Accelerate Mainframe Storage with New Dell Disk Library (DLm) Models

We’re excited to announce the launch of two new models of the Dell Disk Library for Mainframe (DLm), the DLm2700 and DLm8700. These powerful new models feature enhanced Virtual Tape Engines (VTEs) with 60% more processing cores, 32Gb FICON mainframe host connectivity, and 25GbE storage connections for improved performance.

Enhanced Performance and Storage Efficiency

The new DLm models offer a significant increase in processing power, host and storage connectivity speeds, making it possible to manage even the most demanding mainframe tape workloads more efficiently. This allows customers to take advantage of the latest Dell storage solutions, such as PowerProtect, PowerScale and PowerMax, while remaining plug compatible for traditional mainframe tape storage replacement.

DLm 7.0 Builds on the Innovative Features and Flexibility of Dell Technologies Mainframe Storage

DLm built its reputation on the powerful combination of mainframe tape processing performance, storage choice, and innovative features enabling customers to maximize the benefits of data deduplication, scalability, enterprise-class performance and availability. With the ability to share storage resources between mainframe and non-mainframe workloads, customers can cost-optimize their storage investment while modernizing their mainframe infrastructure.

Cloud Connectivity and Long-Term Retention

The new DLm models continue support for Amazon AWS and Dell ECS, enabling more cost-efficient tape image Long Term Retention (LTR) and retrieval. By leveraging a mix of local and cloud-based mainframe tape storage, customers can free up on-premises capacity and share storage resources with open systems storage when faster retrieval is required.

Cyber Resiliency and Multi-Site DR Protection

DLm is built on Dell Technologies rich history of enterprise-class mainframe storage innovation, including the introduction of Universal Data Consistency (UDC) between mainframe tape and disk, which solves a decades-long problem of mainframe data and log files being out of sync which can create issues after an outage. Some additional innovative storage features include mainframe snapshot Data Protection (zDP), Cyber Protection Automation (zCPA), and cyber data intrusion detection (zCID) which provide enhanced cyber resiliency and multi-site DR protection.

Overall, the new DLm models offer a powerful solution for mainframe customers seeking to boost performance, improve storage efficiency, and leverage cloud-based flexibility and cyber resiliency.

The Dell Technologies and IBM Partnership

In collaboration with IBM, Dell Technologies continues to support the mainframe ecosystem, to meet the evolving demands of the world’s largest enterprises. Dell DLm as well as PowerMax, supports IBM z16. Powered by the IBM Telum processor, the z16 enables AI inferencing with unmatched agility, delivering at unprecedented speed and scale.

Start Benefitting from Smarter, More Flexible, and Secure Mainframe Virtual Tape Storage

Click here to learn more about how DLm can help you accelerate your mainframe tape modernization by improving tape processing efficiency, storage asset utilization, strengthening cyber resiliency and multicloud connectivity for your enterprise.

Source: dell.com

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Dell Technologies Accelerates AI Innovation and Strengthens Cybersecurity for Microsoft Customers

In a significant move to bolster AI innovation and cybersecurity, Dell Technologies has announced a series of new offerings designed to enhance the capabilities of Microsoft customers. These advancements, unveiled at the Microsoft Ignite event, aim to simplify AI adoption, improve data protection and strengthen cybersecurity strategies.

Accelerating AI Adoption with Dell AI Factory

Dell Technologies is expanding its AI Factory portfolio with new storage software and services that promise to accelerate AI adoption and performance. The introduction of Dell APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure provides a Dell-managed option that allows organizations to focus on AI application development rather than hybrid cloud infrastructure maintenance. This service leverages Dell PowerScale OneFS software to offer high-performance, scale-out file capabilities in Microsoft Azure, supporting demanding AI applications with up to 18 nodes of storage capacity.

Additionally, Dell is launching several services to help customers create custom AI solutions:

• Accelerator Services for Copilot+ PCs: Enhances productivity and efficiency with advisory on new features, implementation plans, and best practices.
• Services for Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Studio: Assists in developing and implementing Copilot agents and AI solutions tailored to specific business needs.
• Implementation Services for Microsoft Azure AI Service: Supports AI application development on-premises with Azure Stack AI services on Dell solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
• Managed Services for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI: Provides cloud-like flexibility and scalability with expert support for seamless cloud integration.

Enhancing Cybersecurity and Data Protection

Dell Technologies is also introducing robust data protection and cybersecurity services for Microsoft environments. The Dell APEX Protection Services for Microsoft Azure offers enterprise-class multicloud data protection and cyber resiliency across various locations. This AI-powered, Dell-managed solution enhances cyber resiliency with zero trust security features, including immutability, encryption, multi-factor authentication, and role-based access controls. It also provides efficient recovery options to protect against ransomware and cyber threats, significantly reducing recovery time.

Furthermore, Dell is offering new security services to help customers align their cybersecurity posture with industry standards:

• Advisory Services for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) for Microsoft: Provides specific recommendations to align cybersecurity strategies with CMMC guidelines.
• Microsoft Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) Services: Allows customers to focus on their core business while Dell experts monitor, detect, investigate, and respond to threats 24/7.

Conclusion

Dell Technologies continues to lead the way in AI innovation and cybersecurity, providing Microsoft customers with the tools and services needed to accelerate their digital transformation. With these new offerings, Dell is helping organizations innovate faster, control costs, and protect their data more effectively.

Source: dell.com

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PowerMax Innovations Boost AI-Powered Efficiency, Cybersecurity and Multicloud Agility

Today, we’re announcing significant enhancements to Dell PowerMax that improve AI-driven efficiency, increase cyber resiliency, and deliver seamless multicloud mobility. These new capabilities for PowerMax, our continuously modern, highly secure storage solution optimized for mission-critical workloads, make it easier than ever for customers to keep pace with changing business demands.  

AI-Driven Efficiency for Mission-Critical Workloads

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses need storage solutions that keep pace with their demands and anticipate future needs. That’s where the power of artificial intelligence comes in. This release offers customers a range of AI-powered benefits that can help optimize performance, reduce management overhead, and prevent incidents before they occur through:  

• Performance optimization: We are using AI to accelerate performance with dynamic cache optimization through pattern recognition and predictive analytics, reducing latency and increasing speed with no management overhead.  
• Predictive and proactive management: Autonomous health checks with intelligent threshold settings provide corrective actions and self-healing capabilities, addressing issues before they arise (e.g. storage capacity levels, loose cabling).  
• Automated network fabric performance optimization (FPIN): PowerMax quickly identifies Fibre Channel network congestion (slow drain) and isolates root cause resulting in up to 8x faster incident resolution. 
• Infrastructure optimization: Dell’s AIOps Assistant, equipped with Gen AI natural language queries, enables fast and easy infrastructure optimization.  

