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Juniper Networks expanded its wired access portfolio with the introduction of the new EX4000 Series Switches – a line designed to enhance network performance, security, and scalability for enterprises adopting Wi-Fi 7. These AI-native switches integrate Juniper’s Mist AI technology and offer Zero Trust security as well as energy-efficient networking.

One of the key features is its integration with Juniper’s Mist AI which offers predictive analytics and proactive issue resolution.

The Marvis Virtual Network Assistant and Marvis Minis provide real-time network insights, reducing manual troubleshooting efforts. Marvis identifies network issues before they impact users and delivers actionable recommendations, eliminating the need for constant manual monitoring and configuration, says the company.

Juniper’s AI-powered automation also automates routine tasks and enhances visibility through a unified dashboard, while the Mist AI platform provides an overview of network health.

“The EX4000 enables businesses to scale IT operations while reducing operational complexity,” said Christian Gilby, senior director of product marketing for AI-native networking at Juniper.

EX4000 is designed for high-density, multi-gigabit environments making it a scalable option for enterprises transitioning to Wi-Fi 7. The switches are available in various port configurations, including 12-, 24-, and 48-port models, and support 802.3bt PoE++ (up to 60W).

“With the growing adoption of Wi-Fi 7, organizations need network infrastructure that can scale without excessive costs,” Gilby said. “The EX4000 delivers flexible deployment options, ensuring businesses can right-size their network investments while maximizing performance.”

The virtual chassis design enables businesses to scale their infrastructure without requiring rewiring which can aid in simplifying network expansion as demand increases.

Gilby noted security remains a top priority for enterprises, which led to the EX4000 Series integrating Zero Trust principles through Juniper Mist Access Assurance. This technology automates identity verification, access validation, and policy enforcement to protect networks from unauthorized access.

“Zero Trust is built on the principle of ‘never trust, always verify,’ and Juniper Mist Access Assurance makes it easier for businesses to implement this framework at scale,” Gilby said.

He added AI-driven automation continuously monitors devices and users, enforcing strict access policies and identifying potential security risks.

The EX4000 ensures compliance with Zero Trust security measures by integrating with identity providers, endpoint security platforms, and threat intelligence solutions. Features such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), device compliance checks, and real-time threat detection help organizations safeguard sensitive data and maintain network integrity.

With sustainability also developing into a central consideration for organizations and IT teams, the EX4000 series incorporates features designed to reduce power consumption. For example, the switches automatically adjust fan speeds, deactivate unused PoE ports, and optimize energy usage based on network activity.

“Juniper’s AI-native intelligence enables organizations to optimize power consumption without compromising performance,” Gilby said. “By leveraging smart energy management and AI-powered analytics, businesses can align their IT operations with sustainability goals.”

The EX4000 also supports Juniper’s Wired Assurance and Premium Analytics, which provide insights into energy trends and network usage.

Gilby explained IT teams can use this data to implement advanced power-saving strategies and improve overall efficiency.

As network architects and engineers face growing challenges in managing complex IT environments, the EX4000 Series seeks to address these concerns by providing an AI-native platform that enhances scalability, security, and automation.

“Traditional networks often lack the agility needed for modern enterprise growth,” Gilby explained. “The EX4000 eliminates bottlenecks and simplifies network operations, allowing IT teams to scale dynamically while reducing downtime.”

Additionally, the platform’s unified management capabilities help businesses overcome operational silos, providing integration across LAN, WAN, and security infrastructures.

“The EX4000 represents the next generation of AI-powered networking,” Gilby said. “By delivering intelligent automation, enhanced security, and seamless scalability, we are enabling businesses to build resilient, high-performance networks for the future.”

You can watch presentations from Juniper Networks on the Tech Field Day website or YouTube channel.

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Cloud Field Day is back for 2025, continuing the theme of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud from the last Event in October 2024. Our vendor roster for this event aims to ease the complexities and dangers of multi-cloud networks and ensure that applications can be deployed wherever they deliver the most business value. No doubt, the delegate panel will have plenty of questions. You can ask questions on social media, particularly the LinkedIn streaming page for each company.

Learn more about Cloud Field Day 22 on the Tech Field Day website and watch it live on the Cloud Field Day Event page.

Cloud Field Day Presentation ScheduleOn Wednesday, we start at 8:00 AM, with Infoblox and the Infoblox Universal DDI product suite, which handles the fundamentals of efficiently and automatically managing DHCP, DNS names, and IP addresses across complex multi-cloud networks. If you have ever tried to build a unified network across multiple clouds and on-premises networks, you will know the pain of integrating the cloud DNS and ensuring that IP address ranges aren’t accidentally duplicated. From 11:00, Selector AI will showcase the Selector AIOPs solution to provide proactive alerting and easy incident resolution using ChatOps. Selector allows real-time alerting and drill down with comprehensive network visibility, path tracing performance monitoring, and fault isolation by correlating network and cloud events. Selector uses ICMP and HTTP synthetics for performance monitoring to understand traffic latencies in different parts of the network. At 2:00, Catchpoint presents Innovate or Perish: IT Organizations Must Rethink Monitoring in the Cloud Age. Catchpoint will look at why, despite heavy investments, incidents and outages are not going away (they are getting worse). Catchpoint have a new way, a re-envisioning of monitoring to adapt and account for these factors through Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM), which they will demonstrate.

The livestream on Thursday also starts at 8:00 AM Pacific, when the Fortinet team show their fabric platform’s value in combined network and platform signals intelligence that speeds time to detect, decreases SOC effort, and enables rapid and low-risk response. We will see the red team vs blue team demonstrations that Fortinet brings to Tech Field Day events. Combining network visibility to malicious traffic using FortiNDR and anomalous behavior identification through FortiCNAPP’s composite alerts combine to increase signal fidelity, which is more actionable. Through ML, FortiNDR and FortiCNAPP provide signal correlation and pre-investigation, allowing the SOC operator to respond quickly. Thursday will finish with a delegate roundtable discussion where we will undoubtedly gain even more insights into the challenges and joys of deploying and operating applications in a complex multi-cloud network.

