Andy Patrizio
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Andy Patrizio
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Dell and Cisco extend VxBlock integration with new features
Just two months ago Dell EMC and Cisco renewed their converged infrastructure vows, and now the two have taken another step in the alliance. At this year’s at Cisco Live event taking place in San Diego, the two announced plans to expand VxBlock 1000 integration across servers, networking, storage, and data protection.This is done through support of NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), which allows enterprise SSDs to talk to each other directly through a high-speed fabric. NVMe is an important advance because SATA and PCI Express SSDs could never talk directly to other drives before until NVMe came along.To read this article in full, please click here
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The carbon footprints of IT shops that train AI models are huge
A new research paper from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2) generated over the course of training several common large artificial intelligence (AI) models and found that the process can generate nearly five times the amount as an average American car over its lifetime plus the process of making the car itself.The paper specifically examined the model training process for natural-language processing (NLP), which is how AI handles natural language interactions. The study found that during the training process, more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is generated.To read this article in full, please click here
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The carbon footprints of IT shops that train AI models are huge
A new research paper from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2) generated over the course of training several common large artificial intelligence (AI) models and found that the process can generate nearly five times the amount as an average American car over its lifetime plus the process of making the car itself.The paper specifically examined the model training process for natural-language processing (NLP), which is how AI handles natural language interactions. The study found that during the training process, more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is generated.To read this article in full, please click here
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Can Huawei survive, and what should customers do?
Chinese IT hardware giant Huawei is in a very tough position now, cut off from most western technology partners following the Trump administration’s declaration of the firm as a national security risk. The question now becomes what do its customers do.The Trump administration issued an order that effectively bars American firms from selling components and software to the company, and very quickly Huawei was cut off from Intel, ARM, Infineon, Samsung, and Google. The SD Association and Wi-Fi Alliance have also cut ties with Huawei.However, Huawei got a temporary break last month when the Commerce Department gave the company a reprieve after it added Huawei to a list of companies it considered a national security risk. Instead, the department posted a notice to the Federal Register that it would grant 90-day permissions for transactions necessary to maintain and support existing cellular networks and handsets.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data center workloads become more complex despite promises to the contrary
Data centers are becoming more complex and still run the majority of workloads despite the promises of simplicity of deployment through automation and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), not to mention how the cloud was supposed to take over workloads.That’s the finding of the Uptime Institute's latest annual global data center survey (registration required). The majority of IT loads still run on enterprise data centers even in the face of cloud adoption, putting pressure on administrators to have to manage workloads across the hybrid infrastructure.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data center workloads become more complex despite promises to the contrary
Data centers are becoming more complex and still run the majority of workloads despite the promises of simplicity of deployment through automation and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), not to mention how the cloud was supposed to take over workloads.That’s the finding of the Uptime Institute's latest annual global data center survey (registration required). The majority of IT loads still run on enterprise data centers even in the face of cloud adoption, putting pressure on administrators to have to manage workloads across the hybrid infrastructure.To read this article in full, please click here
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Nvidia launches edge computing platform for AI processing
Nvidia is launching a new platform called EGX Platform designed to bring real-time artificial intelligence (AI) to edge networks. The idea is to put AI computing closer to where sensors collect data before it is sent to larger data centers.The edge serves as a buffer to data sent to data centers. It whittles down the data collected and only sends what is relevant up to major data centers for processing. This can mean discarding more than 90% of data collected, but the trick is knowing which data to keep and which to discard.“AI is required in this data-driven world,” said Justin Boitano, senior director for enterprise and edge computing at Nvidia, on a press call last Friday. “We analyze data near the source, capture anomalies and report anomalies back to the mothership for analysis.”To read this article in full, please click here
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With Cray buy, HPE rules but does not own the supercomputing market
