Tag Archives: Data Center

IBM To Fuel AI Digital Transformation In Malaysia!

IBM is offering IT infrastructure with a new level of security and reliability to fuel Malaysia’s AI digital transformation!

AI Digital Transformation In Malaysia Needs Better IT Infra!

Malaysia is at a pivotal point in its digital journey, with businesses future-proofing their organisations by leveraging AI and automation.

The digital economy is now a cornerstone of Malaysia’s economy, contributing 23.2% of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2021. The Malaysia Minister of Communications and Digital, Fahmi Fadzil, anticipates that this will increase to 25.5% by 2025, with a value of RM382 billion. The National Tech Association of Malaysia is even more optimistic, and believes that the digital economy will hit that economic contribution much earlier.

The increased urgency in adopting cutting-edge technologies like AI is driving demand for better IT infrastructure. Better not just in terms of performance and availability, but also security and reliability.

An IDC report forecasted that AI spending in the Asia Pacific region alone will skyrocket to US$78 billion by 2027. And these AI investments are predominantly being funnelled into infrastructure provisioning. That’s because ultimately, digital transformation in any nation is reliant on its IT infrastructure.

IBM To Fuel AI Digital Transformation In Malaysia!

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to AI infrastructure. Organisations must provision the right infrastructure for the AI task at hand.

They have to not only look at the size and scale of the AI models and tasks, they also have to consider security and privacy issues, as well as regulatory compliance. A resilient infrastructure by design is also critical, with AI workloads becoming essential backbones to mission critical applications and workloads.

To that end, IBM Power Systems offer a secure and reliable platform for enterprises to perform inference, and run AI algorithms on their most sensitive data and transactions.

IBM Power Systems run on the Power10 core, which is designed for AI acceleration. Each Power10 core on the IBM Power S1022 can process up to 42% more batch queries per second than a comparable x86 server with a peak load of 40 concurrent users, while running large language AI models.

IBM Power10 systems also offers enterprise out-0f-the-box low-latency transactional capabilities and throughput, resiliency, continuous availability (99.999%) and concurrent replace and repair.

The IBM Power10 is also designed for greater efficiency. The Power E1080, for example, offers 3X the capacity with 52% lower power consumption for the same workload, compared to the Power E880C. It also offers 33% lower power consumption than the Power E980 for the same workload.

IBM claims that, in general, Power10 systems offer 6X more throughput per container cluster, and 40% to 50% lower cost than comparable x86 solutions.

On top of that, the IBM Power Systems are built to be secure by design, with a fully-integrated secured stack from processor chip to operating system, offering quantum-safe encryption and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).

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Name : Adrian Wong
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

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Cloudflare Services Down For Almost 2 Days In Major Outage!

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Cloudflare services have gone down in a major outage, due to a loss of power affecting its data centres! Find out what’s going on!

Updated @ 2023-11-04 : Added new information and updates
Updated @ 2023-11-03 : Added new information and updates
Originally posted @ 2023-11-02

Cloudflare Dashboard + Services Down In Major Outage!

At approximately 11:54 AM UTC on 2 November 2023, Cloudflare customers started experiencing problems with its APIs and Dashboard services. Any user logging into their accounts would only see this announcement:

The Cloudflare Dashboard is temporarily unavailable.

Please reload this page to try again. If the issue persists, please visit the Cloudflare Status page for up-to-date information regarding any ongoing issues.

Cloudflare Edge security features, and Cloudflare CDN caching services were not affected. But all other services relying on the Cloudflare API infrastructure went down – Alerts, Dashboard functionality, Zero Trust, WARP, Cloudflared, Waiting Room, Gateway, Stream, Magic WAN, API Shield, Pages, and Workers.

Cloudflare Services Down From Datacenter Power Loss!

Just over an hour later, Cloudflare reported that the outage was far worse than it initially reported, and they were still “actively investigating the problem”. They also provided a more detailed list of its services that have gone down:

The following products are currently impacted at the data plane / edge level, meaning that the full product functionality is either partially or fully affected: Logpush, WARP / Zero Trust device posture, Cloudflare dashboard, Cloudflare API, Stream API, Workers API, Alert Notification System.

These products are impacted at the control plane / core level, meaning that only the changes to the existing configuration are affected, but the product is functioning at the edge: Magic Transit, Argo Smart Routing, Workers KV, WAF, Rate Limiting, Rules, WARP / Zero Trust Registration, Waiting Room, Load Balancing and Healthchecks, Cloudflare Pages, Zero Trust Gateway, DNS Authoritative and Secondary, Cloudflare Tunnel, Workers KV namespace operations, Magic WAN.

At approximately 1:58 PM UTC, Cloudflare finally revealed that the outage was due to a loss of power at its datacenter, which caused services to fail simultaneously.

Cloudflare is assessing a loss of power impacting data centres while simultaneously failing over services.

We are continuing to work on a fix for this issue.

Several hours later – at 5:08 PM UTC, power was partially restored to its core North American data centre, and some core services were transferred to a backup data centre. In three subsequent updates, Cloudflare reports that it was seeing “gradual improvement” to its affected services.

However, at almost 11 PM that day – almost half a day after the outage started, Cloudflare was still working to restore full functionality.

At 2:40 AM UTC on 3 November, Cloudflare released an updated list of what is now functioning, and what still remains down:

Data plane impact (i.e. full product functionality is either fully impacted or partially impacted):
* Cloudflare Dash: degraded availability but accessible
* Stream API: not available
* Healthchecks: not available
* Radar: Degraded

Control plane impact (i.e. product functionality is online however changes to configuration is impacted):
* Cloudflare Pages: restored
* Magic Transit: not available to make changes
* Magic WAN: not available to make changes
* Argo Smart Routing: configuration now working, smart updates and analytics are offline
* Waiting Room: configuration updates are propagating with delay
* ZT Gateway: degraded but online
* DNS Secondary: not available to make changes
* Billing API: Degraded
* Cloudflare API: degraded but accessible

Some six hours later, they appear to be making some progress, although it seem obvious that they are a long way from a full restoration of services.

Data plane impact (i.e. full product functionality is either fully impacted or partially impacted):
* Logpush: more jobs are being restored
* Cloudflare dashboard: degraded availability but accessible
* Stream API: not available
* Healthchecks: not available
* Radar: Degraded

Control plane impact (i.e. product functionality is online however changes to configuration is impacted):
* CDN API: potentially impacted
* Access API: Degraded
* Magic Transit: configuration plane is working internally (contact your account team to make any urgent changes)
* Magic WAN: configuration plane is working internally (contact your account team to make any urgent changes)
* SOC Proactive Alerts: not available
* Argo Smart Routing: configuration now working, smart updates and analytics are offline
* Billing API: Degraded
* Email Noticatifications: Emails updates from Cloudflare are being delayed or not sent
* Lists: List configurations are working, but there may be delays in list updates propagating throughout the cloudflare network

Almost a day later – at 10:59 AM UTC, Cloudflare said that it was still continuing to work on restoring service for the impacted applications. It is unknown if power has been restored to their North American datacenter in full… or if they are facing other problems…

The good news is that – the Cloudflare Dashboard is now working, although certain services or features like Analytics are “temporarily unavailable”, and you may get error messages about certain API requests failing.

