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Are Data Centres Able to Operate in Tropical Environments?

Given that a large percentage of the power used to run the average data centre is directly related to cooling, builders and designers do their best to locate new facilities in locales with cooler climates and lower humidity. The idea is to save money by reducing the amount of power used for temperature and humidity control. Still, the curious among us want to know if a data centre could still operate at peak performance under conditions twice the current norms. We are about to find out thanks to a test to get under way shortly in Singapore. News reports say the world's first tropical data centre is now in the planning stages and involves a number of big-name partners including Dell, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Intel, ERS, Fujitsu and others. The consortium will set up a controlled test environment in an existing Keppel data centre for the test.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Data Center as a Service Is the Way of the Future

Article | September 14, 2023

Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) is a hosting service that gives clients access to actual data center infrastructure and amenities. Through a Wide-Area Network, DCaaS enables clients to remotely access the provider's storage, server, and networking capabilities (WAN). Businesses can tackle their on-site data center's logistical and financial issues by outsourcing to a service provider. Many enterprises rely on DCaaS to overcome the physical constraints of their on-site infrastructure or to offload the hosting and management of non-mission-critical applications. Businesses that require robust data management solutions but lack the necessary internal resources can adopt DCaaS. DCaaS is the perfect answer for companies that are struggling with a lack of IT help or a lack of funding for system maintenance. Added benefits data Center as a Service allows businesses to be independent of their physical infrastructure: A single-provider API Data centers without Staff Effortlessly handle the influx of data Data centers in regions with more stable climates Data Center as a Service helps democratize the data center itself, allowing companies that could never afford the huge investments that have gotten us this far to benefit from these developments. This is perhaps the most important, as Infrastructure-as-a-Service enables smaller companies to get started without a huge investment. Conclusion Data center as a service (DCaaS) enables clients to access a data center remotely and its features, whereas data center services might include complete management of an organization's on-premises infrastructure resources. IT can be outsourced using data center services to manage an organization's network, storage, computing, cloud, and maintenance. The infrastructure of many businesses is outsourced to increase operational effectiveness, size, and cost-effectiveness. It might be challenging to manage your existing infrastructure while keeping up with the pace of innovation, but it's critical to be on the cutting edge of technology. Organizations may stay future-ready by working with a vendor that can supply DCaaS and data center services.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

The Future of Computing: Why IaaS is Leading the Way

Article | July 19, 2023

Firms face challenges with managing their resources, and ensuring security & cost optimization, adding complexity to their operations. IaaS solves this need to maintain and manage IT infrastructure. Contents 1. Infrastructure as a Service: Future of Cloud Computing 2. Upcoming Trends in IaaS 2.1 The Rise of Edge Computing 2.2 Greater Focus on Security 2.3 Enhancement in Serverless Architecture 2.4 Evolution of Green Computing 2.5 Emergence of Containerization 3. Final Thoughts 1. Infrastructure as a Service: Future of Cloud Computing As digital transformation continues to reshape the business landscape, cloud computing is emerging as a critical enabler for companies of all sizes. With infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), businesses can outsource their hardware and data center management to a third-party provider, freeing up resources and allowing them to focus on their core competencies, reducing operational costs while maintaining the agility to adapt to changing market conditions. With the increasing need for scalable computing solutions, IaaS is set to become a pivotal player in shaping the future of computing. IaaS is already emerging as a prominent solution for organizations looking to modernize their computing capabilities. This article will delve into the recent trends of IaaS and its potential impact on the computing industry, implying why IaaS is important for emerging businesses. 2. Upcoming Trends in IaaS 2.1 The Rise of Edge Computing The rise in IoT and mobile computing has led to a challenge in the amount of data that can be transferred across a network in a certain period. Due to its many uses, such as improving reaction times for self-driving cars and safeguarding confidential health information, the market for edge computing infrastructure is expected to reach a value of $450 billion. (Source: CB Insights) Edge computing is a technology that enables data processing to occur closer to its origin, thereby reducing the volume of data that needs to be transmitted to and from the cloud. A mesh network of micro data centers that process or store critical data locally and push all received data to a central data center or cloud storage repository in a footprint of less than 100 square feet. (Source: IDC) Edge computing represents the fourth major paradigm shift in modern computing, following mainframes, client/server models, and the cloud. A hybrid architecture of interconnected IaaS services allows for low latency through edge computing and high performance, security, and flexibility through a private cloud. Connecting edge devices to an IaaS platform streamlines location management and enables remote work, thus looking forward to smoother future of IaaS. An edge layer (fog computing) is required to optimize the architecture model with high-speed and reliable 5G connectivity, connecting edge devices with the cloud. This layer acts as autonomous distributed nodes, capable of analyzing and acting on real-time data. Doing so sends only the data required to the central infrastructure in an IaaS instance. By combining the advantages of edge computing in data capture with the storage and processing capabilities of the cloud, companies can take full advantage of the benefits of data analytics to leverage their innovation and optimization capabilities while simultaneously and effectively managing IoT devices on the edge. IoT devices, also known as edge devices, possess the ability to analyze data in real time through the use of AI, ML, and algorithms, even in the absence of an internet connection. This technology yields numerous advantages, including superior decision-making, early detection of issues, and heightened efficiency. However, an IaaS infrastructure with top-notch computing and storage capabilities is an absolute necessity to analyze the data effectively. 2.2 Greater Focus on Security Hackers might use cloud-based services to host malware through malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms or to distribute malware payloads using cloud-based apps and services. In addition, organizations often need more than they can secure in their IaaS footprint, leading to increased misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. Recognizing and reacting to an attack is called reactive security, whereas anticipating a dangerous event before it happens and intervening to prevent it is predictive safety. Predictive security is the future of cloud security. The cybersecurity mesh involves setting up a distributed network and infrastructure to create a secure perimeter. This allows companies to centrally manage access to their data while enforcing security policies across the distributed network. It is a critical component of the Zero-Trust architecture. A popular IaaS cloud security trend is the multi-cloud environment. Multi-cloud proves effective when tools like security information and event management (SIEM) and threat intelligence are deployed. DevSecOps is a methodology that incorporates security protocols at every stage of software development lifecycle (SDLC). This makes it convenient to deal with threats during the lifecycle itself. Since deploying DevOps, software releases have been shortened for every product release. DevSecOps proves to be secure and fast only with a fully automated software development lifecycle. The DevOps and security teams must collaborate to provide massive digital transformation and security. Digital services and applications need stronger and better security in exponential amounts. This methodology must be enforced in a CI/CD pipeline to make it a continuous process. Secure access service edge (SASE) is a cloud-based architecture that integrates networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) functions, providing them as a unified cloud service. The architecture combines a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) or other WAN with multiple security capabilities, securing network traffic. 2.3 Enhancement in Serverless Architecture Serverless architecture apps are launched on demand when an event triggers the app code to run. The public cloud provider then assigns the resources necessary for the operation to occur. With serverless apps, containers are deployed and launched on demand when needed. This differs from the traditional IaaS cloud computing model, where users must pre-purchase capacity units for always-on server components to run their apps. The app will incur minimal charges during off-peak hours with a serverless model. When there is a surge in traffic, it can scale up seamlessly through the provider without requiring DevOps involvement. A serverless database is a type of database that operates as a fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS). It automatically adjusts its computing and storage resources to match the demand, making it convenient for users. A serverless database is a cloud based service that eliminates the need to manage infrastructure, scaling, and provisioning. It allows developers to concentrate on constructing applications or digital products without the burden of managing servers, storage, or backups. 2.4 Evolution of Green Computing In promoting green computing, infrastructure-as-a-service plays a significant role by allowing cloud providers to manage the infrastructure. This helps reduce the environmental impact and boosts efficiency by intelligently utilizing servers at high utilization rates. As a result, studies show that public cloud infrastructure is typically 2-4 times more efficient than traditional data centers, a giant leap forward for sustainable computing practices. 2.5 Emergence of Containerization Containerization is a type of operating system virtualization where applications are executed in distinct user spaces called containers. These containers operate on the same shared operating system, providing a complete, portable computing environment for virtualized infrastructure. Containers are self-contained software packages operating in any environment, including private data centers, public clouds, or developer laptops. They comprise all the necessary components required for the right functioning of IaaS-adopted cloud computing. 3. Final Thoughts With the expansion of multi-cloud environments, the emergence of containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, and enhancements in serverless databases, IaaS is poised to become even more powerful and versatile in meeting the diverse computing needs of organizations. These advancements have enabled IaaS providers to offer a wide range of services and capabilities, such as automatic scaling, load balancing, and high availability, making it easier for businesses to build, deploy, and manage their applications swiftly in the cloud.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Upcoming Events for Driving Business Success in the HCI Industry