Improved Efficiency

The latest release also introduces 92% RAID efficiency (RAID 6 24+2) to improve overall storage efficiency and industry-leading power and environmental monitoring capabilities.  

Customers can now track power usage at three levels: the array, the rack and the data center to improve power efficiency, manage energy costs, and effectively reduce energy consumption.  

Enhancing Cyber Resiliency

In an era where cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated, cyber resiliency is critical for all customers. PowerMax adds new cybersecurity features to increase the protection of customer data, reduce attack surfaces, and recover quickly from cyber-attacks with:  

• Cyber Recovery Services for PowerMax: Dell’s new Professional Service offers robust protection against cyberattacks. Using a secure PowerMax vault and granular data protection, this tailored solution ensures quick and efficient recovery while helping customers achieve stringent compliance goals.  
• YubiKey multifactor authentication: Provides a strong and convenient security solution, offering enhanced protection against unauthorized access and simplifying the user authentication process.  

Superior Performance at Scale

PowerMax continues to set the standard for high performance at scale, providing the headroom necessary for both current and future needs. Today’s announcement adds:  

• Up to 30% IOPS performance boost with PowerMax 8500
• Up to 3x faster GbE connectivity with new 100Gb Ethernet I/O modules
• Up to 2x faster FC connectivity with new 64Gb Fibre Channel I/O modules. 

In addition to these significant enhancements, Storage Direct Protection for PowerMax’s integration with PowerProtect enables efficient, secure, and ultra-fast data protection, delivering up to 1PB per day backups and 500TB per day restores.  

Achieve Multicloud Agility

In the evolving digital landscape, multicloud agility is essential for maximizing resource utilization, reducing costs, and adapting swiftly to change. This release helps customers achieve:  

• Seamless multicloud data mobility: Dell now offers simple options to move live PowerMax workloads to and from APEX Block Storage, the industry’s most resilient and flexible cloud storage—while simultaneously performing multi-hop OS conversions to modernize those workloads in one smooth process. 
• Scalable cloud backups and restores: Storage Direct Protection for PowerMax delivers simple, secure, and efficient data protection that empowers customers to choose the best backup destinations. By seamlessly integrating with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba, APEX Protection Storage enables customers to avoid vendor lock-in and select the cloud vendor that aligns with their unique requirements.  
• Simplified consumption model: With Dell APEX Subscriptions, customers pay for what they use and streamline invoicing, billing, and capacity usage monitoring for better forecasting and scaling. This model eliminates the need for large upfront capital investment, providing a modern consumption experience while simplifying lifecycle management.  

Mainframe Innovation

PowerMaxOS 10.2 improves IOPS performance and reduces latency for unbalanced mainframe workloads, enhances cyber intrusion detection for mainframe (zCID) with auto-learning access pattern detection, and leverages IBM’s System Recovery Boost for faster recovery during planned or unplanned outages.  

Source: dell.com

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Elevate Your Azure Stack HCI Experience with Dell Solutions

In today’s fast-paced world, innovation and success are crucial for staying ahead. At Dell Technologies, we believe in meeting customers where they are—empowering them with cutting-edge technology and offering choices that suit every budget.

Read More: D-PDD-DY-23: Dell Technologies PowerProtect DD Deploy 2023

That’s why we’re excited to expand our Dell Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI by offering Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI on the latest generation hardware. That means you can now choose between two powerful options: the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI for a smartly priced and reliable hyperconverged infrastructure, or the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure for even more automation, enhanced value and productivity.

No matter which option you choose, Dell is redefining what it means to deliver a Microsoft Azure experience on-premises. Let’s look at what each solution offers.

Dell’s Factory-ready Azure Stack HCI – Efficiency Out of the Box

For those seeking a Microsoft-native management experience, the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI provides preconfigured, hyperconverged infrastructure backed by Dell’s engineering expertise. This solution offers several key benefits, including easy deployment and management through Azure Management and Governance Services, along with Dell OpenManage Integration for Microsoft Windows Admin Center. It also ensures reliable updates with compatibility checks for both software and infrastructure, and maintains optimized performance through regular system assessments, offering two to four validations each year.

APEX Cloud Platform for Azure – A Microsoft Premier Solution

The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is a robust choice for those seeking enhanced value, productivity, and automation. As the first Premier Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, it’s continuously validated in collaboration with Microsoft. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software, an integral part of the platform, provides deep, cross-layer integrations and intelligent automation that simplify initial deployments and cluster creation, in addition to ongoing operations across the complete technology stack. IT admins can use familiar tools, such as Windows Admin Center and the Azure Portal, for a simple, consistent and centralized way of operating dispersed Azure deployments.

A recent ESG report highlighted that the unique value provided by APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software translates into significant benefits for customers, including:

• 50% more productive administrators. Enhanced automation simplifies tasks, from node addition to cluster expansion.
• 50% reduction in availability issues. Automated, non-disruptive upgrades and validated state assurance keep workloads running smoothly.
• 80% lower testing costs. Continuous joint CI/CD testing with Microsoft ensures each release is backed by extensive engineering hours.
• 40% lower support costs. Proactive, call-home support through Windows Admin Center reduces support costs and boosts reliability.

Why Choose Dell Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI?

Whichever solution you choose, Dell offers unique benefits that set us apart from other providers:

• Unique integration and automation. Opt for the Microsoft-driven management experience of the Dell Integrated System or the enhanced productivity of the APEX Cloud Platform with Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software.
• Built on the latest PowerEdge platforms. Our solutions are purpose-built for their environments, featuring intelligent systems management, cyber-resilient security, and sustainability.
• Flexible consumption options. Purchase through CapEx or modern consumption through APEX Subscriptions
• Expert support with ProSupport. Enjoy comprehensive system-level support from a single source, covering hardware, software, and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, with Dell managing collaboration with Microsoft support.
• Available with Azure Stack HCI OEM License. Gain significant price advantages with a one-time upfront cost for Azure Stack HCI 23H2, Windows Server Data Center 2022 and Azure Kubernetes Service

In summary, Dell Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI deliver unmatched integration, automation and expert support, all built on the latest PowerEdge technology to meet your on-premises Azure needs.

