proprietary physical devices into software-defined appliances, operators can improve remote management capabilities and system resiliency and reduce total cost of ownership while driving sustainability goals and reducing their dependence on proprietary hardware providers.

The Dell Validated Design for Energy Edge


Leading up to VMware Explore, Dell Technologies is introducing a new Validated Design for Energy Edge, a scalable, virtualized substation solution to help ensure the security and reliability of the electric grid. Dell Validated Designs are proven configurations developed to support specific partner software. These pre-tested solutions simplify the deployment, management and support of substation automation software so you can focus on business outcomes.


Built with ABB ZEE600 and Forescout eyeInspect software, the Dell Validated Design for Energy Edge allows electric utility and substation operators to modernize legacy systems through seamless IT/OT system integration with comprehensive substation digitalization and security to forge a path to the future grid while reducing cyber threats.

Built on the rugged PowerEdge XR12 server and Dell Gateways, the Dell Validated Design for Energy Edge is designed around three main principles:

  • Secure virtualization to provide secure isolation of virtual machines, networks, and storage.
  • Layered cybersecurity controls, including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems and network segmentation.
  • High availability through redundant hardware, software and network components to ensure substation availability in the event of hardware or software failures.

Partnership with VMware


This solution is built on vPAC (Virtualized Protection, Automation and Control), a product of Dell’s collaboration with VMware, to design an open, secure and intelligent grid control platform that allows for multiple applications to run on a single hardware device. It delivers other important benefits to electric utility customers, including:

  • Supporting precision time protocol (PTP)
  • Enabling hosting of time-sensitive applications
  • Providing high-availability and seamless redundancy (PRP/HSR)
  • Improving sustainability performance
  • Lowering total cost of ownership
  • Delivering improved remote automated operations

Dell PowerEdge Foundation


Operational efficiency is at the heart of Dell’s work with electric utilities. Building on the utilities-grade PowerEdge XR12 platform, the XR12 is a trusted, reliable system that performs even in the most remote and rugged areas. The Validated Design for Energy Edge simplifies sizing and deployment in new and established computing environments to get you up and running with minimal disruption. Dell services and support simplify day-two operations and reduce the risk of disruption and unexpected downtime. And we have tested and validated both applications to run virtually on a single infrastructure stack, helping achieve greater security, resiliency and scalability.

ABB Substation Automation


The ABB substation automation software incorporated into the Dell solution promotes efficiency and reliability in operating electrification systems. It harnesses real-time, near-real-time and diagnostics data to facilitate digitalization objectives across diverse segment domains. Together with VMware, we have tested and validated this software to be deployed on virtualized infrastructure, consolidating complex substation stacks onto a multi-workload platform that is resilient and scalable.

Forescout Cybersecurity


Dell is committed to delivering security and resilience for today’s OT landscape. That is why we have validated Forescout eyeInspect, an in-depth cybersecurity tool for complete device visibility with deep packet inspection of all OT network protocols. For additional security, our Cyber Resiliency Assessment identifies vulnerabilities and gaps in your security profile, protecting sensitive data from attack and ransomware vulnerabilities. And with Dell PowerProtect, you avoid downtime and ensure business resilience with centralized governance and SaaS-based reporting and monitoring.

Facilitating the Energy Future


The Dell Validated Design for Energy Edge helps electric utility customers modernize legacy systems efficiently and securely, integrating IT/OT systems seamlessly and offering comprehensive substation automation and security. Collaboration with VMware, ForeScout and ABB allows us to help utility providers move confidently to the future grid, facilitating a more reliable energy future.

Source: dell.com

Wednesday, 16 August 2023

The Game-changing Potential of Generative AI

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Just like the revolutionary technologies of personal computers over 40 years ago and server virtualization over 20 years ago, we find ourselves witnessing another transformative era with boundless potential.

We’re still in the early stages of the generative AI revolution, but it’s real. Generative AI is an inflection point. It’s disruptive. It’s game-changing. More to learn. More to come.

