Showing posts with label Servers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Servers. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 April 2021

The PowerEdge XE7100 Significantly Improves Scalability and Efficiency

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Nothing seems to grow faster than the need for storage. With IoT, image, and video objects feeding “big data” analytics systems, that growth curve can be steep as new systems are placed online. Dell Technologies has engineered its latest storage server with a focus on high-density, high-capacity storage customers.

Recently, Dell Technologies commissioned Tolly to study the specifications and characteristics of its Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 and provide analysis and context as to where the device sits in terms of advancing the industry.

Tolly found that the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 Storage Server provides significant scalability and efficiency benefits both compared to prior generation systems and compared to current generation systems of a leading competitor. Significantly, the unit provides module server sled options that allow for high-performance optimization for specific application focus areas such storage/archival, intelligent video analysis (IVA), and media streaming.

Our analysis contrasted the Dell EMC PowerEdge with the specifications of a leading competitor. As you shall see, the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 showed significant scalability benefits as well as significant efficiency advantages. As we say in the report, “More is more… and less is more” – the benefits are manifold.

Scalability

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Let’s start with scalability. The Dell EMC XE7100 supports 100 disks in total. It is top-loading with rows of mostly 15 disks per row. That capacity is 67% greater than a leading competitor. Filling a 42U rack with eight of the 5U Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 units gives you 800 disk drives in a single, STANDARD-size rack.  Some storage providers require racks with unusual dimensions.  Such racks can cause complexity in the data center and reduce physical space available between rows of racks.

So, it is important to note that using a standard-size rack, the number of drives supported per rack with the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 is 33% greater than a leading competitor.  The units now support 18TB drives and this provides for a massive 14.4 Petabytes of storage in a single rack.

Efficiency

Now on to efficiency… Where many storage servers are 4U, the fact that the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 is 5U provides additional efficiency at the rack level. That is, eight units of the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 fill a 42U rack where it would require 10 units of a 4U storage server to fill the rack.

And the efficiency of the Dell EMC XE7100 extends to its power and cabling requirements as well. Dell Technologies has optimized power supplies and the cabling that goes along with power. And, because fewer units are required to fill a rack, that benefits of that optimization extend beyond the unit to the rack overall.

Where a leading competitor requires four 1600W power supplies per unit, the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100 requires only two 2400W power supplies which reduces cabling complexity, allows the user to optimize expensive infrastructure items like power distribution units (PDUs) and reduces energy consumption.

At the unit level, that is a 50% reduction in power supplies required that, at a rack level, is a 60% reduction in power cables. Dell EMC provisions 25% less power per unit and 40% lower total power per rack. Reducing cabling needs reduces overall complexity of data center and rack management.

Data centers are “forever” – and, thus, optimizing operational costs can cast a long shadow and provide “forever” benefits. There is an increasing focus on “sustainable” data centers. Power consumption and energy efficiency are at the core of providing that kind of sustainability. Reductions of 25% power per unit and 40% per rack can provide far reaching benefits with respect to better power efficiency and these benefits only increase as more existing units are replaced by the Dell EMC PowerEdge XE7100.

Flexibility

Not all storage deployments are identical. The type of data and the activities planned can warrant different processing options. The Dell EMC solution offers two different server sled options each of which can be further customized for a particular storage application. The PowerEdgeXE7100, powered by 2nd generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, can be deployed with a single XE7440 full-width sled or up to two XE7420 half-width sleds with various options available for each.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Thursday, 8 April 2021

Be Ready for Anything With Dell Technologies and Intel

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There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the past year. One that really stands out, however, is that organizations need to be ready for anything.

The global pandemic forced many to expedite digital transformation initiatives in order to support a sudden shift to remote work, and some were even required to change their entire business model to adapt.

Read More: DES-1D12: Dell EMC Midrange Storage Solutions Specialist Exam for Technology Architect (DECS-TA)

If that wasn’t enough on its own, organizations today continue to feel the weight of ever-increasing volumes of data being generated. And more and more of that data is being generated outside of traditional data center or cloud.

All of these enormous demands on organizations’ IT require an agile, efficient and secure platform that can quickly respond to shifting requirements. At the same time, IT decision-makers and business professionals need to reduce complexity and costs, while ensuring a secure environment across their entire infrastructure—from the edge to the hybrid cloud.

By harnessing the power of adaptive compute, autonomous compute infrastructure and proactive resilience, Dell Technologies and Intel are giving you the flexibility to meet any challenge, derive data insights from any environment, free IT to focus on innovation, and better protect your business against cyber threats.

Today marks the next milestone in our long-standing partnership with Intel. The balanced architecture of the 3rd generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, with built-in acceleration and advanced security capabilities, deliver a host of advanced technologies that power our portfolio. PowerEdge servers with Intel processors enable emerging capabilities like artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics and automation to drive business innovation.

Today, the PowerEdge server portfolio is designed to optimize the workload you want to run on it.

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Our new PowerEdge servers fueled by 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are engineered for advanced and emerging workloads, as well as traditional workloads needing high performance, such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and database analytics. In recent testing, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R750, with 3rd Generation Intel Scalable processors, delivered 43-percent better performance compared to the previous generation R740.

The powerful combination of Dell Technologies and Intel powerhouse gives you an IT foundation that can act as an innovation engine: ready to drive your business forward at top speed today and shift gears quickly when market forces demand.

And if you need even more agility, payment solutions for PowerEdge servers include Flex on Demand, a pay-per-use consumption model that enables customers to scale capacity up or down, with payments that rise and fall accordingly. This gives customers immediate access to buffer capacity as needed, while only paying for the technology they use.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Sunday, 4 April 2021

SONiC’s Next Home: The SmartNIC

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It’s an exciting time to be a part of today’s networking evolution. All the pieces are finally falling into place to help us truly realize a software-defined network. SONiC is an open-source, containerized network operating system (NOS) that runs on a variety of ASICs and switch hardware. SONiC is quickly gaining traction in cloud, Telco, and enterprise deployments. A 2021 Gartner report predicts 40% of organizations running large data center networks will use SONiC in production.