Keep Up with the ShowThe live stream for Cloud Field Day will be held on Wednesday, February 19 and Thursday, the 20th. You can watch it on the Cloud Field Day event page, the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page, and our sister site, TechstrongTV. If you want to participate in the conversation, comment on our LinkedIn stream or jump on your favorite social media platform and use the hashtag #CFD22. If you miss any of the action during the livestream, you can always head over to our Tech Field Day YouTube channel.

Event InformationAlastair Cooke is a Tech Field Day Event Lead, now part of The Futurum Group. You can connect with Alastair on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and you can read more of his research notes and insights on The Futurum Group’s website.

Tech Field Day is part of The Futurum Group. Follow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. See information and look for upcoming events on the Tech Field Day website.

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I had the privilege to host a session at Techstrong Predict 2025 last month. The subject was something that has long been on my mind: how reliable, available, and stable we can expect applications to be today as everything about them seemingly gets reinvented – their data structures, hosting models, connectivity – and, especially, lifecycles and production pipelines.

My prediction, which I discussed with my co-panelists, Hope Lynch and Amanda Razani, is that these factors will come to a head this year in the industry, and 2025 will be the year we begin to talk about app “fragility” in earnest.

To summarize, applications are becoming more interconnected, reliant on external services, and infused with AI-generated code. Software teams have already been under pressure to deliver more at a faster pace, and AI and containerization has increased this pressure markedly. Dependencies, open integrations, not-yet-matured AI use, and a speed-to-market culture, all have good reasons to be in place, but they also increase the risks of app dysfunction, failure, degradation, and operational (production) issues.

There are a number of factors that seem to be coalescing now and justifying this prediction that this is the year of the fragile app.

Apps have been fragile for years, but 2025 will be the year this issue becomes noticed and discussed. A convergence of sophisticated cyber threats, steadily maturing user expectations, and the persistent culture of relentless innovation will bring the result – unreliable apps – into a more widespread consciousness. Think about last year’s CrowdStrike incident where a high-profile brand faced operational setbacks.

Another factor at play is AI-driven uncertainties. Organizations are rushing to integrate AI into apps and app development. Completely normal and understandable! But as Lynch pointed out in our session, some companies are given “a basket of money” to incorporate AI without clear direction, leading to confusion and stress among platform engineering teams. The push for AI-driven development, predictive maintenance, and self-healing applications can improve resiliency—but only if done with a level of intention, structure, and human oversight that hasn’t been understood yet.

Properly executed platform engineering can help mitigate fragility by enabling observability, intelligent monitoring, and dependency analysis, improving the developer experience, response times, and overall application stability. As Lynch emphasized, platform engineers should be seen as partners, not separate teams operating in silos, a state we have only started to achieve.

Another thing to note is that DevOps is at a crossroads. Under the pressure of recent change with no letting-up on the gas, DevOps has become somewhat sloppy and is due for a corrective regrounding. The term has been stretched to mean so many things in the fad to “shift left,” and it already started from a pretty ambiguous definition. Some of its core disciplines, such as release controls, integrated telemetry, and cross-functional collaboration, have eroded or never fully taken. Without stronger DevOps practices, the rapid pace of software delivery will introduce more instability than efficiency.

The session also underscored a fundamental tension in IT: Should organizations invest in hardening their systems and platforms? Or should they accept failure as inevitable and focus on lightning-quick remediation? Obviously, this depends on the particular requirements and functionality of each application, but I fear that we have a problem right now with the rapid-recovery side; a slack in engineering with the expectation of failure and a determination to be able to perform through failure.

Why Does This Matter?Fragile applications pose risks to goal achievement, competitiveness, and consumer protection. Organizations must decide how to approach this challenge in 2025. Is it the moment to proactively invest in strategies to refine DevOps practices, reinforce platform engineering, and reduce app fragility? Or consciously and deliberately adopt a reactive and ready stance, addressing issues as failures emerge?

It is crucial to see this trade-off clearly whether or not my prediction is correct. Managing application fragility ultimately means, as Lynch put it, “prioritizing resilience over perfection.” IT and DevOps practitioners should at least think about a framework that accomplishes this in a way that reflects their organizations’ culture and approach, balancing allocation of resources (e.g., 20% on release quality, 80% on anticipation).

Also Razani shared an important insight which needs highlighting: Communication is key. This is the heart of DevOps – opening up, and accelerating communication. Whether between developers and platform engineers, IT leaders and executive teams, businesses and customers, or agencies and communities, strong collaborative practices will be a differentiating factor in addressing application fragility effectively.

Organizations that act early will be better positioned to accelerate their accomplishments and profits as well as to react and scale rapidly when needed. Addressing fragility now can prevent costly disruptions in the future.

For deeper insights, I encourage you to watch the full session (free registration required). I thank Hope Lynch and Amanda for the sharp, informative discussion, as well as my village of DevOps and application practitioners and experts who helped me bring this prediction to light.

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A group of investors, led by Elon Musk’s startup xAI and other backers, has made a $97.4 billion bid to take control of OpenAI, aiming to refocus the organization on open-source AI and safety amid rising tensions between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over its shift to a for-profit model. Meanwhile, OpenAI is advancing its AI hardware strategy with plans to launch a custom-designed AI chip in 2024, fabricated by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology to reduce reliance on Nvidia. Initially deployed on a limited scale, the chip is designed to optimize AI model performance, with OpenAI’s expanding chip team already working on future iterations with enhanced capabilities. This and more on The Rundown.

2:44 – Turn/River Capital Acquires SolarWinds

With its $4.4 billion acquisition of SolarWinds, Turn/River Capital seeks to take the IT management software firm private, allowing it to focus on long-term growth without the pressure of quarterly earnings. This deal aligns with a broader surge in private-equity buyouts in the software sector, driven by declining borrowing costs, and comes after SolarWinds’ turbulent past, including a major 2020 cyberattack that compromised government and corporate clients.