I recently met with our investor community in our “Ask the Experts” webcast. As you can imagine, generative AI was the number one topic. Joined by our CTO John Roese and president of ISG Jeff Boudreau, we delved into the hot-button questions surrounding this exciting technology.

We view generative AI as a new category of computing in the technology stack with very distinct characteristics. It’s a new workload that is enabling a level of productivity we have never seen. As such, GenAI will not displace existing spend; rather it will grow the IT TAM over time. Moreover, the models GenAI creates will be some of the most valuable data ever created – data we’ll need to protect.

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Dell is uniquely suited to help customers in their AI journeys. Navigating the technology options and how to integrate GenAI into their existing IT environment or deploy a new edge AI solution can be very complex. We have the experience and insights to help our customers design the most efficient solution based on their application and desired outcome for improving software development productivity, enhancing customer experience and/or automating their operations.

Our AI offers start with our modern data infrastructure portfolio – our latest generation of servers purpose-built for training or tuning GenAI models and AI inferencing, storage that scales to handle the massive amount of unstructured data needed for GenAI workloads and a data protection portfolio that can protect this data and the valuable models.

During my conversation with Jensen Huang, co-founder, president and CEO of NVIDIA, at Dell Technologies World, he shared that in the future, we’ll see AI factories at the edge, the data center and in the cloud. In other words, everywhere, resulting in a range of generative AI infrastructure solutions.

Source: dell.com

Saturday, 12 August 2023

Three Simple Steps to Improve Your Security Posture

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The security landscape is in a constant state of evolution, with rapid changes taking place in recent years. Many of today’s security measures leave businesses vulnerable to cyberthreats, necessitating organizations invest in robust security solutions and establish security-aware cultures. As cyberattacks continue to rise and their consequences escalate, it can feel overwhelming to choose the right security approach.

Yet, choosing the right security approach is no easy task either. For that reason, we’re introducing Security Spotlight, a bi-weekly podcast series from Dell Technologies dedicated to educating our audience about the importance of proactive cybersecurity measures and the benefits of a modern security approach. The podcast will feature Dell voices and external subject matter experts engaging in discussions covering a range of security topics, including different approaches to Zero Trust, the role of generative AI in security, reducing the attack surface, cyber threat detection and response, rapid recovery from attacks, taking advantage of professional services to help you close your experience gaps and how to advance your cybersecurity or Zero Trust maturity in your organization. Our ultimate goal is to equip listeners with insights from trusted professionals, enabling them not only to comprehend potential security limitations, but also to receive valuable advice on enhancing their security posture.


For the inaugural Security Spotlight episode, Transform Security with Confidence, Steve Kenniston joined the podcast to discuss starting points organizations can implement today to improve their security posture. First, we talk about how organizations can improve their protection. Next, we discuss the importance of a resiliency plan. And finally, we talk about choosing the right partner for your security journey.

Before jumping into the technology, we hit on some important topics organizations should think about as they being to plan their own security strategy, such as doing a security audit or assessment, classifying data or applications to know what to recover first, educating employees and ensuring a documented incident response plan that the core team has practiced.

IT security always begins with protection, encompassing various forms of safeguarding measures, including integrating security into the foundation of technology. While protection is vital, it’s not foolproof, making resilience planning equally crucial. Cyber resilience assumes attacks are inevitable, shifting focus from prevention to efficient recovery with minimal disruption and loss. Implementing a proactive approach to downtime ensures recovery from cyberattacks.

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In this episode, we also discuss how security success is really a team sport, requiring a trusted partner that brings more than just features to the table. Confidence, an important pillar of security, emphasizes the value of selecting the right partner with scale, innovation and foundational resources like key partnerships and supply chain security. Dell stands as a trusted end-to-end partner, driving innovation for emerging realities like Zero Trust. Dell’s global IT presence, powerful partner ecosystem and streamlined path to authentic Zero Trust position it as the clear choice for organizations seeking a comprehensive security solution.