As part of our ongoing commitment in supporting SONiC innovations with the open source community, Dell Technologies is now working with several industry leaders in bringing SONiC to SmartNICs/DPUs. Running a NOS on a SmartNIC/DPU in a server is a logical next step for SONiC where it can help optimize data center performance by getting networking functions as close to the workload as possible. It will also help service providers, Telco’s, and large enterprises roll out new services in the cloud and at edge locations without the need for expensive, power-hungry, or purpose-built networking hardware.

Besides supporting SONiC on SmartNICs/DPUs, Dell envisions theP4 programming language as the interface to allow network programmability, regardless of the card that runs the NOS. That means customers will be able to choose SmartNICs/DPUs from Dell partners including NVIDIA, Intel, and Pensando while using P4 as the programming layer across the SmartNIC/DPU fleet.

Moving to the SmartNIC/DPU

As edge and cloud services continue to grow, there’s a greater demand to support network functions closer to the workload. Innovations such as DPDK enable off-the-shelf CPUs to run network and security functions more efficiently.

Another option is the SmartNIC/DPU, which offloads networking and security functions from the server CPU so that the processor’s full power is available for application performance. SmartNICs/DPUs have acceleration engines to tackle a variety of tasks including encryption/decryption, firewalling, packet inspection, routing, storage networking, and more.

As networks evolve it’s important to note that SmartNICs/DPUs running SONiC will be able to be used for network monitoring, telemetry, and observability. Telemetry and observability are particularly critical for applications and services that are highly distributed across cloud and edge instances.

SmartNICs/DPUs are far more flexible than traditional, fixed-function ASICs. Organizations will also appreciate how they also use less power and can be easily added to existing servers in data centers, colos, cell towers, and other locations. And because they run inside the servers, organizations can deploy virtualized network and security functions instead of purpose-built hardware. This can save on power, cooling, and operational costs. SmartNICs/DPUs are ideal for locations where physical space is at a premium.

We at Dell are extremely excited to be working with the open-source community to fine-tune a version of SONiC that will be optimized for SmartNICs/DPUs. And because SONiC is modular, customers will be able to deploy only the protocols they need to maximize efficiency.

Leveraging P4 For Programmability

Dell is also taking advantage of P4, an open programming language originally developed to customize the packet pipeline processing in ASICs. We have been monitoring how P4 is being adopted for wider use cases, including as a common programming language for SONiC running on SmartNICs/DPUs.

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Because SONiC may be running on hundreds or even thousands of SmartNICs/DPUs, we feel it’s important to have a common interface to program the NOS. P4 enjoys a robust community of contributors, and a variety of P4 programs are already available. Users have the flexibility of designing their own programs or drawing from the pool of existing programs developed by the community. And because P4 is open, users can also customize existing programs to suit their needs.

By combining SONiC, SmartNICs/DPUs, and P4, Dell is leveraging the best elements of open-source networking. And as organizations look to optimize data center, cloud, and edge networking, Dell’s SONIC/SmartNIC/DPU initiative will help them get network and security functions as close to the workload as possible to maximize performance, enable fine-grained network programmability, and benefit from a robust open-source ecosystem that continues to develop and refine the SONiC NOS.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Saturday, 27 March 2021

Advance Your Analytics Workloads With Cloudera and Dell Technologies

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Data is the lifeblood of the modern business in today’s data era. It is the fuel that powers smarter decision making while unlocking newfound productivity and progress. Over the last decade, we at Dell Technologies have been delivering deeper insights to our customers with flexible, scalable, enterprise data analytics solutions that bridge structured and unstructured data.

Big Data Analytics platforms like Apache Hadoop are key in deriving insights from this massively growing datasphere. We have been partnering with the leading analytics platform providers like Cloudera to bring jointly engineered, optimized and tested Big Data Analytics solutions to market while providing extensive consulting and professional services to those who need it to help our customers at every step of their digital transformation journey.

Together, Dell Technologies and Cloudera are committed to deliver data insights anywhere, from the edge to the core data center to the cloud. With Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) Private Cloud Base combined with scale-out NAS like Dell EMC PowerScale and enterprise object storage like Dell EMC ECS, you can soft-migrate and seamlessly transition from Hortonworks to CDP. Consolidating data in one place also simplifies containerization and/or virtualization of Hadoop, so you can provide Hadoop-as-a-Service with PowerScale as the storage foundation.

With the recent launch of the new PowerEdge servers, customers can get the compute power needed for all of their workloads and applications, including the highly compute-intensive Big Data Analytics solutions. Optimizing the latest technologies and featuring 3rd Generation AMD EPYC™ processors, PowerEdge R6515 accelerates data processing capabilities by up to 60% in Big Data Hadoop databases, speeding time to insights.

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Customers are benefitting from the innovations coming out of Dell Technologies and Cloudera. It is helping us transform too. Our own IT organization is delivering data-driven business insights to employees and customers around the world by running analytics and AI workloads on a massive data lake powered by Cloudera’s Apache distribution and our infrastructure portfolio of PowerEdge, PowerSwitch, PowerScale and PowerFlex.

Cloudera recently recognized Dell Technologies’ leadership in Hadoop/Big Data analytics and our long-term relationship with the Global Partner of the Year award. This award was granted, among other things, based on year-over-year growth trajectory, development commitment and technology alignment, and, joint wins and success stories over the past year.

Going forward, we are working with Cloudera for customers to consume Hadoop solutions in any way they need. You can buy the individual solution components, such as servers and storage on demand, and/or you can buy integrated Hadoop solutions on demand.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Thursday, 18 March 2021

The Dell EMC PowerEdge Portfolio: Your Innovation Engine

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Where Will Your Innovation Engine Take You?

The data era is well underway, and its scope and impact will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. Data is being created at an unprecedented pace, and customers and partners of every type are seeking modern ways to access, activate, move, store and secure it every day. Customers are also looking at ways to do this where the data is created, to increase efficiencies and hasten the speed to insights and drive more impact from data. And this “digital first” mindset has only accelerated over the last year.

We stand ready to help customers and partners accelerate their digital transformation, and to push the limits of their full potential. This fourth industrial revolution will be driven by modern infrastructure, flexible consumption models and differentiated services. In addition to modernizing the operations of our portfolio, we are also focused on enabling customers in new areas around edge, telco, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

The innovation that we will see over the next decade is incredibly exciting.

We can help you build your innovation engine

With the largest launch of our PowerEdge portfolio, Dell Technologies is pleased to announce solutions that deliver critical and differentiated capabilities.


