Network World Data Center

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eBay scores cost savings and a bandwidth boost with white-box switches running SONiC

For online auction powerhouse eBay, customer service is everything. Or, as Parantap Lahiri, vice president of network and data center engineering, puts it, “We want to make the network more like air or water, so our people don’t have to worry about network resources when creating magical services for our users.”The demands on the eBay infrastructure are staggering: 1.8 billion active listings; 133 million active buyers. It’s main landing page gets 250 million visits per day. Unlike a static storefront site like Amazon, an eBay auction can entail multiple bidders from all over the world competing against each other as the clock ticks down to the end of the auction. And the eBay platform supports direct communication between sellers and buyers, with offers and counteroffers flying back and forth.To read this article in full, please click here

Google launches A3 supercomputer VMs

Google Cloud announced a new supercomputer virtual-machine series aimed at rapidly training large AI models.Unveiled at the Google I/O conference, the new A3 supercomputer VMs are purpose-built to handle the considerable resource demands of a large language model (LLM). “A3 GPU VMs were purpose-built to deliver the highest-performance training for today’s ML workloads, complete with modern CPU, improved host memory, next-generation Nvidia GPUs and major network upgrades,” the company said in a statement.The instances are powered by eight Nvidia H100 GPUs, Nvidia’s newest GPU that just begin shipping earlier this month, as well as Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon Scalable processors, 2TB of host memory and 3.6 TBs bisectional bandwidth between the eight GPUs via Nvidia’s NVSwitch and NVLink 4.0 interconnects.To read this article in full, please click here

Taking advantage of the grep command’s many options

The grep command makes it easy to find strings in text files on Linux systems, but that's just a start. It can be used to search through these files for multiple strings or regular expressions at the same time. It can also ignore case when needed, and it can count the lines in the resulting output for you. This post shows how to use grep in all these ways.Basic grep The simplest grep command looks like the one shown below. This "find string in file" command will show all the lines in the file that contain the string, even when that string is only part of a longer one.$ grep word story The wording suggests there was more to the story than anyone wanted to admit. The sword had been left behind the shed. It was several days before it was Finding multiple strings There are a number of ways to search for a group of strings in a single command. In the command below, the '|' character serves as an "or" function. The command will display any lines in the file that contain the word "xray", the word "tape" or both.To read this article in full, Continue reading

Dell pushes security, devops integration in storage updates

Dell’s storage product lineup is set to receive a wide range of updates, including  devops integrations with the Ansible and Terraform tools, compliance with the latest US government security standards, zero trust readiness and more.PowerStore, Dell’s flash-based storage array line, is receiving the lion’s share of the security updates, according to a Dell announcement on Wednesday. Dell said that PowerStore now boasts STIG hardening, meaning that it is compliant with the federal government’s stanadards for its own networks. PowerStore also received secure and immutable snapshot technology, which should make for more reliable and harder-to-compromise recoveries. Multifactor authentication, streamlined file resiliency (which adds more mounted snapshots per system) and direct management of file permissions from within PowerStore are also being added.To read this article in full, please click here

US data center market nears full capacity

The North American data center market is at near capacity, which means that enterprises looking for colocation services may not be able to get the space they need at the data center they want, or they may have to pay a premium for it.Market researcher datacenterHawk, which helps companies search for colocation and cloud service providers, says that the North American data center market is facing record-high demand, although the rate of growth has slowed somewhat due to economic headwinds.High demand and low inventory (available space) have resulted in a vacancy rate in major North American markets of just 2.88%, according to datacenterHawk's 1Q 2023 Data Center Market Recap. In the secondary markets, it’s 5%.To read this article in full, please click here

AT&T, Dell and VMware team to simplify 5G edge deployments

AT&T, Dell and VMware have partnered to create a multi-access edge computing (MEC) solution that includes private 5G wireless deployed on premises. The three vendors combined their experience in 5G communications and edge infrastructure to create an integrated 5G MEC solution – called AT&T MEC with Dell Apex – that’s designed to accelerate enterprise adoption of 5G technology.AT&T provides network connectivity for the solution, while Dell delivers the hardware that AT&T MEC rides on and provides an “as-a-service” capability via Dell Apex Private Cloud. VMware's virtualization and multi-cloud enablement software comes loaded on the Dell Private Cloud VxRail HCI servers.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM advances its quantum roadmap as competition heats up

IBM reached a quantum-computing milestone in March with the first U.S. deployment of an on-site, private-sector, IBM-managed quantum computer. The IBM Quantum System One, installed at the Cleveland Clinic, is the world's first quantum computer to be specifically dedicated to healthcare research, with the goal of helping the Cleveland Clinic accelerate biomedical discoveries, according to IBM.The announcement didn't surprise Scott Buchholz, global quantum computing lead at enterprise advisory firm Deloitte. "IBM is a leader in the race to build useful, scalable quantum computers," he says. "Their research teams have been working to build the software, hardware, and supplier ecosystem necessary to support the long-term development of these important technologies."To read this article in full, please click here

Four ways to view files and file permissions on Linux

There are a number of ways to view files on Linux, because, after all, files on Linux are multifaceted. They have names, they have content, they have access permissions, and they have dates and times associated with their "birth" (when they were initially added to the file system) as well as when they were last changed and last accessed. This post covers the commands that allow you to view all these details.Listing files The easiest and most obvious way to list files is with the ls command. By default, ls will list files in the current directory in name order, but you can reverse that by adding the -r option.To read this article in full, please click here