Article | October 10, 2023

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) is a critical aspect of the ever-evolving infrastructure industry, helping ensure efficient and secure operation. It involves the continuous surveillance, analysis, and management of the digitalization in manufacturing, performance, and efficiency. To stay ahead of the latest advancements in this industry, executives and managers must attend the upcoming conferences scheduled for 2023. These events provide a crucial platform for professionals to gain in-depth insights into emerging trends, innovative technologies, and best practices. Basics and Operation of Hyperconverged Infrastructure November 21, 2023 | Online Attend the training session on hyper convergent infrastructure led by Dr. Markus Ermes. This session will address hyper-convergent infrastructure questions, including appliances or software, central data centers or smaller locations, and established manufacturers or challengers. During the training session, this Hyperconverged Infrastructure conference allows participants to gain insights into software-defined storage, the critical properties of storage technologies, changes in backup and recovery scenarios, and considerations for data center network planning. This knowledge will enable participants to evaluate the merits and drawbacks of HCI in a nuanced and informed manner. The training session will accommodate participants with varying skill levels, whether they are beginners or have advanced expertise. Attending this training session will equip participants with the knowledge to navigate hyper-convergent infrastructures' complexities effectively. TechMentor Redmond 2023 July 17-21, 2023 | Washington (US) TechMentor Redmond 2023 is an anticipated technology conference that brings together IT professionals, industry experts, and thought leaders for an immersive learning experience. Set in Redmond, Washington, the heart of the tech industry, it will offer a unique opportunity for participants to engage with leading experts from Microsoft and other prominent technology companies. These sessions will cover a wide range of topics, including cloud computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, DevOps, data analytics, IoT, and more. With a focus on practical implementation and real-world scenarios, TechMentor Redmond will equip attendees with the skills and knowledge needed to tackle the challenges of today's IT landscape. One of the highlights, is the opportunity to learn directly from industry experts and Microsoft MVPs. Advancing Data Center Construction: West 2023 July 17-19, 2023 | Washington (US) West 2023: Advancing Data Center Construction brings together Washington-to-Arizona clients, contractors, and designers to discuss industry issues. This event will provide a rare opportunity to collaborate and solve project delivery issues caused by tougher restrictions, difficult geographical conditions, supply chain interruption, and workforce shortages, offering hyper converged infrastructure solutions. The event will have sessions from keynote speakers David McCall, Michelle Stuart, Chad Labucki, and Micah Piippo. Hyperconverged Infrastructure events including this event, allow attendees to learn from over 25 hours of world-class content, 12+ hours of networking, and industry leaders like Google, Yondr, Clayco, Microsoft, and McKinstry. Participants will learn to overcome supply chain interruption, streamline approval processes, and enhance efficiency through case studies of breakthrough technology and energy-efficient, sustainable data centers. CIO Cloud Summit July 17, 2023 | Online One of the leading Hyperconverged Infrastructure events, this distinguished event caters to CIOs and IT executives strategically evaluating cloud computing solutions for their organizations. With a dedicated focus on crucial cloud computing issues, including data governance, security, private versus public cloud, and data availability, the summit offers a platform for in-depth discussions and knowledge sharing. Attendees can anticipate a curated agenda with interactive sessions, analyst-led presentations, and an exclusive environment with an average attendance of 50 C-level executives because CDM Media Summits is renowned for its ability to bring together industry leaders, analysts, and solution providers. The event is hosts renowned speakers as Chris Mattmann, Steve Rubinow, Jason Spencer, and Robert DeVito. It is an exceptional opportunity for networking, debating, and gaining insights from the latest industry research. Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference December 5 – 7, 2023 | Las Vegas (Nevada) The Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations, & Cloud Strategies Conference 2023 brings together global technology leaders to explore the latest trends, gain objective insights, and exchange best practices. The conference will offer attendees access to nine tracks and seven spotlight tracks, each covering specific focus areas to help I&O leaders create effective pathways for the future while networking with peers. Topics will include innovation, cloud value acceleration, engineering platforms, enhancing operations, evolving at the edge, embedding security, developing skills, transforming leadership and the organization, optimizing costs & value, and more. The event features guest speakers such as Daniel Betts, Arun Chandrasekaran, Hassan Ennaciri, among others, Gartner Magic Quadrant sessions, solution provider sessions, workshops, and facilitated sessions, providing attendees with valuable inspiration, insights, and collaborative problem-solving opportunities. stackconf 2023 September 13-14, 2023 |Berlin (Germany) Being one of the best HCI events, stackconf is a prominent open-source infrastructure event focused on various aspects of CI/CD, containers, hybrid environments, and cloud solutions. It will address the challenges faced by businesses in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, where virtual infrastructures and multi-channel platforms have become the norm. The conference aims to bridge the gap between development, testing, and operations, offering insights and solutions from multiple perspectives. Attendees will be able to stay informed about current and future trends, think creatively, and explore innovative approaches to optimize their IT infrastructure. With a diverse international audience of IT infrastructure specialists, CTOs, CIOs, SREs, system administrators, IT architects, and DevOps engineers, the event stands out for its speaker talks, which offer practical insights instead of vendor pitches, and its emphasis on fostering meaningful discussions and collaboration among participants. DatacenterDynamics (DCD) Connect | London October 2-3, 2023 | London (United Kingdom) DCD Connect | London is a highly anticipated event that brings together leaders and professionals from the data center and cloud infrastructure communities. The event will feature an exhibition floor where leading technology vendors and service providers showcase their latest products, services, and solutions. This will allow attendees to explore and evaluate the latest advancements in hardware, software, infrastructure, cooling systems, power management, and other critical aspects of data center operations. Beyond the knowledge-sharing opportunities, it will promote thought-provoking talks by Dame Dawn Childs, Val Walsh, Michael Winterson among others. Attendees will earn continuing professional development (CPD) credits by attending educational sessions and workshops, enhancing their industry credentials, and demonstrating a commitment to ongoing learning. The event will also provide a platform for career growth, with potential job openings and networking connections within the data center and cloud infrastructure sectors. Key Takeaway The conferences bring together industry experts, IT professionals, engineers, and decision-makers in the network industry. Attendees can expect a comprehensive program consisting of keynote presentations, panel discussions, case studies, and interactive workshops. The listed events will cover a wide range of topics, including the latest trends in data center design, energy efficiency, modular construction, and emerging technologies. Participating in these also offer ample networking opportunities, allowing attendees to connect with peers, share experiences, and establish valuable business connections. Leaders can stay at the forefront of the evolving data center landscape and gain a competitive edge in their respective organizations.

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Application Infrastructure

How Splunk Helps Maintain Cloud Infra?