The Dell EMC PowerEdge portfolio is built on the following key pillars that drive business success:

Adaptive Compute


PowerEdge servers deliver adaptive compute with the latest advances in a platform specifically built to enable your workloads and business requirements — both now and in the future. We’ve segmented our server portfolio to deliver the right combination of technology and capabilities to address your unique compute and workload needs. These naturally encompass a wide range of use cases from new workloads around cloud and AI/ML to more traditional workloads around big data and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

For example, we’re making GPUs mainstream with an AI-optimized portfolio. We recently announced the all-new PowerEdge XE8545 server, which was designed as a powerhouse for AI workloads. It brings together up to 128 cores of 3rd Generation AMD EPYC™ processors and four NVIDIA A100 GPUs to deliver an AI infrastructure without compromise. Designed to optimize performance of NVIDIA’s vGPU software and Multi-Instance GPU capabilities, the XE8545 doubles HPC performance and increases machine learning by up to 7x. The XE8545 also powers the latest HPC Ready Architecture for AI and Data Analytics, including the new Dell-developed and open-sourced Omnia automation software.

Edge computing is on everyone’s mind – the traditional idea of the “data center” and where, when, and how your data is processed, is shifting rapidly. Dell Technologies has you covered with ruggedized form factors designed for unique constraints and the ability to process data at the point of creation. Built for harsh, remote environments, the PowerEdge XR11 and XR12 ruggedized servers are purpose-built to provide enterprise performance outside the data center. We’re talking servers that can stand up to heat, cold, dust, vibrations and shocks with a hardened chassis and minimal footprint.

Autonomous Compute Infrastructure


Automation helps you respond rapidly to business opportunities with intelligent systems that work together as well as independently to deliver outcomes aligned with business priorities, freeing IT to stop managing and start innovating. By providing world-class tools for integration, autonomous compute infrastructure helps you adapt to changing environments, enables rapid digital transformation and positions you to grow, scale and evolve.

Dell Technologies offers extensive capabilities that makes it easy to build automation in your organization. Our comprehensive strategy outlines the path to success for full automation.

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Autonomous compute infrastructure can help you overcome the many challenges you face in the data era. Automatic certificate enrollment, auto discovery and automated firmware updates are just a few of the many features of our OpenManage systems management solutions.

Additionally, zero touch deployment from iDRAC9 brings automated functionalities such as server discovery, installation and configuration, security settings, OS deployment and updates, freeing IT resources to focus on higher value activities. In the future, autonomous compute will help customers fully realize self-deployed, self-provisioned and self-managed infrastructure. Today, customers can achieve on average 85%-time savings and eliminate 38 steps by utilizing the OpenManage portfolio to automate steps involved with typical IT Admin tasks like deployment, monitoring, firmware updates, and incident resolution compared to manual methods.

Proactive Resilience


Start Strong. Stay Strong. And Outmaneuver Threats.

Cyber security continues to be a major source of sleepless nights for most IT folks. Dell Technologies includes cyber security enhancements across our entire portfolio helping you establish and maintain a secure IT ecosystem, from the edge to hybrid cloud. These elements bolster your trust and confidence in Dell Technologies as the primary source of IT solutions in today’s data era.

Embed trust into your digital transformation with an infrastructure and IT environment designed for secure interactions and the capability to anticipate potential threats. Our proactive resilience starts with the silicon design and permeates the system’s lifecycle, from manufacturing, through the supply chain, and retirement – all from a single, trusted vendor.

We continue to innovate across our Cyber Resilient Architecture and the supply chain to bolster your security, all while following and often exceeding, world-renowned best practices and standards. We are the first server vendor with a cross-portfolio solution for cryptographically verified hardware integrity with Dell Technologies Secured Component Verification. Secured Component Verification provides “as-built” hardware validation for the server upon delivery to ensure integrity in transit. Additionally, Dell Technologies’ implementation of UEFI Secure Boot Customization was highlighted in the National Security Agency (NSA) technical paper “UEFI Secure Boot Customization.”

Build an innovation engine that’s ready for anything

PowerEdge servers enable you to rapidly adapt to evolving business demands and harness data from any environment, leverage intelligence and automation to free IT for higher value activities and embed trust with proactive resilience to protect against cyber threats. With PowerEdge servers as your innovation engine, you can seamlessly navigate this data era and be prepared for the unexpected.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

The Uncompromised Power of the Dell Technologies AI Infrastructure

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With the release of third generation AMD® EPYC™ processors, Dell Technologies is excited to introduce the refreshed Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio, which brings adaptive compute capabilities to an incredibly broad range of workloads. These servers don’t just power your data center, they’re designed to help you innovate, adapt and grow well into the future.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545 is a brand new and incredibly powerful server that simplifies artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in your data center. It is designed specifically for accelerated workloads, which make it ideal for cutting-edge machine learning models, complex high performance computing (HPC) and GPU virtualization.


Powerful compute and parallel processing — for unparalleled performance


Key capabilities of the PowerEdge XE8545 include optimized CPU to GPU performance and accelerated I/O throughput. This server combines the maximum core counts of two powerful 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors with four of the highest performing NVIDIA® A100 GPUs. In fact, this is one of the first servers to have the new NVIDIA NVLink™ baseboard with the incredibly fast A100 chips in it. For example, you can boost A100 machine learning inferencing with 1.46X more images per second per GPU within the PowerEdge XE8545.

We’ve also increased the speed of storage with NVMe™ and reduced data latency with PCIe Gen 4 to accelerate I/O throughput, which prevents performance bottlenecks when you’re executing large data sets. These components help you take full advantage of the server’s compute power by keeping the data close to the processing.

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No compromises — with simplified data center management


While AI infrastructure is loaded with performance features, it also has a reputation for being difficult to deploy and manage. We’ve remedied these concerns with a server design and management features that radically simplify your experience.

The PowerEdge XE8545 is a 4U, standard-depth rack server, so it fits effortlessly into your existing data center. It is completely air cooled for greater efficiency and lower cost of operation. This avoids the hassle of incorporating extra piping to accommodate liquid cooling. You can analyze more than 150k images per second, leveraging 2x AMD Milan CPU and 4x NVIDIA A100 SXM4 500W GPU, all with standard air cooling in the PowerEdge XE8545.