Broadcom CEO pledges $2 billion for VMware R&D, professional services support

Broadcom said it will spend $2 billion a year to accelerate research and development for VMware products and services.In making the investment assurance, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan wrote in a blog post: “By extending our multi-cloud strategy, we will invest in extending VMware’s software stack to run and manage workloads across private and public clouds, which means any enterprise can run application workloads easily, securely, and seamlessly on-prem, or in any cloud platform they prefer.”“If companies can run VMware as a private cloud on-prem, they should be able to take their same application workloads to the public cloud without needing to re-engineer that application or worry about being locked into the public cloud providers that they choose,” Tan stated.To read this article in full, please click here

Data center sustainability becoming the norm, not the exception

The proportion of companies implementing a data center infrastructure sustainability program will rise from about 5% in 2022 all the way to 75% by 2027, as sustainability becomes an increasingly central consideration for cost optimization and risk management, according to new data from Gartner Research.Respondents to a recent global survey of 221 IT leaders conducted by Gartner said that sustainability is already on the march within their organizations, with 42% saying that environmentally friendly choices are helping to drive business growth and provide a differentiator to their competition, and 29% reporting that it’s helping to create strategic value through industry partnerships.To read this article in full, please click here

How to shop for network observability tools

Today’s enterprise networks span on-premises and cloud environments, and it has become a lot harder for IT teams to maintain performance, reliability and security when some parts of the network are unknown or off-limits to traditional performance monitoring tools.“If you cannot get visibility into all the components comprising the digital experience, everything that is between the end user clicking the mouse to the deepest part of a cloud or data center network, then you are flying blind, you are incurring a lot of risk, and you could be overspending, too,” says Mark Leary, research director for network analytics and automation at research firm IDC.To read this article in full, please click here

Exploring bash builtins on Linux

You probably use some bash builtins fairly often whether or not you think of them as builtins or simply as commands. After all, bash builtins are commands, but not implemented as separate executables. Instead, they are part of the bash executable. In other words, they are "built into" bash, thus the term "bash builtins".If you're looking for a particular builtin, the which command isn't going to find it for you because it only looks through a collection of executables. This includes system commands like /bin/echo as well as scripts for which you have execute permission. Here's an example of which not finding anything:To read this article in full, please click here

IBM offers bare metal LinuxONE instances through the cloud

IBM is now offering bare metal instances in the cloud powered by its LinuxONE hardware with a pitch that enterprises can consolidate workloads and reduce energy consumption compared to x86 servers under similar conditions.The LinuxONE servers feature the Telum processor that IBM uses in its z16 mainframe, but they're designed to run multiple flavors of enterprise Linux rather than the mainframe z/OS.IBM shipped the fourth generation of its LinuxONE product line last September, dubbed LinuxONE Emperor, promising both scale-out and scale-up performance and requiring a lot less hardware than standard x86 servers. More recently, it introduced LinuxONE Rockhopper, a smaller-scale system for more modest deployments.To read this article in full, please click here

Broadcom’s new switching chip links GPUs, aims to boost AI networks

Broadcom’s new networking chip, called the Jericho3-AI, is designed to connect supercomputers and features a high-performance fabric for artificial intelligence (AI) environments.Broadcom has three switch families: the high-bandwidth Tomahawk switch platform, which is used primarily within data centers; the lower bandwidth Trident platform, which offers greater programmability and deeper buffers, making it more suited for the edge; and the Jericho line, which sits somewhere between the other two and is best suited for low latency interconnects.Jericho3-AI is targeted at AI and machine-learning backend networks where the switch fabric handles spraying of traffic on all network links and reordering of that traffic before delivering to the endpoints. It also has built-in congestion management capabilities for load balancing and minimizing network congestion. To read this article in full, please click here

Understanding Linux file system types

You may not spend much time contemplating the characteristics of the file systems on your Linux system, but the differences between the various file system types can be both interesting and highly relevant. This article explains commands that you can use to verify your file system types and describes their differences.Commands that report file system types There are a number of Linux commands that will display file system types along with the file system names, mount points and such. Some will also display sizes and available disk space.Using df -Th The df command with the "T" (show file system type) and "h" (use human-friendly sizes) options provides a very useful look at the file systems on a Linux system. Here's an example:To read this article in full, please click here

Intel seeks momentum two years into Gelsinger’s turnaround effort

When Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel as its CEO in February 2021, he took over a company that had been battered by mismanagement and weakened by competition.Intel had lost significant ground in process-node development to Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC. While TSMC was making transistors at 7nm, Intel was struggling to get 10nm. AMD was besting Intel in both client and server performance and taking more market share with each passing quarter. Nvidia was on its steady march of domination in the GPU market and gaining mindshare as the ultimate AI processing vendor.To read this article in full, please click here

SONiC test lab gains industry support

Enterprises that want to kick the tires on the open-source network operating system SONiC got a new option this week as Aviz Networks and a group of well-established industry vendors and organizations said they would collaborate on a new testing facility.The lab, the Open Networking Experience (ONE) Center for SONiC is being offered by SONiC startup Aviz and will be supported by collaboration with the Linux Foundation, The Open Compute Project, Celestica, Cisco, Edgecore, Nvidia, Ragile, Supermicro, Wistron, and Keysight.The center will feature online and in-person access at no cost for network operators to try out the capabilities of SONiC across a wide range of hardware, according to Aviz. To read this article in full, please click here

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