As the security landscape evolves, so must our approach to protecting organizations. By embracing the security lifestyle journey, investing in protection, resilience and trusting in a reputable partner like Dell, businesses can navigate the ever-changing cybersecurity terrain with confidence. Together, we can fortify our organizations and stay one step ahead of emerging threats, ensuring a secure future for all.

Source: dell.com

Thursday, 10 August 2023

Streamlining Modern IT Operations with a Collaborative Approach

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This is the third blog highlighting the work we’re doing with Microsoft to deliver hybrid solutions for businesses. In our previous two blogs, we discussed how Dell and Microsoft are collaborating to help customers accelerate hybrid cloud adoption and simplify application modernization initiatives. Here, we will look at how we’re collaborating to simplify operations and deliver consistency for customers. There are a number of priorities we see impacting – and evolving – customers’ IT operations, such as:

  • Diversity of applications. Modern enterprises rely heavily on IT to deliver innovative applications and services that help enhance business agility while unlocking new opportunities and improving profitability. Increasingly, IT is adopting containerized, cloud native application architectures to keep pace with business demands. These apps do not replace the traditional run-the-business application typically deployed as virtual machines, resulting in proliferation of diverse application architectures with varying performance, scaling and availability requirements. IT needs consistent management and simpler operations to support their diverse application requirements.
  • Expanding edge footprint. With proliferation of devices at edge locations, there is a vast amount of data being generated outside of conventional data centers. Having IT infrastructure dispersed across many locations raises new management and governance challenges.
  • Flexible usage of cloud and on-premises resources. Over 92% of businesses have a multicloud strategy. IT organizations increasingly want to be able to utilize on-premises and public cloud resources flexibly, and they want to optimize application and data placement based on workload and business requirements while ensuring simplicity of management and governance.

These trends are challenging the status quo for the traditional approaches to IT operations and management. Enterprises need modern approaches suited for the complex, dispersed IT landscapes they have to operate.

Dell and Microsoft have long partnered to deliver innovations that simplify customers’ operations and deliver predictability, and we continue to collaborate as customers adopt these new trends and paradigms. There are three areas where Dell and Microsoft continue to partner and innovate as it relates to optimizing IT operations.

  • Standardization of applications and infrastructure. Dell and Microsoft have partnered to optimize Microsoft applications and operating environments for Dell’s standard-based infrastructure platforms. Dell’s Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a great example. Going further, Microsoft and Dell are working together to bring consistency to application environments with standardization. Dell’s collaboration with Microsoft for validating and documenting Microsoft Azure Arc-enabled app and data services further helps standardize how customers deploy advanced capabilities like DBaaS, Data Lake House and AI/ML Analytics consistently, predictably and efficiently. Dell is also optimizing the underlying infrastructure platforms so customers can effectively consolidate applications of diverse characteristics and varying criticality, both virtualized and containerized. By continuing to drive standardization and consolidation across customers’ application landscapes, Dell and Microsoft help simplify these environments and their management.
  • Deep cross-layer integrations and intelligent automation. Today’s IT workflows have become complex. To achieve their objectives, IT teams must orchestrate processes that span multiple layers, from hardware infrastructure and operating environments to applications and service delivery. An integrated approach that intelligently automates these workflows dramatically improves the efficiency of platform teams, enabling them to operate these complex stacks predictably using common interfaces. As we continue our collaboration to address customers’ hybrid cloud priorities, you will see continued focus on automation in the areas of lifecycle management, security and compliance, as well as governance.
  • Centralization of management and governance. With IT spread out across data centers, numerous edge locations and cloud destinations, centralization of management and governance is the key to reining in IT complexity. While both Dell and Microsoft have taken on several initiatives that simplify deployment and management of distributed IT, the Dell integrations with Arc-enabled services for management and governance is worth noting. Dell’s Azure Stack HCI solution offers extensive capabilities for centralizing management and governance through the Azure Portal. We are collaborating further to enhance these capabilities and enable customers to manage their entire IT landscape seamlessly, irrespective of location.
Dell and Microsoft have a history of innovation in delivering simpler, more predictable IT operations for customers. As customers evolve their priorities to extract the most value from new opportunities presented by containerization, edge computing and hybrid cloud, we’ll continue to collaborate to help streamline modern IT operations to market.
Source: dell.com