It was only at 6:42 AM UTC on November 4, 2023 – almost 2 days later, that Cloudflare finally reported that it restored all services to “operational status”.

Now, we wait to see whether it would reveal what actually happened in this exceptional downtime, for a company that prides itself on helping to keep its clients online and available…

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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!

Name : Adrian Wong
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

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How NVIDIA A800 Bypasses US Chip Ban On China!

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Find out how NVIDIA created the new A800 GPU to bypass the US ban on sale of advanced chips to China!

NVIDIA Offers A800 GPU To Bypass US Ban On China!

Two months after it was banned by the US government from selling high-performance AI chips to China, NVIDIA introduced a new A800 GPU designed to bypass those restrictions.

The new NVIDIA A800 is based on the same Ampere microarchitecture as the A100, which was used as the performance baseline by the US government.

Despite its numerically larger model number (the lucky number 8 was probably picked to appeal to the Chinese), this is a detuned part, with slightly reduced performance to meet export control limitations.

The NVIDIA A800 GPU, which went into production in Q3, is another alternative product to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China.

The A800 meets the U.S. government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it.

NVIDIA is probably hoping that the slightly slower NVIDIA A800 GPU will allow it to continue supplying China with A100-level chips that are used to power supercomputers and high-performance datacenters for artificial intelligence applications.

As I will show you in the next section, except in very high-end applications, there won’t be truly significant performance difference between the A800 and the A100. So NVIDIA customers who want or need the A100 will have no issue opting for the A800 instead.

However, this can only be a stopgap fix, as NVIDIA is stuck selling A100-level chips to China until and unless the US government changes its mind.

How Fast Is The NVIDIA A800 GPU?

The US government considers the NVIDIA A100 as the performance baseline for its export control restrictions on China.

Any chip equal or faster to that Ampere-based chip, which was launched on May 14, 2020, is forbidden to be sold or exported to China. But as they say, the devil is in the details.

The US government didn’t specify just how much slower chips must be, to qualify for export to China. So NVIDIA could technically get away by slightly detuning the A100, while offering almost the same performance level.

And that was what NVIDIA did with the A800 – it is basically the A100 with a 33% slower NVLink interconnect speed. NVIDIA also limited the maximum number of GPUs supported in a single server to 8.

That only slightly reduces the performance of A800 servers, compare to A100 servers, while offering the same amount of GPU compute performance. Most users will not notice the difference.

The only significant impediment is on the very high-end – Chinese companies are now restricted to a maximum of eight GPUs per server, instead of up to sixteen.

To show you what I mean, I dug into the A800 specifications, and compared them to the A100 below:

NVIDIA A100 vs A800 : 80GB PCIe Version

Specifications	A100 80GB PCIe	A800 80GB PCIe
FP64	9.7 TFLOPS
FP64 Tensor Core	19.5 TFLOPS
FP32	19.5 TFLOPS
Tensor Float 32	156 TFLOPS
BFLOAT 16 Tensor Core	312 TFLOPS
FP16 Tensor Core	312 TFLOPS
INT8 Tensor Core	624 TOPS
GPU Memory	80 GB HBM2
GPU Memory Bandwifth	1,935 GB/s
TDP	300 W
Multi-Instance GPU	Up to 7 MIGs @ 10 GB
Interconnect	NVLink : 600 GB/s PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s	NVLink : 400 GB/s PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
Server Options	1-8 GPUs

NVIDIA A100 vs A800 : 80GB SXM Version

Specifications	A100 80GB SXM	A800 80GB SXM
FP64	9.7 TFLOPS
FP64 Tensor Core	19.5 TFLOPS
FP32	19.5 TFLOPS
Tensor Float 32	156 TFLOPS
BFLOAT 16 Tensor Core	312 TFLOPS
FP16 Tensor Core	312 TFLOPS
INT8 Tensor Core	624 TOPS
GPU Memory	80 GB HBM2
GPU Memory Bandwifth	2,039 GB/s
TDP	400 W
Multi-Instance GPU	Up to 7 MIGs @ 10 GB
Interconnect	NVLink : 600 GB/s PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s	NVLink : 400 GB/s PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
Server Options	4/ 8 / 16 GPUs	4 / 8 GPUs

NVIDIA A100 vs A800 : 40GB PCIe Version

Specifications	A100 40GB PCIe	A800 40GB PCIe
FP64	9.7 TFLOPS
FP64 Tensor Core	19.5 TFLOPS
FP32	19.5 TFLOPS
Tensor Float 32	156 TFLOPS
BFLOAT 16 Tensor Core	312 TFLOPS
FP16 Tensor Core	312 TFLOPS
INT8 Tensor Core	624 TOPS
GPU Memory	40 GB HBM2
GPU Memory Bandwifth	1,555 GB/s
TDP	250 W
Multi-Instance GPU	Up to 7 MIGs @ 10 GB
Interconnect	NVLink : 600 GB/s PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s	NVLink : 400 GB/s PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
Server Options	1-8 GPUs

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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!

Name : Adrian Wong
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

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TikTok Leak : China Repeatedly Accessed Private User Data!

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Leaked audio from internal TikTok meetings show that private user data has been repeatedly accessed from China!

Here is what you need to know…

Privacy Promise By TikTok : Overseas Data Stored In US + Singapore

For many years now, TikTok has repeatedly assured users that all data collected from users outside of China, stays out of China and is thus, not accessible to anyone in China.

To ensure that the Chinese government has no access to the data, one of the measures they took was to store all data collected overseas in servers located in the United States, with backups in Singapore.

This was explicitly stated in their New Privacy Policy :

We store the information described in the “ What Information We Collect ” section in servers located in the United States and Singapore.

Most people may not realise this, but they also added a caveat right after that, stating that their Corporate Group (in China) may remotely access the data…

When entities in our Corporate Group need information to help us provide the Platform, they remotely access the information pursuant to authorised and secure access controls.

TikTok Leak : China Repeatedly Accessed Private User Data!

Buzzfeed News recently received audio recordings from more than eighty (80) internal TikTok meetings, in which employees admitted that engineers in China accessed private user data.

This was despite a TikTok executive’s sworn testimony at an October 2021 US Senate hearing at the same time period, that a “world-renowned, US-based security team” decides who gets access to the private user data.

Instead, the leaked audio revealed that US staff did not have permission or knowledge of how to access the data. Rather, it was their colleagues in China who determined how and who accessed the private user data.

The leaked tapes ultimately show that TikTok may have misled lawmakers, users, and the public by downplaying the fact that their private data is readily accessible by employees in China, and potentially, the Chinese government.