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The server also includes iDRAC compliance and OpenManage Enterprise support, helping you easily implement, monitor and maintain your data center with OpenManage integrations.

Speed time to value


Regardless of whether you’re doing training or inferencing, solving tough problems involving fluid dynamics or genomics, analyzing data or virtualizing GPU operations, it’s time to unleash the uncompromised power of the PowerEdge XE8545. Catalyze the development and implementation of machine learning algorithms, quickly perform advanced computations and analyze data with amazing speed.

Invest in a modern infrastructure that meets all your AI training demands and sets your organization apart. Do it today, with the PowerEdge XE8545 server — your innovation engine.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Thursday, 11 March 2021

Fast Track Your Hybrid Cloud with Intelligent Automation

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Today, companies of all sizes are fostering remote work with a hybrid approach. Similar transformations are occurring in the data center. Just as we have adapted to a “work from anywhere” model, hybrid cloud infrastructure will become the new norm as modern businesses embrace a combination of public cloud services, on-premises compute and private clouds.

Also Read: DES-9131: Dell EMC Infrastructure Security Specialist

Dell Technologies has been one of the leaders of hybrid cloud compute, as demonstrated most recently by the Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Integrated System, a joint innovation with Microsoft. Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is now readily available with new hybrid Azure Stack HCI host OS. Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI built with PowerEdge Servers for the rapidly growing HCI market – fully engineered AX nodes with workload-focused configurations, specially trained technical support and services, and full stack lifecycle management through powerful OpenManage Integration with Microsoft Windows Admin Center (OpenManage extension and snap-in).

Talal Alqinawi, senior director of Azure Marketing at Microsoft said, “At Microsoft, we’re focused on empowering the Microsoft Azure Stack HCI customer to have a seamless deployment and upgrade experience.”

Dell Technologies and the Microsoft teams collaborated to provide an integrated and seamless experience for the Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.  This delivers the latest firmware and driver updates to keep your Azure Stack HCI deployment always up to date. Dell EMC OpenManage Windows Admin Center snap-in automatically detects the model and loads a curated list of firmware and drivers that provides you with the latest features and functionality.

Seamless deployment and maintenance of Azure Stack HCI

Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI management with Microsoft Windows Admin Center and OpenManage extension brings in effortless cluster creation  and enhanced full stack cluster-aware update experience. It’s set for optimal performance and reduced maintenance windows. First time administrators will be prompted with installation of the OpenManage snap-in. Furthermore, if there is an update available, it will pop up as a recommendation for the Dell EMC Integrated System for Azure Stack HCI.

Automation of Azure Stack HCI cluster creation

The Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI cluster creation with Windows Admin Center eliminates manual processes and guesswork. Steps that were previously executed manually by administrators can now be done with an outcome-based approach via this hybrid cloud infrastructure deployment. The Dell EMC policies ensure Azure Stack HCI cluster creation is optimal with the hardware check of nodes and components for symmetry. Microsoft recommends installing the latest operating system updates and patches, which can now be done together with Dell EMC infrastructure updates. Both updates will be staged to a single reboot per node part of this cluster creation workflow with the OpenManage snap-in.

Azure Stack HCI 1-click full stack update

Administrators will now spend less time in maintenance of Azure Stack HCI update with full stack Cluster-Aware updates. The OpenManage snap-in orchestrates updates of Azure Stack HCI operating system (updates, security patches) and Dell EMC hardware updates (BIOS, firmware, drivers). This single click full stack Cluster-Aware Updating is performed with no impact to virtual machines running on the Azure Stack HCI cluster. This is a huge step forward in better handling the change management experience. Typical change management requires change control board approval to ensure maintenance windows are well planned. Anytime there is a maintenance update failure could result in business impact. For instance, in the event of recharge services outage a mobile service operator could potentially be impacted with millions in revenue — even if services go down for short time.

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Take control of your cluster updates


OpenManage extension (and snap-in), is a native integration offering lifecycle management across edge, local and remote environments. It does not require any additional software or agent. OpenManage Integration with Windows Admin Center leverages iDRAC agent-free management, adds full stack and hardware cluster-aware updates (CAU) in assisting HCI administrators to have essential visibility, control and management of clusters.

IT Administrators constantly look for ways to reduce the maintenance window by scheduling updates on optimal days and times or running updates immediately when possible during non-peak hours. Administrators can now schedule cluster-aware updates (of hardware) without impact to services directly from the OpenManage extension. Schedule cluster-aware update supports the Microsoft HCI solutions and failover clusters based on PowerEdge servers.

Organizations of all sizes can save time and eliminate human error through the introduction of increased automation. OpenManage extension delivers considerable automation benefits of 80-95% fewer steps, and 90-95% less focused time for 4-nodes to 16-nodes Azure Stack HCI cluster. This automated approach could save customers one week of effort per year for 20 discrete four-node clusters. For more details check out this detailed whitepaper from Dell Technologies lab testing.

For a reliable purpose-built hybrid cloud infrastructure look no further than the Dell EMC Integrated System for Azure Stack HCI.  For a more technical deep dive into the OpenManage extension features, check out the Microsoft HCI Solutions, Dell Technologies Infohub page.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Tuesday, 2 March 2021

Evolution of AI Architectures

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As torrents of data continue to swamp organizations worldwide, the technologies that manage, store and process them are evolving at a rapid pace. And the adoption of AI in efforts to harness the power of data is quickly becoming a mainstream occurrence. The organizations that do it well can effectively gain competitive advantage with better insights into customers, operational efficiencies, and more consistent outcomes. Numerous questions and opinions abound on how best to drive data science initiatives — and we have some answers.

Read More: DES-2T13: Dell EMC Cloud Infrastructure Specialist Exam for Cloud Architects


Being one of the world’s largest providers of essential IT infrastructure, Dell Technologies strives to make it easy to design and deploy your valuable IT and data science resources for successful AI initiatives. We do so by offering simplicity and choice in how you build an optimal IT infrastructure. And NVIDIA, a leading innovator of server GPUs, takes a very similar approach as it brings new products and solutions to market.

