Bringing your Internet of Things infrastructure into the digital age

When Campofrio Food Group’s 17-year-old factory in Burgos, Spain, famously burned to the ground, the multinational meat processor turned tragedy into opportunity. With an eye on digital transformation, Campofrio rebuilt the facility as a connected factory, powered by the Internet of Things (IoT). This allowed the state-of-the-art, greenfield meat packing plant to automate processes and provide real-time data on materials, equipment and workers to uncover new business value.

Spotlight

TeraThink Corporation

TeraThink is an exceptionally nimble, resourceful team of information technology and management consultants that’s purpose-built to help our clients drive real, rapid progress and make smart, sustainable improvements that lead to less stress and greater operational success. Our seasoned consultants are 100% focused on our government clients, and have a proven track record collaborating with them to dramatically reduce cycle times, do more with less, lower error rates, simplify processes, save money, and equip every client to focus more energy and resources on accomplishing their missions.

OTHER ARTICLES
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

How to Rapidly Scale IT Infrastructure For Remote Workers

Article | July 19, 2023

Rapid IT infrastructure scaling is always challenging. In March 2020, the coronavirus caused a surge in remote workers as organizations switched overwhelmingly to work-from-home policies. Scaling IT infrastructure to support this sudden shift proved to be a struggle for IT teams, resulting in a migration to cloud-based applications and solutions, a rush on hardware that can support a remote environment, and challenges scaling VPNs to support remote worker security. Here are some of the insights and lessons learned from IT professionals.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

How to backup hyperconverged infrastructure

Article | October 10, 2023

Enterprises running hypervisors on hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) systems typically have backup options available to them that are not available to those running on generic hardware. Such customers may also have additional backup challenges depending on the HCI vendor and hypervisor they have chosen. Let’s take a look.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Network Security: The Safety Net in the Digital World

Article | September 14, 2023

Every business or organization has spent a lot of time and energy building its network infrastructure. The right resources have taken countless hours to establish, ensuring that their network offers connectivity, operation, management, and communication. Their complex hardware, software, service architecture, and strategies are all working for optimum and dependable use. Setting up a security strategy for your network requires ongoing, consistent work. Therefore, the first step in implementing a security technique is to do so. The underlying architecture of your network should consider a range of implementation, upkeep, and continuous active procedures. Network infrastructure security requires a comprehensive strategy that includes best practices and continuing procedures to guarantee that the underlying infrastructure is always safe. A company's choice of security measures is determined by: Appropriate legal requirements Rules unique to the industry The specific network and security needs Security for network infrastructure has numerous significant advantages. For example, a business or institution can cut expenses, boost output, secure internal communications, and guarantee the security of sensitive data. Hardware, software, and services are vital, but they could all have flaws that unintentional or intentional acts could take advantage of. Security for network infrastructure is intended to provide sophisticated, comprehensive resources for defense against internal and external threats. Infrastructures are susceptible to assaults like denial-of-service, ransomware, spam, and illegal access. Implementing and maintaining a workable security plan for your network architecture can be challenging and time-consuming. Experts can help with this crucial and continuous process. A robust infrastructure lowers operational costs, boosts output, and protects sensitive data from hackers. While no security measure will be able to prevent all attack attempts, network infrastructure security can help you lessen the effects of a cyberattack and guarantee that your business is back up and running as soon as feasible.