Read More: SolarWinds To Be Acquired By Turn/River Capital In $4.4B All-Cash Deal

Read More: Turn/River’s $4.4 Billion Acquisition of SolarWinds Could Signal More IT-Related Deals

5:21 – WEKA Restructure to Focus on AI

WEKA is restructuring its go-to-market functions to align with the rapid growth of generative AI, following a strong 2024 in which it raised $140 million in funding and surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. CEO Liran Zvibel emphasizes that this strategic shift will position the company for long-term success, with plans to expand headcount by approximately 120 employees to support large-scale enterprise AI and GPU acceleration deployments.

Read More: WEKA restructures for the GenAI era

9:23 – Cisco One Silicon Shows Big at Cisco Live EMEA

Cisco Live EMEA is happening this week and Cisco has had some big announcements. The biggest news comes with investments in new service provider hardware and data center infrastructure as well. The moves appear to be positioned to help Cisco customers take advantage of AI while also offering a custom advantage. The newest platforms are all powered by Cisco’s Silicon One chips. The newest A-series and K-series CPUs help offload processing to the edge and give Cisco an opportunity to challenge merchant silicon vendors in the space. For more on this we’re going on site to Tom Hollingsworth in Amsterdam at Cisco Live for more.

Read More: Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA Day One

12:50 – Hammerspace is Changing the AI Training Game

Hammerspace is challenging conventional reliance on object storage for AI workloads by advocating for universal, protocol-agnostic data access instead. The company has emphasized the importance of intelligent data orchestration across various storage types, ensuring seamless access to relevant datasets without disruptive migrations. As AI adoption continues to grow, Hammerspace highlights the need for metadata-driven automation and hybrid access models to optimize performance and scalability in enterprise environments.

Read More: Hammerspace challenges object storage norms for AI

17:31 – French President to Invest $112B in AI

French President Emmanuel Macron announced $112 billion in private investments for the AI ecosystem, with funds expected to be deployed in the coming years, coinciding with Paris hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit. This investment will primarily focus on AI data centers, with the country positioning itself as an ideal location for AI infrastructure due to its low-carbon electricity and stable grid, which Macron emphasized as a competitive advantage for attracting global investments.

Read More: Macron unveils $112B AI investment package, France’s answer to US’ Stargate

22:36 – Huawei Shows Revenue Growth Despite Ban

Huawei expects to meet its 2024 revenue target of ¥860 billion ($118.25 billion), marking 22% growth compared to 2023. Despite sanctions, its ICT business remains strong, its consumer sector is growing, and its smart car solutions are expanding quickly. This success is notable considering Huawei’s challenges, including the sale of its Honor brand and the difficult economic environment in China.

Read More: Huawei revenue growing fast, suggesting China’s scoffing at sanctions

26:49 – Sam Altman Says OpenAI is Not for Sale

A group of investors has made a $97.4 billion offer to take control of OpenAI, aiming to restore the organization’s focus on open-source AI and safety. The investors are led by Elon Musk’s startup xAI and several other backers. Tensions between Musk and OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman have escalated as Musk challenges OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit model and its current management.

Read More: Musk-led investor group offers $97.4 billion for OpenAI — Altman declines

33:06 – OpenAI to Take On NVIDIA with Proprietary Chip

OpenAI is preparing to launch its own AI chip in 2024, aiming to reduce its reliance on Nvidia. The custom-designed chip, to be fabricated by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology, will focus on running AI models and will initially be deployed on a limited scale. OpenAI’s chip team, which has recently doubled in size, is also working on future versions with enhanced capabilities.

Read More: OpenAI is reportedly getting closer to launching its in-house chip

38:13 – The Weeks Ahead

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The amount of data that has been unearthed in the network over the past few years is astounding. We now have access to more information that we could ever hope to want about the status of packets transiting through the enterprise. But is this data causing networks to be more complex? In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Pieter-Jan Nefkens, Matyas Prokop, and Dominik Pickhardt as they explore the rise in data-centric network design. They discuss the drivers behind the need for more focused deployments and how access to this amount of data is creating challenges for operations teams. They also look at how security plays a role in the amount of information gathered and what happens to it after it is collected.

Data Makes Networking BetterThe amount of data that has been unearthed in the network over the past few years is astounding. We now have access to more information that we could ever hope to want about the status of packets transiting through the enterprise. But is this data causing networks to be more complex? In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Pieter-Jan Nefkens, Matyas Prokop, and Dominik Pickhardt as they explore the rise in data-centric network design. They discuss the drivers behind the need for more focused deployments and how access to this amount of data is creating challenges for operations teams. They also look at how security plays a role in the amount of information gathered and what happens to it after it is collected.

The network has always contained the data that we have only recently surfaced. Being able to find that data has been useful for network engineers that are looking to build new networks. Understanding the minutiae of things like performance and tail latency means you can support new applications without the need to go out and purchase expensive new hardware. However, not all that data is useful. It takes a keen eye or a very comprehensive software algorithm to understand what’s happening under the surface.

That’s why the data is valuable but the processed information is even more critical. We need to make sense of the millions of lines of logs and the overwhelming amount of data points that only gain context with analysis. For designers and operations teams it takes more than just a table of numbers to make things better. You need to understand why things are behaving the way they are and where to apply the changes to make them work better. That is the essence of turning data into information. It’s about adding context.

This is even more apparent in security settings. You need the raw data and the analysis to be able to add the next important step of taking action. Network designs and performance may improve when you add more information to your platforms but those actions can be scheduled and planned. When it comes to a security breach you need to take that critical information and make it actionable, whether it is stopping an ongoing attack or plugging a hole that could be used in the future. The refinement of data into information leads to better decisions from that point forward.

Podcast Information:Tom Hollingsworth is the Networking Analyst for The Futurum Group and Event Lead for Tech Field Day. You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Find out more on his blog or on the Tech Field Day website.