Over the last few years, our two companies have established a strong relationship as we work to help organizations accelerate their AI initiatives. Our collaboration is built on the philosophy of allowing flexibility and informed choice across extensive portfolios of products and solutions. Together, our technologies provide the foundation for successful AI solutions which drive the development of advanced deep learning (DL) software frameworks, deliver massively parallel compute in the form of NVIDIA GPUs for parallel model training and scale-out file systems to support the concurrency, performance, and capacity requirements of unstructured image and video data sets.

The recent releases of new PowerScale and DGX Systems showcase the latest evolutions of AI architectural building blocks designed for the rigors of data science. We’ve published a new Reference Architecture, Dell EMC PowerScale and NVIDIA DGX A100 Systems for Deep Learning, and this Solution Brief, to illustrate how we’re achieving breakthrough performance.

As tested, this architecture provides storage that starts small and scales concurrently with data growth, keeping compute and GPU resources performing optimally all while giving seamless, multi-protocol access to larger datasets. This powerful combination of massively parallel compute and flexible, scalable storage is the foundation for an IT infrastructure that can support AI initiatives today and tomorrow.

Key components of the Reference Architecture include:

◉ Dell EMC PowerScale — Isilon F800 All-Flash nodes deliver up to 924 TB max raw capacity with scale-out storage, supporting up to 250,000 IOPS and 15 GB/s bandwidth per chassis.

◉ NVIDIA DGX A100 — a universal system for all types of AI workloads. Integrated with eight NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, offers unprecedented acceleration for data science.

◉ NVIDIA Mellanox SN3700V and QM8700 switches — provide high-speed connectivity between the Isilon F800 cluster nodes and NVIDIA DGX A100 systems.

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If past is prologue, then you can expect data to continue amassing and AI architectures evolving to keep pace. And you can also expect that Dell Technologies will stop at nothing in helping our customers achieve success in their AI practices.

Together with NVIDIA, we’ll continue to deliver Reference Architectures along with turnkey solutions that make it easier to design and deploy optimal IT infrastructure to support AI at scale.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Thursday, 28 January 2021

It Takes Two to Tanzu

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January is the month for a fresh start. Especially after this past year, many of us resolved to reduce stress and simplify. If you’re like me and the millions of others who hope to make our lives easier in 2021, there is good news from Dell EMC PowerEdge and VMware. vSphere with Tanzu Basic is available through Dell Technologies, so you can easily and quickly get started with Kubernetes on PowerEdge servers. So, while VMware Tanzu may not be able to shovel your driveway, help your son with his virtual book report or tackle that pile of your laundry in your dining room, it CAN simplify your container management. And that’s a huge win right there.

Whether you’re brand new to containers or are looking for a way to simplify and secure the process, PowerEdge and VMware can help you quickly and more easily get started with Kubernetes and position you to future-proof your infrastructure.

Kubernetes = the Future of Modern Applications

Modern applications are increasingly built using containers. However, as these applications grow to span multiple containers, operating them gets more and more complex. This is where Kubernetes comes in. Kubernetes helps by managing clusters of virtual machines, grouping containers into pods, and scheduling containers to run based on available resources. It brings operations and software development together, simplifying the entire process.

Although containers have been around longer, Kubernetes is only about five years old (still a wee preschooler in tech years). But during that time the growth has been exponential — and there are no signs of slowing down. Consider:

◉ Gartner predicts that by 2025 more than 85% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production – a significant increase from fewer than 35% in 2019.

and…

◉ By the same year more than 80% of independent software vendors (ISVs) will offer their application software in container format (up from less than 10% today).

Additionally, according to the VMware State of Kubernetes 2020 Report, Kubernetes use grew to 48% in 2020, up from 27% in 2018. Interestingly, the same report (which surveyed 247 individuals actively using Kubernetes) found that 60% of the time Kubernetes was deployed on-premises. Which means that organizations are taking advantage of existing infrastructure and established virtual environments to get started with Kubernetes.

For organizations still considering getting on the Kubernetes train, 2021 is the year many will jump on board.

Running Kubernetes Doesn’t Have to Be Complex

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance your organization is already using, or at least considering using, containers — and you realize the need to support them. Wouldn’t it be great to embrace the newest technology and still manage the containerized applications using your existing tools? Fortunately, VMware Tanzu Basic enables you to do this securely, so you can quickly get started with Kubernetes.

VMware Tanzu Basic simplifies Kubernetes operation on-premises, uniting VMs and containers to offer a single application platform. It gives you everything you need to run Kubernetes using what you already know and love: vSphere.

vSphere 7 embeds Kubernetes in the vSphere control plane, which benefits both operators AND developers. Operators gain access to Kubernetes capabilities through a familiar set of tools and scripts, while developers can access cloud resources using Kubernetes APIs.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you can use tools you’re already familiar with.  Not only is this approach less daunting for anyone on the fence about using Kubernetes, but it’s more efficient and makes it easier to quickly get started. Which is important, considering enterprises are predicted to build over 500 million logical apps using cloud native tools and methods over the next five years (equal to the total number of apps built over the last 40 years!).

PowerEdge & VMware Partnership

To maximize performance, it’s no secret that great software runs best on great hardware. Together, PowerEdge and VMware combine best‑in‑class hardware and software to help you expand your modernization efforts. For over 20 years, we’ve worked closely to integrate our technology, solutions and support. With a focus on performance, scalability and security we work together to bring the best solutions to our joint customers.

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Dell was one of the first to implement vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) when it was released as part of vSphere 7, bringing together firmware and software updates for simplified lifecycle management. When used with the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) plug-in, you can simplify management in a familiar environment. Together, OMIVV and vLCM help organizations complete hypervisor and firmware updates in under 4 minutes (versus 3.5 hours manually) for an 8‑node PowerEdge cluster.

Additionally, we have the support you need. Dell has over 1,800 VMware-certified Dell Support professionals ready to help, so most hardware and software issues are resolved with a single phone call.

Dell offers Tanzu Basic OEM both as a standalone license as well as bundled together with vSphere 7 Enterprise Plus. To learn more about the benefits of running  Tanzu on Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers, view this PowerEdge and vSphere with Tanzu infographic or visit our solutions page.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Saturday, 23 January 2021

Dell’s 2021 Server Trends & Observations

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With the start of a new year, we can say goodbye to the tumultuous and challenging 2020 – a year that brought about monumental changes in our industry through acquisitions, technology introductions, and of course, a shift to remote work force. No one could have predicted all the changes that happened last year, but now we have an opportunity to look back on how the server trends and technologies detailed by us last year impacted our industry. And as we have done for the past several years, we want to continue our tradition in Dell’s Infrastructure CTO group of highlighting some of the most interesting technology and industry trends we expect to see impacting our server incubation and product efforts this year. These trends were compiled by polling our senior technologists in the server organization, who are looking at the most impactful influences to their workstreams.