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Storage Management

Ensuring Compliance in IaaS: Addressing Regulatory Requirements in Cloud

Article | May 3, 2023

Stay ahead of the curve and navigate the complex landscape of regulatory obligations to safeguard data in cloud. Explores the challenges of maintaining compliance and strategies for risk mitigation. Contents 1. Introduction 2. 3 Essential Regulatory Requirements 2.1 Before migration 2.2. During migration 2.3. After migration 3. Challenges in Ensuring Compliance in Infrastructure as a Service in Cloud Computing 3.1. Shared Responsibility Model 3.2. Data Breach 3.3. Access Mismanagement 3.4. Audit and Monitoring Challenges 4. Strategies for Addressing Compliance Challenges in IaaS 4.1. Risk Management and Assessment 4.2. Encryption and Collaboration with Cloud Service Providers 4.3. Contractual Agreements 4.4. Compliance Monitoring and Reporting 5. Conclusion 1. Introduction Ensuring Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) compliance in security is crucial for organizations to meet regulatory requirements and avoid potential legal and financial consequences. However, several challenges must be addressed before and after migration to the cloud. This article provides an overview of the regulatory requirements in cloud computing, explores the challenges faced in ensuring compliance in IaaS, a cloud implementation service and provides strategies for addressing these challenges to ensure a successful cloud migration. 2. 3 Essential Regulatory Requirements When adopting cloud infrastructure as a service, organizations must comply with regulatory requirements before, during, and after migration to the cloud. This ensures avoiding the challenges, firms may face later and suggest solutions if they do so. 2.1 Before migration: Organizations must identify the relevant regulations that apply to their industry and geographic location. This includes: Data Protection Laws, Industry-Specific Regulations, and International Laws. 2.2. During migration: Organizations must ensure that they meet regulatory requirements while transferring data and applications to the cloud. This involves: Ensuring proper access management, data encryption, and data residency requirements. 2.3. After migration: Organizations must continue to meet regulatory requirements through ongoing monitoring and reporting. This includes: Regularly reviewing and updating security measures, ensuring proper data protection, and complying with audit and reporting requirements. 3. Challenges in Ensuring Compliance in Infrastructureas a Service in Cloud Computing 3.1. Shared Responsibility Model The lack of control over the infrastructure in IaaS cloud computing is caused by the shared responsibility model of IaaS, where the cloud service provider is responsible for the IaaS security while the customer is responsible for securing the data and applications they store and run in the cloud. According to a survey, 22.8% of respondents cited the lack of control over infrastructure as a top concern for cloud security. (Source: Cloud Security Alliance) 3.2. Data Breach Data breaches have serious consequences for businesses, including legal and financial penalties, damage to their reputation, and the loss of customer trust. The location of data and the regulations governing its storage and processing create challenges for businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions. The global average total cost of a data breach increased by USD 0.11 million to USD 4.35 million in 2022, the highest it's been in the history of this report. The increase from USD 4.24 million in the 2021 report to USD 4.35 million in the 2022 report represents a 2.6% increase. (Source: IBM) 3.3. Access Mismanagement Insider threats, where authorized users abuse their access privileges, can be a significant challenge for access management in IaaS. This includes the intentional or accidental misuse of credentials or non-protected infrastructure and the theft or loss of devices containing sensitive data. The 2020 data breach investigations report found that over 80% of data breaches were caused by compromised credentials or human error, highlighting the importance of effective access management. (Source: Verizon) 3.4. Audit and Monitoring Challenges Large volumes of alerts overwhelm security teams, leading to fatigue and missed alerts, which result in non-compliance or security incidents going unnoticed. Limited resources may also make it challenging to effectively monitor and audit infrastructure as a service cloud environment, including the implementation and maintenance of monitoring tools. 4. Strategies for Addressing Compliance Challenges in IaaS 4.1. Risk Management and Assessment Risk Assessment and Management includes conducting a risk assessment, including assessing risks related to data security, access controls, and regulatory compliance. It also involves implementing risk mitigation measures to address identified risks, like additional security measures or access controls such as encryption or multi-factor authentication. 4.2. Encryption and Collaboration with Cloud Service Providers Encryption can be implemented at the application, database, or file system level, depending on the specific needs of the business. In addition, businesses should establish clear service level agreements with their cloud service provider related to data protection. This includes requirements for data security, access controls, and backup and recovery processes. 4.3. Contractual Agreements The agreement should also establish audit and compliance requirements, including regular assessments of access management controls and policies. Using contractual agreements, organizations help ensure that they are clearly defined and that the cloud service provider is held accountable for implementing effective access management controls and policies. 4.4. Compliance Monitoring and Reporting Monitoring and Reporting involves setting up automated monitoring and reporting mechanisms that track compliance with relevant regulations and standards and generate reports. They should also leverage technologies such as intrusion detection and prevention systems, security information and event management (SIEM) tools, and log analysis tools to collect, analyze, and report on security events in real time. 5. Conclusion In accordance with the increasing prevalence of data breaches and the growing complexity of regulatory requirements, maintaining a secure and compliant cloud environment will be crucial for businesses to build trust with customers and avoid legal and financial risks. Addressing these requirements, the cloud helps companies maintain data privacy, avoid legal risks, and build customer trust. Organizations create a secure and compliant cloud environment that meets their needs by overcoming challenges and implementing best practices, working closely with cloud service providers. Ultimately, by prioritizing compliance and investing in the necessary resources and expertise, businesses can navigate these challenges and unlock the full potential of the cloud with confidence.