Everything Is Seen In China

Eight different employees stated in nine statements that they had to refer to their colleagues in China to make those decisions.

“Everything is seen in China“, said a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department in a September 2021 meeting.

In another September 2021 meeting, a TikTok director referred to a Beijing-based engineer as a “Master Admin” who “has access to everything“.

There’s Some Backdoor To Access User Data…

Fourteen of the leaked audio recordings were with, or about, a team of Booz Allen Hamilton consultants that TikTok brought in to investigate how data flows through TikTok and ByteDance’s internal tools.

In September 2021, one Booz Allen Hamilton consultant told colleagues that the tools felt like they had backdoors to access user data :

I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them, which is exhausting.

Oracle Only Providing Storage For Project Texas

TikTok has been working on what they call Project Texas – securely storing overseas data in Oracle cloud servers to comply with CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States).

Project Texas is limited to protecting the private information of US users, like phone numbers and birthdays – details that are not publicly visible, or have been set to private.

Such data will be stored at an Oracle datacenter in Texas – hence the name, and would only be accessible to specific US-based TikTok employees.

However, TikTok’s head of global cyber and data defense made clear that Oracle was only providing the data storage space for Project Texas. Ultimately, TikTok would be setting up the servers, and controlling everything.

It’s almost incorrect to call it Oracle Cloud, because they’re just giving us bare metal, and then we’re building our VMs [virtual machines] on top of it.

Unique IDs Not Protected Information

In one of the leaked audio recordings from a January 2022 meeting, TikTok’s head of product and user operations announced with a laugh that the Unique ID (UID) will not be amongst the protected content under the CFIUS agreement.

The conversation continues to evolve. We recently found out that UIDs are things we can have access to, which changes the game a bit.

Other Data Not Stored On Oracle Servers

The problem with Project Texas is that it only addresses US users… and only a small subset of their data.

Everything else – including private user data from non-US countries – will stay in their US and Singapore servers that remain accessible to ByteDance’s Beijing offices.

Response By TikTok : 100% US Data Traffic Routed To Oracle

TikTok publicly announced on the same day – June 17, 2022, that it changed the “default storage location of US user data“, and that “100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure“.

Although they “expect” to fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US, they will continue to use their existing US and Singapore servers for backup, and delete US users’ private data over time.

While this may address some of the privacy concerns for US users, it does not address the other privacy concerns revealed in the leaked audio recordings… or the privacy concerns of non-US users.

Please Support My Work!

Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!

Name : Adrian Wong
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

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NTT Launches Fifth Data Center In Malaysia – Cyberjaya 5!

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NTT Ltd just launched their fifth data centre in Malaysia – Cyberjaya 5 (CBJ5)!

Here is a quick look at what NTT Cyberjaya 5 offers!

NTT Launches Fifth Data Center In Malaysia – Cyberjaya 5

On 3 February 2021, NTT Ltd announced the launch of their fifth data center in Malaysia – Cyberjaya 5 (CBJ5).

Located within the NTT Cyberjaya Campus, this new 107,000 square feet data center is designed for hyperscalers and high-end enterprises in Malaysia’s growing digital economy.

CBJ5 supports 6.5 megawatts of flexible and scalable power, and boasts a Tier IV-ready, compact and modular design, with a cooling wall system that handles up to 15 kilowatts per rack.

NTT clients will have greater access to flexible, scalable and secure infrastructure in Malaysia – a regional data center hub.

“The demand for data storage and managed hosting services is expected to grow exponentially across Malaysia. This fifth data center will meet the expanding needs of organizations to reach their digital business objectives, in particular the FSI sector, as our data center complies with the Risk Management in Technology (RMiT) guideline set by Bank Negara Malaysia. We hope to play a key role in providing the vital data capacity at a high speed to keep Malaysia’s digital ecosystems and the digital economy ticking.” said Henrick Choo, CEO, NTT Ltd. in Malaysia.

NTT Cyberjaya 5 : Part Of Strategic ASEAN Hub

CBJ5 is connected to the existing Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) and Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) cable system, and will eventually be linked to the upcoming MIST cable system.

The MIST cable system will be available by end 2022 and it is a strategic joint venture for international submarine cables in South East Asia, with Orient Link Pte. Ltd.. It will enable NTT Ltd. to expand its offerings into India and beyond, while the ASE and APG cable systems provide global connectivity from Asia to United States.

This new expansion in Malaysia is part of NTT Global Data Centres division’s growth strategy. Malaysia is a prime data centre market in the ASEAN region, due to the abundant availability of resources, and favourable government policies.

“NTT places Asia Pacific as a tactical key region, and Malaysia – a strategic hub for the submarine cables operated by NTT such as the new MIST cable system, as well as the existing Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) and Asia Pacific Gateway (APG). Furthermore, CBJ5 will drive business opportunities in Asia through the upcoming MIST cable system which will link all our large-scale data centers in the region. Our continued commitment to Malaysia will help position NTT as a technologically innovative leader to address the industries of the future,” said Ryuichi Matsuo, Executive Vice President for NTT Ltd.’s Global Data Centers division.

“The pandemic also illustrated the importance of effective connectivity and reliable infrastructure to ensure business continuity. NTT’s global data center platform offers flexible, scalable and secure infrastructure along with a full-stack of customizable solutions that clients can utilize to support their digital transformation needs and maintain critical applications in a comprehensive, hybrid IT environment,” he concluded.

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PowerProtect Data Manager Nov 2020 Update: What’s New?

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Dell Technologies just announced enhancements to PowerProtect Data Manager available globally in November 2020!

Find out what’s new in the latest Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager!

PowerProtect Data Manager : What Is It?

Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager provides software-defined data protection, automated discovery, and deduplication for physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Its software-defined architecture allows for greater operational agility, and faster IT transformation, while delivering next-generation data protection.

PowerProtect Data Manager November 2020 Update : What’s New?

In its November 2020 update, PowerProtect Data Manager offers these new enhancements :

In-cloud workloads in Microsoft Azure and AWS are now protected
VMware Tanzu portfolio is now supported
Native vCenter Storage Policy-Based Management integrated for VM protection
VMware-certified solution to protect VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure layer.
Protection for containerised apps with open source databases, including PostgreSQL and Apache Cassandra, in Kubernetes environments.
Customers can now protect Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to back-up Kubernetes cluster-level resources.

PowerProtect Data Manager November 2020 Update : Availability

The November 2020 enhancements are available globally with immediate effect.

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2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect DP Series IDPA : What’s New?

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Dell Technologies just announced the 2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect DP Series appliances!

Here is what you need to know about the next-generation integrated data protection appliances!

2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect DP Series : What Is It?

The 2020 PowerProtect DP series is the next-generation family of integrated data protection appliances (IDPA) from Dell Technologies.