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Advance Productivity: PowerScale Storage Certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD

In this era of exceptional technological advancements, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force across industries. The rise of generative AI, in particular, has unlocked tremendous potential, enabling machines to synthesize and create valuable content. Announced at the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference, Dell PowerScale file storage is the world’s first Ethernet-based storage certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. This solution helps enable businesses to harness the full potential of AI-enabled applications.

Rise of Generative AI

Generative AI has marked a turning point in the technology landscape, enabling machines to create, replicate and learn from patterns in extensive datasets, with minimal human intervention. From healthcare and manufacturing to finance and entertainment, generative AI has the power to transform industries like never before. As a result, the demand for advanced storage solutions capable of handling the sheer volume of data required by AI workloads has skyrocketed.

Certification

Dell has always been at the forefront of innovation, striving to offer cutting-edge solutions that address the evolving needs of businesses. As Dell announced earlier this year, the certification of Dell PowerScale as the first Ethernet-based storage for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD marks an advancement in storage compatibility. This solution simplifies AI infrastructure, empowering organizations to unlock the true potential of their AI initiatives.

Martin Glynn, Senior Director of Product Management for Dell Technologies, affirms, “The world’s first Ethernet storage certification for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with Dell PowerScale combines Dell’s industry-leading storage and NVIDIA’s AI supercomputing systems, empowering organizations to unlock AI’s full potential, drive breakthroughs and achieve the seemingly impossible.”

“To harness the transformative power of generative AI, organizations are seeking robust and scalable infrastructure that can help unlock insights and drive innovation,” said Tony Paikeday, senior director of AI systems at NVIDIA. “The certification of Dell PowerScale as the world’s first Ethernet storage to operate with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD gives enterprises greater choice and flexibility in their implementations of scalable AI infrastructure.”

PowerScale – Extreme Performance for Next-Generation Workloads

Dell PowerScale has gained trust and recognition for its exceptional scalability, performance and security built on over a decade of experience. Its certification for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD further strengthens Dell’s storage solution for organizations seeking to harness the power of generative AI. Here’s why PowerScale stands out:

• Enhanced network access. Technologies like NVIDIA Magnum IO, GPUDirect Storage and NFS over RDMA are natively integrated into NVIDIA ConnectX NICs and NVIDIA Spectrum switches, accelerating network access to storage. These advanced features further minimize data transfer times to and from PowerScale storage, ensuring faster storage throughput for AI training, checkpointing and inferencing tasks.
• Maximizing performance. Dell PowerScale offers a new Multipath Client Driver that optimizes data throughput and allows organizations to achieve the high performance required by DGX SuperPOD. This innovative feature enables businesses to accelerate AI model training and inference, facilitating seamless integration with the powerful NVIDIA DGX platform.
• Scalability. PowerScale’s unique design enables effortless scaling by simply adding new nodes, delivering unparalleled agility to businesses. This flexibility ensures that organizations can adapt and grow their storage infrastructure as their AI workloads expand, avoiding any potential bottlenecks for even the most demanding AI use cases.
• Federal-grade security. PowerScale has been recognized for its exceptional security capabilities, earning the U.S. Department of Defense Approved Product List. Successful completion of this rigorous process underscores PowerScale’s suitability for mission-critical applications and bolsters protection of critical data assets.
• Efficiency. PowerScale’s innovative architecture is designed to optimize efficiency. Utilizing advanced technologies, it maximizes performance and minimizes power consumption while reducing operational costs and environmental impacts.

To accelerate the deployment of PowerScale with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD solutions, Dell developed the following reference architecture. The whitepaper illustrates the seamless combination of PowerScale with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD.

The certification of Dell PowerScale as the world’s first Ethernet-based storage solution certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD represents a significant milestone in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Dell’s collaboration with NVIDIA is helping to pave the way for organizations to leverage generative AI with scalability and performance. By embracing these leading technologies, businesses can unlock the full potential of AI and transform their operations, propelling themselves into an era of accelerated innovation and remarkable growth.

Source: dell.com

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Five Ways Dell Can Help Telecom Increase Cloud Sustainability

Sustainability is a non-negotiable for communication service providers (CSP). A recent study by the GSM Association tells us that CSPs spend 20 to 40% of OpEx on energy. With increasing pressure to reduce their carbon footprint, CSPs need to find innovative ways to manage their network infrastructure while keeping it reliable and efficient. Dell Technologies has a variety of products and solutions to help the telecom industry achieve their sustainability goals. And we aren’t talking about recycling – although we do that (that’s table stakes).

Dell Technologies Bare Metal Orchestrator (BMO) is a powerful software platform that automates the deployments and lifecycle management of bare-metal servers (or infrastructure network) at massive scale. BMO helps CSPs manage their network infrastructure all the way out to the edge in a more efficient and automated way, which can help reduce the time and effort required to manage infrastructure and improve overall performance.

Here are five ways BMO can help you achieve telecom achieve its sustainability goals:

1. Energy Efficiency: CSPs can use BMO to monitor and manage server utilization. By optimizing server utilization, CSPs can reduce the amount of energy required to run their data centers and, in turn, reduce their carbon footprint.
2. Resource Management: BMO can help CSPs manage their resources more effectively, which can help reduce waste and improve the sustainability of their operations. BMO can define consistency in processes around how the backup, data erase happens correctly and hence enable security and data breaches and feedback to the organization they need to plan the server procurements. For example, CSPs can use BMO to automate the provisioning and decommissioning of bare-metal servers, which can help reduce the amount of waste these servers generate. Servers that are no longer being used still use the energy and network bandwidth.
3. Data Center Optimization: CSPs can use BMO to optimize the performance of data centers, which can help reduce the amount of energy required to run these centers. This can include optimizing the utilization of bare-metal servers, improving the cooling and ventilation systems based on the telemetry collected from the servers and reducing the amount of energy required to power the data center.
4. Increased Agility: BMO can help CSPs be more agile in their operations, which can be especially important in a rapidly changing market. By automating the management of their infrastructure, CSPs can respond more quickly to changes in demand and ensure they have the resources they need to meet the changing needs of their customers. Examples include reduced downtime by enabling IT staff to respond quickly to issues and faults in the data center, deploy renewable infrastructure and adapt to changing sustainability requirements due to its flexibility and scalability. Furthermore, since BMO is software-based, CSPs can deploy servers remotely without traveling to the site, eliminating the carbon footprint of commuting.
5. Future-proofing: By implementing sustainable practices and using tools like BMO, CSPs can ensure they are well-positioned for the future. As sustainability becomes increasingly important, CSPs that have implemented sustainable practices will be well-positioned to meet the changing needs of their customers and remain competitive in the market.