Hewlett Packard Enterprise was already the leader in the high-performance computing (HPC) sector before its announced acquisition of supercomputer maker Cray earlier this month. Now it has a commanding lead, but there are still competitors to the giant.The news that HPE would shell out $1.3 billion to buy the company came just as Cray has announced plans to build three of the biggest systems yet – all exascale, and all at the same time for 2021 deployment.Sales had been slowing for HPC systems, but our government with its endless supply of money came to the rescue, throwing hundreds of millions at Cray for systems to be built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.To read this article in full, please click here
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With Cray buy, HPE rules but does not own the supercomputing market
Hewlett Packard Enterprise was already the leader in the high-performance computing (HPC) sector before its announced acquisition of supercomputer maker Cray earlier this month. Now it has a commanding lead, but there are still competitors to the giant.The news that HPE would shell out $1.3 billion to buy the company came just as Cray has announced plans to build three of the biggest systems yet – all exascale, and all at the same time for 2021 deployment.Sales had been slowing for HPC systems, but our government with its endless supply of money came to the rescue, throwing hundreds of millions at Cray for systems to be built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.To read this article in full, please click here
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Benchmarks of forthcoming Epyc 2 processor leaked
Benchmarks of engineering samples of AMD's second-generation Epyc server, code-named “Rome,” briefly found their way online and show a very beefy chip running a little slower than its predecessor.Rome is based on the Zen 2 architecture, believed to be more of an incremental improvement over the prior generation than a major leap. It’s already known that Rome would feature a 64-core, 128-thread design, but that was about all of the details.[ Also read: Who's developing quantum computers ] The details came courtesy of SiSoftware's Sandra PC analysis and benchmarking tool. It’s very popular and has been used by hobbyists and benchmarkers alike for more than 20 years. New benchmarks are uploaded to the Sandra database all the time, and what I suspect happened is someone running a Rome sample ran the benchmark, not realizing the results would be uploaded to the Sandra database.To read this article in full, please click here
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Benchmarks of forthcoming Epyc 2 processor leaked
Benchmarks of engineering samples of AMD's second-generation Epyc server, code-named “Rome,” briefly found their way online and show a very beefy chip running a little slower than its predecessor.Rome is based on the Zen 2 architecture, believed to be more of an incremental improvement over the prior generation than a major leap. It’s already known that Rome would feature a 64-core, 128-thread design, but that was about all of the details.[ Also read: Who's developing quantum computers ] The details came courtesy of SiSoftware's Sandra PC analysis and benchmarking tool. It’s very popular and has been used by hobbyists and benchmarkers alike for more than 20 years. New benchmarks are uploaded to the Sandra database all the time, and what I suspect happened is someone running a Rome sample ran the benchmark, not realizing the results would be uploaded to the Sandra database.To read this article in full, please click here
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Atos is the latest to enter the edge computing business
French IT giant Atos is the latest to jump into the edge computing business with a small device called BullSequana Edge. Unlike devices from its competitors that are the size of a shipping container, including those from Vapor IO and Schneider Electronics, Atos' edge device can sit in a closet.Atos says the device uses artificial intelligence (AI) applications to offer fast response times that are needed in areas such as manufacturing 4.0, autonomous vehicles, healthcare and retail/airport security – where data needs to be processed and analyzed at the edge in real time.[ Also see: What is edge computing? and How edge networking and IoT will reshape data centers.] The BullSequana Edge can be purchased as standalone infrastructure or bundled with Atos’ software edge software, and that software is pretty impressive. Atos says the BullSequana Edge supports three main categories of use cases:To read this article in full, please click here
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French IT giant Atos enters the edge-computing business
French IT giant Atos is the latest to jump into the edge computing business with a small device called BullSequana Edge. Unlike devices from its competitors that are the size of a shipping container, including those from Vapor IO and Schneider Electronics, Atos' edge device can sit in a closet.Atos says the device uses artificial intelligence (AI) applications to offer fast response times that are needed in areas such as manufacturing 4.0, autonomous vehicles, healthcare and retail/airport security – where data needs to be processed and analyzed at the edge in real time.[ Also see: What is edge computing? and How edge networking and IoT will reshape data centers.] The BullSequana Edge can be purchased as standalone infrastructure or bundled with Atos’ software edge software, and that software is pretty impressive. Atos says the BullSequana Edge supports three main categories of use cases:To read this article in full, please click here
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French IT giant Atos enters the edge-computing business