They offer a complete solution for backup, recovery, replication, deduplication, cloud readiness with disaster recovery, and long-term rotation to the public cloud!

The 2020 Dell EMC DataProtect DP series are all-in-one data protection solutions that offer :

Storage capacities from 8 terabytes to 1 petabyte
Greater efficiency, with up to 65:1 data reduction
Up to 38% faster backups, and up to 45% faster restores, compared to previous generation.
Instant access and restore of up to 50% greater IOPS, compared to previous generation.
Consumes up to 23% less power than the previous generation
Cloud long-term retention, and cloud DR-ready
VMware integration

The 2020 Dell EMC DataProtect DP series is also guaranteed under the Future-Proof Program, and is part of the Dell Technologies on Demand program.

2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect DP Series : Models + Key Specifications

The 2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect DP series consists of four models – DP4400, DP5900, DP8400 and DP8900. Here are their key specifications.

Specifications	DP4400	DP5900	DP8400	DP8900
Physical Capacity	8 TB to 96 TB	96 TB to 288 TB	192 TB to 768 TB	576 TB to 1 PB
Physical Capacity with Cloud Tier	Up to 288 TB	Up to 864 TB	Up to 2.3 PB	Up to 3 PB
Logical Capacity	Up to 4.8 PB	Up to 18.7 PB	Up to 49.9 PB	Up to 65 PB
Logical Capacity with Cloud Tier	Up to 14.4 PB	Up to 56.1 PB	Up to 149.7 PB	Up to 195 PB
Max Throughput	Up to 9 TB/hr	Up to 33 TB/hr	Up to 57 TB/hr	Up to 94 TB/hr
Drive Type	SAS 12 TB	SAS 4 TB	SAS 8 TB	SAS 8 TB
Networking	8 x RJ45, or 8 x SFP	4 x 40 GbE uplinks Each Quad SFP port can be split into 4 x 10 GbE
Max. Power	475 VA	2,830 VA	5,480 VA	7,250 VA
Thermal Rating	1,620 BTU/hr	9,300 BTU/hr	17,800 BTU/hr	23,400 BTU/hr

2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect DP Series : Availability

The 2020 Dell EMC PowerProtect series appliances – DP4400, DP5900, DP8400 and DP8900 – will be available globally in December 2020.

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VMware vSphere 7 Now Supports AMD SEV-ES Encryption!

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VMware just announced that vSphere 7 Update 1 will add support for AMD SEV-ES encryption!

Find out what this means for enterprise security, and the future of AMD EPYC processors!

AMD SEV-ES Encryption : What Is It?

SEV-ES, short for Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Encrypted State, is a hardware-accelerated encryption capability in AMD EPYC processors.

Leveraging both the AMD Secure Processor and the AES-128 encryption engine built into every AMD EPYC processor, SEV-ES encrypts all CPU register contents when a virtual machine stops running.

This prevents the leakage of information from the CPU registers to components like the hypervisor. It can even detect malicious modifications to a CPU register state.

VMware vSphere 7 Now Supports AMD SEV-ES Encryption!

VMware vSphere 7 Update 1 adds support for both AMD SEV-ES and AMD EPYC processors.

The AMD Secure Processor in the first-generation EPYC processors can handle up to 15 encryption keys.

That increases to more than 500 encryption keys with the second-generation EPYC processors.

ESXi has many layers of isolation within its virtualised infrastructure, but all of that is implemented in software. They still require a level of trust in the hardware, which is where AMD SEV-ES comes in.

A guest operating system that supports SEV can ask the AMD Secure Processor to issue it an encryption key, for full in-memory, in-hardware encryption.

SEV-ES extends that protection to CPU registers, so that the data inside the CPU itself is encrypted. This protects the data from being read or modified when the virtual machine stops running.

Even a compromised hypervisor that accesses the register data cannot make use of it, because it is now encrypted.

Needless to say, adding support for AMD SEV-ES in vSphere 7 will spur the uptake of AMD EPYC processors in the datacenter.

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Hitachi Vantara : 2020 HCI Portfolio Updates Revealed!

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Hitachi Vantara just unveiled their 2020 HCI (Hyperconverged Infrastructure) portfolio, with updates to the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP). Here are the details…

Hitachi Vantara : 2020 HCI Portfolio Updates

Hitachi Vantara today unveiled their 2020 HCI (Hyperconverged Infrastructure) portfolio, featuring updates to Hitachi UCP HC and Hitachi UCP RS.

Faster provisioning with new Hitachi UCP Advisor
Certified support for SAP HANA workloads
New Intel Cascade Lake Xenon Refresh processors for increased performance
Enhanced lifecycle management capabilities for non-disruptive upgrades

The updated 2020 Hitachi Vantara HCI solutions unify cloud infrastructure management with interoperability across their customer’s environments, whether they are using traditional storage, HCI-powered hybrid clouds or public clouds.

These new HCI offerings include a scalable and simplified foundation for hybrid clouds, allowing customers to rapidly scale-out, when increased datacenter resources are required.

Unified Cloud Management

Customers have the flexibility to build a cloud infrastructure with seamless workload and data mobility across on-premises and public cloud environments.

Hitachi UCP Advisor accelerates provisioning up to 80% faster compared to previous HCI management tools and reduces management complexity across the environment.

Scalable Performance

Greater performance, scale and density support IT departments’ ability to rapidly scale data center resources for business-critical applications and lower operational overhead for better TCO.

The updated HCI platforms provide certified support for SAP HANA workloads on HCI. Intel Cascade Lake Refresh Xeon processors increase performance for workload consolidation while avoiding resource contention issues.

Hitachi HCI solutions help reduce CapEx and OpEx overhead with advanced automation and data efficiency technologies.

Simplified Consumption

Everflex from Hitachi Vantara provides simple, elastic and comprehensive acquisition choices for the entire Hitachi Vantara portfolio, including the UCP Family, with consumption-based pricing models that align IT spend with business use and help lower costs by up to 20% with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Customers can also accelerate time to production with pre-validated and optimized bundles and starter packs, including solutions enabling remote work.

2020 Hitachi Vantara HCI Portfolio : Availability

The 2020 Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC and Hitachi Unified Compute Platform RS are available from Hitachi Vantara and their global network of business partners, with immediate effect.

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Dell EMC PowerStore 9000 | 5000 | 1000 : A Quick Primer!

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Dell EMC just launched PowerStore – their new storage appliance, built around a unified data-centric architecture.

Here is a quick primer on the Dell EMC PowerStore 9000, PowerStore 5000 and PowerStore 1000 storage appliances!

Dell EMC PowerStore : What Is It?

Dell EMC PowerStore is a new mid-range storage appliance, with a flexible, container-based architecture, and end-to-end NVMe design.

It promises to offer 7X better performance with 3X lower latency than previous mid-range storage appliances, as well as the ability to scale up to 2.8 petabytes per appliance, and up to 11.3 petabytes per cluster.