Tuesday, 8 August 2023

Leading SAP HANA Performance by Dell PowerEdge R760 Servers

To respond effectively to dynamic market conditions, enterprises need to be able to quickly generate and act on intelligence. This has led many to shift to in-memory databases that help enable high-performance computing, faster application response times, and real-time analytics. And the responsiveness of these memory-centric workloads is tied directly to the underlying server infrastructure.

As organizations become more data-centric, the underlying infrastructure used to collect, synthesize, transform, and analyze this data grows in importance. The most effective server platforms for memory-centric workloads can house large amounts of data in close physical proximity to compute. An architecture that can balance cores to large memory footprints, closely connected to high-performing local storage, is ideal for these business-critical workloads.

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For these advanced workloads that power the business, Dell employs a rich portfolio of 2- to 16-socket design servers that align with the needs of these applications – richer compute, more memory, high-performance, and localized storage. The Dell PowerEdge R760 server represents a 2-socket platform that balances superior performance, with robust security and availability, while simultaneously reduces costs. Let’s explore how the Dell PowerEdge R760, powered by the latest 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, performs in simulations with a variety of users and different analytical requirements.

SAP HANA is an in-memory database platform used to manage large amounts of data in real-time for a variety of purposes, including point-of-sale data, real-time analytics for inventory management, supply-chain optimization and customer behavior analysis. As the amount of data to process grows, it can be challenging for servers to deliver information and analysis quickly enough to meet the increasingly demanding business requirements for fast data access. That’s why SAP HANA users are always on the lookout for better-performing servers.

SAP publishes the results of standardized benchmark tests to assist customers in comparing the performance of different servers when running SAP HANA. SAP recently published performance results for the Dell PowerEdge R760 server, and we’re excited to share some highlights about just how well this server stacks up against other servers.

Fifteen different data points are available for comparing the PowerEdge R760 server to other servers. The standard benchmarks measure three key performance data points for each of the five different database sizes on which SAP tested the PowerEdge R760 server.

The following table shows the rank of the PowerEdge R760 server for each of the 15 points of comparison among all the different servers tested using SAP’s benchmark version. The source of the data is the publicly available SAP Standard Application Benchmarks directory, accessed on April 19, 2023.

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The PowerEdge R760 server outperformed all the other servers in 13 of the 15 benchmark points of comparison, and it ranked second in the remaining two.

The PowerEdge R760 two-socket server, with the latest 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, and Micron DDR5 memory, outperforms all other servers in SAP HANA benchmarking – even 4 and 8-socket servers –in every database size up to 6.5 billion initial records. It provides the performance and versatility you need to address your most demanding applications, including SAP HANA with massive databases and mission-critical requirements for real-time performance.

Source: dell.com

Saturday, 5 August 2023

Three Critical Benefits of Cloud Security Posture Management

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In the era of digital transformation, organizations are increasingly utilizing public cloud infrastructure for storage, processing and other operations. This shift, however, comes with new security hurdles that require careful and continuous monitoring to avoid data exposure and security breaches. According to Statista, cloud misconfiguration was named the biggest security threat in public cloud environments, with a total of three billion records breached in 2019. Of all public cloud records exposed to a breach in 2019, a whopping 85% were the result of a misconfiguration. And 48% of those misconfigurations led to exposure of sensitive data. Even unintentional actions can lead to dire consequences for organizations.