Article | January 21, 2021

With the regular increase of data in both cloud and organizations, a way to tackle these data and extract valuable insights is highly in demand. Although there are multiple tools available in the market not all of them can provide a complete resolution. Developed in 2003, Slunk has become the ideal tool for numerous businesses across the globe. It is a software platform that is popular for searching, monitoring, analyzing, and visualizing data in real-time. Slunk performs operations such as gathering, interpreting, and coordinating data to create alerts, dashboards, and graphs instantaneously. Why Splunk? 1. Business Flexibility It improves the way people around organizations identify, predict, and solve problems simultaneously. It helps in answering questions for every part of the business, be it DevOps, IT, or Business Development. It offers capabilities to detect, visualize and collaborate anytime. 2. Enhance Digitization Splunk assists businesses in ensuring the success of their digitization with its artificial intelligence and machine learning-based solutions. 3. New Opportunities No matter how much data you have gathered, Splunk will help in scaling according to the data volume. It does that with the ecosystem provided by its partners and services. 4. Data-To-Everything It is a platform that enables businesses to detect, monitor, analyze, and work with both structured and unstructured data regardless of their source and timescale. It allows users to ask any question related to insights and take actions accordingly. 5. Fast & Flexible The time to value can be sped up to two days. Companies can deploy in increasing capacity within two days and retrieve their data as long as 90 days. Moreover, the upgrades and updates are handled by the team for them. 6. Maximize Value The subscribers of Splunk do not have to manage infrastructure and they do not even need one. As a service, it offers scarce and valuable resources as required for better performance. 7. Robust Security Splunk is certified and authorized by ISO 27001 and FedRAMP. They proffer dedicated cloud environments with encryption to the customer for robust security as well. Apart from these major advantages, Splunk also grants incredible GUI, reduces troubleshooting time, real-time dashboard visibility, incorporates AI in data strategy, monitors business metrics, powerful visualization, and search. Some of the crucial features of Splunk include development & testing, faster ROI generation, developing real-time data applications, and real-time architecture stats & reports. Be Ready for Splunk-Based Cloud Infra Maintenance At its core, Splunk is an efficient tool for data aggregation that comes with versatile search functionality. Any business can get started with Splunk depending on certain needs they have for data-set monitoring and management. It allows users to take a highly effective data wealth that is pulled from different sources like websites, apps, or IoT. All that is needed to do is getting started with Splunk-based applications for which you can hire developers with relevant knowledge and experience.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

HCI Adoption Strategies for Successful Implementation in B2B Markets

Article | September 14, 2023

Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) is a hosting service that gives clients access to actual data center infrastructure and amenities. Through a Wide-Area Network, DCaaS enables clients to remotely access the provider's storage, server, and networking capabilities (WAN). Businesses can tackle their on-site data center's logistical and financial issues by outsourcing to a service provider. Many enterprises rely on DCaaS to overcome the physical constraints of their on-site infrastructure or to offload the hosting and management of non-mission-critical applications. Businesses that require robust data management solutions but lack the necessary internal resources can adopt DCaaS. DCaaS is the perfect answer for companies that are struggling with a lack of IT help or a lack of funding for system maintenance. Added benefits data Center as a Service allows businesses to be independent of their physical infrastructure: A single-provider API Data centers without Staff Effortlessly handle the influx of data Data centers in regions with more stable climates Data Center as a Service helps democratize the data center itself, allowing companies that could never afford the huge investments that have gotten us this far to benefit from these developments. This is perhaps the most important, as Infrastructure-as-a-Service enables smaller companies to get started without a huge investment. Conclusion Data center as a service (DCaaS) enables clients to access a data center remotely and its features, whereas data center services might include complete management of an organization's on-premises infrastructure resources. IT can be outsourced using data center services to manage an organization's network, storage, computing, cloud, and maintenance. The infrastructure of many businesses is outsourced to increase operational effectiveness, size, and cost-effectiveness. It might be challenging to manage your existing infrastructure while keeping up with the pace of innovation, but it's critical to be on the cutting edge of technology. Organizations may stay future-ready by working with a vendor that can supply DCaaS and data center services.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

Designing an Advanced Data Center for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Article | July 19, 2023

Firms face challenges with managing their resources, and ensuring security & cost optimization, adding complexity to their operations. IaaS solves this need to maintain and manage IT infrastructure. Contents 1. Infrastructure as a Service: Future of Cloud Computing 2. Upcoming Trends in IaaS 2.1 The Rise of Edge Computing 2.2 Greater Focus on Security 2.3 Enhancement in Serverless Architecture 2.4 Evolution of Green Computing 2.5 Emergence of Containerization 3. Final Thoughts 1. Infrastructure as a Service: Future of Cloud Computing As digital transformation continues to reshape the business landscape, cloud computing is emerging as a critical enabler for companies of all sizes. With infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), businesses can outsource their hardware and data center management to a third-party provider, freeing up resources and allowing them to focus on their core competencies, reducing operational costs while maintaining the agility to adapt to changing market conditions. With the increasing need for scalable computing solutions, IaaS is set to become a pivotal player in shaping the future of computing. IaaS is already emerging as a prominent solution for organizations looking to modernize their computing capabilities. This article will delve into the recent trends of IaaS and its potential impact on the computing industry, implying why IaaS is important for emerging businesses. 2. Upcoming Trends in IaaS 2.1 The Rise of Edge Computing The rise in IoT and mobile computing has led to a challenge in the amount of data that can be transferred across a network in a certain period. Due to its many uses, such as improving reaction times for self-driving cars and safeguarding confidential health information, the market for edge computing infrastructure is expected to reach a value of $450 billion. (Source: CB Insights) Edge computing is a technology that enables data processing to occur closer to its origin, thereby reducing the volume of data that needs to be transmitted to and from the cloud. A mesh network of micro data centers that process or store critical data locally and push all received data to a central data center or cloud storage repository in a footprint of less than 100 square feet. (Source: IDC) Edge computing represents the fourth major paradigm shift in modern computing, following mainframes, client/server models, and the cloud. A hybrid architecture of interconnected IaaS services allows for low latency through edge computing and high performance, security, and flexibility through a private cloud. Connecting edge devices to an IaaS platform streamlines location management and enables remote work, thus looking forward to smoother future of IaaS. An edge layer (fog computing) is required to optimize the architecture model with high-speed and reliable 5G connectivity, connecting edge devices with the cloud. This layer acts as autonomous distributed nodes, capable of analyzing and acting on real-time data. Doing so sends only the data required to the central infrastructure in an IaaS instance. By combining the advantages of edge computing in data capture with the storage and processing capabilities of the cloud, companies can take full advantage of the benefits of data analytics to leverage their innovation and optimization capabilities while simultaneously and effectively managing IoT devices on the edge. IoT devices, also known as edge devices, possess the ability to analyze data in real time through the use of AI, ML, and algorithms, even in the absence of an internet connection. This technology yields numerous advantages, including superior decision-making, early detection of issues, and heightened efficiency. However, an IaaS infrastructure with top-notch computing and storage capabilities is an absolute necessity to analyze the data effectively. 2.2 Greater Focus on Security Hackers might use cloud-based services to host malware through malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms or to distribute malware payloads using cloud-based apps and services. In addition, organizations often need more than they can secure in their IaaS footprint, leading to increased misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. Recognizing and reacting to an attack is called reactive security, whereas anticipating a dangerous event before it happens and intervening to prevent it is predictive safety. Predictive security is the future of cloud security. The cybersecurity mesh involves setting up a distributed network and infrastructure to create a secure perimeter. This allows companies to centrally manage access to their data while enforcing security policies across the distributed network. It is a critical component of the Zero-Trust architecture. A popular IaaS cloud security trend is the multi-cloud environment. Multi-cloud proves effective when tools like security information and event management (SIEM) and threat intelligence are deployed. DevSecOps is a methodology that incorporates security protocols at every stage of software development lifecycle (SDLC). This makes it convenient to deal with threats during the lifecycle itself. Since deploying DevOps, software releases have been shortened for every product release. DevSecOps proves to be secure and fast only with a fully automated software development lifecycle. The DevOps and security teams must collaborate to provide massive digital transformation and security. Digital services and applications need stronger and better security in exponential amounts. This methodology must be enforced in a CI/CD pipeline to make it a continuous process. Secure access service edge (SASE) is a cloud-based architecture that integrates networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) functions, providing them as a unified cloud service. The architecture combines a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) or other WAN with multiple security capabilities, securing network traffic. 2.3 Enhancement in Serverless Architecture Serverless architecture apps are launched on demand when an event triggers the app code to run. The public cloud provider then assigns the resources necessary for the operation to occur. With serverless apps, containers are deployed and launched on demand when needed. This differs from the traditional IaaS cloud computing model, where users must pre-purchase capacity units for always-on server components to run their apps. The app will incur minimal charges during off-peak hours with a serverless model. When there is a surge in traffic, it can scale up seamlessly through the provider without requiring DevOps involvement. A serverless database is a type of database that operates as a fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS). It automatically adjusts its computing and storage resources to match the demand, making it convenient for users. A serverless database is a cloud based service that eliminates the need to manage infrastructure, scaling, and provisioning. It allows developers to concentrate on constructing applications or digital products without the burden of managing servers, storage, or backups. 2.4 Evolution of Green Computing In promoting green computing, infrastructure-as-a-service plays a significant role by allowing cloud providers to manage the infrastructure. This helps reduce the environmental impact and boosts efficiency by intelligently utilizing servers at high utilization rates. As a result, studies show that public cloud infrastructure is typically 2-4 times more efficient than traditional data centers, a giant leap forward for sustainable computing practices. 2.5 Emergence of Containerization Containerization is a type of operating system virtualization where applications are executed in distinct user spaces called containers. These containers operate on the same shared operating system, providing a complete, portable computing environment for virtualized infrastructure. Containers are self-contained software packages operating in any environment, including private data centers, public clouds, or developer laptops. They comprise all the necessary components required for the right functioning of IaaS-adopted cloud computing. 3. Final Thoughts With the expansion of multi-cloud environments, the emergence of containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, and enhancements in serverless databases, IaaS is poised to become even more powerful and versatile in meeting the diverse computing needs of organizations. These advancements have enabled IaaS providers to offer a wide range of services and capabilities, such as automatic scaling, load balancing, and high availability, making it easier for businesses to build, deploy, and manage their applications swiftly in the cloud.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Ensuring Long-Term Reliability of Technology Partners using HCI

