“Maximizing the Value of IT” Webinar

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Article | October 10, 2023

COVID-19 has altered our world. In this series of stories, Data Center Frontier explores the strategic challenges the pandemic presents for the data center and cloud computing sectors as we navigate this complex new landscape. We begin with a look at how COVID-19 is impacting demand for digital infrastructure. The COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the importance of data centers and cloud computing for our society. In the early days of the crisis, the data center

Application Infrastructure, Application Storage

Article | July 19, 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.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

Article | July 19, 2023

Unlocking the potential of hyper-converged infrastructure: Designing an advanced data center with scalability, efficiency, and performance for seamless HCI deployments through recent trends. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Top Trends to consider in HCI 2.1. Public Cloud Services: An Option to On-premises Storage Infrastructure 2.2. Increasing Priority for Edge in Digital Businesses 2.3. Application Modernization 2.4. Hybrid and HCI: The Way to Future 2.5. HCI Automation Software in Pipeline 2.6. Backup and Disaster Recovery 2.7. Quadrupling of Micro Data and Edge Centers 3. Wrap Up 1. Introduction In the era of hyper-converged infrastructure, designing an advanced data center is crucial to unlock the full potential of this transformative technology. With HCI combining compute, storage, and networking into a single platform, the data center must be carefully planned and optimized to ensure scalability, flexibility, and efficient operations. In this article, explore the key considerations and top hyper converged infrastructure trends for designing an advanced data center tailored for HCI, enabling organizations to harness the benefits of this innovative infrastructure. 2. Top Trends to consider in HCI 2.1 Public Cloud Services: An Option to On-premises Storage Infrastructure HCI is experiencing the option of public cloud services as an alternative to on-premises storage infrastructure. By leveraging cloud services and native HCI platform file services, organizations can optimize workloads, leverage data storage services, eliminate silos, and create a unified and high-performance infrastructure. A 2019 ESG survey conducted among IT and data storage professionals found that public cloud storage infrastructure is increasingly favored over on-premises options. The survey revealed that IT professionals are twice as likely to consider public cloud storage infrastructure due to its benefits in cost efficiency, ease of procurement, automation capabilities, and simplified evaluation processes. Hyperconverged infrastructure facilitates on-premises and cloud-based deployments, enabling organizations to integrate and manage their IT infrastructure across both environments seamlessly. As organizations continue to explore hybrid IT strategies, HCI will play a critical role in providing a flexible and efficient infrastructure foundation. 2.2 Increasing Priority for Edge in Digital Businesses Organizations are investing in IT to support this new business model of edge computing, and HCI plays a crucial role in enabling the deployment of edge resources. This trend also drives cloud adoption for such implementations, facilitating rapid responses to evolving business models and enabling dynamic scalability without impacting the core business. The rise of remote workforces has highlighted the importance of edge computing, where computing resources are brought closer to the point of data generation and consumption. This streamlined approach enables organizations to deploy and manage edge resources efficiently, ensuring reliable performance and data availability for remote employees. Furthermore, the adoption of IT infrastructure is complemented by the increasing use of cloud services. HCI serves as a bridge between on-premises infrastructure and the cloud, facilitating seamless integration and enabling organizations to leverage cloud capabilities for rapid scalability and flexibility. 2.3 Application modernization One among Hyper-Converged Infrastructure trends, is application modernization is driving CIOs to seek opportunities for migrating to next-generation digital platforms that leverage HCI and cloud-native approaches. As part of this modernization approach, DevOps practices will need to incorporate containers and orchestration layers to provide the burst capabilities required to keep up with the escalating demands of digital experiences. The need for application modernization makes embracing advanced digital platforms that can efficiently modernize their existing applications compelling. This transformation allows for the rapid development of new products, services, and processes, enhancing customer experiences and increasing customer satisfaction. Containers provide a lightweight and scalable environment, allowing for consistent and reliable application deployment across various platforms. Orchestration tools streamline the management of containerized applications, enabling automated scaling, load balancing, and efficient resource allocation. By leveraging these containerization and orchestration layers, organizations can meet the growing demands of digital experiences, ensuring optimal performance and responsiveness. 