Dell EMC PowerStore : Advantages

Dell EMC promises that PowerStore will offer these advantages to organisations looking to transform their data center operations :

Designed For Any Workload

Dell EMC PowerStore will support any workload, whether traditional or modern workloads.

Its PowerStoreOS container-based software architecture offers portability, standardisation, as well as rapid deployment.

It also supports AppsON, which allows organisations to run applications directly on the appliance.

High Performance, Massive Storage

Thanks to its end-to-end NVMe design, and support for dual-ported Intel Optane Storage Class Memory (SCM) SSDs, it is seven times faster with three times lower latency than its predecessor, Unity XT.

Each appliance can offer up to 898 TB of storage, which can be scaled up using expansion enclosures to 2.8 petabytes. It can also be scaled out to eight nodes, offering 11.3 petabytes of storage in the cluster.

It also automatically dedupes and compresses the data, offering a guaranteed 4:1 data reduction.

Autonomous Appliance

When scaled out, Dell EMC PowerStore are loosely coupled, allowing a machine learning engine to intelligently place data to rebalance storage volumes.

The machine learning engine is continuously and autonomously monitoring resources of each appliances and data requests, for maximum efficiency.

Cloud-Ready

Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services can directly connect PowerStore to all major public clouds. It can be deployed as a storage option within Dell EMC PowerOne autonomous infrastructure.

Dell EMC PowerStore : Models + Specifications

At launch, Dell EMC is offering three PowerStore appliances, with these specifications :

Specifications Per Appliance	PowerStore 1000	PowerStore 5000	PowerStore 9000
Base Enclosure	2U, 2-node enclosure with twenty-five 2.5-inch NVMe drive slots
Expansion Enclosure	2U enclosure attached to PowerStore base enclosure with twenty-five 2.5-inch SAS drive slots Maximum 3 per appliance
Power Supplies	2 dedundant power suppliers per enclosure
Max Drives	96	96	96
NVRAM	2	4	4
RAID Options	RAID 5 (4+1 or 8+1)
CPUs	4 x Intel CPUs 32 cores (1.8 GHz)	4 x Intel CPUs 64 cores (2.1 GHz)	4 x Intel CPUs 112 cores (2.1 GHz)
System Memory + Cache	384 GB	1,152 GB	2,560 GB
Mezzanine Cards	2	2	2
IO Modules	4	4	4
Embedded SAS IO Ports	4 x 4 lane 12Gb/s SAS ports for back-end connection
Front End Ports	24	24	24
16/32Gb FC End Ports	16	16	16
10 Gbase-T / iSCSI Ports	24	24	24
10/25 GbE / iSCSI Ports	24	24	24
Max Raw Capacity	898.56 TB	898.56 TB	898.56 TB
Power Consumption	1597 W max	1758 W max	2047 W max
Heat Dissipation	5,449 Btu/hr	5,995 Btu/hr	6,985 Btu/hr

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NTT To Build 5th Data Centre In Cyberjaya, Malaysia!

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NTT Limited just announced that they will construct their 5th data centre at the NTT Cyberjaya Campus in Malaysia!

Here are the details…

NTT To Build 5th Data Centre In Cyberjaya, Malaysia

As part of their expansion plans, NTT will build their fifth data centre at their Cyberjaya campus in Malaysia. This Tier-4 ready, compact and modular data centre, called CBJ5, is scheduled to be complete in 2020.

Once it comes online, NTT says that it will provide their clients with “a flexible and scalable power and cooling solution coupled with an industry leading Service Level Agreement (SLA) that is the first of its kind in Malaysia.”

This announcement comes after Malaysia’s Budget 2020 was tabled, with a focus on driving economic growth through digital transformation. There will be additional grants and incentives for organisations to digitally transform their businesses.

As such, NTT believes there will be increased demand for their services, which CBJ5 will be ready to fulfil.

“CBJ5 is designed to meet the requirements of hyperscalers and high-end enterprises, especially those that require solid power management capabilities. CBJ5 is able to accommodate progressive power increments and cooling of up to 10kW/rack. This is revolutionary as it will allow our clients to maximize the power resources in their chosen data center,” said Henrick Choo, CEO, Malaysia for NTT Ltd.

NTT Data Centre Capabilities

With CBJ5, NTT aims to become the leading Digital Infrastructure Provider in Malaysia, attracting both domestic and global traffic into its carrier-neutral data centre campus that also includes NTT’s global Tier-1 IP network, Multi-Cloud Connect platform and domestic Internet Exchange.

The NTT Cyberjaya Campus features a high-density fibre network facilitating inter-connection among our clients to create a digital supply chain ecosystem.

Bank Negara Malaysia recently announced a set of guidelines defining Risk Management in Technology (RMiT) for financial institutions, meaning security becomes a crucial consideration as they are now responsible for the safety of the bank’s information infrastructure, systems and data.

NTT will address these new requirements by working together with financial institutions, so they are able to comply to BNM’s guideline. Henrick also stated that security will be heightened as the company grows.

“NTT’s physical data center access control will be increased to safeguard all data center blocks within the NTT Cyberjaya Campus. We will also be introducing smart security technology integrating Visitor Management Systems with facial recognition technology. Essentially, we will double our security cover with the two combined,” he added.

NTT clients are able to choose from multiple architectures from on-premise, to cloud and even multi-cloud. All solutions will come with managed security solutions to offer data protection while minimising business disruptions.

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Kingston DC500 SSDs Are Now Certified VMware Ready!

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Kingston Technology just announced that their DC500 enterprise-grade SSDs are now certified VMware Ready. Find out what this means!

Kingston DC500 SSDs Are Now Certified VMware Ready!

After the VMware Ready validation process, the Kingston DC500 family of enterprise SSDs are now certified for VMware vSAN and vSphere in production environments.

The Kingston DC500 family of enterprise SSDs had earlier been validated by NAS providers like QNAP and Synology, but this is their first enterprise-class validation.

This gives their enterprise clients assurance that the Kingston DC500 SSDs can be deployed in production environments without worry.

The Kingston DC500 drives have been tuned using comprehensive QoS test scripts developed in-house that measure IO and latency patterns at varying block sizes and queue depths. This allows them to deliver low latency out to six 9s (99.9999 percent) of consistency while delivering high throughput and predictable IO.

The VMware Ready program is a co-branding benefit of the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program that makes it easy for customers to identify partner products certified to work with VMware cloud infrastructure.

The Kingston DC500 SSD Family

The Kingston DC500 SSD family consists of two models – DC500R and DC500M that are tuned for different use cases :

Kingston DC500R : Read-Centric SSD

The Kingston DC500R is highly optimised for read-centric workloads, delivering high I/O speeds and response times at lower price points than write-intensive SSDs.

Kingston DC500M : Mixed-Use SSD

The Kingston DC500M, on the other hand, is tuned for mixed-use workloads which demand a mix of read and write operations. It offers greater write endurance with strict performance consistency for datacenters.