Article | October 10, 2023

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) is a critical aspect of the ever-evolving infrastructure industry, helping ensure efficient and secure operation. It involves the continuous surveillance, analysis, and management of the digitalization in manufacturing, performance, and efficiency. To stay ahead of the latest advancements in this industry, executives and managers must attend the upcoming conferences scheduled for 2023. These events provide a crucial platform for professionals to gain in-depth insights into emerging trends, innovative technologies, and best practices. Basics and Operation of Hyperconverged Infrastructure November 21, 2023 | Online Attend the training session on hyper convergent infrastructure led by Dr. Markus Ermes. This session will address hyper-convergent infrastructure questions, including appliances or software, central data centers or smaller locations, and established manufacturers or challengers. During the training session, this Hyperconverged Infrastructure conference allows participants to gain insights into software-defined storage, the critical properties of storage technologies, changes in backup and recovery scenarios, and considerations for data center network planning. This knowledge will enable participants to evaluate the merits and drawbacks of HCI in a nuanced and informed manner. The training session will accommodate participants with varying skill levels, whether they are beginners or have advanced expertise. Attending this training session will equip participants with the knowledge to navigate hyper-convergent infrastructures' complexities effectively. TechMentor Redmond 2023 July 17-21, 2023 | Washington (US) TechMentor Redmond 2023 is an anticipated technology conference that brings together IT professionals, industry experts, and thought leaders for an immersive learning experience. Set in Redmond, Washington, the heart of the tech industry, it will offer a unique opportunity for participants to engage with leading experts from Microsoft and other prominent technology companies. These sessions will cover a wide range of topics, including cloud computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, DevOps, data analytics, IoT, and more. With a focus on practical implementation and real-world scenarios, TechMentor Redmond will equip attendees with the skills and knowledge needed to tackle the challenges of today's IT landscape. One of the highlights, is the opportunity to learn directly from industry experts and Microsoft MVPs. Advancing Data Center Construction: West 2023 July 17-19, 2023 | Washington (US) West 2023: Advancing Data Center Construction brings together Washington-to-Arizona clients, contractors, and designers to discuss industry issues. This event will provide a rare opportunity to collaborate and solve project delivery issues caused by tougher restrictions, difficult geographical conditions, supply chain interruption, and workforce shortages, offering hyper converged infrastructure solutions. The event will have sessions from keynote speakers David McCall, Michelle Stuart, Chad Labucki, and Micah Piippo. Hyperconverged Infrastructure events including this event, allow attendees to learn from over 25 hours of world-class content, 12+ hours of networking, and industry leaders like Google, Yondr, Clayco, Microsoft, and McKinstry. Participants will learn to overcome supply chain interruption, streamline approval processes, and enhance efficiency through case studies of breakthrough technology and energy-efficient, sustainable data centers. CIO Cloud Summit July 17, 2023 | Online One of the leading Hyperconverged Infrastructure events, this distinguished event caters to CIOs and IT executives strategically evaluating cloud computing solutions for their organizations. With a dedicated focus on crucial cloud computing issues, including data governance, security, private versus public cloud, and data availability, the summit offers a platform for in-depth discussions and knowledge sharing. Attendees can anticipate a curated agenda with interactive sessions, analyst-led presentations, and an exclusive environment with an average attendance of 50 C-level executives because CDM Media Summits is renowned for its ability to bring together industry leaders, analysts, and solution providers. The event is hosts renowned speakers as Chris Mattmann, Steve Rubinow, Jason Spencer, and Robert DeVito. It is an exceptional opportunity for networking, debating, and gaining insights from the latest industry research. Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference December 5 – 7, 2023 | Las Vegas (Nevada) The Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations, & Cloud Strategies Conference 2023 brings together global technology leaders to explore the latest trends, gain objective insights, and exchange best practices. The conference will offer attendees access to nine tracks and seven spotlight tracks, each covering specific focus areas to help I&O leaders create effective pathways for the future while networking with peers. Topics will include innovation, cloud value acceleration, engineering platforms, enhancing operations, evolving at the edge, embedding security, developing skills, transforming leadership and the organization, optimizing costs & value, and more. The event features guest speakers such as Daniel Betts, Arun Chandrasekaran, Hassan Ennaciri, among others, Gartner Magic Quadrant sessions, solution provider sessions, workshops, and facilitated sessions, providing attendees with valuable inspiration, insights, and collaborative problem-solving opportunities. stackconf 2023 September 13-14, 2023 |Berlin (Germany) Being one of the best HCI events, stackconf is a prominent open-source infrastructure event focused on various aspects of CI/CD, containers, hybrid environments, and cloud solutions. It will address the challenges faced by businesses in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, where virtual infrastructures and multi-channel platforms have become the norm. The conference aims to bridge the gap between development, testing, and operations, offering insights and solutions from multiple perspectives. Attendees will be able to stay informed about current and future trends, think creatively, and explore innovative approaches to optimize their IT infrastructure. With a diverse international audience of IT infrastructure specialists, CTOs, CIOs, SREs, system administrators, IT architects, and DevOps engineers, the event stands out for its speaker talks, which offer practical insights instead of vendor pitches, and its emphasis on fostering meaningful discussions and collaboration among participants. DatacenterDynamics (DCD) Connect | London October 2-3, 2023 | London (United Kingdom) DCD Connect | London is a highly anticipated event that brings together leaders and professionals from the data center and cloud infrastructure communities. The event will feature an exhibition floor where leading technology vendors and service providers showcase their latest products, services, and solutions. This will allow attendees to explore and evaluate the latest advancements in hardware, software, infrastructure, cooling systems, power management, and other critical aspects of data center operations. Beyond the knowledge-sharing opportunities, it will promote thought-provoking talks by Dame Dawn Childs, Val Walsh, Michael Winterson among others. Attendees will earn continuing professional development (CPD) credits by attending educational sessions and workshops, enhancing their industry credentials, and demonstrating a commitment to ongoing learning. The event will also provide a platform for career growth, with potential job openings and networking connections within the data center and cloud infrastructure sectors. Key Takeaway The conferences bring together industry experts, IT professionals, engineers, and decision-makers in the network industry. Attendees can expect a comprehensive program consisting of keynote presentations, panel discussions, case studies, and interactive workshops. The listed events will cover a wide range of topics, including the latest trends in data center design, energy efficiency, modular construction, and emerging technologies. Participating in these also offer ample networking opportunities, allowing attendees to connect with peers, share experiences, and establish valuable business connections. Leaders can stay at the forefront of the evolving data center landscape and gain a competitive edge in their respective organizations.