Dominik Pickhardt is an InfoSec Architect. You can connect with Dominik on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter, or read more on his website.

Pieter-Jan Nefkens is a network consultant and has his own company, Nefkens Advies. He has also been a Cisco Champion since 2017. Connect with Pieter-Jan on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn.

Matyáš Prokop is the Technology Director at Natilik. You can connect Matyáš Prokop on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more about his work on Natilik’s website.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast. If you enjoyed the discussion, please remember to subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast application so you don’t miss an episode and do give us a rating and a review. This podcast was brought to you by Tech Field Day, home of IT experts from across the enterprise, now part of The Futurum Group.

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We may only be a few weeks into 2025 but we’re ready to bring you more great Tech Field Day content! We will once more be broadcasting live from Amsterdam as we kick off Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2025. There are lots of exciting technology announcements that you’re not going to want to miss.

Field Day Extra Event ScheduleWe’re starting out on Tuesday, February 11 at 13:00 Central European Time (CET) with our first round of presentations. Expect to hear from Cisco’s Service Provider team and the data center networking group as they bring you the latest buzz around these critical pieces of the IT puzzle. Be on the lookout for Nexus and UCS and more. Some of your favorite presenters will be joining us as we hit all the key points to keep you informed.

We’re back on Wednesday, February 12 at 13:00 CET to continue the action. This day will have presentations from the wireless group and the security team. Wi-Fi 7 is as hot as ever and the Meraki team will also be around to help talk about user access. Add in topics like firewalls and zero trust network architecture and we will all be in for a great ride.

Follow The Field Day ActionOur European audience will be able to tune in live as we will be on local time from Amsterdam! Check out the event page for all the schedule details and delegates. If you want to check out our other streaming video locations make sure to bookmark Techstrong.TV and the Tech Field Day LinkedIn Page. For those that aren’t early rises in the US the videos will be posted to the Tech Field Day Youtube channel. If you want to join the conversation make sure you jump on social media and use the hashtag #TFDx. Content will also be shared on BlueSky.

Tech Field Day Extra is going to rock and we hope to see you there!

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We heard the rumors back in November that the HPE deal to acquired Juniper Networks was getting a closer look from the Department of Justice. Last week we got confirmation that the DoJ will be filing suit to half the deal. The arugument from the government is that the result of the deal would be 70% of the market for networking equipment being held by just two companies. Specifically cited was the wireless LAN component, where the DoJ said there were only three major players. This was refuted quickly by both HPE and Juniper. The UK Competition and Markets authority and the EU have both cleared the deal. This and more on The Rundown.

1:10 – Intel Not Bringing Falcon Shores GPU to Market

During Intel’s Q4 2024 earnings call it was announced that they will not be releasing their current generation GPU, code named Falcon Shores. The project has been in development for over three years and industry analysts have lamented that the chip maker has fallen behind the competition. Falcon Shores was supposed to be the entry point for Intel to claw their way into the AI GPU accelerator market. According to Six Five Live hosts Daniel Newman and Pat Moorhead, Falcon Shores was Intel’s last chance to make a splash in the market given the struggles that the giant has faced over the past twelve months.

Read More: Intel Falcon Shores GPU Not Coming to Market in an AI Hit

3:52 – NVIDIA Accelerates Storage Networking

It’s the return of storage networking. NVIDIA had a big announcement this week about using Spectrum-X to speed up the data storage fabric. One of the key features is using adaptive routing to prevent flow collisions and route around congestion in the storage infrastructure. If you’re worried about the data bits arriving out-of-order, have no fear. NVIDIA Bluefield-3 SuperNICs can hold onto those pieces and reassemble them for proper presentation to the host system without impacting performance. Spectrum-X is the Ethernet solution that allows for RDMA traffic to be sent via RoCE v2. Testing of the newest features increased read performance up to 48% and write bandwidth by up to 41%.

Read More: Nvidia says Spectrum-X adaptive routing can boost storage fabric bandwidth

Read More: Accelerating AI Storage by up to 48% with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking Platform and Partners

7:42 – Phishing attacks against Microsoft ADFS

Looks like some hackers got their phishing license early this year. The target is Microsoft’s legacy Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS), which is an SSO solution that allows one set of credentials to authenticate across multiple environments. Given this story invovles phishing, guess how they’re using it? Did you say spoofed login pages? How about tricks for two-factor codes? You’re right! The attacks use very well crafted emails and link obfuscation to snare even the most diligent workers. According to researchers at Abnormal Security, the targets for these attacks appear to be in the education sector.

Read More: A new phishing campaign is exploiting Microsoft’s legacy ADFS identity solution to steal credentials and bypass MFA

11:31 – Ventev Acquired by Hubbell Inc

Yesterday news broke that Ventev is being acquired by Hubbell Incorporated of Deleware. Ventev, a major manufacturer of wireless antennas and mobile technology, was formerly a part of Tessco. Hubbell has a large range of technologies for enteprise IT. Ventev is expected to continue their focus under the new organization.

14:25 – AI and Cloud costs are driving a closer look at FinOps tools

Strangely, the majority of respondents to an Apptio survey are expecting an increased IT budget but unsurprisingly demand for new services are outstripping any budget increase. The combination of unpredicatable cloud costs, huge AI build-out costs, and a host of legacy hardware and software costs present a big maanagement headache. This seems to be a data problem and ideal for a software based solution, is FinOps about to get hot?

Read More: Tech execs grapple with budget sinkholes as AI drives up spend

17:33 – Microsoft Stops TPM Bypass for Win11 Installs

One of the challenges for installing Windows 11 has been the requirement for a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 chip in the system. Microsoft had previously provided guidance on how to get around this particular hiccup in their official installation documentation. Several other developers have even created tools to bypass the TPM check. However, this week Microsoft has decided that everyone needs to play by the rules. Microsoft has removed the guide to bypassing the TPM check from online sources and Windows Defender now flags the popular FlyBy11 TPM tool as malware. Users on Windows 10 must now decide if they want to buy a new system with a compatible TPM or let their OS fall out of support toward the end of 2025.