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Spotlight

TeraThink Corporation

TeraThink is an exceptionally nimble, resourceful team of information technology and management consultants that’s purpose-built to help our clients drive real, rapid progress and make smart, sustainable improvements that lead to less stress and greater operational success. Our seasoned consultants are 100% focused on our government clients, and have a proven track record collaborating with them to dramatically reduce cycle times, do more with less, lower error rates, simplify processes, save money, and equip every client to focus more energy and resources on accomplishing their missions.

Related News

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Storage Management, IT Systems Management

Supermicro Launches Industry's First NVIDIA HGX H100 8 and 4-GPU H100 Servers with Liquid Cooling -- Reduces Data Center Power Costs by Up to 40%

Prnewswire | May 22, 2023

Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, continues to expand its data center offerings with liquid cooled NVIDIA HGX H100 rack scale solutions. Advanced liquid cooling technologies entirely from Supermicro reduce the lead time for a complete installation, increase performance, and result in lower operating expenses while significantly reducing the PUE of data centers. Savings for a data center are estimated to be 40% for power when using Supermicro liquid cooling solutions compared to an air-cooled data center. In addition, up to 86% reduction in direct cooling costs compared to existing data centers may be realized. "Supermicro continues to lead the industry supporting the demanding needs of AI workloads and modern data centers worldwide," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO of Supermicro. "Our innovative GPU servers that use our liquid cooling technology significantly lower the power requirements of data centers. With the amount of power required to enable today's rapidly evolving large scale AI models, optimizing TCO and the Total Cost to Environment (TCE) is crucial to data center operators. We have proven expertise in designing and building entire racks of high-performance servers. These GPU systems are designed from the ground up for rack scale integration with liquid cooling to provide superior performance, efficiency, and ease of deployments, allowing us to meet our customers' requirements with a short lead time." To learn more about Supermicro's GPU servers, visit: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/gpu AI-optimized racks with the latest Supermicro product families, including the Intel and AMD server product lines, can be quickly delivered from standard engineering templates or easily customized based on the user's unique requirements. Supermicro continues to offer the industry's broadest product line with the highest-performing servers and storage systems to tackle complex compute-intensive projects. Rack scale integrated solutions give customers the confidence and ability to plug the racks in, connect to the network and become more productive sooner than managing the technology themselves. The top-of-the-line liquid cooled GPU server contains dual Intel or AMD CPUs and eight or four interconnected NVIDIA HGX H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Using liquid cooling reduces the power consumption of data centers by up to 40%, resulting in lower operating costs. In addition, both systems significantly surpass the previous generation of NVIDIA HGX GPU equipped systems, providing up to 30x performance and efficiency in today's large transformer models with faster GPU-GPU interconnect speed and PCIe 5.0 based networking and storage. State-of-the-art eight NVIDIA H100 SXM5 Tensor Core GPU servers from Supermicro for today's largest scale AI models include: SYS-821GE-TNHR – (Dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 8 GPUs, 8U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/8U/SYS-821GE-TNHR AS -8125GS-TNHR – (Dual 4th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 8 GPUs, 8U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/8U/AS-8125GS-TNHR Supermicro also designs a range of GPU servers customizable for fast AI training, vast volume AI inferencing, or AI-fused HPC workloads, including the systems with four NVIDIA H100 SXM5 Tensor Core GPUs. SYS-421GU-TNXR - (Dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 4 GPUs, 4U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/4U/SYS-421GU-TNXR SYS-521GU-TNXR - (Dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 4 GPUs, 5U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/4U/SYS-521GU-TNXR Supermicro's liquid cooling rack level solution includes a Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU) that provides up to 80kW of direct-to-chip (D2C) cooling for today's highest TDP CPUs and GPUs for a wide range of Supermicro servers. The redundant and hot-swappable power supply and liquid cooling pumps ensure that the servers will be continuously cooled, even with a power supply or pump failure. The leak-proof connectors give customers the added confidence of uninterrupted liquid cooling for all systems. Learn more about the Supermicro Liquid Cooling system at: https://www.supermicro.com/en/solutions/liquid-cooling Rack scale design and integration has become a critical service for systems suppliers. As AI and HPC have become an increasingly critical technology within organizations, configurations from the server level to the entire data center must be optimized and configured for maximum performance. The Supermicro system and rack scale experts work closely with customers to explore the requirements and have the knowledge and manufacturing abilities to deliver significant numbers of racks to customers worldwide. Read the Supermicro Large Scale AI Solution Brief - https://www.supermicro.com/solutions/Solution-Brief_Rack_Scale_AI.pdf Supermicro at ISC To explore these technologies and meet with our experts, plan on visiting the Supermicro Booth D405 at ISC High Performance 2023 event in Hamburg, Germany, May 21 – 25, 2023. About Super Micro Computer, Inc. Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first to market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are transforming into a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, and switch systems, software, and services while delivering advanced high-volume motherboard, power, and chassis products. The products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling). Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.