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Application Infrastructure

How Splunk Helps Maintain Cloud Infra?

Article | January 21, 2021

With the regular increase of data in both cloud and organizations, a way to tackle these data and extract valuable insights is highly in demand. Although there are multiple tools available in the market not all of them can provide a complete resolution. Developed in 2003, Slunk has become the ideal tool for numerous businesses across the globe. It is a software platform that is popular for searching, monitoring, analyzing, and visualizing data in real-time. Slunk performs operations such as gathering, interpreting, and coordinating data to create alerts, dashboards, and graphs instantaneously. Why Splunk? 1. Business Flexibility It improves the way people around organizations identify, predict, and solve problems simultaneously. It helps in answering questions for every part of the business, be it DevOps, IT, or Business Development. It offers capabilities to detect, visualize and collaborate anytime. 2. Enhance Digitization Splunk assists businesses in ensuring the success of their digitization with its artificial intelligence and machine learning-based solutions. 3. New Opportunities No matter how much data you have gathered, Splunk will help in scaling according to the data volume. It does that with the ecosystem provided by its partners and services. 4. Data-To-Everything It is a platform that enables businesses to detect, monitor, analyze, and work with both structured and unstructured data regardless of their source and timescale. It allows users to ask any question related to insights and take actions accordingly. 5. Fast & Flexible The time to value can be sped up to two days. Companies can deploy in increasing capacity within two days and retrieve their data as long as 90 days. Moreover, the upgrades and updates are handled by the team for them. 6. Maximize Value The subscribers of Splunk do not have to manage infrastructure and they do not even need one. As a service, it offers scarce and valuable resources as required for better performance. 7. Robust Security Splunk is certified and authorized by ISO 27001 and FedRAMP. They proffer dedicated cloud environments with encryption to the customer for robust security as well. Apart from these major advantages, Splunk also grants incredible GUI, reduces troubleshooting time, real-time dashboard visibility, incorporates AI in data strategy, monitors business metrics, powerful visualization, and search. Some of the crucial features of Splunk include development & testing, faster ROI generation, developing real-time data applications, and real-time architecture stats & reports. Be Ready for Splunk-Based Cloud Infra Maintenance At its core, Splunk is an efficient tool for data aggregation that comes with versatile search functionality. Any business can get started with Splunk depending on certain needs they have for data-set monitoring and management. It allows users to take a highly effective data wealth that is pulled from different sources like websites, apps, or IoT. All that is needed to do is getting started with Splunk-based applications for which you can hire developers with relevant knowledge and experience.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Alluxio Unveils New Data Platform for AI: Accelerating AI Products’ Time-to-Value and Maximizing Infrastructure ROI

GlobeNewswire | October 19, 2023

Alluxio, the data platform company for all data-driven workloads, today introduced Alluxio Enterprise AI, a new high-performance data platform designed to meet the rising demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads on an enterprise’s data infrastructure. Alluxio Enterprise AI brings together performance, data accessibility, scalability and cost-efficiency to enterprise AI and analytics infrastructure to fuel next-generation data-intensive applications like generative AI, computer vision, natural language processing, large language models and high-performance data analytics. To stay competitive and achieve stronger business outcomes, enterprises are in a race to modernize their data and AI infrastructure. On this journey, they find that legacy data infrastructure cannot keep pace with next-generation data-intensive AI workloads. Challenges around low performance, data accessibility, GPU scarcity, complex data engineering, and underutilized resources frequently hinder enterprises' ability to extract value from their AI initiatives. According to Gartner®, “the value of operationalized AI lies in the ability to rapidly develop, deploy, adapt and maintain AI across different environments in the enterprise. Given the engineering complexity and the demand for faster time to market, it is critical to develop less rigid AI engineering pipelines or build AI models that can self-adapt in production.” “By 2026, enterprises that have adopted AI engineering practices to build and manage adaptive AI systems will outperform their peers in the operationalizing AI models by at least 25%.” Alluxio empowers the world’s leading organizations with the most modern Data & AI platforms, and today we take another significant leap forward, said Haoyuan Li, Founder and CEO, Alluxio. Alluxio Enterprise AI provides customers with streamlined solutions for AI and more by enabling enterprises to accelerate AI workloads and maximize value from their data. The leaders of tomorrow will know how to harness transformative AI and become increasingly data-driven with the newest technology for building and maintaining AI infrastructure for performance, seamless access and ease of management. With this announcement, Alluxio expands from a one-product portfolio to two product offerings - Alluxio Enterprise AI and Alluxio Enterprise Data - catering to the diverse needs of analytics and AI. Alluxio Enterprise AI is a new product that builds on the years of distributed systems experience accumulated from the previous Alluxio Enterprise Editions, combined with a new architecture that is optimized for AI/ML workloads. Alluxio Enterprise Data is the next-gen version of Alluxio Enterprise Edition, and will continue to be the ideal choice for businesses focused primarily on analytic workloads. Accelerating End-to-End Machine Learning Pipeline Alluxio Enterprise AI enables enterprise AI infrastructure to be performant, seamless, scalable and cost-effective on existing data lakes. Alluxio Enterprise AI helps data and AI leaders and practitioners achieve four key objectives in their AI initiatives: high-performance model training and deployment to yield quick business results; seamless data access for workloads across regions and clouds; infinite scale that has been battle-tested at internet giant’s scale; and maximized return on investments by working with existing tech stack instead of costly specialized storage. With Alluxio Enterprise AI, enterprises can expect up to 20x faster training speed compared to commodity storage, up to 10x accelerated model serving, over 90% GPU utilization, and up to 90% lower costs for AI infrastructure. Alluxio Enterprise AI has a distributed system architecture with decentralized metadata to eliminate bottlenecks when accessing massive numbers of small files, typical of AI workloads. This provides unlimited scalability beyond legacy architectures, regardless of file size or quantity. The distributed cache is tailored to AI workload I/O patterns, unlike traditional analytics. Finally, it supports analytics and full machine learning pipelines - from ingestion to ETL, pre-processing, training and serving. Alluxio Enterprise AI includes the following key features: Epic Performance for Model Training and Model Serving - Alluxio Enterprise AI offers significant performance improvements to model training and serving on an enterprise’s existing data lakes. The enhanced set of APIs for model training can deliver up to 20x performance over commodity storage. For model serving, Alluxio provides extreme concurrency and up to 10x acceleration for serving models from offline training clusters for online inference. Intelligent Distributed Caching Tailored to I/O Patterns of AI Workloads - Alluxio Enterprise AI’s distributed caching feature enables AI engines to read and write data through the high performance Alluxio cache instead of slow data lake storage. Alluxio’s intelligent caching strategies are tailored to the I/O patterns of AI engines – large file sequential access, large file random access, and massive small file access. This optimization delivers high throughput and low latency for data-hungry GPUs. Training clusters are continuously fed data from the high-performance distributed cache, achieving over 90% GPU utilization. Seamless Data Access for AI Workloads Across On-prem and Cloud Environments - Alluxio Enterprise AI provides a single pane of glass for enterprises to manage AI workloads across diverse infrastructure environments easily. Providing a source of truth of data for the machine learning pipeline, the product fundamentally removes the bottleneck of data lake silos in large enterprises. Sharing data between different business units and geographical locations becomes seamless with a standard data access layer via the Alluxio Enterprise AI platform. New Distributed System Architecture, Battle-tested At Scale - Alluxio Enterprise AI builds on a new innovative decentralized architecture, DORA (Decentralized Object Repository Architecture). This architecture sets the foundation to provide infinite scale for AI workloads. It allows an AI platform to handle up to 100 billion objects with commodity storage like Amazon S3. Leveraging Alluxio’s proven expertise in distributed systems, this new architecture has addressed the ever-increasing challenges of system scalability, metadata management, high availability, and performance. “Performance, cost optimization and GPU utilization are critical for optimizing next-generation workloads as organizations seek to scale AI throughout their businesses,” said Mike Leone, Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Alluxio has a compelling offering that can truly help data and AI teams achieve higher performance, seamless data access, and ease of management for model training and model serving.” “We've collaborated closely with Alluxio and consider their platform essential to our data infrastructure,” said Rob Collins, Analytics Cloud Engineering Director, Aunalytics. “Aunalytics is enthusiastic about Alluxio's new distributed system for Enterprise AI, recognizing its immense potential in the ever-evolving AI industry.” “Our in-house-trained large language model powers our Q&A application and recommendation engines, greatly enhancing user experience and engagement,” said Mengyu Hu, Software Engineer in the data platform team, Zhihu. “In our AI infrastructure, Alluxio is at the core and center. Using Alluxio as the data access layer, we’ve significantly enhanced model training performance by 3x and deployment by 10x with GPU utilization doubled. We are excited about Alluxio’s Enterprise AI and its new DORA architecture supporting access to massive small files. This offering gives us confidence in supporting AI applications facing the upcoming artificial intelligence wave.” Deploying Alluxio in Machine Learning Pipelines According to Gartner, data accessibility and data volume/complexity is one the top three barriers to the implementation of AI techniques within an organization. Alluxio Enterprise AI can be added to the existing AI infrastructure consisting of AI compute engines and data lake storage. Sitting in the middle of compute and storage, Alluxio can work across model training and model serving in the machine learning pipeline to achieve optimal speed and cost. For example, using PyTorch as the engine for training and serving, and Amazon S3 as the existing data lake: Model Training: When a user is training models, the PyTorch data loader loads datasets from a virtual local path /mnt/alluxio_fuse/training_datasets. Instead of loading directly from S3, the data loader will load from the Alluxio cache instead. During training, the cached datasets will be used in multiple epochs, so the entire training speed is no longer bottlenecked by retrieving from S3. In this way, Alluxio speeds up training by shortening data loading and eliminates GPU idle time, increasing GPU utilization. After the models are trained, PyTorch writes the model files to S3 through Alluxio. Model Serving: The latest trained models need to be deployed to the inference cluster. Multiple TorchServe instances read the model files concurrently from S3. Alluxio caches these latest model files from S3 and serves them to inference clusters with low latency. As a result, downstream AI applications can start inferencing using the most up-to-date models as soon as they are available. Platform Integration with Existing Systems To integrate Alluxio with the existing platform, users can deploy an Alluxio cluster between compute engines and storage systems. On the compute engine side, Alluxio integrates seamlessly with popular machine learning frameworks like PyTorch, Apache Spark, TensorFlow and Ray. Enterprises can integrate Alluxio with these compute frameworks via REST API, POSIX API or S3 API. On the storage side, Alluxio connects with all types of filesystems or object storage in any location, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or both. Supported storage systems include Amazon S3, Google GCS, Azure Blob Storage, MinIO, Ceph, HDFS, and more. Alluxio works on both on-premise and cloud, either bare-metal or containerized environments. Supported cloud platforms include AWS, GCP and Azure Cloud.