Read More: Microsoft is cracking down on people upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

22:16 – DoJ Blocks HPE Juniper Deal

Read More: US DOJ sues to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion Juniper deal

31:22 – The Weeks Ahead

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The expansion of wireless spectrum technologies is affording new opportunities for growth. Existing areas are becoming more crowded as devices become more prevalent. This includes not only user devices but Internet of Things (IoT) as well. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Cheryl Connell, Ron Westfall, and Jason Beshara as they discuss how the growth of IoT has caused contention in the current Wi-Fi spaces. They also discuss how the opening of the 6 GHz spectrum band has the potential to create more room for growth, provided device manufacturers adopt these new areas with the guidelines the bring.

6 GHz Will Help IoT AdoptionOne thing that has caused significant issues with adoption today is the fact that Wi-Fi radios are often one of the most economical parts of the device. Some newer tablets and laptops have cutting edge cards that operate at peak performance. However, the resource budgets for IoT devices often dictate less capable radio cards. Sometimes that happens because the CPU on the device isn’t capable of doing enough calculations to provide higher throughput. In other cases it is because the cost for a more capable card would increase the manufacturing cost of the device and reduce the operating profit for making thousands of them. Opportunity costs spare no one.

Another consideration is that crowded spectrums also create issues for operations that could have liability impacts for enterprises. IoT is more than thermostats and intelligent appliances. The term also applies to medical devices and safety sensors. These devices need to have clear ways to communicate and cannot afford to face contention in the air. That means creating new designs that use 6 GHz radios is a must, as is the need for medical and safety organizations to deploy proactively to support these devices right away.

Lastly, the guests discuss how to best prepare for these new deployments and understand the technologies behind them. There will always be challenges and external contractors and tenants will create situations that you must address. Investigation and planning now will prevent the kinds of challenges that could derail upgrade efforts in the near future.

Ron Westfall is The Research Director at The Futurum Group specializing in Digital Transformation, 5G, AI, Security, Cloud Computing, IoT and Data Center as well as the host of 5G Factor Webcast. You can connect with Ron on LinkedIn and on X/Twitter and see his work on The Futurum Group’s website.

Cheryl Connell is a Senior Wireless Administrator at Dalhousie University. You can connect with Cheryl on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on LinkedIn. Learn more about Cheryl on her website.

Jason Beshara is a Mobility Solutions Architect and Wi-Fi expert. You can connect with Jason on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more about Jason on his personal website.

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As we mentioned earlier, the early days of a US government change invovle a lot of new orders and announcements. After a week in office the current US administration announced a plan to impose import tariffs on Taiwan for a variety of goods, including pharmaceuticals, steel, and chips. The tariff was reported to be 25% but could be as high as 100%. In further comments the president said the goal of the move was to lure companies back to the US to manufacture chips domestically. However, the CHIPS Act was specifically called out as being problematic because it simply gave money away instead of punishing companies with additional taxes to change their behavior. This is definitely a developing situation but lets dive in. Al, what’s the ultimate goal here? This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:23 – Pure Storage Gets Hyperscale Win

Predictions of the demise of storage technologies are as regular as stories about the immortality of the same technology. The recent announcement that Pure Storage has a deal with an un-named hyperscaler to standardise on an all-flash storage design has brought the suggestion that hyperscalers may move on from spinning disk. All-flash arrays have been around for a while, is this really the end for hard drives in cloud storage?

Read More: Pure Storage’s recent hyperscaler ‘design win’ could be the death knell for disk storage

4:31 – Salt Typhoon Probe Potentially Disrupted

The first week of any new presidential administration is a flurry of activity. One of the items that slipped through the news coverage last week was an announcement that the US Department of Homeland Security has fired outside advisors on a number of advisory committees according to a report from Reuters. One of those review boards was in the middle of investigating the recent spate of hacks caused by the Chinese-aligned group Salt Typhoon that we’ve been covering here for the past few months. The letter reporting the firing of the committee said the members were free to reapply but other sources have said the investigation is effectively dead. Tom, is this the end of the Salt Typhoon probe?

Read More: US DHS fires outside advisers, sources say China probe disrupted

7:47 – AI Gets Trapped in a Maze

AI is very good at consuming information. What happens when a creative researcher makes it eat its own tail? In this case, this particular trap is named Napenthes, named after the carnivorous pitcher plant. The trap is designed to halt AI algorithms that are crawling the Internet for data without respecting limits on crawling sites. The system generates false links that contain garbage data and links back to other generated pages. While humans will be able to see through the ruse quickly the automated systems are locked into a loop that consumes resources and wastes time.

Read More: Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots

11:35 – Swedes Seize Ship Slashing Subsea Stuff

The Swedish authorities have impounded a vessel they suspect caused damage to an undersea internet cable last week. This comes after two other cables owned by Finland were damaged back in December. While the ship is flagged in Malta it is rumored to be a part of a shadow fleet owned and operated by Russian interests. These vessels are reported to have caused damage to a number of cable in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere. Authorities are unsure if the damage is deliberate or has been caused by saliors that are less than seaworthy.

Read More: Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

14:56 – OpenAI Announces Operator Agent AI

Agentic AI is being promoted as the next big wave, where Generative AI tools get to not just talk to us, but to take action for us. OpenAI has added their agent technology called Operator as a part of their Pro Subscription. Can we trust these AI models to act on our behalf and in our best interest? Is this really the start of Skynet or just a way for OpenAI to try to get some revenue to offset the huge cost of training GPT4?