Kingston DC500 Common Features

Both Kingston DC500R and DC500M SSDs incorporate end-to-end data path protection, which guarantee that all data will be written to the SSD and is protected against transient errors.

They also include on-board Power-Loss Protection (PLP) using tantalum capacitors. This ensures that data-in-flight is written to the flash memory in the event of unexpected power loss. The PLP also ensures that the drives’ mapping table (FTL) is updated before the drive powers down.

These safeguards reduce the risk of data loss, and ensure that the drive will initialise properly when the server powers up again.

Kingston DC500 SSD Family Specifications

For your convenience, we compare both DC500R and DC500M models in this table :

Specifications	Kingston DC500R	Kingston DC500M
Form Factor	2.5-inch
Interface	SATA 3.0 (6 Gbps)
Storage Capacities	480 GB / 960 GB / 1.92 TB / 3.84 TB
NAND Flash Type	3D TLC NAND
Built-In Encryption	256-bit AES Encryption
Power Loss Protection	Tantalum capacitors
QoS Read Latency	< 500 µs
QoS Write Latency	< 2 ms
Sequential Read Speed	480 GB : 555 MB/s 960 GB : 555 MB/s 1.92 TB : 555 MB/s 3.84 TB : 555 MB/s	480 GB : 555 MB/s 960 GB : 555 MB/s 1.92 TB : 555 MB/s 3.84 TB : 555 MB/s
Sequential Write Speed	480 GB : 500 MB/s 960 GB : 525 MB/s 1.92 TB : 525 MB/s 3.84 TB : 520 MB/s	480 GB : 520 MB/s 960 GB : 520 MB/s 1.92 TB : 520 MB/s 3.84 TB : 520 MB/s
Steady-State Random Read	480 GB : 98,000 IOPS 960 GB : 98,000 IOPS 1.92 TB : 98,000 IOPS 3.84 TB : 98,000 IOPS	480 GB : 98,000 IOPS 960 GB : 98,000 IOPS 1.92 TB : 98,000 IOPS 3.84 TB : 98,000 IOPS
Steady-State Random Write	480 GB : 12,000 IOPS 960 GB : 20,000 IOPS 1.92 TB : 24,000 IOPS 3.84 TB : 28,000 IOPS	480 GB : 58,000 IOPS 960 GB : 70,000 IOPS 1.92 TB : 75,000 IOPS 3.84 TB : 75,000 IOPS
Endurance	480 GB : 438 TBW 960 GB : 876 TBW 1.92 TB : 1752 TBW 3.84 TB : 3504 TBW	480 GB : 1139 TBW 960 GB : 2278 TBW 1.92 TB : 4555 TBW 3.84 TB : 9110 TBW
Power Consumption	Idle : 1.56 W Average : 1.6 W Max. Read : 1.8 W Max. Write : 4.86 W
Vibration (Non-Operating)	20 G peak (10-2000 Hz)
Vibration (Operating)	2.17 G peak (7-800 Hz)
Storage Temperature	-40°C ~ 85°C
Operating Temperature	0°C ~ 70°C
Dimensions	69.9 mm x 100 mm x 7 mm
Weight	92.34 g
Warranty	5 Years

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The 2019 Dell EMC Unity XT + PowerProtect Primer!

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One of big stories out of Dell Technologies World 2019 was about new Dell storage and data management solutions, like Unity XT and PowerProtect.

Here is our primer on the new Dell EMC Unity XT unified storage solutions, the Dell EMC PowerProtect data management platform, as well as updates on Isilon and more!

The 2019 Dell Storage + Data Management Solutions Revealed!

In the following 30-minute long video, we have top guns from Dell EMC to showcase the 2019 Dell storage and data management solutions :

Jeff Clarke (Vice Chairman, Dell Technologies),
John Roese (Dell Technologies President & Dell EMC Chief Technology Officer),
Craig Bernero (Senior Vice President, Dell EMC Midrange & Entry Storage),
Beth Phalen (President & General Manager of Dell EMC Data Protection), and
Chad Dunn (Vice President of Product Management, Dell EMC Hyperconverged Infrastructure)

The 2019 Dell EMC Unity XT

The next-generation Dell EMC Unity XT midrange storage system is up to 2X faster than its predecessor, and 67% faster than its nearest competitor.

Optimised for greater data efficiency with up to 5:1 data reduction and 85% system efficiency, the Unity XT is built for a multi-cloud world.

The new Unity XT can run in a public cloud, seamlessly move data to the cloud, and is available as a service through the new Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services. It can also be used as a building block for Dell Technologies Cloud, as part of a validated design.

Unity XT storage arrays use an active-active architecture, and is NVMe-ready. They are designed to simultaneously run applications, process file and block inline data reduction, while delivering operational data services.

Dell EMC Isilon Update

Dell EMC also announced a new Isilon release with greatly improved scalability, as well as enhanced cloud integration and security.

The new Isilon OneFS 8.2 provides up to 75% greater cluster scalability – up to 252 nodes, 58 PB of storage, and 945 GB/s of aggregate throughput per cluster!

Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services

To support enterprises looking to extend their on-premise infrastructure to public cloud, Dell Technologies is introducing the Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services.

The new Cloud Storage Services uses Dell EMC storage directly connected to the public cloud through a managed service provider, to give customers multi-cloud agility.

Furthermore, VMware customers can also leverage the automated disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) in VMware Cloud on AWS.

Dell EMC PowerProtect

Dell EMC also introduced their PowerProtect Software platform, and the Dell EMC PowerProtect X400 multi-dimensional appliance.

The Dell EMC PowerProtect Software platform delivers data protection, replication and reuse, as well as SaaS-based management and self-service capabilities. The data owner now has the autonomy to control backup and recovery operations.

VMware customers will benefit from a simple data management solution for their vSphere environments, with automated policy-based backup and recovery, as well as integration with vRealize Automation.

Available as a hybrid, or all-flash data management appliance, the Dell EMC PowerProtect X400 can scale-up with grow-in-place capacity expansion, and scale-out compute power and capacity.

It is also the first Dell EMC data management solution to leverage machine learning for intelligent load balancing.

Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance

For small- and medium-sized businesses looking for improved data protection in an integrated appliance, Dell EMC is offering the Dell EMC DP4400 Integrated Data Protection Appliance with 8 to 24 TB of storage.

The lower storage capacity version of IDPA DP4400 makes it ideal for smaller organisations. yet, it has the ability to grow-in-place up to 96 TB, with the purchase of licence keys and an upgrade kit.

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The Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 Server Updates Revealed!

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Dell has just announced details of the Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 server updates. Here is a quick primer on the newly-refreshed Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and OpenManage systems management.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 Server Updates

The Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 servers will come with new features like Openmanage FlexSelect Manage, and OpenManage FlexSelect Secure.

Both these features will provide greater flexibility in managing and securing the PowerEdge 2019 servers.