When the technologists provided their inputs, the underlying theme that emerged was the desire to life cycle data – curate, transport, analyze and preserve data – in the most effective and secure means, while producing the most efficient business outcomes from the infrastructure. Since the generation of data has continued to increase, customers are looking for ways to leverage third-party services in an integrated offering to allow them to understand how to more quickly analyze and value the right data in the most cost-effective and secure manner. This paradigm has also forced owners of the IT equipment that performs these analyses to ensure they are using the most effective technology integrations. These integrations need to be managed with the minimal amount of operational expenses across a continuum of Edge, Core and Cloud architectures. Finally, 2020 created another challenge to carry forward, which is the ability to adopt new technologies with more remote staff and remote users stressing the infrastructure in means and methods not expected this early in most digital transformation plans.

So, with that introduction, let us provide you the Top Trends for 2021 that are influencing our server technology efforts and product offerings:

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1. aaS becomes the Enterprise theme. As technology velocity continues to rise, enterprise customers deal with constrained budgets and legacy skillsets while still needing to focus on differentiated business outcomes with the most beneficial price/performance and least amount of bring up and maintenance overhead. The options for on-prem Infrastructure aaS offerings allow customers to be nimble and focus on their business value through diverse deployments while maintaining their data security and governance with trusted infrastructure.

2. Server Growth is Building Vertically. As customers look for the most efficient outcomes from their infrastructure, the industry will continue to see more verticalization and specialization of offerings. Integrated solutions will address packaging and environmental considerations; SW ecosystem enablement and domain-specific accelerators address unique performance and feature requirements that are optimized for specific business outcomes.

3. More Data, More Smarts. The challenges with data velocity, volume and volatility continue and require continuance of AI/ML adoption for analytics while increased focus on solving data life cycling challenges arises. The integration of data curation models, transport methods, preservation and security architectures with faster analysis will all be key to support and monetize the Internet of Behaviors.

4. The Emergence of the Self-Driving Server. Customers will start seeing the use of telemetry, analytics, and policies to achieve higher levels of automation in their systems management infrastructure. Similar to the driver assist/autonomy levels of autonomous vehicles, AI Ops capabilities with systems management will usher in the era of moving automated tasks to automated decisions, with implementations showing up in addressing runaway system power and policy advising recommendation engines.

5. Goodbye, SW Defined. Hello, SW Defined with HW Offload. Application architectures are evolving to create control plane and data plane separation. Control planes stays as a software layer and the data planes move to programmable hardware in the form of service processor add-in-cards which allow bare-metal and containerized applications to run with disaggregated infrastructure software (network virtualization, storage virtualization, GPU virtualization, security services), creating Intent Based Computing for customer workloads.

6. 5G is Here! Seriously, it is this year. After several years of hype and promises, we will see the proliferation of 5G and with it will come shifts in paradigms around communication infrastructure, remote management models and connectivity that impact server form-factors and features. As businesses develop more edge infrastructure to handle the generation and influx of data, 5G will create the need for customers to reevaluate their edge connectivity and infrastructure management offerings to take advantage of 5G capabilities.

7. Rethinking Memory and Storage to be Data Centric. The industry is moving from Compute-Centric Architectures to Data Centric Architectures and that transition is driving new server connected memory and storage models for IT. Technologies around persistent, encrypted and tiered memory inside the server along with remotely accessed SCM and NVMe oF data through new industry fabric standards are creating innovative IT architectures for optimal data security, scaling and preservation.

8. Adopting new Server technology while Being Remote. The world has changed, and businesses have been forced to not just map a digital transformation but realize it to operate. Companies dealing with faster digital transitions of tools, processes and infrastructure need to operate with a remote work force. This transition is forcing companies to evaluate new server technologies and assess resource requirements which will emphasize the necessity to utilize server capabilities around debug, telemetry and analytics in a remote fashion to keep business continuity going forward.

9. It’s not a CPU Competition, it’s a Recipe Bake-off. The processor landscape is changing, and it is becoming an environment of acquisitions, specializations and vendor differentiated integrations. We see Intel, AMD and Nvidia all making acquisitions to provide each with CPUs, DPUs and Accelerators in their portfolio. The real winner will be able to leverage their portfolio of silicon products and software libraries to form recipes of integrated offerings for targeted workloads to help end customers optimize business outcomes.

10. Measure your IT Trust Index. Security around server access and data protection has never been more challenging, so customers need to be able to quantify their security confidence in order to gauge infrastructure trustworthiness and identify digital risks. Customers need to analyze product origins and features, new security technologies and segment specific digital threats in the backdrop of increasing regulatory landscape to formulate their measurement of IT trust from the Edge to Core to Cloud.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Thursday, 7 January 2021

The Year of IT

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Looking back at 2020, I am truly inspired by the heroic actions of IT organizations! Many of us who rely on IT daily to manage our applications, help us recover our passwords, and save us from our own mistakes often forget how much we depend on our IT teams to keep us productive and successful. I remember how quickly our own Dell Technologies IT organization responded last year, enabling us to work from home and delivering critical resources no matter where we were physically located.  And this was not unique to Dell – organizations and companies around the globe have relied on their IT teams to keep them productive, safe, and successful. This year in so many ways has been a year for IT. I am very grateful for being part of a company that has helped IT support so many people around the globe.

We want to recognize each and every one of our unique customers for giving Dell Technologies the opportunity to partner with your organization as you rapidly pivoted to respond to the needs of workers going remote, to service your customers remotely, to handle restrictions on travel, and to provide secure online tools. It was definitely a year of unexpected challenges, and you are the real heroes of our business.

Here are just a few customers I’d like to highlight:

Philip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science

Frost Science relies on state-of-the-art IT infrastructure to power its aquarium, planetarium, and online exhibitions and shows – as well as support employees while many work from home.  Frost museum IT admins can remotely manage and efficiently monitor the aquarium, upload videos and manage Frost Science@Home livestreaming thanks to the creative use of the Dell EMC iDRAC.