Using Dell’s Bare Metal Orchestrator can help CSPs optimize the utilization of bare-metal servers, manage resources more effectively and improve the performance of data centers, thereby reducing their impact on the environment and ensuring the long-term sustainability of their operations.

Source: dell.com

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For CSPs, the Chatbot Discussion Heats Up Around AI

Let’s talk about chatbots for a moment. We’ve all used them before and, by now, most of us have accepted their limitations as the lesser of two evils (the greater evil being stuck in an endless IVR loop). Many users report at least some level of satisfaction with chatbots, particularly when handling common issues such as password resets, basic account information and other frequently asked questions. Yet the fact remains that traditional chatbots struggle with replicating a human interactive experience when the conversation goes off script. In those cases, it’s often necessary to call in the live troops to resolve a customer’s issue.

And that would be the end of our conversation about chatbots, except for the disruptive potential that AI brings to the discussion.

AI-powered chat agents have the potential to take automated customer service to another level. The ability to apply dynamic, human-like intelligence and real-time machine learning to customer experiences (CX) is what every chatbot has always dreamed of being. It is not, however, just a simple matter of bolting AI onto your existing chatbot app and waiting for better outcomes. There’s a lot of business process integration and customization around industry-specific large language models (LLMs) that need to take place before a chatbot becomes an AI chat agent. Fortunately, that work is being done right now in an industry that can desperately use it: telecommunications.

Dialing Up AI for better Customer Experiences

Dell Technologies is honored to be part of an initiative led by SK Telecom to develop an AI chat agent application for communications service providers (CSPs). In addition to SK Telecom, which is developing the application, there is a critical middleware component being developed by Compax (on the business integration side) and Matrixx Software (on the billing integration side) to bring everything together. Dell’s contributions center on three solution aspects: the cloud foundation for the application (via Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks), the underlying AI infrastructure (via Dell and Nvidia’s AI Factory) and the multivendor solution integration and validation, which is being hosted in Dell’s Open Telecommunications Ecosystem Lab (OTEL).

Part of the challenge of building an LLM-based AI chat agent for CSPs is the language itself. Telecommunications has its own set of industry-specific terms, from roaming fees to family plans. SK Telecom is currently building a customized LLM for CSPs that is capable of understanding the nuances of telco terminology. Beyond that, there is the challenge of integrating these conversations with back-office and billing systems that are often highly complex and, in some cases, have been in place for decades. And, finally, the entire solution needs to be deployed in a cloud-native architecture featuring AI-ready infrastructure. It’s these individual components that brought SK Telecom, Dell, Compax and Matrixx together, with Dell’s OTEL being the logical place to integrate and validate the entire solution.

Once completed, SK Telecom plans to roll the solution out to other CSPs around the world. For an industry that thrives on communication, AI chat agents are a potential game changer for telcos. Imagine, for example, being able to get real-time recommendations on plan changes and shop for new devices with an intelligent shopping assistant. Or get AI advice on choosing the best roaming plan right before you leave for your European vacation. These are the kinds of complex tasks that AI chat agents can perform and—here’s the key—get better at over time by learning your preferences. Even human agents often struggle to connect on that kind of personal level.

We’ve come a long way from switchboard operators, and the best is yet to come. Want to talk about developing your AI app for telecommunications? Talk to Dell or check out more on the AI Chat Agent we are working on with SK Telecom. We’re here to keep the AI conversation moving forward.

Source: dell.com

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Dell Technologies at Black Hat 2024

Dell Technologies is thrilled to announce our participation in Black Hat USA 2024, the premier global information security event, August 7 and 8 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. As a leader in cybersecurity solutions, Dell takes security very seriously. We embed security capabilities into every solution we build and are dedicated to empowering organizations to defend against ever-evolving cyber threats. This year, we are excited to showcase our security strategy aimed at helping customers to reduce the attack surface, enhance threat detection and response and ensure swift recovery from cyber incidents.

Reducing the Attack Surface

In today’s digital landscape, reducing the attack surface is a critical component of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy. With the proliferation of devices, applications and networks, the potential entry points for attackers have increased exponentially. Dell’s solutions are designed to minimize these vulnerabilities through robust endpoint protection, secure access controls and advanced threat prevention mechanisms.

Endpoint Protection: Dell has the world’s most secure commercial PCs, and our endpoint security solutions provide multiple layers of defense, including anti-malware, intrusion prevention and application control. By securing endpoints, we help prevent attackers from gaining a foothold in your network.

Secure Access Controls: Implementing strong access controls is essential to limit unauthorized access. Dell’s identity and access management (IAM) solutions ensure that only authorized users can access critical systems and data, significantly reducing the risk of breaches.

Threat Prevention: Utilizing advanced threat prevention technologies, Dell’s solutions help to detect and block malicious activities before they can cause harm. This includes real-time threat intelligence, machine learning-based anomaly detection and behavior analysis.

Detection and Response to Cyber Threats: Despite best efforts to reduce the attack surface, some threats inevitably penetrate defenses. Rapid detection and response are crucial for mitigating the impact of these breaches. Dell’s integrated detection and response solutions provide organizations with the tools they need to quickly identify and neutralize threats.

Advanced Threat Detection: Leveraging AI/ML, threat detection systems can identify sophisticated attacks that traditional security measures may miss. By continuously analyzing network traffic, user behavior and system activity, we help detect anomalies that could indicate a breach.

Incident Response: When a threat is detected, swift action is necessary to contain and eliminate it. Dell’s incident response services offer immediate support from our team of cybersecurity experts. We work closely with your organization to investigate incidents, mitigate damage and restore normal operations.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Our SIEM solutions aggregate and analyze security events from across your network, providing comprehensive visibility into potential threats. This centralized approach allows for faster detection and more effective response to security incidents.

Recovering from Cyber Attacks: While prevention and detection are vital, organizations must also be prepared to recover from cyberattacks. Dell’s recovery solutions ensure that your business can quickly bounce back from disruptions, minimizing downtime and data loss.

Data Backup and Recovery: Regular data backups are essential for protecting against data loss. Dell’s backup solutions offer automated, secure backups that can be quickly restored in the event of an attack. Our solutions support a variety of environments, including on-premises, cloud and hybrid setups.