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Fortinet Debuts SD-WAN ASIC to Power Latest FortiGate Appliance

sdxcentral | April 09, 2019

Fortinet today released a SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC, which will power the latest iteration of its FortiGate appliance, 100F. The company also updated its operating system and security fabric to power what it calls security-driven networking, including new features for SD-WAN and other edge and multi-cloud environments. FortiGate is the firm’s next-generation firewall appliance, which is what it offers its SD-WAN features through. Fortinet began selling SD-WAN directly to its customers (through this appliance) last July. Nirav Shah, the senior director of network security products and solutions at Fortinet, said the company has been focused for three years on building SD-WAN functionality as a software, but this is the first announcement being made in terms of redesigning the architecture and building an ASIC

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Belgian Carriers Grapple With 5G Spectrum Auction Delay and Radiation Concerns

sdxcentral | April 09, 2019

Belgium’s three mobile carriers have in recent months been ramping up their 5G network plans, but hurdles still lie in their way. These include growing concerns about radiation levels of new 5G antennas and the seeming inability of the country’s ruling bodies to agree on a 5G auction process. Former telecom incumbent Proximus is working with Nokia to upgrade the capacity of its IP transport network tenfold to prepare for new services including 5G and IoT. The carrier has been working with Nokia on the Terabit IP Transport and Aggregation Network (TITAN) project since last August, and just switched on the Nokia 7750 SR-14s multi-terabit router that uses the Nokia FP4 network processor.

Read More

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Storage Management, IT Systems Management

Supermicro Launches Industry's First NVIDIA HGX H100 8 and 4-GPU H100 Servers with Liquid Cooling -- Reduces Data Center Power Costs by Up to 40%