Ascend Money

With 6 locations across Asia, Ascend Money has succeeded through innovation—changing the way people access financial services. The company knows its pace of innovation depends on the IT underpinning the business.

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“We decided to standardize on Dell EMC PowerEdge because of the build quality and the local support available,” says John Cattrall, Head of Technology Operations at Ascend Money. “All our IT engineers are familiar with the PowerEdge platform. Regular firmware updates help maintain the security of the servers and OpenManage software simplifies management through a single pane of glass.”

Somerset NHS and Musgrove Park Hospital

The Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, together with Musgrove Park Hospital, provides inpatient, outpatient, emergency care, and children’s and maternity services to around 340,000 people local to Somerset, England.

By moving their applications to the Dell EMC PowerEdge MX modular server, the Musgrove Park Hospital was able to improve clinician efficiency by 50%. The biggest impact was for clinicians, who can access the information they need from across the entire healthcare organization in one place with one login and without unnecessary manual paperwork, inputting information in half the time.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Tuesday, 15 December 2020

Data Security for PowerEdge Servers Made Easy

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What do you think when you hear the words, “data security”? A number of ideas may come to mind depending on your background, profession, or how closely you have been following the recent news of data breaches. Often, the same is true when organizations try to tackle the challenge of securing data. They know it’s an issue, but how best to address it? Where should they start? Many organizations fall into the trap of thinking their perimeter security is enough. If they can just keep the threats out of their networks, they will be safe. However, that is not the case. It’s not that those security solutions are not important; in fact, they are crucial. It’s that the threats are continually evolving — and the individuals behind the threats are finding new ways to break in.

We must start treating data with the same rigor as the perimeter, to ensure the right types of security are in place. Data has become the new perimeter. Taking a layered approach to securing data increases the chance that in the event of breach, the data will remain secure. How do we do this? We must make sure the data is encrypted and that the encryption keys are secured, so even if the data is stolen, it is unusable.

One of the many ways Dell Technologies is aiming to help our customers with these security challenges is by providing infrastructure solutions that are cyber-resilient by design. We realize our customers are going to be running their sensitive data on our platforms, so we need to provide them with the tools necessary to secure that data. Here we are going to explore just one of those ways we help customers achieve data security within their server infrastructure.

In a global marketplace, the physical location of data can spread far and wide, leading to increased vulnerabilities. Gone are the days of organizations operating a single, tightly secured data center where access is limited and server hardware physical security is well assured. Data center admins are tasked with fast response times, disaster recovery plans, and regulatory requirements that mandate onshore private data storage. To accomplish this, most organizations follow the multiple data center architecture approach. This conventional approach carries risk.

Data-at-rest encryption is one of the key security considerations to keep data safe on the disks using self-encrypting drives (SEDs). Data-at-rest encryption offers instant, transparent encryption of data on servers and dedicated storage. The default protection strategy for the data on the SEDs is to use on-board key management software which grants authorized users access to the keys needed to decrypt and unlock the data stored on the SED. However, this strategy has limitations. If a malicious user walks out of the data center with this server, they could potentially locate the keys and access the encrypted data. Additionally, it can leave you exposed to insider threats, where an employee who has access to the server could locate the key and steal the data.

To address this security hole, a new feature – Secure Enterprise Key Management (SEKM) was introduced. Utilizing SEKM, the keys are generated, managed, and stored on an external server away from the data that is stored on the SEDs. SEKM is then coupled with industry-leading data security solution Thales’ CipherTrust Manager through the industry standard Key Management Interoperability Protocol or KMIP. Since the CipherTrust Manager is external, the keys have the highest possible availability, so their power to enhance data security can be leveraged across many systems, thereby achieving true scalability that extends the value of the key management components. Leveraging the key management deployment across the organization also simplifies policy management and regulatory compliance audits.

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In addition, CipherTrust Manager is external. The keys have the highest possible availability, so their power to enhance data security can be leveraged across many systems. This provides true scalability that extends the value of the key management platform. Leveraging the key management deployment across the organization also simplifies policy management and regulatory compliance audits. If you need to meet higher FIPS levels, including Thales Luna HSMs adds the strongest possible root-of-trust, high entropy of the generated keys, and a FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified hardware vault to hold these critical private keys.

Developing the right data security strategy can be daunting and complex, but with the expertise of our sales teams, we can help to simplify data security and accelerate your time to compliance and to achieve multi-cloud security. With Dell EMC’s cyber-resilient by design PowerEdge servers and Thales CipherTrust Data Security Manager, we can help you develop a more comprehensive strategy to secure your data. If you are ready to get started, contact your Dell Sales team.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

Thriving in the Cybersecurity Chess Game

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Start Strong, Stay Strong, Keep Your Opponents in Check

Cyberattacks have the most impact and are a persistent threat to any organization, especially those leveraging information technology to achieve a competitive advantage. Just look at a few of the headlines over the last six months: “Tech Giant Down After Ransomware Attack,” “Cruise Line Suffered A Ransomware Attack In Which Guest And Employee Data Was Accessed,” “Business Giant Data Leaked After Ransomware Attack.” What is going on? There are so many safeguards available today to prevent this kind of impactful breach, what’s missing?

It isn’t that there’s anything missing, per se, it’s that the IT security landscape is constantly shifting, and many IT teams struggle to keep up. Devon Ackerman, head of incident response at Kroll North America was recently quoted by ZDNet as saying, “The ongoing evolution of ransomware creators is constantly shifting the goalposts for those trying to defend data and systems, so vigilance must remain at the top of CIOs to do list.” One area emerging as a newer security threat is infrastructure security, including hardware and the associated firmware.

The server hardware, consisting of the baseboard, memory, CPUs, storage, and so forth, is probably assumed to be the most secure part of the IT infrastructure. It takes some serious Mr. Robot kind of hacking to compromise a server’s hardware. Recent analysis by Forrester shows that 63% of companies have experienced a data compromise due to an exploited vulnerability in hardware- or silicon-level security. Nevertheless, there are hardware hacking proofs of concept and the threat is real. Getting ahead of the problem is the best mitigation strategy.