Maintaining visibility and control across multiple cloud services is a significant challenge for security teams. With public cloud breaches on the rise, it’s critical to have a strong security posture management solution to protect against a data breach. Enter the Netskope Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solution. Netskope’s CSPM is a market-leading solution that continuously monitors for and identifies potential security issues for fast remediation within cloud service provider (CSP) infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud environments, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. This solution uses continuous monitoring and remediation tools to enforce optimal cloud configurations.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the critical benefits of CSPM.

1. Spot and resolve misconfigurations proactively. As mentioned before, misconfigurations are among the primary culprits behind cloud data breaches. Even if an organization’s cloud infrastructure is initially configured correctly, over time this configuration can drift from an optimal state through changes in settings, updating permissions or simply by moving data. These changes can add up and expose data in public cloud infrastructure to bad actors. Without continuous monitoring of public cloud configurations, security teams may overlook insecure settings. Netskope’s CSPM solution continuously evaluates cloud services for their security posture. It identifies misconfigurations and offers actionable recommendations to rectify them. This ensures security gaps can be addressed before bad actors exploit them.

2. Streamline compliance management. Navigating the litany of regulatory compliance standards, like GDPR, HIPAA and PCI DSS, can be a challenging task for security teams. The complexity only increases when dealing with cloud environments where data is scattered across multiple services. Netskope’s CSPM makes compliance management straightforward by keeping a continuous check on the cloud environment and offering automated compliance assessments. It ensures organizations’ cloud usage aligns accurately with relevant regulations, sparing users from potential non-compliance fines.

3. Enable automated remediation. While Netskope’s CSPM identifies and alerts organizations to security gaps, it also takes it a step further by providing automated remediation. In many cases, the solution can correct common misconfigurations on its own, freeing up security teams to focus on more complex issues. Automated remediation not only streamlines resolution, but also reduces the risk of human error, ultimately saving time, money and resources.

With the right security posture management solution, an organization can seamlessly maintain the security of their public cloud services. And with Netskope’s CSPM, organizations can operate confidently across multiple cloud environments, knowing they’re well-protected against security breaches and data exposure.

Source: dell.com

Thursday, 3 August 2023

Insights Unlocked: Introduce AI to Your Data

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Data is the Fuel for Use Cases Like Generative AI


I’m calling it: Artificial intelligence is the hottest topic of 2023. With the release of ChatGPT and Google Bard, there is plenty to be excited about. AI promises to drive business growth around the world, change the way we work and unlock new use cases we aren’t even thinking about yet. But behind all the model training, all the querying and inferencing is data. Data is fueling the AI rocket ship that will lead to better and more informed decisions, generate new content, improve operational efficiencies and ultimately drive greater predictability into business models. Pretty exciting, right?

But in the middle of all the AI hype are the data scientists and IT teams trying to make sense of it all. The truth is – uncovering insights with data can be hard. According to an Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) survey, 47% of all data within organizations is dark on average (i.e., data that is stored but not ready for analysis), with most of that data being unstructured. Over 90% of the global datasphere is made up of unstructured data that doesn’t present itself in nice and neat columns for analysis. So, how can data scientists and IT partner together to unlock these insights that are hidden in images, videos and sensor data?

Dell Unstructured Data Solutions: AI Innovations, Delivered


With the Dell Unstructured Data Solutions portfolio – which includes powerful and highly secure file and object storage platforms such as PowerScale, ECS and ObjectScale – our main goal is to help you leverage every drop of valuable data to drive your demanding workloads. In this blog, we’ll take you on a journey to build the optimal IT environment.  Modernize and create a next-generation storage foundation with PowerScale OneFS and ECS or ObjectScale, secure your data with Dell Cyber Protection for Unstructured Data and act on your data with a full suite of data management tools and partner ecosystem.