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Data Storage

AMI to Drive Intel DCM's Future and Broaden Manageability Solutions for Sustainable Data Centers

Cision Canada | October 17, 2023

AMI, the leader in foundational technology for sustainable, scalable, and secure global computing, is set to drive the future of Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) as it takes over the development, sales, and support of DCM under an agreement with Intel. This strategic transition empowers AMI to lead further the innovation and expansion of the Intel DCM product. With a unique position in the industry, AMI plays a pivotal role in enabling the cloud and data center ecosystem for all compute platforms. Intel DCM empowers data centers with the capability to manage and fine-tune server performance, energy consumption, and cooling efficiency. This operational optimization reduces the total cost of ownership, improves sustainability, and elevates performance benchmarks. We thank Intel for trusting AMI to lead Intel DCM into the future. This solution for efficient data center management will play a crucial role in enhancing the operational eco-efficiency of the data centers. It empowers data center managers with real-time insights into energy usage, thermal status, device health, and asset management, says Sanjoy Maity, CEO at AMI. AMI remains steadfast in aiding data center operators in achieving their manageability and sustainability objectives. About AMI AMI is Firmware Reimagined for modern computing. As a global leader in Dynamic Firmware for security, orchestration, and manageability solutions, AMI enables the world's compute platforms from on-premises to the cloud to the edge. AMI's industry-leading foundational technology and unwavering customer support have generated lasting partnerships and spurred innovation for some of the most prominent brands in the high-tech industry. For more information, visit ami.com.

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Data Storage

CoolIT Systems Partners with Switch Datacenters to Launch Advanced Energy-Efficient Data Centers

PRWeb | October 12, 2023

CoolIT Systems, a global leader in advanced cooling technology, and Switch Datacenters, a leading sustainable data center operator and developer, are thrilled to unveil a strategic partnership that will benefit an industry seeking to improve the sustainability of data centers. Following the recent release of the World Economic Forum's Top 10 Emerging Technologies featuring "Sustainable Computing" as the 9th-ranked emerging technology, the collaboration between Switch Datacenters and CoolIT facilitates data center space and the necessary technology to significantly curtail energy and water consumption inherent in modern data centers. With a history spanning more than a decade, Switch Datacenters has consistently demonstrated a commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability. Their latest 45MW AMS6 data center near the Schiphol airport area features an HPC/AI-ready design that uses data center heat to warm adjacent greenhouses. Currently under development, their AMS5s is designed to make a significant contribution to the Amsterdam municipal heat grid with green, CO2-neutral heat. For both data centers, there's a marked preference for liquid cooling because it allows heat extraction at temperatures higher than traditional air cooling, offering enhanced economic value. CoolIT Systems is the industry-leading provider of efficient Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) and Rear Door Heat Exchangers (RDHx) that enable heat reuse and help customers meet key Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) targets. CoolIT DLC technology is featured as a factory-installed, warranty-approved feature from most major servers OEMs. "CoolIT's DLC and RDHx technologies have been instrumental in various data center heat reuse projects for years, with customers reporting at minimum a savings of 10% on energy bills (OPEX), more than 50% on CAPEX spends, and examples of PUE lowered from 1.30 to 1.02," expressed Peggy Burroughs, Director of CoolIT Next. "Our collaborations with most major server OEMs have cultivated an expansive ecosystem for clients aspiring to achieve both business and ESG goals." CoolIT is the right company to help make our vision a reality at an industrial scale. Both CoolIT and Switch Datacenters have shared the same passion for sustainable innovation for years and truly want to elevate the industry's adoption of liquid cooling. We believe liquid cooling will be the game-changer in the next wave of sustainable data center designs, and CoolIT is one of the very few companies that can lead this upcoming demand, thanks to their long history of innovation, reliability, breadth of portfolio, and capabilities to scale with their numerous IT partners worldwide, says Gregor Snip, CEO of Switch Datacenters. Data centers are projected to account for 8% of the global electricity consumption by 20301. Technologies such as Direct Liquid Cooling can significantly reduce data center energy consumption by 25-40% and deliver water savings of 70-97%, depending on local climate and specific implementations2. Switch Datacenters is leading the charge in embracing sustainable alternatives for heating by reusing data center-generated heat. With their latest project, Switch Datacenters AMS6, they will revolutionize the way nearby greenhouses are heated by providing high-temperature heat from their data center. This innovative solution will replace traditional fossil fuel-based heating and contribute to a greener future. By harnessing the power of IT servers to generate green heat for large-scale crop cultivation, Switch Datacenters is driving the transition away from fossil fuels. They strongly advocate for the integration of heat-recapture-enabled data centers in areas with high demand for heat, making it a standard design principle. With the world calling for sustainable IT and data centers, the time is ripe for this much-needed change. With the combined expertise of CoolIT and Switch Datacenters, customers can now harness technologically advanced solutions that not only result in considerable energy and water savings but also contribute significantly to the global drive for reduced environmental impact, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7), Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9), and Climate Action (SDG 13). About CoolIT Systems CoolIT Systems is renowned for its scalable liquid cooling solutions tailored for the world's most challenging computing contexts. In both enterprise data centers and high-performance computing domains, CoolIT collaborates with global OEM server design leaders, formulating efficient and trustworthy liquid cooling solutions. In the desktop enthusiast arena, CoolIT delivers unmatched performance for a diverse range of gaming setups. Their modular Direct Liquid Cooling technology, Rack DLC™, empowers dramatic spikes in rack densities, component efficacy, and power savings. Jointly, CoolIT and its allies are pioneering the large-scale adoption of sophisticated cooling techniques. About Switch Datacenters Switch Datacenters is a Dutch privately-owned data center operator and developer founded in 2010 by Gregor Snip and his brother. Initially established as a private data center for their successful hosting company, the Amsterdam-based company later expanded into a fully-fledged commercial data center operator. It added several highly efficient and environmentally-friendly data center sites to its portfolio, with a current focus on constructing and managing wholesale data centers for large global customers while also providing tailor-made data center services. Switch Datacenters is an ambitious, 100% Dutch player in the Amsterdam data center sector, experiencing rapid growth by continually partnering with leading and globally recognized industry players and customers. The company maintains a steadfast commitment to innovative and sustainable site development. Currently, Switch Datacenters has over 200MW of new sustainable data center capacity in development. This year, it will launch its flagship sustainable data center, AMS4, with major customers having already pre-leased the 15-18MW facility.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Alluxio Unveils New Data Platform for AI: Accelerating AI Products’ Time-to-Value and Maximizing Infrastructure ROI