Start Strong – Validate Your Hardware Configuration from Day One

Dell Technologies has a well-established supply chain and continues to address the evolving threat landscape. Suppliers for Dell systems are vetted, inspected, and validated continuously to meet stringent security requirements for the infrastructure portfolio. Key requirements encompass physical security, cybersecurity, and personnel security as well as risk management processes that incorporate continuous improvement. Providing a reliably secure supply chain reinforces the root of trust that serves as the foundation for our customers’ secure computing and storage environments.

One recent enhancement to our PowerEdge line is the ability to automate the work required to inventory and deploy new systems. With Dell Technologies Secured Component Verification, you can validate the servers’ “as-delivered” hardware inventory compared to the “as-built” inventory, quickly identifying and correcting any changes from the expected configuration. A small detail in the bigger picture, but it’s an improvement with a significant impact to the chain of trust for server infrastructure.

Simply put, when a new system is built in our manufacturing facility, we perform an automated inventory that is cryptographically signed and stored in that new system. When the system arrives, this same inventory process can be run again, and results compared with the trusted inventory stored on the system. Comparing these two inventories guarantees that if anything changed in transit, it can be inspected and corrected before deployment.

Stay Strong – Enhance Your Firmware’s Resiliency

While we’re talking about hardware, let’s bring firmware certificate management into the mix. Certainly not the most exciting part of any system administrator’s day, firmware is an emerging “attack vector” for newer, more sophisticated cyberattacks. The big problem with firmware hacks – if successful, is that they can persist, undetected, because virus protection software is unable to check this level of integrity. Breaching the firmware’s security destroys the chain of trust, rippling into compromised applications and data storage. Some of the most secure computing environments we work with require higher security procedures when it comes to firmware certificate management and validation.

To harden firmware security, we’ve extended the management capabilities for our platform’s secure boot process with Dell EMC PowerEdge UEFI Secure Boot Customization. This new capability enables granular control of the firmware certificate validation process. Customers may now select which firmware and OS bootloaders are authorized to operate on their PowerEdge servers, eliminating dependence on third party certificate authorities. While this level of independence does require more planning and server infrastructure management, it comes with the benefits of increased control, security and reduced exposure to related vulnerabilities in the boot process.

It’s no surprise that the Dell Technologies’ implementation of UEFI Secure Boot Customization was highlighted in the National Security Agency (NSA) recent technical paper “UEFI Secure Boot Customization.” Given our industry leading work in this area, it was rewarding to see PowerEdge servers used to illustrate examples of how to use customization for UEFI secure boot.

Outmaneuver Your Opponents – Enable Intelligent Automation for Your Secure Environment

Dell Technologies makes extensive use of intelligent automation, so you can stay a step ahead of bad actors and keep your opponents in check. With these newest innovations, in addition to the automation capabilities already available in iDRAC, you can rest assured you have the right tools to help build a secure IT infrastructure. Secured Component Verification and UEFI Secure Boot Customization move the security bar higher, increasing the intelligence of the automated processes you rely on to keep pace with your organization’s demand for IT resources.

Understand that your success is our vested interest, so delivering our portfolio of infrastructure products with a secure supply chain and intrinsic security capabilities is a top priority today and going forward.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Thursday, 26 November 2020

Using the Power of HPC to Save Lives

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Dell Technologies helps TGen unravel the secrets of the human genome to fight disease

Dell Technologies and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have a long history of collaborating to enable groundbreaking research with life-changing results. Located in Phoenix Arizona, TGen is a nonprofit medical research institute affiliated with City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and treatment center for life-threatening diseases.

TGen leverages multiple Dell Technologies supercomputers to unravel the secrets of the human genome and develop precision medicines for diseases such as COVID and other infectious diseases, cancer, neurological disorders, and rare childhood disorders. TGen uses its supercomputing power to identify more precise and personal treatment options, sooner, to save more lives.

For example, TGen is already running an HPC cluster used primarily for pathogen genomics and is in the process of building a newer system based on Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 Servers with Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, Dell EMC Isilon storage and Dell EMC PowerSwitch networking.

TGen and City of Hope also have a GPU-centric system based on Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140 and R640 Servers with NVIDIA® V100 GPUs, Dell EMC PowerSwitch networking and Dell EMC Isilon network attached storage that they use primarily for molecular dynamics simulations.

Now, an upgraded HPC system, originally built by TGen, Dell Technologies and Intel in 2012, is enabling TGen to handle the massive quantities of data involved in genome sequencing. Building the system was no small engineering feat, because next-generation sequencing (NGS) typically captures a terabyte or more of data each time a sequencer runs, and TGen runs multiple sequencers run around the clock. TGen needed an HPC system capable of storing, processing and computing against those massive data sets—with a goal of dramatically reducing time to results.

The upgraded supercomputer gives TGen the processing power of 3,000 Intel® Xeon® processing cores, giving researchers 1 million CPU hours per month to perform 50 trillion operations per second. The genomics sequencing system also offers more than 3 petabytes of Dell EMC Isilon scale-out network-attached storage.

The upgrade cuts the data processing time from two weeks to just eight hours. This dramatic performance improvement enables TGen to deliver personalized treatments that save lives, sooner. It’s also helping TGen unravel the secrets of infectious diseases, which are also DNA-based organisms. That’s helping the institute take an active role in the fight against COVID-19. TGen has developed an RNA test for COVID-19 and has been testing local patients since March 2020. The researchers are sequencing all of the positive test results and building a biobank of genetic signatures for the disease over time.

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Researchers at TGen can then use the insights gained from sequencing the virus to search for drugs that might be effective against it. As part of this project, TGen can analyze data on the Dell Technologies HPC & AI Innovation Lab’s Zenith supercomputer. As an affiliate of City of Hope, TGen is contributing to the preclinical development of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

According to TGen CIO James Lowey, “Over a number of years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many people at Dell who are really passionate about what they do and believe in the mission. I think Michael Dell puts it best when he says it’s not just about building technology for technology’s sake. It’s about building technology to solve problems, to work in the real work and to make a difference. That philosophy aligns very closely with what we are trying to do here at TGen. Having a partner who is truly invested in trying to change things for the better is absolutely critical. That’s something we value immensely.”

A new case study outlines the long relationship between TGen and Dell Technologies, as well as the technical details and astounding results of the recent NGS system upgrade and its impact on COVID-19 research.

Source: delltechnologies.com