Read More: OpenAI launches Operator, an AI agent that performs tasks autonomously

18:23 – DeepSeek Causes Deep Thoughts Among Tech

This week has been dominated by discussion about a new company called DeepSeek. Their app shot to the number 1 spot on various app stores practically overnight. The magic behind the newest AI darling is more interesting. It utilizes a new model dubbed R1. DeepSeek says that R1 was developed similarly to OpenAI’s o1 model but was done for a reported $6 million. That number is a fraction of the cost of competing software from other companies. DeepSeek also released the model weights for free licensed under the open MIT license so everyone can have a look at them. The market took heed of this and promptly dropped on the news. There’s been a lot of discussion so far but analysts are urging caution because something isn’t quite right with the story.

Read More: DeepSeek panic triggers tech stock sell-off as Chinese AI tops App Store

23:53 – TSMC Tariffs Could Cause Chaos

As we mentioned earlier, the early days of a US government change involve a lot of new orders and announcements. After a week in office the current US administration announced a plan to impose import tariffs on Taiwan for a variety of goods, including pharmaceuticals, steel, and chips. The tariff was reported to be 25% but could be as high as 100%. In further comments the president said the goal of the move was to lure companies back to the US to manufacture chips domestically. However, the CHIPS Act was specifically called out as being problematic because it simply gave money away instead of punishing companies with additional taxes to change their behavior. This is definitely a developing situation but lets dive in.

Read More: Responding to Trump tariff threat, Taiwan says chip business is ‘win-win’

31:40 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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In the tech industry, moving up the ranks without the traditional opportunities of visibility and networking can be backbreaking.

Since the pandemic, a majority of workforce has been working remotely. And a blizzard of layoffs sweeping through the industry is only adding to the uncertainty making it even trickier for workers to curve out a successful career.

The 2024 Hiring Trend Report traces a significant shift in the sentiment around technical hiring. Axios Market finds that job postings for developer positions are the lowest in five years.

The business world is transitioning from volume hiring to hiring that matters. A big reason for that is more engineers are upskilling, and tapping into AI tools in their everyday work, delivering greater output than usual.

Full-Time in-Office or Full-Time Remote?Polls show that many seasoned employees favor working in isolation over working out of office as it helps them balance job responsibilities with personal obligations. But for people who are just starting out, being outside the office is a rather uncomfortable experience.

Thankfully, most companies have been hands-on with helping employees close the distance by shoring up communication with the help of technology, putting together practice handbooks, and mandating availability of middle managers and senior staff members during the workhours – but climbing the career ladder is still hard from afar.

“Own Your Career”So how do employees ensure they are moving towards their career goals in this new reality?

By owning your career, says Jack Poller, industry analyst and Tech Field Day delegate.

“Careers are about people, and not resumes,” Poller said while sharing his outlook and wisdom, at the Ignite Talk at the recent Cloud Field Day event.

When a candidate sends in a resume, it first goes through an AI applicant tracking system that checks for keyword matches before pushing it downstream to an HR person. If the application has 9 out of the 10 keyword matches with the job posting, the resume is passed on to the recruiting team. If not – it is simply tossed in the bin.

This is the primary reason why getting a call back from companies is frustratingly hard.

Poller who has played many roles in his long and illustrious career from an engineer to a marketer to now an analyst, says that the secret to, whether it’s landing a dream job, or pushing forward in career, is to understand that every interaction is about selling yourself as the right person to the one in front of you – and that is a critical thing to internalize even before starting the quest.

Another thing to familiarize with is how success is measured in the corporate world.

“Careers are about people, and not resumes.”“There’s exactly one measure of success that matters and that’s profit,” said Poller. “And there’s exactly two ways we can do it: To control profit, we can either increase our revenue and sales, or we can reduce our costs and expenses.”

“At the very end of the day, no matter who you’re talking to, that’s what you want to be thinking about,” he added.

To get closer to the goals, Poller says, it is also imperative that one finds the right set of people who can boost their efforts by helping them choose the right skillset to build on, or assist in drafting a career blueprint by sharing their own experiences.

But none of it is possible without articulating one’s vision adequately to others, Poller reminds. Just communicating your career plans can win you necessary support and all momentum you require.

Communicating not only helps one obtain valuable advice from people ahead of them, but also fosters team relations, and helps hone the ability to influence people into seeing their vision and views.

Doing this remotely is far from ideal, says Poller. The new geography of work, while it lends flexibility and freedom to the masses, is often conflicting with the basic of any relation – trust. When you meet someone on one-one-one video meets, it is hard to create a personal relation without feeling their energy.

Poller suggests professionals to get out there and be among people as much as possible to build that bond.

And last but not the least, there’re no shortcut to success. Poller says that while there are always people around who can provide support and mentorship, the hard work is all one’s own.

“If you’re going to do something that is off-brand or a reach or a stretch for you, you have to do the job in order to get the job,” he emphasizes.

Poller highlights a simple equation in conclusion: Everything narrows down to what is the problem the company has, and how are you solving it for the company.

Conversely, it is important to remember that building a career is not a sprint. It’s a long journey that has many highs and lows, and people must not hesitate to take a step back and reflect whenever necessary.

“Throughout your career, keep an open mind,” he says. But also remember to “take a break, and look at things from a different perspective.”

Catch more Ignite Talks on tech from the Cloud Field Day event on the Tech Field Day website.

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After a rough couple of years, 2024 felt like the beginning of better days. In many ways, it was return to normal life. COVID is finally behind us. Tech layoffs are tapering off slowly but surely. And the economy seems to be in an ever so slightly better health.

But the effects of a period of economic upheaval still linger on. Although inflation cooled off in the final year of Biden’s administration, and a series of Fed rate cuts brought a glimmer of hope, people are still sore from annual price increases, and geopolitical escalations are significant. And now with a new administration on the way to take over, once again, the future is uncertain.

With some happy surprises and wild setbacks, 2024 was quite a year in tech. Here’s a roundup of the some of the highlights.

ScreenshotIntel’s Struggles Get RealFor the entire year, speculations were rife that the Silicon Valley titan is struggling. Amid tumbling stocks and billions of dollars of losses from its chip foundry business, Intel had presumably lost its edge.