Prnewswire | May 22, 2023

Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, continues to expand its data center offerings with liquid cooled NVIDIA HGX H100 rack scale solutions. Advanced liquid cooling technologies entirely from Supermicro reduce the lead time for a complete installation, increase performance, and result in lower operating expenses while significantly reducing the PUE of data centers. Savings for a data center are estimated to be 40% for power when using Supermicro liquid cooling solutions compared to an air-cooled data center. In addition, up to 86% reduction in direct cooling costs compared to existing data centers may be realized. "Supermicro continues to lead the industry supporting the demanding needs of AI workloads and modern data centers worldwide," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO of Supermicro. "Our innovative GPU servers that use our liquid cooling technology significantly lower the power requirements of data centers. With the amount of power required to enable today's rapidly evolving large scale AI models, optimizing TCO and the Total Cost to Environment (TCE) is crucial to data center operators. We have proven expertise in designing and building entire racks of high-performance servers. These GPU systems are designed from the ground up for rack scale integration with liquid cooling to provide superior performance, efficiency, and ease of deployments, allowing us to meet our customers' requirements with a short lead time." To learn more about Supermicro's GPU servers, visit: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/gpu AI-optimized racks with the latest Supermicro product families, including the Intel and AMD server product lines, can be quickly delivered from standard engineering templates or easily customized based on the user's unique requirements. Supermicro continues to offer the industry's broadest product line with the highest-performing servers and storage systems to tackle complex compute-intensive projects. Rack scale integrated solutions give customers the confidence and ability to plug the racks in, connect to the network and become more productive sooner than managing the technology themselves. The top-of-the-line liquid cooled GPU server contains dual Intel or AMD CPUs and eight or four interconnected NVIDIA HGX H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Using liquid cooling reduces the power consumption of data centers by up to 40%, resulting in lower operating costs. In addition, both systems significantly surpass the previous generation of NVIDIA HGX GPU equipped systems, providing up to 30x performance and efficiency in today's large transformer models with faster GPU-GPU interconnect speed and PCIe 5.0 based networking and storage. State-of-the-art eight NVIDIA H100 SXM5 Tensor Core GPU servers from Supermicro for today's largest scale AI models include: SYS-821GE-TNHR – (Dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 8 GPUs, 8U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/8U/SYS-821GE-TNHR AS -8125GS-TNHR – (Dual 4th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 8 GPUs, 8U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/8U/AS-8125GS-TNHR Supermicro also designs a range of GPU servers customizable for fast AI training, vast volume AI inferencing, or AI-fused HPC workloads, including the systems with four NVIDIA H100 SXM5 Tensor Core GPUs. SYS-421GU-TNXR - (Dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 4 GPUs, 4U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/4U/SYS-421GU-TNXR SYS-521GU-TNXR - (Dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, NVIDIA HGX H100 4 GPUs, 5U)https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/GPU/4U/SYS-521GU-TNXR Supermicro's liquid cooling rack level solution includes a Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU) that provides up to 80kW of direct-to-chip (D2C) cooling for today's highest TDP CPUs and GPUs for a wide range of Supermicro servers. The redundant and hot-swappable power supply and liquid cooling pumps ensure that the servers will be continuously cooled, even with a power supply or pump failure. The leak-proof connectors give customers the added confidence of uninterrupted liquid cooling for all systems. Learn more about the Supermicro Liquid Cooling system at: https://www.supermicro.com/en/solutions/liquid-cooling Rack scale design and integration has become a critical service for systems suppliers. As AI and HPC have become an increasingly critical technology within organizations, configurations from the server level to the entire data center must be optimized and configured for maximum performance. The Supermicro system and rack scale experts work closely with customers to explore the requirements and have the knowledge and manufacturing abilities to deliver significant numbers of racks to customers worldwide. Read the Supermicro Large Scale AI Solution Brief - https://www.supermicro.com/solutions/Solution-Brief_Rack_Scale_AI.pdf Supermicro at ISC To explore these technologies and meet with our experts, plan on visiting the Supermicro Booth D405 at ISC High Performance 2023 event in Hamburg, Germany, May 21 – 25, 2023. About Super Micro Computer, Inc. Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first to market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are transforming into a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, and switch systems, software, and services while delivering advanced high-volume motherboard, power, and chassis products. The products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling). Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Read More

Fortinet Debuts SD-WAN ASIC to Power Latest FortiGate Appliance

sdxcentral | April 09, 2019

Fortinet today released a SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC, which will power the latest iteration of its FortiGate appliance, 100F. The company also updated its operating system and security fabric to power what it calls security-driven networking, including new features for SD-WAN and other edge and multi-cloud environments. FortiGate is the firm’s next-generation firewall appliance, which is what it offers its SD-WAN features through. Fortinet began selling SD-WAN directly to its customers (through this appliance) last July. Nirav Shah, the senior director of network security products and solutions at Fortinet, said the company has been focused for three years on building SD-WAN functionality as a software, but this is the first announcement being made in terms of redesigning the architecture and building an ASIC

Read More

Belgian Carriers Grapple With 5G Spectrum Auction Delay and Radiation Concerns

sdxcentral | April 09, 2019

Belgium’s three mobile carriers have in recent months been ramping up their 5G network plans, but hurdles still lie in their way. These include growing concerns about radiation levels of new 5G antennas and the seeming inability of the country’s ruling bodies to agree on a 5G auction process. Former telecom incumbent Proximus is working with Nokia to upgrade the capacity of its IP transport network tenfold to prepare for new services including 5G and IoT. The carrier has been working with Nokia on the Terabit IP Transport and Aggregation Network (TITAN) project since last August, and just switched on the Nokia 7750 SR-14s multi-terabit router that uses the Nokia FP4 network processor.

Read More

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