What is composable infrastructure?

Composable infrastructure treats compute, storage, and network devices as pools of resources that can be provisioned as needed, depending on what different workloads require for optimum performance. It’s an emerging category of infrastructure that’s aimed at optimizing IT resources and improving business agility.The approach is like a public cloud in that resource capacity is requested and provisioned from shared capacity – except composable infrastructure sits on-premises in an enterprise data center.[ Check out REVIEW: VMware’s vSAN 6.6 and hear IDC’s top 10 data center predictions . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] IT resources are treated as services, and the composable aspect refers to the ability to make those resources available on the fly, depending on the needs of different physical, virtual and containerized applications. A management layer is designed to discover and access the pools of compute and storage, ensuring that the right resources are in the right place at the right time.To read this article in full, please click here

What is composable infrastructure?

Composable infrastructure treats compute, storage, and network devices as pools of resources that can be provisioned as needed, depending on what different workloads require for optimum performance. It’s an emerging category of infrastructure that’s aimed at optimizing IT resources and improving business agility.The approach is like a public cloud in that resource capacity is requested and provisioned from shared capacity – except composable infrastructure sits on-premises in an enterprise data center.[ Check out REVIEW: VMware’s vSAN 6.6 and hear IDC’s top 10 data center predictions . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] IT resources are treated as services, and the composable aspect refers to the ability to make those resources available on the fly, depending on the needs of different physical, virtual and containerized applications. A management layer is designed to discover and access the pools of compute and storage, ensuring that the right resources are in the right place at the right time.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: File storage modernization for the small and midsize business

In our last two columns, we’ve focused our discussion on industry trends that are impacting storage architectures, as well as a few “broad stroke” architectures that may help businesses address the issues those trends created. For this month’s column (as well as more than a few future ones), I’d like to instead focus on solution strategies for improving and modernizing the storage architectures for today’s businesses.Market drivers for SMB storage Let’s start with looking at small and midsize businesses (SMBs). By our definition we’re talking about firms with less than 1,000 employees. While that’s hardly FORTUNE 500 territory, firms with hundreds of employees still have a deep need for enterprise-class file storage capabilities. Think design firms, software developers, architectural firms, creative businesses, etc. – all of these SMBs rely on their data and file storage as the lifeblood of their business.To read this article in full, please click here

Sponsored Post: Educative, Clover, Triplebyte, Exoscale, Symbiont, Loupe, Etleap, Aerospike, Scalyr, Domino Data Lab, MemSQL

Who's Hiring? 

  • Clover is looking for seasoned software engineers to help us solve the most complicated problem in the world: healthcare. We're using sophisticated data analytics, custom software, and machine learning to coordinate care and build a clearer model of our member's health and risk factors. We are on a mission to help seniors and low-income members live healthier while keeping costs down. This is an opportunity for those who want to be at the intersection of health and technology and thrive in a collaborative environment as well as the freedom of self-direction. If you're interested, please directly apply here!

  • Triplebyte now hires software engineers for top tech companies and hundreds of the most exciting startups like Apple, Dropbox, Mixpanel, and Instacart. They identify your strengths from an online coding quiz and let you skip resume and recruiter screens at multiple companies at once. It's free, confidential, and background-blind. Apply here.

  • Symbiont is a New York-based financial technology company building new kinds of computer networks to connect independent financial institutions together and allow them to share business logic and data in real time. This involves developing a distributed system which is also decentralized, and which allows for the creation Continue reading

A Better Internet for Kenyan Kids

Unlike most children of his age, Alex Bahati, 16, is privileged to have a smart phone at his disposal when he is at home during school holidays. Alex lives with his two young siblings and a house help.  His parents work with an international NGO and their work demands a lot of travel and this keeps them away from the family most of the time. The flat where Alex lives is fixed with free Wifi giving the residents access to the Internet without much restriction. At Domus Marie Secondary School where he is in Form one, the deputy principle Mr. Thomson reported that Alex is one among a couple of students who are withdrawn and sleepy in class most of the times. His parents have also pleaded with the school administration to give Alex some special attention because he is addicted to the Internet.

As founder of MediaNetWorks, an advocacy and capacity building organization, I have been holding presentations and seminars about Internet safety in local schools, churches, and events organized for children. Some events of seven years ago remain vividly clear. While giving a workshop on Internet Safety to teens at a local Church in Ngong (Nairobi), Continue reading

Cisco emboldens its disaggregation strategy

The notion of disaggregation – separating the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware –  has always been a conundrum for Cisco.  In a nutshell, why would the company risk losing all of the millions of dollars in development and the key networking features tied up in current Cisco hardware and software packages?But in the new world of all-things software in which Cisco plans to be king, the disaggregation strategy is gaining momentum. [ Learn about how server disaggregation can boost data center efficiency and learn the how Windows Server 2019 embraces hyperconverged data centers . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] This week the company took things a step further in announcing a variety of disaggregation steps enterprise and service provider customers could be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco emboldens its disaggregation strategy

The notion of disaggregation – separating the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware –  has always been a conundrum for Cisco.  In a nutshell, why would the company risk losing all of the millions of dollars in development and the key networking features tied up in current Cisco hardware and software packages?But in the new world of all-things software in which Cisco plans to be king, the disaggregation strategy is gaining momentum. [ Learn about how server disaggregation can boost data center efficiency and learn the how Windows Server 2019 embraces hyperconverged data centers . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] This week the company took things a step further in announcing a variety of disaggregation steps enterprise and service provider customers could be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco emboldens its disaggregation strategy