Greater Control

FlexSelect Manage offers customers new flexibility in selecting OpenManage Enterprise capabilities to streamline management efficiency.

Enhancements to the Redfish-compliant Dell EMC RESTful API and OpenManage Mobile also gives customers greater control of their server operations and devices.

Customers can reduce time by using fewer steps to maintain server health by 28%, compared to manually retrieving server logs.

Enhanced Security

OpenManage Secure Enterprise Key Manager Scale provides data protection and streamlines the management of self-encrypting drives.

Customers can centrally manage keys for self-encrypting drives to better secure data at both the drive and server level.

Improved Performance and Scalability

The Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 servers are powered by the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, increasing their performance by up to 40% for core business applications.

Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 Server Availability

These new Dell EMC PowerEdge 2019 servers and systems will be available beginning Q2 2019 :

Dell EMC OpenManage
Dell EMC PowerEdge R940, R740, R740xd, R740xd2, R640, and C6420 servers (with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors)
Other Dell EMC PowerEdge servers like PowerEdge MX
Dell EMC Ready Solutions for HPC with Intel Deep Learning Boost

Also available in Q2 2019 is the Intel Optane DC persistent memory hands-on trials through a Dell EMC customer proof of concept program and Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centers.

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The NVIDIA Quadro vDWS Virtualisation Software Revealed!

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SINGAPORE, 18 August 2017 — NVIDIA today introduced the new Quadro vDWS virtualisation software that turns NVIDIA Tesla-accelerated serversinto powerful workstations and provide IT departments the resources they need to address the demands of an enterprise-wide virtual workspace. Certified with hundreds of professional workstation applications, NVIDIA Quadro has long been the industry standard for professional visualisation in the enterprise.

The NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Data Center Workstation Software (Quadro vDWS)

Now, NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Data Center Workstation Software (Quadro vDWS) delivers an unparalleled experience running both virtualised graphics and compute workloads on any virtual workstation or laptop from NVIDIA Tesla-accelerated data centres.

Available for over 120 systems from 33 system vendors, Quadro vDWS provides high-end performance to multiple enterprise users from the same GPU for lower cost of ownership. Quadro vDWS enables greater mobility and collaboration among globally dispersed teams.

It also addresses the increasingly compute-intensive workflows –with their exponential growth in data size and complexity –associated with new technologies for 3D, photo realistic rendering, virtual reality and deep learning. These are particularly common in such fields as engineering and science, where, for example, simulations are conducted during the design process to accurately predict final products.

When powered by NVIDIA Pascal architecture-based Tesla GPU accelerators, Quadro vDWS provides:

The ability to create complex 3D and photo real designs – Up to 24GB of GPU memory for working with large, immersive models.
Increased productivity – Up to double the graphics performance of the previous NVIDIA GPU architecture lets users make better, faster decisions.
Unified graphics and compute workloads – Supports accelerated graphics and compute (CUDA and OpenCL) workflows to streamline design and computer-aided engineering simulation.
Better performance for Linux users – NVIDIA NVENC delivers better performance and user density by off-loading H.264 video encoding, a compute-intensive task, from the CPU for Linux virtual workstation users.“The enterprise is transforming.

Workflows are evolving to incorporate AI, photorealism, VR, and greater collaboration among employees. The Quadro visualisation platform is evolving with the enterprise to provide the performance required,” said Bob Pette, Vice President of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. “With Quadro vDWS on Tesla-powered servers, businesses can tackle larger datasets, power the most demanding applications and meet the need for greater mobility.”

NVIDIA GRID vPC Powers the Modern Virtual Workspace

At the same time as manufacturing and design workloads are growing more complex, everyday programs like Windows 10, Office 365 and streaming applications like YouTube now require graphics acceleration to deliver features, functionality and a great virtual PC user experience for the digital workplace. To address the growing demand for graphics-accelerated VDI, NVIDIA announced improvements to its NVIDIA GRID vPC product.

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By leveraging new enhancements in the NVIDIA GRID August 2017 Release and Pascal-based NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators, GRID vPC provides:

Improved user density and scalability – The Tesla P40 supports up to 24 instances of 1GB virtual desktop profiles, which is a 50 percent increase when compared to the Tesla M60. Taking advantage of this market-leading graphics virtualisation density, IT departments can optimise their infrastructure investment and deliver graphics-accelerated virtualized desktops and applications across the enterprise.
Greater vGPU insight – End-to-end management and monitoring tools provide vGPU visibility at the host or guest level. Application-level monitoring capabilities allow IT to intelligently design, manage and support their end users’ experience. New integrations with VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), Citrix Director and XenCenter enable flexibility and control from a single, unified view.
Better service – A new GPU resource scheduler helps IT departments enable seamless, consistent allocation of vGPU resources to the user, preventing latency and a degraded user experience caused by a “noisy neighbour.”

Tesla-Powered Virtual GPU Solutions Deliver More Power for More Users NVIDIA Quadro vDWS and NVIDIA GRID vPC solutions are designed for optimal performance with Pascal-based Tesla GPU accelerators. Joining the NVIDIA Tesla P4, P40 and P100 is the new Tesla P6. It is designed entirely for blade servers and delivers 16GB of memory and supports up to 16 instances of 1GB virtual desktop profiles.

Pascal-based Tesla accelerators provide IT departments the graphics and compute virtualization resources needed to meet demands and scale across the enterprise. Availability Quadro vDWS and NVIDIA GRID vPC solutions are available today in over 100 server systems worldwide, including those from Cisco, Citrix, Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, VMware and others, with support for new Pascal-based features and functionality starting September 1.

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14th Generation PowerEdge Servers @ Dell EMC Forum 2017

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Dell EMC just announced the worldwide availability of the 14th Generation PowerEdge servers, as well as Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) advancements, at the Dell EMC Forum 2017 here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Join us for the media briefing on these two new developments at the Dell EMC Forum 2017, with KT Ong and William Tan from Dell EMC Malaysia!

The Dell EMC Business Update For 2H 2017

The media briefing kicked off with a business update on Dell EMC by KT Ong, Country Manager of Dell EMC Malaysia. He also briefed us on the maturity of the industry’s digital transformation process.

Some key points from his presentation :

Dell EMC is the market leader in Converged Infrastructure.
They recorded 17 consecutive quarters of gain in the PC market.
Their PowerEdge server business continues to deliver double-digit growth.
Their Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) business is growing in triple digits, and they expected to be the market leader by the next quarter.
Only 5% of organisations that responded to the Dell EMC survey had fully completed their digital transformation, with 12% of organisations still stuck with legacy IT.
Transformed organisations are more than twice as likely to report exceeding their FY2016 revenue goals than those still stuck with legacy IT.

The 14th Generation PowerEdge Servers

The bedrock of the modern data center, and Dell EMC’s infrastructure solution strategy is their PowerEdge servers. In this video, William Tan, Director of Compute & Marketing, Dell EMC Malaysia, details their server strategy and how the new 14th Generation PowerEdge servers fit into it all.