GlobeNewswire | October 19, 2023

Alluxio, the data platform company for all data-driven workloads, today introduced Alluxio Enterprise AI, a new high-performance data platform designed to meet the rising demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads on an enterprise’s data infrastructure. Alluxio Enterprise AI brings together performance, data accessibility, scalability and cost-efficiency to enterprise AI and analytics infrastructure to fuel next-generation data-intensive applications like generative AI, computer vision, natural language processing, large language models and high-performance data analytics. To stay competitive and achieve stronger business outcomes, enterprises are in a race to modernize their data and AI infrastructure. On this journey, they find that legacy data infrastructure cannot keep pace with next-generation data-intensive AI workloads. Challenges around low performance, data accessibility, GPU scarcity, complex data engineering, and underutilized resources frequently hinder enterprises' ability to extract value from their AI initiatives. According to Gartner®, “the value of operationalized AI lies in the ability to rapidly develop, deploy, adapt and maintain AI across different environments in the enterprise. Given the engineering complexity and the demand for faster time to market, it is critical to develop less rigid AI engineering pipelines or build AI models that can self-adapt in production.” “By 2026, enterprises that have adopted AI engineering practices to build and manage adaptive AI systems will outperform their peers in the operationalizing AI models by at least 25%.” Alluxio empowers the world’s leading organizations with the most modern Data & AI platforms, and today we take another significant leap forward, said Haoyuan Li, Founder and CEO, Alluxio. Alluxio Enterprise AI provides customers with streamlined solutions for AI and more by enabling enterprises to accelerate AI workloads and maximize value from their data. The leaders of tomorrow will know how to harness transformative AI and become increasingly data-driven with the newest technology for building and maintaining AI infrastructure for performance, seamless access and ease of management. With this announcement, Alluxio expands from a one-product portfolio to two product offerings - Alluxio Enterprise AI and Alluxio Enterprise Data - catering to the diverse needs of analytics and AI. Alluxio Enterprise AI is a new product that builds on the years of distributed systems experience accumulated from the previous Alluxio Enterprise Editions, combined with a new architecture that is optimized for AI/ML workloads. Alluxio Enterprise Data is the next-gen version of Alluxio Enterprise Edition, and will continue to be the ideal choice for businesses focused primarily on analytic workloads. Accelerating End-to-End Machine Learning Pipeline Alluxio Enterprise AI enables enterprise AI infrastructure to be performant, seamless, scalable and cost-effective on existing data lakes. Alluxio Enterprise AI helps data and AI leaders and practitioners achieve four key objectives in their AI initiatives: high-performance model training and deployment to yield quick business results; seamless data access for workloads across regions and clouds; infinite scale that has been battle-tested at internet giant’s scale; and maximized return on investments by working with existing tech stack instead of costly specialized storage. With Alluxio Enterprise AI, enterprises can expect up to 20x faster training speed compared to commodity storage, up to 10x accelerated model serving, over 90% GPU utilization, and up to 90% lower costs for AI infrastructure. Alluxio Enterprise AI has a distributed system architecture with decentralized metadata to eliminate bottlenecks when accessing massive numbers of small files, typical of AI workloads. This provides unlimited scalability beyond legacy architectures, regardless of file size or quantity. The distributed cache is tailored to AI workload I/O patterns, unlike traditional analytics. Finally, it supports analytics and full machine learning pipelines - from ingestion to ETL, pre-processing, training and serving. Alluxio Enterprise AI includes the following key features: Epic Performance for Model Training and Model Serving - Alluxio Enterprise AI offers significant performance improvements to model training and serving on an enterprise’s existing data lakes. The enhanced set of APIs for model training can deliver up to 20x performance over commodity storage. For model serving, Alluxio provides extreme concurrency and up to 10x acceleration for serving models from offline training clusters for online inference. Intelligent Distributed Caching Tailored to I/O Patterns of AI Workloads - Alluxio Enterprise AI’s distributed caching feature enables AI engines to read and write data through the high performance Alluxio cache instead of slow data lake storage. Alluxio’s intelligent caching strategies are tailored to the I/O patterns of AI engines – large file sequential access, large file random access, and massive small file access. This optimization delivers high throughput and low latency for data-hungry GPUs. Training clusters are continuously fed data from the high-performance distributed cache, achieving over 90% GPU utilization. Seamless Data Access for AI Workloads Across On-prem and Cloud Environments - Alluxio Enterprise AI provides a single pane of glass for enterprises to manage AI workloads across diverse infrastructure environments easily. Providing a source of truth of data for the machine learning pipeline, the product fundamentally removes the bottleneck of data lake silos in large enterprises. Sharing data between different business units and geographical locations becomes seamless with a standard data access layer via the Alluxio Enterprise AI platform. New Distributed System Architecture, Battle-tested At Scale - Alluxio Enterprise AI builds on a new innovative decentralized architecture, DORA (Decentralized Object Repository Architecture). This architecture sets the foundation to provide infinite scale for AI workloads. It allows an AI platform to handle up to 100 billion objects with commodity storage like Amazon S3. Leveraging Alluxio’s proven expertise in distributed systems, this new architecture has addressed the ever-increasing challenges of system scalability, metadata management, high availability, and performance. “Performance, cost optimization and GPU utilization are critical for optimizing next-generation workloads as organizations seek to scale AI throughout their businesses,” said Mike Leone, Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Alluxio has a compelling offering that can truly help data and AI teams achieve higher performance, seamless data access, and ease of management for model training and model serving.” “We've collaborated closely with Alluxio and consider their platform essential to our data infrastructure,” said Rob Collins, Analytics Cloud Engineering Director, Aunalytics. “Aunalytics is enthusiastic about Alluxio's new distributed system for Enterprise AI, recognizing its immense potential in the ever-evolving AI industry.” “Our in-house-trained large language model powers our Q&A application and recommendation engines, greatly enhancing user experience and engagement,” said Mengyu Hu, Software Engineer in the data platform team, Zhihu. “In our AI infrastructure, Alluxio is at the core and center. Using Alluxio as the data access layer, we’ve significantly enhanced model training performance by 3x and deployment by 10x with GPU utilization doubled. We are excited about Alluxio’s Enterprise AI and its new DORA architecture supporting access to massive small files. This offering gives us confidence in supporting AI applications facing the upcoming artificial intelligence wave.” Deploying Alluxio in Machine Learning Pipelines According to Gartner, data accessibility and data volume/complexity is one the top three barriers to the implementation of AI techniques within an organization. Alluxio Enterprise AI can be added to the existing AI infrastructure consisting of AI compute engines and data lake storage. Sitting in the middle of compute and storage, Alluxio can work across model training and model serving in the machine learning pipeline to achieve optimal speed and cost. For example, using PyTorch as the engine for training and serving, and Amazon S3 as the existing data lake: Model Training: When a user is training models, the PyTorch data loader loads datasets from a virtual local path /mnt/alluxio_fuse/training_datasets. Instead of loading directly from S3, the data loader will load from the Alluxio cache instead. During training, the cached datasets will be used in multiple epochs, so the entire training speed is no longer bottlenecked by retrieving from S3. In this way, Alluxio speeds up training by shortening data loading and eliminates GPU idle time, increasing GPU utilization. After the models are trained, PyTorch writes the model files to S3 through Alluxio. Model Serving: The latest trained models need to be deployed to the inference cluster. Multiple TorchServe instances read the model files concurrently from S3. Alluxio caches these latest model files from S3 and serves them to inference clusters with low latency. As a result, downstream AI applications can start inferencing using the most up-to-date models as soon as they are available. Platform Integration with Existing Systems To integrate Alluxio with the existing platform, users can deploy an Alluxio cluster between compute engines and storage systems. On the compute engine side, Alluxio integrates seamlessly with popular machine learning frameworks like PyTorch, Apache Spark, TensorFlow and Ray. Enterprises can integrate Alluxio with these compute frameworks via REST API, POSIX API or S3 API. On the storage side, Alluxio connects with all types of filesystems or object storage in any location, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or both. Supported storage systems include Amazon S3, Google GCS, Azure Blob Storage, MinIO, Ceph, HDFS, and more. Alluxio works on both on-premise and cloud, either bare-metal or containerized environments. Supported cloud platforms include AWS, GCP and Azure Cloud.