2.4 Hybrid and HCI: The Way to Future Traditional, cumbersome infrastructure is slowing down companies and impeding their ability to innovate faster than their more agile competitors. The future of IT infrastructure lies in hybrid environments, and HCI serves as a powerful facilitator for this transition. HCI allows businesses to seamlessly simplify their environments, optimize workload experiences, and improve scalability. According to research by 451 Research, 45% of respondents using HCI report that it facilitates resource scaling across their environments as circumstances and goals evolve. Additionally, an overwhelming 97% of HCI customers agree that HCI simplifies the deployment process for hybrid IT environments. This demonstrates the value and relevance of HCI in supporting the agility and flexibility demanded by the future of IT infrastructure. Fundamental innovations such as compute/storage disaggregation with HCI Mesh, native file services, and Kubernetes integration are broadening the range of applications for which HCI is well suited. With ongoing product innovations, such as compute/storage disaggregation, native file services, and Kubernetes integration, HCI continues to expand its range of applications, providing organizations with the performance, agility, and cost savings needed in modern IT infrastructure. 2.5 HCI Automation Software in Pipeline The highly automated nature of HCI helps mitigate the risk of downtime by automating everyday life-cycle infrastructure management tasks, such as firmware upgrades and system refreshes. This automation reduces the need for complex, disruptive forklift upgrades traditionally prevalent in data centers. As a result, the data center becomes more intelligent and automated through the pervasive use of artificial intelligence and hyper-convergence, particularly in the monitoring and managing of assets and risks. Hyper converged infrastructure vendors are heavily investing in machine learning and automation to improve the underlying hardware and hyper-converged software for providing hyper converged solutions. The development of automation software, machine-learning-based AI for HCI reflects the industry's focus on enhancing HCI's efficiency, resilience, and manageability. Integrating artificial intelligence and automation technologies into HCI offerings paves the way for more intelligent and self-managing data centers. As the trend continues to evolve, organizations can expect greater automation capabilities and improved management of their decentralized and distributed systems through innovative HCI software solutions. 2.6 Backup and Disaster Recovery Increasing concerns for faster data backup and security drive significant growth in the backup and disaster recovery application segment. Research firm MarketsAndMarkets reports that backup and disaster recovery are the fastest-growing applications within the hyper-converged market. One notable trend in the backup and disaster recovery space is the ability of hyper-convergence to reduce the total cost of ownership and operating expenses. Organizations can achieve cost savings and streamline their backup and disaster recovery processes by consolidating backup software, deduplication appliances, and storage arrays into a unified infrastructure. This integrated approach simplifies management, eliminates the need for separate components, and improves overall efficiency. According to MarketsAndMarkets, the global hyper-converged infrastructure market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33 percent over the next four years, reaching a value of $17.1 billion by 2023. The demand for continuous application delivery and the increasing awareness among enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses are expected to drive this hyper converged market size expansion. 2.7 Quadrupling of Micro Data and Edge Centers The evolution and adaptation of traditional enterprise data centers, driven by the rise of cloud computing, are paving the way for the expansion of micro or edge data centers. Gartner predicts that by 2025 these edge data centers will quadruple, fueled by innovations such as 5G and hyperconverged infrastructure. This shift presents an opportunity for hyper-converged offerings to consolidate servers, storage, networking, and software into a single, streamlined solution at the edge. While small remote office and edge deployments may require fewer storage and compute resources, they greatly benefit from centralized management and high-availability designs. HCI's ability to consolidate resources and its compact form factor make it an ideal solution for edge environments with limited physical space. 3. Wrap Up Designing an advanced data center for hyper-converged infrastructure trends requires careful planning and consideration of key factors in HCI such as scalability, network architecture, storage requirements, and redundancy. By implementing approaches like modular design, modern digitalization, efficient cooling, proper power distribution, and robust security measures, organizations can create a data center that optimally supports HCI deployments. With an advanced data center, organizations can realize the full potential of HCI, achieving agility, scalability, and improved performance for their IT infrastructure. An advanced data center tailored for hyper-converged infrastructure is essential to fully leverage HCI's benefits. By following the trends & techniques and considering critical factors in design, organizations can create a future-proof and efficient data center that enables seamless deployment and operation of HCI solutions, unlocking agility and scalability for their IT infrastructure.

Article | May 3, 2021

What Is IT Infrastructure Security? If you are reading this blog, we would like to assume that you are either an aspiring cybersecurity professional or a business owner looking for ways to improve their network security. A business IT infrastructure includes networks, software, hardware, equipment, and other facilities that make up an IT network. These networks are applied to establish, monitor, test, manage, deliver, and support IT services. So, IT infrastructure security describes the process of safeguarding the core networking infrastructure, and it is typically applied to enterprise IT environments. You can improve IT infrastructure security by installing protective solutions to block unauthorized access, theft, deletion, and data modification.