French IT giant Atos is the latest to jump into the edge computing business with a small device called BullSequana Edge. Unlike devices from its competitors that are the size of a shipping container, including those from Vapor IO and Schneider Electronics, Atos' edge device can sit in a closet.Atos says the device uses artificial intelligence (AI) applications to offer fast response times that are needed in areas such as manufacturing 4.0, autonomous vehicles, healthcare and retail/airport security – where data needs to be processed and analyzed at the edge in real time.[ Also see: What is edge computing? and How edge networking and IoT will reshape data centers.] The BullSequana Edge can be purchased as standalone infrastructure or bundled with Atos’ software edge software, and that software is pretty impressive. Atos says the BullSequana Edge supports three main categories of use cases:To read this article in full, please click here
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Microsoft issues fixes for non-supported versions of Windows Server
Microsoft took the rare step of issuing security fixes for both the server and desktop versions of Windows that are long out of support, so you know this is serious.The vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) is in the Remote Desktop Services component built into all versions of Windows. RDP, formerly known as Terminal Services, itself is not vulnerable. CVE-2019-0708 is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction, meaning any future malware could self-propagate from one vulnerable machine to another.CVE-2019-0708 affects Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. It does not impact Microsoft’s newest operating systems; Windows 8 through 10 and Windows Server 2012 through 2019 are not affected.To read this article in full, please click here
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Microsoft issues fixes for non-supported versions of Windows Server
Microsoft took the rare step of issuing security fixes for both the server and desktop versions of Windows that are long out of support, so you know this is serious.The vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) is in the Remote Desktop Services component built into all versions of Windows. RDP, formerly known as Terminal Services, itself is not vulnerable. CVE-2019-0708 is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction, meaning any future malware could self-propagate from one vulnerable machine to another.CVE-2019-0708 affects Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. It does not impact Microsoft’s newest operating systems; Windows 8 through 10 and Windows Server 2012 through 2019 are not affected.To read this article in full, please click here
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Nutanix offers unified data backup and recovery, allies with AMD
Nutanix is adding a data backup and recovery software package called Nutanix Mine to its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) offerings, which integrates third-party data backup and recovery software with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software.This allows Nutanix customers to manage their primary and secondary data storage and backup and recovery through a single management console. Nutanix claims that Mine will streamline overall deployment and will simplify the full lifecycle of data backup operations, including ongoing management, scaling and troubleshooting.Nutanix Mine will support a number of data backup and recovery software products, including Veeam, HYCU, Commvault, Veritas, and Unitrends.To read this article in full, please click here
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Supermicro moves production from China
Server maker Supermicro, based in Fremont, California, is reportedly moving production out of China over customer concerns that the Chinese government had secretly inserted chips for spying into its motherboards.The claims were made by Bloomberg late last year in a story that cited more than 100 sources in government and private industry, including Apple and Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, Apple CEO Tim Cook and AWS CEO Andy Jassy denied the claims and called for Bloomberg to retract the article. And a few months later, the third-party investigations firm Nardello & Co examined the claims and cleared Supermicro of any surreptitious activity.To read this article in full, please click here
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Supermicro moves production from China
Server maker Supermicro, based in Fremont, California, is reportedly moving production out of China over customer concerns that the Chinese government had secretly inserted chips for spying into its motherboards.The claims were made by Bloomberg late last year in a story that cited more than 100 sources in government and private industry, including Apple and Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, Apple CEO Tim Cook and AWS CEO Andy Jassy denied the claims and called for Bloomberg to retract the article. And a few months later, the third-party investigations firm Nardello & Co examined the claims and cleared Supermicro of any surreptitious activity.To read this article in full, please click here
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Backblaze report shows slight uptick in HDD failure rates
Cloud backup vendor Backblaze issued its latest quarterly findings for hard-disk drive (HDD) reliability, and it shows a slight uptick in failure rates — but hardly something to fret over.All told, Backblaze has 106,238 hard drives spinning in three data center colocations, and every quarter it highlights the failure rate of each model drive it uses. The company first came to prominence several years ago when it highlighted an abnormally high failure rate of Seagate drives.The problem arose about two years after massive floods in Thailand (around 2011) ruined the manufacturing facilities of several hard drive manufacturers, with Seagate taking it especially hard. I did some reporting back then for a now-defunct publication and found out that some corners were cut to get hard drive production going again and that those cuts resulted in a bunch of time bomb hard drives with higher than average failure rates.To read this article in full, please click here