Disaster Recovery Planning: Having a robust disaster recovery plan in place is crucial for ensuring business continuity. Dell’s experts can help you develop and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy tailored to your organization’s needs. This includes risk assessments, recovery objectives, and regular testing to ensure readiness.

Incident Recovery Retainer: Our Incident Recovery Retainer service provides organizations with pre-defined hours of recovery assistance, ensuring that expert help is available when you need it most. This proactive approach not only helps with immediate recovery efforts but also strengthens your overall resilience against future attacks.

We invite you to visit Dell Technologies next week at Booth 2168 during Black Hat 2024 – August 7 and 8 – to learn more about our cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. Our team of experts will be on hand to provide live demonstrations, answer your questions and discuss how we can help your organization achieve a robust security posture.

In addition to our booth activities, Dell will be hosting a series of informative sessions and workshops on key cybersecurity topics. These sessions will cover best practices for reducing the attack surface, effective threat detection and response strategies and how to ensure swift recovery from cyber incidents. Don’t miss the opportunity to gain valuable insights from industry leaders and network with other cybersecurity professionals.

Black Hat 2024 promises to be an exciting event and we look forward to sharing our latest innovations with you. Together, we can build a safer, more secure digital world.

Source: dell.com

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Introducing Llama 3.1: Pushing the Boundaries of Open AI

The AI community is abuzz with anticipation as Meta announced the launch of Llama 3.1, their most advanced and capable AI model collection to date. Building on the success of its Llama 3 predecessors, Llama 3.1 includes Llama 3.1 405B, a model that represents a leap forward in natural language processing, machine learning and open-source AI capabilities, and rivals the best closed-source models in the field. We at Dell Technologies are committed to making these cutting-edge models available on-premises by demonstrating the practical deployment of Llama models on enterprise-grade infrastructure. Here’s a closer look at what makes these models a game-changer and how it is set to transform the landscape of AI.

Unmatched Versatility and Performance

Llama 3.1 models expand context length to 128K, add support across eight languages and include Llama 3.1 405B that boasts an unprecedented 405 billion parameters, making it the largest openly available foundation model. Llama 3.1 405B rivals the top models in AI when it comes to state-of-the-art capabilities in general knowledge, steerability, math, tool use and multilingual translation. This massive scale enables it to understand and generate human-like text with remarkable accuracy, nuance and contextual understanding. Whether writing essays, answering complex questions or engaging in natural conversations, Llama 3.1 405B excels in delivering responses that are not only accurate but also contextually relevant. This release is poised to have a profound impact on various aspects of AI research and development, particularly in the areas of:

• Synthetic data generation. The creation of robust and diverse synthetic data sets, enabling the training and evaluation of AI models in a more efficient and controlled manner.
• Model distillation. The compression and simplification of complex models, facilitating the transfer of knowledge and expertise to smaller, more efficient models.
• Model customization. The instruction-tuned model can be used for further customization using tools including Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (P-tuning, Adapters, LoRA, etc.)

Responsible Development and Safety Measures

The development of Llama 3.1 405B has been guided by Meta’s strong commitment to ethical AI practices and safety. They are continuing to build out Llama to be a system by providing more components that work together with the model, including reference implementations. The aim is to empower developers with the tools to create their own custom agents and new types of agentic behaviors by bolstering the models with new security and safety tools to help build AI responsibly.

Dell PowerEdge and Llama models: Powering the Future of AI

Strengthening our continued collaboration with Meta, Dell engineers have successfully deployed Llama 3.1 405B model on Dell’s leading compute platforms, both the single node PowerEdge XE 9680 server and a distributed system comprised of two PowerEdge XE9680 servers, connected via InfiniBand (IB) or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) for high-speed data transfer and efficient scaling.

The Llama 3.1 Community License Agreement gives organizations the freedom and flexibility to adapt the model to almost any application. The Llama 3.1 405B models will soon be available on Dell Enterprise Hub on the Hugging Face platform at dell.huggingface.co for download as ready-to-use containers, optimized on Dell PowerEdge XE9680. The Dell Enterprise Hub is an innovative portal designed specifically for Dell customers, offering a streamlined approach to on-premises deployment of popular large language models (LLM) on Dell’s robust infrastructure.

Use Cases and Deployment Flexibility

The release of Llama 3.1 405B includes two categories:

• The pre-trained general LLM
• The instruction fine-tuned LLM

Each version is released with model weights in BF16. In addition, each category includes a version supporting model parallelism of 16 (for running on two nodes) and supporting model parallelism of 8 running with FP8.

Enterprises can fine-tune the instruction model on proprietary or domain-specific data to create chatbot applications, coding assistants and assistants for customer service agents. Further applying model compression and distillation techniques opens additional environments for serving applications by decreasing the memory needed while benefiting from the accuracy of the 405B model. This enables customers to deploy the distilled model on smaller edge devices and in applications to meet different latency requirements. Moreover, combining retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques with the distilled models can enhance response quality. Notably, the large context length support enables more extensive context handling, further improving the effectiveness of RAG techniques and leading to even more accurate and informative responses.

In the upcoming weeks, Dell Technologies will share test results, practical applications and deployment guidelines demonstrating the seamless deployment of the Llama 3.1 405B models on Dell infrastructure. This ongoing collaboration between Dell and Meta highlights our dedication to driving innovation in the open-source AI community and enabling businesses to leverage AI capabilities within their own IT infrastructure. By leveraging Llama 3.1 models and the open-source AI frameworks, researchers and practitioners can explore new avenues for advancing state-of-the-art AI research and applications.

Source: dell.com

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Generative AI Release Updates With Dell and AMD

As AI continues to rapidly evolve, the fusion of open-source technologies and cutting-edge hardware acceleration is driving industry innovation. Dell Technologies and AMD are at the forefront, offering on-premises infrastructure solutions that are up to 75% more cost-effective than public cloud IaaS and tailored to empower generative AI applications in the enterprise.

Read More: D-CI-DS-23: Dell Technologies Cloud Infrastructure Design 2023

We’re excited to share a series of updates powering the deployment of open AI ecosystems and frameworks. First, the Dell PowerEdge XE9680 is now shipping with the AMD Instinct™ MI300X accelerators, enhancing AI performance options for our customers. Second, we’ve published the Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with AMD, enabling custom applications development with open-framework foundations. And third, our new deployment services, available in September, will ensure smooth integration of these innovations into your operations.