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Data Storage

AMI to Drive Intel DCM's Future and Broaden Manageability Solutions for Sustainable Data Centers

Cision Canada | October 17, 2023

AMI, the leader in foundational technology for sustainable, scalable, and secure global computing, is set to drive the future of Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) as it takes over the development, sales, and support of DCM under an agreement with Intel. This strategic transition empowers AMI to lead further the innovation and expansion of the Intel DCM product. With a unique position in the industry, AMI plays a pivotal role in enabling the cloud and data center ecosystem for all compute platforms. Intel DCM empowers data centers with the capability to manage and fine-tune server performance, energy consumption, and cooling efficiency. This operational optimization reduces the total cost of ownership, improves sustainability, and elevates performance benchmarks. We thank Intel for trusting AMI to lead Intel DCM into the future. This solution for efficient data center management will play a crucial role in enhancing the operational eco-efficiency of the data centers. It empowers data center managers with real-time insights into energy usage, thermal status, device health, and asset management, says Sanjoy Maity, CEO at AMI. AMI remains steadfast in aiding data center operators in achieving their manageability and sustainability objectives. About AMI AMI is Firmware Reimagined for modern computing. As a global leader in Dynamic Firmware for security, orchestration, and manageability solutions, AMI enables the world's compute platforms from on-premises to the cloud to the edge. AMI's industry-leading foundational technology and unwavering customer support have generated lasting partnerships and spurred innovation for some of the most prominent brands in the high-tech industry. For more information, visit ami.com.

Read More

Data Storage

CoolIT Systems Partners with Switch Datacenters to Launch Advanced Energy-Efficient Data Centers

PRWeb | October 12, 2023

CoolIT Systems, a global leader in advanced cooling technology, and Switch Datacenters, a leading sustainable data center operator and developer, are thrilled to unveil a strategic partnership that will benefit an industry seeking to improve the sustainability of data centers. Following the recent release of the World Economic Forum's Top 10 Emerging Technologies featuring "Sustainable Computing" as the 9th-ranked emerging technology, the collaboration between Switch Datacenters and CoolIT facilitates data center space and the necessary technology to significantly curtail energy and water consumption inherent in modern data centers. With a history spanning more than a decade, Switch Datacenters has consistently demonstrated a commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability. Their latest 45MW AMS6 data center near the Schiphol airport area features an HPC/AI-ready design that uses data center heat to warm adjacent greenhouses. Currently under development, their AMS5s is designed to make a significant contribution to the Amsterdam municipal heat grid with green, CO2-neutral heat. For both data centers, there's a marked preference for liquid cooling because it allows heat extraction at temperatures higher than traditional air cooling, offering enhanced economic value. CoolIT Systems is the industry-leading provider of efficient Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) and Rear Door Heat Exchangers (RDHx) that enable heat reuse and help customers meet key Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) targets. CoolIT DLC technology is featured as a factory-installed, warranty-approved feature from most major servers OEMs. "CoolIT's DLC and RDHx technologies have been instrumental in various data center heat reuse projects for years, with customers reporting at minimum a savings of 10% on energy bills (OPEX), more than 50% on CAPEX spends, and examples of PUE lowered from 1.30 to 1.02," expressed Peggy Burroughs, Director of CoolIT Next. "Our collaborations with most major server OEMs have cultivated an expansive ecosystem for clients aspiring to achieve both business and ESG goals." CoolIT is the right company to help make our vision a reality at an industrial scale. Both CoolIT and Switch Datacenters have shared the same passion for sustainable innovation for years and truly want to elevate the industry's adoption of liquid cooling. We believe liquid cooling will be the game-changer in the next wave of sustainable data center designs, and CoolIT is one of the very few companies that can lead this upcoming demand, thanks to their long history of innovation, reliability, breadth of portfolio, and capabilities to scale with their numerous IT partners worldwide, says Gregor Snip, CEO of Switch Datacenters. Data centers are projected to account for 8% of the global electricity consumption by 20301. Technologies such as Direct Liquid Cooling can significantly reduce data center energy consumption by 25-40% and deliver water savings of 70-97%, depending on local climate and specific implementations2. Switch Datacenters is leading the charge in embracing sustainable alternatives for heating by reusing data center-generated heat. With their latest project, Switch Datacenters AMS6, they will revolutionize the way nearby greenhouses are heated by providing high-temperature heat from their data center. This innovative solution will replace traditional fossil fuel-based heating and contribute to a greener future. By harnessing the power of IT servers to generate green heat for large-scale crop cultivation, Switch Datacenters is driving the transition away from fossil fuels. They strongly advocate for the integration of heat-recapture-enabled data centers in areas with high demand for heat, making it a standard design principle. With the world calling for sustainable IT and data centers, the time is ripe for this much-needed change. With the combined expertise of CoolIT and Switch Datacenters, customers can now harness technologically advanced solutions that not only result in considerable energy and water savings but also contribute significantly to the global drive for reduced environmental impact, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7), Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9), and Climate Action (SDG 13). About CoolIT Systems CoolIT Systems is renowned for its scalable liquid cooling solutions tailored for the world's most challenging computing contexts. In both enterprise data centers and high-performance computing domains, CoolIT collaborates with global OEM server design leaders, formulating efficient and trustworthy liquid cooling solutions. In the desktop enthusiast arena, CoolIT delivers unmatched performance for a diverse range of gaming setups. Their modular Direct Liquid Cooling technology, Rack DLC™, empowers dramatic spikes in rack densities, component efficacy, and power savings. Jointly, CoolIT and its allies are pioneering the large-scale adoption of sophisticated cooling techniques. About Switch Datacenters Switch Datacenters is a Dutch privately-owned data center operator and developer founded in 2010 by Gregor Snip and his brother. Initially established as a private data center for their successful hosting company, the Amsterdam-based company later expanded into a fully-fledged commercial data center operator. It added several highly efficient and environmentally-friendly data center sites to its portfolio, with a current focus on constructing and managing wholesale data centers for large global customers while also providing tailor-made data center services. Switch Datacenters is an ambitious, 100% Dutch player in the Amsterdam data center sector, experiencing rapid growth by continually partnering with leading and globally recognized industry players and customers. The company maintains a steadfast commitment to innovative and sustainable site development. Currently, Switch Datacenters has over 200MW of new sustainable data center capacity in development. This year, it will launch its flagship sustainable data center, AMS4, with major customers having already pre-leased the 15-18MW facility.

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