In December, as Pat Gelsinger announced his retirement, it left no room for doubt. Intel truly is in an irrevocably difficult spot.

The company continued cost cutting measures and layoffs quarter after quarter but insofar, has failed to reach a turning point from where it can return to its vaunted position up top. It seems more than ever now that it has ceded the market to NVIDIA.

A Fortuitous Year for NVIDIAWhile the wheels fell off for Intel, its biggest competitor, NVIDIA, grew the business empire overnight becoming a $3.2 trillion dollar company banking on AI gold rush.

The California-based chip designer rose to the second position in the list of most valuable companies by market cap value in 2024.

NVIDIA’s stocks have been on an upward swing since the beginning of the year, gaining by a mind-blowing 200%. It crossed the $2 trillion mark in February, and shocking everybody, hit a $3 trillion within just the second quarter.

As the AI fever rose, NVIDIA availed its first-place advantage in the GPU market to seize market share formerly owned by Intel and AMD.

VMware under BroadcomLate in 2023, Broadcom acquired VMware in a staggering $69 billion deal. The acquisition sent shockwaves across the IT community, and had many customers worried over possible price changes.

Broadcom made sweeping changes post-acquisition, overhauling the former operations and strategies which impacted both VMware’s products and pricing. One of things that got flak from customers widely is a changeover from perpetual licensing to subscription-based licensing. VMware infrastructure products being a standard across IT made the change hugely impactful for companies.

Another key development was the discontinuation of ESXi Hypervisor free edition which was canceled mid-February further affirming Broadcom’s determination to enforce a subscription-based business model across the company.

Changes too were made to the Unit Model wherein customers now require a license for every core, and the minimum license capacity is 16 cores.

Broadcom also discontinued VMware’s partners program making it invitation only. The program follows a selective method of choosing based on a company’s ability to qualify Broadcom’s baseline spend requirement.

An Uptick in Chinese CyberattacksNo annual roundup in tech is complete without an explosive cybersecurity story, and this year’s big story was the Salt Typhoon attack. 2024 saw an alarming number of high-profile cases that included two big back-to-back breaches in June – the Ticketmaster breach and the Snowflake data breach, but among them the Salt Typhoon attack in September clearly stood out.

According to officials, a Chinese hacking group named Salt Typhoon which is suspected to have links with the Chinese government, launched a cyberespionage campaign targeting 8 major telecom networks in the US, including AT&T and Verizon.

Reports revealed that metadata of a large number of Americans, including many senior politicians like that of President-elect Donald Trump and VP-elect J.D.Vance, were taken.

Senator, Marco Rubio, described the incident as “the most disturbing and widespread incursion” into telco networks in the world history.

According to Futurum Intelligence‘s recently launched CIO Insights dataset, 63.9% IT leaders has cybersecurity as the top priority for IT investment in 2025.

Be sure to watch the special year-end episode of Gestalt IT Rundown for a complete checklist of all the hottest tech stories from 2024.

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We’re looking back at our reporting on the biggest enterprise IT stories of 2024 and telling you the trends that will be discussion points well into 2025. We’re reconsidering Broadcom’s moves with VMware, the fall of Intel, HPE’s acquisition of Juniper, that fab CHIPS act, the evolution of data protection companies to security, power-hungry GPUs, Co-Pilot PCs, lots of AI infrastructure, a whole lot of hacks, including Snowflake and Salt Typhoon, and the government’s actions against big tech.

2:04 – The Fall of Intel

It’s hard to say which story from 2024 will have the most-lasting impact on the future of enterprise technology, but we can safely say that Intel’s position in the market will never be the same. We started the year on a high note, with new product launches and the execution of Pat Gelsinger’s strategy to leapfrog rivals in manufacturing processes. But rumors were swirling in the second half of the year, with rumors that not all was going to plan. This all came to a head on December 2, with the company announcing the surprise retirement of Gelsinger.

10:09 – Broadcom and VMware

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is driving major changes, including shifts to subscription-only licensing and stricter partner requirements, such as a $500,000 revenue threshold. Smaller partners and customers are feeling the impact, while some organizations explore open-source alternatives like Proxmox. These moves aim to boost revenue but have sparked industry concerns and legal challenges over accessibility and fairness.

20:53 – That’s HPE’s Juniper Buy!

The biggest news in the networking industry comes from HPE’s announcement that they are buying Juniper in a blockbuster deal to take on the biggest players out there. HPE is gearing up to be an integral part of a new generation of enterprise IT focused on delivering the products and services that are necessary for new adavances like AI and hybrid cloud. The first step in this new journey is buying the backbone of the networks that power clouds, service providers, and end users in the campus.

26:59 – Fabulous Fabs and CHIPS!

The 2022 CHIPS act aimed to secure America’s access to advanced semiconductors, doling out money to build fabs in the United States. The sheer amount of money tilted the market, with every company in the space asking for cash to support their operations here. While it’s too soon to say whether these subsidies are going to work, not to mention what the next administration will do, we can say that there are more chip fabs being built in the USA than ever, with Intel, TSMC, Samsung, Micron, and others actively expanding. But who’s going to build and work in these fabs? And what products will they make? We’ll be watching in 2025 as they come online.

34:37 – Transforming Data Protection

The market for backup and recovery continues to transform into data protection to emphasize the security aspects of platforms. And it means big moves designed to turn these companies into more critical components of the infrastructure. Consolidation was a big theme of the year, with several acquisitions happening as well as a big IPO and some new advances designed to work with the way that companies consume data and the regulations that require them to keep it safe.

41:29 – Nuking GPUs in Pennsylvania

The voracious appetite of AI chips has entered pop culture, becoming just as much a criticism of the technology as hallucinations and job losses. Major IT companies have scaled back their carbon-neutral promises and are looking at nuclear energy as an option. Yet nothing has stopped them from building ever-larger AI clusters in the race to dominate this new space.