Now Shipping – PowerEdge XE9680 With AMD Instinct MI300X Accelerators

The PowerEdge XE9680 with AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators offers high-performance capabilities designed for enterprises leveraging generative AI and features eight MI300X accelerators, a combined 1.5 TB of HBM3 memory and 42 petaFLOPS of peak theoretical FP8 with sparsity precision performance.

This powerful configuration enables faster training and inferencing of large language models helping organizations deliver AI-driven insights and innovative applications more efficiently. Recent testing on a single node configuration displayed a leading total cost of ownership value:

• Deployed the Llama 2 70B parameter model on a single AMD Instinct MI300X accelerator on the Dell PowerEdge XE9680 Server.
• Deployed eight concurrent instances of the model by utilizing all eight available AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators on the Dell PowerEdge XE9680 Server.
• Fine-tuned the Llama 2 70B parameter model with FP16 precision on one Dell PowerEdge XE9680 Server with eight AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators.

With simplified deployment through Dell OpenManage Enterprise, intelligent automation via APEX AIOps software and enhanced security featuring integrated cyber recovery and a Zero Trust approach, the XE9680 empowers businesses to rapidly implement and scale their GenAI solutions while maintaining a robust security posture.

Available Today – the Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with AMD

Announced in May, and available today, the Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with AMD is the next step of Dell Generative AI Solutions making it easier for organizations to deploy trustworthy GenAI. This design guidance gives organizations and developers comprehensive directions to implement LLM inferencing and model customization, as well as advanced techniques like fine-tuning and retrieval augmented generation (RAG). Built on open standards and reducing the need for proprietary AI software suites, developers can simplify development and freely customize workflows with open-source LLM models from partners including Hugging Face and Meta.

Accelerate modern workloads. Innovation and scale that enable efficient, agile businesses and outcomes.

• Powered by AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators, the Dell Validated Design enables near-linear scaling and low latency distributed GenAI training and inferencing.
• The PowerScale F710 delivers faster time to AI insights with massive gains in streaming performance that accelerates all phases of the AI pipeline.
• The Dell PowerSwitch Z9664F-ON, offering 64 ports of 400GbE, delivers low latency and high throughput Ethernet fabrics for modern AI clusters.
• The Broadcom Thor2 AI optimized NIC delivers 400G, interconnecting MI300X accelerators with the industry’s lowest power requirements.

Boost application development. Open-source software and ecosystems allow developers and data scientists to innovate freely.

• AMD ROCm-powered frameworks extend the Dell Generative AI Solutions ecosystem and include support for open-source large language models like PyTorch, TensorFlow, ONNX-RT and JAX, as well as the full stack of drivers, dev toolkits and APIs for AMD Instinct accelerators.
• Dell Omnia streamlines the creation and management of AI clusters automating configuration for efficient workload processing.
• Enterprise SONiC distribution by Dell Technologies delivers a scalable networking solution that combines the open-source SONiC platform with Dell PowerSwitch, offering advanced features and enterprise-grade support.

Dell Validated Designs for Generative AI make it simple for Dell customers to build GenAI platforms tailored to their needs by taking the guesswork out of integration, performance and sizing considerations.

Services to Get Started

Manage the AI lifecycle with confidence, with a future-proofed, open development framework developed for AI. Aligned to this new Dell Validated Design, we’ll be introducing new platform implementation services in September. Trusted experts will help you quickly establish a fully operational platform that is primed for innovation, implementing the necessary tools and framework into your environment and sharing best practices to maintain secure, streamlined operations.

Not sure where to begin? Try an Accelerator Workshop, a half-day facilitated event that is a great first step in determining how your organization can maximize value from AI. These are collaborative and engaging sessions involving key stakeholders, designed to focus on key challenges to help you achieve clarity for your vision. With over 1,000 workshops delivered per year and decades of experience, we’ll help you accelerate AI success.

Source: dell.com

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An End-to-End Approach to Sustainability in the AI Era

With our scalable Dell AI factory and open ecosystem partnerships, we’re helping our customers unlock new possibilities with AI. With these possibilities, also come challenges, like the world’s transition to Net-zero and what impact generative AI will have on climate transition work already underway.

What we know is the world relies on supercomputing to solve many of its greatest challenges like advancing healthcare, transforming the food system and conserving nature. Yet certain AI workloads can be energy intensive. In fact, it is estimated that by 2030, energy demands for AI data centers will equate to around 390 gigawatts (GW), with an additional capacity of 130GW for other applications. That’s 520GW in total—eight times today’s capacity.

Read More: D-NWG-FN-23: Dell Technologies Networking Foundations 2023

So how do we approach this as a global technology leader? How can we help create a future where progress does not come at the expense of our planet?

For decades, we have seen sustainability as a business imperative, so we treat it like one. It’s woven throughout our business operations, influences how we design products and innovate more energy-efficient data center solutions and shapes how we help our customers meet their business and societal impact goals. We take an end-to-end approach to sustainability.

Back End and Front End Expertise

Think of the back end as how we integrate and operationalize sustainability as an organization internally and within our ecosystem. Everyone across the organization plays a role, from our accounting teams to our engineers, global operations and sales leaders. It’s this foundation that enables us to drive sustainable materials innovation with our suppliers and product design teams. It’s how we are exploring the intersection of technology and energy innovation. And how we drive cross-organizational collaboration to meet upcoming regulations and reporting requirements.

The front end is what most people see. It’s the conversations we have with our customers and partners about their sustainability needs—how we’re helping them to right-size their workloads and advising on renewable energy sources. The front end is our sustainable data center solutions like storage and servers built with leading liquid and air cooling, emissions tracking and energy efficiency top of mind. It shows up in the low emissions aluminum and recycled cobalt in our AI PCs and our multipack shipping options to reduce emissions and waste. It’s present in our recycling and recovery services for the responsible retirement or reuse of systems and the reduction of e-waste. We consider sustainability in every offering—including our as-a-Service solutions for more flexible IT management. These solutions could help reduce the overall emissions of IT operations.

Why is an End-to-end Approach to Sustainability Important?

Rising energy costs, changing regulations and reporting requirements and diverse stakeholder demands are forcing organizations to adopt more sustainable IT practices. However, almost six in 10 customers tell us they think AI will compromise their environmental sustainability efforts, and many customers tell us they are not sure where to focus. We are on a similar journey and this approach, including an annual end-to-end sustainability roadmap, has helped us focus and make progress.