The new 14th Generation PowerEdge servers are now optimised for NVMe storage, software-defined storage and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), promising :

Accelerated database performance and lower latency – up to 12X more database IOPS, and up to 98% less database latency in a VMware vSAN cluster
Faster and seamless live migration of virtual machines – up to 58% faster migrations, with up to 75% less CPU usage when using 25 GbE with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA).
Faster storage performance – with up to 6X more NVMe drives, and up to 5X more flash storage, 30% more I/O slots and 25% increase in density.

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The 14th Generation PowerEdge Line-Up

The 14th Generation PowerEdge servers are powered by the new Intel Xeon Scalable processors. With 27% more CPU cores and 50% more memory bandwidth, they will offer more compute performance than ever before. Here is the current line-up as announced at the Dell EMC Forum 2017 :

Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 – ideal for dense scale-out datacenter computing and storage in a 1U / 2-socket platform.
Dell EMC PowerEdge R740 – workhorse 2U / 2-socket platform with 50% more VDI users per server, and up to 50% more GPU accelerator support for Hadoop analytics.
Dell EMC PowerEdge R740XD – this 2U / 2S platform has best-in-class storage performance and density for software-defined storage.
Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 – this 3U / 4S platform handles extremely demanding, mission-critical workloads like ERP, e-commerce and very large databases. The PowerEdge R940 can save up to US$600,000 in Oracle licensing fees, and performs up to 44% faster in an SAP SD Sybase Environment.
Dell EMC PowerEdge M640 & FC640 – these are modular servers with best-in-class storage density in a blade / modular platform.
Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 – ideal for high-performance computing, with maximum density, scalability and energy-efficiency in a 2U / 8S modular platforms.

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Dell EMC Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Advancements

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Dell EMC Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Advancements

At the Dell EMC Forum 2017, Dell EMC announced that they will be integrating their Dell EMC PowerEdge servers into the Dell EMC VxRail Appliances Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI).

VxRail Appliances on PowerEdge servers deliver 40% more CPU performance for the same price, increased flexibility and scalability with more configurations, all-flash nodes equipped with double the storage capacity and a new 3-node entry point that is more than 25% less expensive.

This allows Dell EMC to address new workloads or use cases like :

Storage heavy workloads including Big Data Analytics and Microsoft Exchange can take advantage of VxRail Appliances based on the PowerEdge R730xd platform that has highly dense storage nodes coupled with the latest Intel processors to provide high-performance processing.
Graphics-heavy client virtualisation workloads that require increasing levels of performance found in the latest operating systems including Microsoft Windows 10, as well as productivity applications and graphics-intensive CAD/CAM, research and development applications based on the PowerEdge R730.
Remote Office/Branch Office environments can leverage the low-end 3-node entry option based on the PowerEdge R630 with a starting priced as low as US $25,000 for a three-node cluster, allowing customers to cost-effectively deploy HCI to simplify IT management at multiple remote sites.

In addition, Dell EMC announced the availability of Dell EMC VxRail Appliances 4.5 that delivers these new enterprise features :

Enhanced enterprise deployment features – Streamlined installation and implementation experience designed to help enterprise customers manage VxRail Appliances at scale. The VxRail Appliance deployment experience, which is optimised to deploy a single appliance in only 20 minutes, now can be applied to larger cluster sizes, allowing customers to add and manage 10 or more appliances as easily as a single appliance.
Additional hardware flexibility lowers total cost of ownership – New single processor options, reduce the cost of deploying processor-based licensed software for scaling up to 64 nodes. New network options, including up to 12 additional ports, allow VxRail Appliances to be deployed in environments requiring physical network segmentation of workloads.
Support for the latest VMware technologies – New VMware vSphere 6.5 and VMware vSAN 6.6 support adds optimised data service algorithms to accelerate flash performance, software-defined data-at-rest encryption to protect against unwanted access to data, and enhanced protection for stretched clusters.
Improved interoperability with Dell EMC technologies – Customers deploying VxRail Appliances now can leverage a centralised Dell EMC Secure Remote Services (ESRS) gateway to provide a single point of secure, two-way remote support for their entire Dell EMC infrastructure.

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Dell EMC VxRail Appliances on PowerEdge Availability

VxRail Appliances powered by PowerEdge servers is now available for order in Singapore, India, and Korea starting 14 August 2017.
VxRail Appliances powered by PowerEdge servers have planned available in October 2017 in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Fiji, Guam, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Samoa, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Mellanox Technologies Expands Presence In Malaysia

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KUALA LUMPUR, April 12, 2017 – MellanoxTechnologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ: MLNX) today unveiled its expansion plans for Malaysia. The announcement, which is in line with the country’s ambitions of becoming the leading Big Data Analytics (BDA) solutions hub in South East Asia, reiterated Mellanox’s commitment to Malaysia through its strategic investment roadmap.

Mellanox Technologies Expands Presence In Malaysia

“Malaysia’s investment in Big Data, data centers and the Cloud is impressive,” said Charlie Foo, Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific Japan, Mellanox Technologies. “With a year-over-year growth of more than 20 percent in the last five years, the field of digital data management is maturing rapidly. Mellanox’s investment in Malaysia looks to complement Malaysia’s advancing digital economy by providing intelligent 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100Gb/s interconnect solutions that serve today’s and future needs in Malaysia. This will enable organizations to be less concerned about today’s technological demands while concentrating on running their business, resulting in unparalleled operating efficiency for these organizations.”

Mellanox’s investment into Malaysia’s digital economy comes at a time when the country is ramping up its efforts to see its ICT roadmap to fruition. The country’s ICT custodian, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), noted that MSC Malaysia — a national initiative designed to attract world-class technology companies to the country — reported a U.S. $3.88 billion in export sales in 2015, representing an 18 percent increase over 2014.

Today, the MSC Malaysia footprint has expanded to include 42 locations across the country, hosting more than 3,800 companies from more than 40 countries, employing more than 150,000 high-income knowledge workers, 85 percent which are Malaysians. This has propelled Malaysia to a top three ranking in AT Kearney’s Global Services Location Index since 2005, with only China and India ahead of Malaysia.

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Mellanox’s Open Ethernet switch family delivers the highest performance and port density with a complete chassis and fabric management solution, enabling converged data centers to operate at any scale while reducing operational costs and infrastructure complexity.

Mellanox InfiniBand solutions have already been chosen to accelerate large High Performance Computing (HPC) customers in Malaysia. HPC customers use super computers and parallel processing techniques for solving complex computational problems and performing research activities through computer modeling, simulation and analysis. These HPC customers span various industries including education, bioscience, governments, finance, media and entertainment, oil and gas, pharmaceutical and manufacturing.

The company is actively seeking partnerships and collaboration opportunities to support customers from different industries, primarily within Big Data, data centers and the Cloud.