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Modernize Your Infrastructure to Create a Next Gen Storage Foundation for AI Workloads


While it’s tempting to skip right to the inferencing, driving effective training and modeling for AI use cases requires a solid storage foundation. You may not know what questions to ask AI today, but the data you store will drive predictions and greater insight in the future. What’s more, your datasets are bound to grow, and your data collection and model training cycles are going to demand higher performance. The good news is we designed PowerScale OneFS, ECS and ObjectScale for the most intensive workloads such as generative AI. With a range of available models, you have the flexibility to right-size your environment for your specific needs. Let’s also talk about scalability. With our portfolio of file and object storage platforms, your datasets can expand as fast as they need to. For example, increase AI model accuracy for higher resolution data sets with up to 186PB of raw storage capacity in a single cluster on PowerScale. Adding capacity is non-disruptive, meaning your data scientists and LOB teams can continue learning and innovating with your data without skipping a beat.

“PowerScale enables us to access data and analytics in real time — without the latency caused by sending it from the edge to the core or the cloud.”

– Keith Bradley VP of Information, Technology and Security – Nature Fresh Farms

Additionally, data processing for use cases like generative AI require a combination of training the model, fine-tuning it and generating predictions based on input data. The reality is all three of these steps may occur in different locations. Depending on latency requirements, deployment time, security and a host of other considerations, you may need a combination of on-premises, edge and cloud deployments to truly meet your AI objectives. With our Unstructured Data Solutions, we believe you should be able to run workloads like generative AI wherever you’d like. That’s why our portfolio is multicloud-enabled, giving you a single point of data access from core to edge to cloud. For example, with APEX File Storage for AWS, you can easily move data from on-premises to the cloud using advanced native replication without having to refactor your storage architecture. And once in the cloud, you can use all enterprise-grade PowerScale OneFS features. This is critical for driving operational efficiencies, as there is no need to retrain your IT teams because everything is familiar and predictable.

Secure Your Data with Intelligent, Real-time Detection Tools and Fast Recovery Time


Unfortunately, security threats have shown no sign of slowing down. The cost of cybercrime is expected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025, and a whopping 76% of organizations have experienced an attempted ransomware attack. Attackers are specifically targeting unstructured data because of its value (i.e., sensitive data that can be sold) and sheer data volume. Because of this, multilayered security is a requirement when setting up any environment for AI training and modeling. Dell Cyber Protection for Unstructured Data helps stop cyber-attackers in their tracks with a multilayered approach.

Our commitment to security begins right at the start, as we conduct a comprehensive assessment of your current cybersecurity state through the lens of Zero Trust with Dell security experts. Next, we establish an air-gapped cyber vault that creates an impenetrable barrier between your mission-critical data and general storage. But that’s not all – we seamlessly integrate AI and machine learning software, empowering you to detect and analyze any suspicious activity in real-time. If a threat is detected, our proactive measures kick in. Track and identify all accessed or modified files and quickly lock out accounts and shut down data replication pipelines to mitigate your risk. In the unfortunate event of an attack, our fast recovery time ensures that operations can be restored – recovering petabytes of data in hours versus weeks. With our end-to-end cybersecurity solution, you can rest easy knowing that you have the right level of visibility and security to safeguard your AI environment in real time. 

Act on and Analyze Your Data Wherever It Lives


Now that you’ve established a modern, secure foundation for your data, the excitement continues. Our team of in-house Dell AI experts are dedicated to supporting you throughout your entire AI journey – from model training to fine-tuning to inferencing – so you can act on your insights faster. Our in-house data scientists will meet with you to identify your most pressing business problems and recommend ways to run your workloads, like generative AI, where it makes the most sense. Dell also has a broad ecosystem of data management partners – such as Starburst, Snowflake and Databricks – that is tightly integrated to help simplify data discovery and unlock valuable insights. Establish a modern data lakehouse to streamline data access while utilizing the most robust data querying and engineering tools on the market for your AI projects.

“With all-flash PowerScale at the edge we’re able to run analytics and deliver insights faster, including both training and inference.”