There is more work to do, including how to sustainably manage power hungry GenAI. What we know is managing our sustainability innovation and operations end-to-end is an important foundation to build on as we seize the AI opportunity ahead.

It is a pivotal moment. We’re optimistic, pragmatic and will continue to use the industry’s broadest technology and services portfolio, combined with our team member and partner ingenuity, and global reach to deliver positive business, environmental and societal impact.

Source: dell.com

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Elevate the Self-Service Experience for Your Customers

As the world embraces the transformative power of generative AI (GenAI), businesses are racing to unlock new efficiencies that could propel them ahead of the competition. One high-value use case that’s capturing the imagination of our customers is based on the age-old idea of automating routine tasks and repetitive exchanges—but with a modern, AI-fueled twist.

With this in mind, we are now offering the Dell Generative AI Solution for Digital Assistants. Announced at Dell Technologies World this week, this solution is an excellent example of the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA in action, leveraging Dell expertise across infrastructure, software and professional services.

Aimed at elevating self-service experiences with GenAI technologies and a humanistic AI Avatar interface, this solution allows users to interact with an intelligent digital assistant through natural conversation in practically any language, at any time of day. Organizations can utilize digital assistants to automate a broad range of interactions, from simple queries to multi-step exchanges, saving time and money while freeing up valuable human resources to focus on more strategic, high-impact work. 

What Are Digital Assistants?

Broadly speaking, digital assistants are a category of advanced technology that simulate conversations with users utilizing artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning to provide a personalized, conversational experience. Digital Assistants have many possible interfaces, including chat, voice-only, AI Avatars or a combination of these for a multimodal experience.

In an era where customer expectations are soaring and the end-user experience is paramount, many self-service interactions can be significantly elevated with a highly advanced, yet remarkably human-like interface that understands context and provides personalized solutions with empathy, emotional intelligence and non-verbal cues that are absent from other self-service interfaces.

The City of Amarillo is already embracing this technology to make community services more accessible for the city’s diverse citizens, who speak 62 languages and dialects.

Other example use cases include:

• Customer service and technical support. Digital assistants can assist in answering product or service questions and provide basic troubleshooting support.
• Employee training. Organizations can personalize training by using digital assistants to create interactive learning experiences, such as selling scenarios tailored to different audiences.

How Can GenAI Digital Assistants Help My Business?

Use cases for GenAI Digital Assistants go far beyond handling simple inquiries. They can proactively guide customers through complex processes, such as troubleshooting, completing forms and making purchases. With their contextual understanding and multimodal capabilities, these assistants streamline exchanges, reduce customer frustration compared to more traditional self-service options and increase overall satisfaction.

Furthermore, GenAI Digital Assistants can continuously learn and improve from each interaction, enabling them to better anticipate customer needs and offer personalized recommendations.

This level of tailored service fosters loyalty and drives long-term business growth, extending across a wide range of industry use cases such as:

• Retail. Digital assistants can be used in online shopping to provide personalized recommendations and assistance. Physical stores can also utilize them for use cases such as end-of-aisle displays in big-box stores, providing a consistent brand representative for customer interactions.
• Healthcare. Digital assistants can help with patient check-in and discharge, provide support in patient rooms and act as an interface between the patient and care team.
• Other industries. Digital assistants have applications in various industries, including financial services, travel, insurance, hospitality and telecommunications, among others.

With the power of generative AI, businesses can redefine the boundaries of self-service, providing seamless, intuitive and highly personalized interactions at scale.

Rapidly Deploy Digital Assistants with a Proven Solution

Dell is making it simple for our customers to get their own GenAI Digital Assistant up and running quickly with Dell Validated Design for Digital Assistants, a proven solution that includes infrastructure, platforms and professional services to ensure customer success.

We have validated each element needed for an optimized deployment, leveraging our recognized AI expertise to drive reliability, security and performance, along with trusted Dell hardware such as PowerEdge servers with NVIDIA GPUs and Precision Workstations at the Edge.

This solution allows organizations to swiftly establish and scale on-premises infrastructure tailored to their needs with pre-validated solutions that streamline adoption. This reduces the time spent on design, planning and testing while minimizing risk and accelerating time-to-market.

With the flexibility to start small and quickly scale using a modular approach, organizations can confidently implement a solution that meets business requirements and supports data sovereignty and compliance with high levels of control and regulatory assurance.

Bringing the complete solution together, Dell Professional Services for Digital Assistants provide strategic guidance for customer use cases, personalized AI Avatar development, platform implementation with data source integrations and ongoing support to drive continued success, upskilling and optimization.

Source: dell.com

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Live Optics and Azure Stack HCI

The IT industry has coped with many challenges during the last decades. One of the most impactful ones, probably due to its financial implications, has been the “IT budget reduction”—the need for IT departments to increase efficiency, reduce the cost of their processes and operations, and optimize asset utilization.

This do-more-with-less mantra has a wide range of implications, from cost of acquisition to operational expenses and infrastructure payback period.

Cost of acquisition is not only related to our ability to get the best IT infrastructure price from technology vendors but also to the less obvious fact of optimal workload characterization that leads to the minimum infrastructure assets to service business demand.

Without the proper tools, assessing the specific needs that each infrastructure acquisition process requires is not simple. Obtaining precise workload requirements often involves input from several functional groups, requiring their time and dedication. This is often not possible, so the only choice is to do a high-level estimation of requirements and select a hardware offering that can cover by ample margin the performance requirements.

Those ample margins do not align very well with concepts such as optimal asset utilization and, thus, do not lead to the best choice under a budget reduction paradigm.

But there is free online software, Live Optics, that can be used to collect, visualize, and share data about your IT infrastructure and the workloads they host. Live Optics helps you understand your workloads’ performance by providing in-depth data analysis. It makes the project requirements much clearer, so the sizing decision—based on real data—is more accurate and less estimated.

Azure Stack HCI, as a hyperconverged system, greatly benefits from such sizing considerations. It is often used to host a mix of workloads with different performance profiles. Being able to characterize the CPU, memory, storage, network, or protection requirements is key when infrastructure needs to be defined. This way, the final node configuration for the Azure Stack HCI platform will be able to cope with the workload requirements without oversizing the hardware and software offerings, and we are able to select the type of Azure Stack HCI node that best fits the workload requirements.

Microsoft recommends using an official sizing tool such as Dell’s tool, and Live Optics incorporates all Azure Stack HCI design constraints and best practices, so the tool outcome is optimized to the workload requirements.