The notion of disaggregation – separating the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware –  has always been a conundrum for Cisco.  In a nutshell, why would the company risk losing all of the millions of dollars in development and the key networking features tied up in current Cisco hardware and software packages?But in the new world of all-things software in which Cisco plans to be king, the disaggregation strategy is gaining momentum. [ Learn about how server disaggregation can boost data center efficiency and learn the how Windows Server 2019 embraces hyperconverged data centers . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] This week the company took things a step further in announcing a variety of disaggregation steps enterprise and service provider customers could be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco emboldens disaggregation strategy

The notion of disaggregation – separating the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware –  has always been a conundrum for Cisco.  In a nutshell, why would the company risk losing all of the millions of dollars in development and the key networking features tied up in current Cisco hardware and software packages?But in the new world of all-things software in which Cisco plans to be king, the disaggregation strategy is gaining momentum.[ Check out REVIEW: VMware’s vSAN 6.6 and hear IDC’s top 10 data center predictions . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] This week the company took things a step further in announcing a variety of disaggregation steps enterprise and service provider customers could be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here

To understand big data, convert it to sound

Humans are far better at identifying data pattern changes audibly than they are graphically in two dimensions, researchers exploring a radical concept say. They think that servers full of big data would be far more understandable if the numbers were all moved off the computer screens or hardcopies and sonified, or converted into sound.That's because when listening to music, nuances, can jump out at you — a bad note, for example. And researchers at Virginia Tech say the same thing may apply with number crunching. Data-set anomaly spotting, or comprehension overall, could be enhanced.Also read: How tech giants are putting big data to work | Sign up: Receive daily Network World news updates The team behind a project to prove this is testing the theory with a recently built 129-loudspeaker array installed in a giant immersive cube in Virginia Tech’s performance space/science lab, the school's Moss Arts Center.To read this article in full, please click here

To understand big data, convert it to sound

Humans are far better at identifying data pattern changes audibly than they are graphically in two dimensions, researchers exploring a radical concept say. They think that servers full of big data would be far more understandable if the numbers were all moved off the computer screens or hardcopies and sonified, or converted into sound.That's because when listening to music, nuances, can jump out at you — a bad note, for example. And researchers at Virginia Tech say the same thing may apply with number crunching. Data-set anomaly spotting, or comprehension overall, could be enhanced.Also read: How tech giants are putting big data to work | Sign up: Receive daily Network World news updates The team behind a project to prove this is testing the theory with a recently built 129-loudspeaker array installed in a giant immersive cube in Virginia Tech’s performance space/science lab, the school's Moss Arts Center.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Building the smart city: 8 things that matter

What is a smart city? The answer depends on whom you ask.Solutions providers will tell you it’s smart parking, smart lighting or anything to do with technology. City officials may tell you it’s about conducting city business online, such as searching records or applying for permits. City residents may tell you it’s the ease of getting around, or about crime reduction.Everyone is right. A smart city, built properly, will have different value for different stakeholders. They may not even think of their city as a “smart” city. They know it only as a place they want to live in, work in, and be a part of.Technology is top of mind in the smart city. But it is just one layer of many in the smart city ecosystem. Each layer has a different but equally important role. No one layer is more relevant than another. For example, technology “powers” the smart city, but it is data that leads to insights and new services. However, to create relevant services, cities must be able to innovate the right solutions. To get the right outcomes that matter consistently and at scale, civic leaders must establish sensible technology and data policies. Finally, Continue reading

Mounting Complexity Pushes New GPU Profiling Tools

The more things change, the more they remain the same — as do the two most critical issues for successful software execution. First, you remove the bugs, then you profile. And while debugging and profiling are not new, they are needed now more than ever, albeit in a modernized form.

The first performance analysis tools were first found on early IBM platforms in the early 1970s.  These performance profiles were based on timer interrupts that recorded “status words” set at predetermined specific intervals in an attempt to detect “hot spots” inside running code.  

Profiling is even more critical today, …

Mounting Complexity Pushes New GPU Profiling Tools was written by James Cuff at The Next Platform.

“Enhancing IoT Security” Kicks off in Ottawa

While Internet-connected devices afford utility unseen in generations past, they may also create a host of security issues, ranging from insignificant to catastrophic in potential impact. In an effort to mitigate this risk, the Internet Society partnered with Innovation, Science and Economic Development, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, CANARIE, and CIPPIC to host a multistakeholder meeting on the security of IoT devices. The event takes place in Ottawa, Canada on April 4, 2018.

This meeting will be the first in a year-long process to develop recommendations for a set of norms and/or policies to secure IoT in Canada. This event will serve as an opportunity to begin planning and implementing a bottom-up, organic process to remedy existing and potential security challenges in Canada’s national IoT ecosystem.

This session will focus on IoT as it relates to two specific themes: consumer protection and network resiliency. The event will begin with presentations from engaged stakeholders in order to lay the groundwork for group discussion. Participants will then work in small groups to develop consensus on key IoT issues and determine what can be done to meaningfully impact consumer protection and network resiliency. This will create the basis of discussion Continue reading

Patches for Meltdown and Spectre aren’t that bad after all

Internal tests from a leading industry vendor have shown that fixes applied to servers running Linux or Windows Server aren’t as detrimental as initially thought, with many use cases seeing no impact at all.The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, first documented in January, seemed like a nightmare for virtualized systems, but that is overblown. There are a lot of qualifiers, starting with what you are doing and what generation processor you are using.The tests were done on servers running Xeons of the Haswell-EP (released in 2014), Broadwell-EP (released in 2016), and Skylake-EP (released in 2017). Haswell and Broadwell were the same microarchitecture, with minor tweaks. The big change there was Broadwell was a die shrink. Skylake, though, was a whole new architecture, and as it turns out, that made the difference.To read this article in full, please click here

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