– Arnaud Langer, Global Edge and IoT Senior Product Director – Atos

Choose the Provider You Know and Trust to Power Your AI Journey


Dell is here to partner with you to successfully make use of your data and innovate with AI. With market-validated technology and over 16,000 customer installations spanning the globe, you can rest easy knowing you’re choosing a provider that some of the largest companies in the world trust. Additionally, we have the most flexible, efficient and secure storage on the market and have been named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for seven consecutive years. In the report, Gartner states that “Dell Technologies has the broadest portfolio of products and builds on insights gathered from the largest installed base in the market to address the challenges of unstructured data.”

Our in-house AI experts and data scientists are ready to ideate and develop a comprehensive AI strategy for your business. Get started today by taking advantage of our Dell AI Starter Kit, which is based on PowerScale, Dell PowerEdge servers and NVIDIA.

Source: dell.com

Tuesday, 1 August 2023

Deliver Faster Value with Dell Generative AI Solutions

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The large and sudden popularity of GenAI is grabbing everyone’s attention, as organizations are trying to figure out what this means for their business – and how they can build value and revenue.

With our July 31 announcement – building on May’s Project Helix announcement – we’re now simplifying the deployment and adoption of a full-stack solution for GenAI inferencing projects. In collaboration with NVIDIA, this joint architecture delivers a modular and flexible design supporting a multitude of use cases and computational requirements.

First of All, What’s Inferencing?


Inferencing in AI refers to the process of using a trained model to generate predictions, make decisions, or produce outputs based on input data. It’s applying the learned knowledge and patterns during the model’s training phase to completely new data. During inferencing, the trained model processes input data through its computational algorithms or neural network architecture to produce an output or prediction (i.e., meaningful information or actions). 

So What Does That Mean for GenAI?


Inferencing is the final stage in the lifecycle of an AI system, enabling the model to generalize its knowledge and make predictions or generate responses on new data. Basically, you’ve done the training and tuning (or using a pre-trained model), now it’s time to deploy into production and start delivering results and value.

Some interesting examples of inferencing use cases include:

◉ Natural language generation. Models can be used for text generation tasks such as document writing, dialogue generation, summarization, or content creation.
◉ Chatbots and virtual assistants. Power conversational agents, chatbots and virtual assistants by generating natural language responses based on user queries or instructions.
◉ Code development. Get assistance in software development with features like code completion, ability to generate unit tests or a chat function for explain code.

Increase Productivity and Insights


Through Dell Validated Designs you can take the guess work out of deploying GenAI with a proven reference architecture made to simplify adoption. Power your inferencing efforts on Dell infrastructure, such as the Dell PowerEdge XE9680 or PowerEdge R760xa, a choice of NVIDIA® Tensor Core GPUs, with Dell software and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform including Triton Inference Server and the NeMo framework. Fast, ample data lake storage for Generative AI and large language models is provided by Dell PowerScale all-flash or hybrid storage arrays (download the guide here.)

With a reference architecture for Inferencing, we’re delivering a roadmap for how to cost-efficiently take advantage of the pre-trained models via NVIDIA NeMo framework – rather than building and training your own model from scratch. By taking advantage of pre-trained inferencing models, you can deliver faster and more cost-efficient results. Pre-trained models can also be further fine-tuned with smaller amounts of task-specific data, while giving access to a range of functionalities ready to use such as language translation for example.

Deliver High Performance Development Environments Locally


Part of deploying LLM inferencing at scale in your own data center is enabling your AI developers and data scientists to develop and fine-tune GenAI models locally before pushing to production. With the Dell Precision workstations and built-in AI software (Dell Optimizer) you get performance and reliability you’re used to from Dell – supported by up to four NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada generation GPUs in a single workstation. 

Unlock on Your Priorities Faster with Dell Professional Services


Additionally, we’ll help you at every stage of your journey towards LLM inferencing. With Dell Professional Services, whether you need support developing your strategy, deploying and integrating with your other systems, or scaling up to meet newer business requirements – we’ll be there every step of the way.

With powerful GenAI solutions from Dell Technologies and NVIDIA, you can now transform processes in areas like customer operations, content creation, software development and sales – while delivering the on-premises security needed to protect your proprietary company data.

Source: dell.com