Imagine that we had to host in the Azure Stack HCI infrastructure a number of business applications with sets of users. With the performance data gathered by Live Optics, and using the Azure Stack HCI sizing tool, we can select the type of node we need, the amount of memory each node will have, what CPU we will equip, how many drives are needed to cover the I/O demand, and the network architecture.

We can see a sample of the sizing tool input in the following figure:

Figure 1.  Example from Dell's sizing tool for Azure Stack HCI

In this case, we have chosen to base our Azure Stack HCI infrastructure on four AX-750 nodes, with Intel Gold 6342 CPUs and 1 GB of RAM per node.

Because we have used Live Optics to gather and analyze performance data, we have sized our hardware assets based on real customer usage data such as that shown in the next figure:

Figure 2.  Live Optics performance dashboard

This Live Optics dashboard shows the general requirements of the analyzed environment. Data of aggregated network throughput, IOPS, and memory usage or CPU utilization are displayed and, thus, can be used to size the required hardware.

There are more specific dashboards that show more details on each performance core statistic. For precise storage sizing, we can display read and write I/O behavior in great detail, as we can see in the following figure:

Figure 3.  IOPS graphics through a Live Optics read/write I/O dashboard

With a tool such as Live Optics, we can size our Azure Stack HCI infrastructure based on real workload requirements, not assumptions made because information is lacking. This leads to an accurate configuration, usually resulting in a lower price, and warranties that the proposed infrastructure can handle even the peak business workload requirements.

Check the resources shown below to find links to the Live Optics site and collector application, as well as some Dell technical information and sizing tools for Azure Stack HCI.

Source: infohub.delltechnologies.com

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Three Key Data Protection Takeaways from Dell Technologies World

AI and GenAI were all the buzz at Dell Technologies World 2024. But between the AI glitz of the mainstage and showroom floor, there were some intriguing discussions about data protection, cybersecurity and Zero Trust that underscore the criticality of building a strong data protection foundation on your journey to an AI automated future.

#1 – Don’t Let Data Protection Take a Back Seat on Your AI Journey

Jeff Clarke highlighted in his keynote address that with the AI revolution in full swing, data protection can’t be an afterthought. Clarke is right on the money as only 11% of organizations are protecting more than 75% of their GenAI data, according to ESG Research. Considering the substantial investment organizations are making in server computation, high-speed storage, low-latency networking infrastructure and developer time to generate GenAI output, letting this data go unprotected is a major gamble—even by Las Vegas standards.

And then there’s the security side to consider. GenAI training data is essentially a big game target for bad actors to contaminate. Manipulating or “poisoning” the data that feeds GenAI training workloads can result in all sorts of distortions that can produce inaccurate or biased results that could discredit an organization and damage their brand. This makes it essential for organizations to implement Zero Trust security measures around their data repositories and critical systems to keep cyber attackers at bay. In the event of a breach, the ability to isolate and contain the attack, minimize its impact and restore data from a trusted source like a digital vault, becomes crucial.

#2 – In the GenAI Data Tsunami, Efficiency is King

One of the main points emphasized at Dell Technologies World is that AI and GenAI will significantly accelerate data growth. With GenAI set to double the amount of data it trains on, organizations must have data protection solutions that can efficiently scale across on-premises environments, at the edge and across multicloud infrastructure.

In this new GenAI-driven world, managing an ever-growing data footprint while keeping storage costs down will become the new gold standard. Achieving this will require solutions that offer consistent data protection operations wherever GenAI workloads reside, incorporating automation and high levels of efficiency to handle the vast amounts of data generated by AI factories.

#3 – You’re Only as Strong as Your Weakest Link

During his standing-room-only breakout session, University of Barcelona CIO Goncal Badenes delivered remarks that illuminated the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities lurking within the depths of any organization’s IT infrastructure. Few would expect that a minimally privileged student account would serve as the entry point for cyber criminals to launch a devastating ransomware attack, crippling every critical system at the University of Barcelona. “Utter panic” was how Badenes described the reaction of IT stakeholders once they fully grasped the scale and scope of the attack. With all core services offline—including the university website, research, faculty, student, billing and payment systems—it was a seemingly worst-case scenario.

“Legally, we cannot negotiate with cyber criminals over ransomware payments,” Badenes explained to the audience. The only option available to IT personnel was to restore data from an uninfected backup copy. Fortunately for Badenes and his team, they found a clean backup copy, and with the assistance of Dell engineering support, they were able to bring all their systems back online without any data loss. Despite Badenes’ assertion that “we got lucky,” the university endured two weeks of systems downtime, during which classrooms reverted to blackboard instruction.

Lessons Learned

It turned out that, in addition to the student not practicing good password hygiene (using a strong password, changing passwords periodically, etc.), the VPN hosting this user account did not have multi-factor authentication (MFA) deployed. Additionally, the attackers exploited a critical security vulnerability on a university server to deploy the ransomware.

In response, Badenes and his staff:

• Educated users on strong password practices and enforced mandatory password changes.
• Mandated MFA across the network.
• Implemented role-based access control and network segmentation.
• Enhanced detection and response capabilities to identify anomalies and counter cyber threats.

In addition, this experience convinced Badenes and the university board of the need for an isolated cyber vault, completely off the attack surface, to ensure a clean backup copy is always available for recovery.  Although the university managed to recover from a second backup copy, Badenes noted that they were “lucky” this copy had not been infected like the primary backup. He emphasized that a cyber vault would help guarantee a clean backup for future cyberattacks. He also highlighted their investment in analytics within the vault to quickly identify the most recent clean backup, thus accelerating recovery time. With these capabilities in place, Badenes expressed greater confidence in their resiliency and ability to withstand future attacks.

Protecting and Securing Data in the Age of AI

In the age of AI and GenAI, building a strong foundation to protect and secure data is more critical than ever. To address this need, we announced the Dell Solution for AI Data Protection. This comprehensive solution, encompassing backup, recovery and cyber resilience, helps organizations safeguard crucial components such as training data, models and output data. Additionally, we are developing a Dell Reference Design for AI Data Protection using the previously announced, Dell Scalable Architecture for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with NVIDIA Microservices, which is set to be published this quarter.

This solution will deliver consistent data protection operations across on-premises, edge and multicloud environments, providing the efficiencies and automation organizations need to manage the vast amounts of data that will be generated by AI workloads, ensuring valuable information is secure and recoverable.

Source: dell.com

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