46:09 – My Co-Pilot is a Dog

Microsoft embraced AI in 2024 but it seemed to be hit or miss. Their work with OpenAI continued to be one of the bigger stories of the year. However, their implementation of the solutions they built using AI seemed to fall flat. The elephant In the room came courtesy of CoPilot Recall. Let’s see how we got there.

52:44 – AI Infrastructure Baby!

AI is the hottest topic in tech, and the enterprise IT companies are focusing on it, too. Storage and networking companies are re-tooling their products and plans to capitalize on the AI training market, announcing new offerings all year long to keep the GPUs fed. And the chipmakers aren’t slowing down, with NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm and others announcing new AI processors this year. AI infrastructurue even became a new Tech Field Day topic this year! Let’s take a closer look.

1:00:10 – It’s Snowing Data (Breaches)

There are three big breach stories that we wanted to cover from this year. The first invovles Christmas in the summertime. Or, more appropriately, snow fallout from Snowflake. This database hack had far reaching implications for a number of infrastructure players and services alike. Taylor Swift fans were in the same boat as storage admins and even the phone company as the world seemed to melt down around them.

1:03:25 – Crowd Strikes Back

The second big security story of the year was from a little update gone wrong that caused no end of trouble the world over. People woke up in the early morning hours of June 26th to find a whole host of services offline. People couldn’t buy things at the store. Airlines were grounded. It’s like everything went on strike.

1:07:14 – Salt Typhoon

The end of the year saw yet another huge hack that we will definitely be talking about well into 2025. The state-back group Salt Typhoon found ways into critical telecom infrastructure and started doing everything they could to upset the balance of power. Reports of political candidates being hacked had the government scrambling to react and even recommending encrypted applications they had been railing against only months prior.

1:10:18 – DOJ Gonna DOJ

While it’s too soon to say what the next administration will do, the current US Department of Justice is actively pursuing antitrust investigations into many prominent tech firms. NVIDIA, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Apple, and many others faced scrutiny this year, but it seems that Google will be the first to face sanctions. What’s the state of antitrust in big tech?

The Weeks Ahead:

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Enterprise IT has long been divided into silos. This is because of scarce resources and specialized knowledge required to perform some IT operations tasks. The world of today is much more focused on outcomes and the need for silos is waning. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alastair Cooke, and Tom Hollingsworth discuss how enterprise IT has moved away from silos due to increased resource availability and cross training. They also look ahead to new challenges from advances like AI and quantum computing.

Technology Silos Are a Thing of the PastEnterprise IT has long been divided into silos. This is because of scarce resources and specialized knowledge required to perform some IT operations tasks. The world of today is much more focused on outcomes and the need for silos is waning. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alastair Cooke, and Tom Hollingsworth discuss how enterprise IT has moved away from silos due to increased resource availability and cross training. They also look ahead to new challenges from advances like AI and quantum computing.

Silos were very popular in the days when you storage admins and your network engineers had their own spaces to operate and no one really did any cross training. You had your area and you stuck to it. As IT evolved those silo walls started coming down. Storage and compute merged because of virtualization. Wireless and traditional networking have started to become one edge-focused solution. All of those came even before the cloud started battering down the barriers to how we need to consider working with our infrastructure.

Part of the reason for the changes is abundance. We no longer have to conserve resources as we once did. Bandwidth is plentiful. Cloud computing makes CPU and storage effectively unlimited if budgets allow. Engineers no longer need to worry about the minutia of esoteric configurations that optimize dwindling resources. Instead, engineering and development talent have started to focus on outcomes. Applications have become the atomic unit of deployment, while networking and storage have been relegated to components of the overall solution.

That’s not to say that new challenges aren’t on the horizon for IT silos. AI is creating new boundaries based on resources that, while deep, are also very expensive to create and maintain. These new constraints are creating divisions just like the old silos. Another challenge is the need to simplify and abstract enterprise IT technology. Hiding the complexity from DevOps and AIOps teams doesn’t mean that it goes away. Instead it leads to bigger issues when the abstractions fail and the understanding of the siloed nature of IT isn’t there.

The future continues to be uncertain as the power needs of AI and the hardware requirements of quantum computing seem to be limitless. The unpredictability of the deployment of these technologies and the lack of efficiency they demonstrate today mean that we may have eliminated our existing silos only to have set up the creation of many more.

Stephen Foskett is the President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

Alastair Cooke is a Tech Field Day Event Lead, now part of The Futurum Group. You can connect with Alastair on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and you can read more of his research notes and insights on The Futurum Group’s website.

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Automation is designed to help professionals in any niche reach max productivity in least time. But what does that mean for the future of employment?

Since automation has emerged into public consciousness, there’s wide expectation that it will surge up productivity creating room for cutbacks. Automation tools and technologies are finding broad use at companies. The biggest beneficiaries are organizations where employees are leveraging the technology to ramp up output – and get more done than their share of work, allowing employers to run bigger operations with a relatively small staff.

In the recent years, a ton of low-skill, routine tasks have been automated putting many people out of job overnight. Many others face the risk of losing employment because of the growing popularity of the technology.

Jobs like full-service checkout at a grocery store, tax filing, record keeping, and cashier and clerical positions are fast going away. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates that approximately 9% to 47% of jobs can be replaced with automation as the technology matures.

While automated processes no doubt have benefits – flexibility, and opportunities for cost reduction – the question becomes should everything be automated? Stephen Foskett, president of Tech Field Day, asked this question to the panel at the recent Cloud Field Day Delegate Roundtable.

The panel offered two distinct but opposing views. One set of people that is pro-automation said that technologies like AI and robotics have clear benefits, and are an inevitability. The other group is opposed to wholesale automation and worries that it may create a wide socio-economic imbalance.

“We as technologists, like to automate things, but we tend to forget that there are human beings currently doing those thing, and we don’t really think about the effect on them very much, and we should,” notes Justin Warren, who runs a boutique analyst firm in Melbourne.

Mr. Warren humorously reminds that some things should never be automated, for example being a parent or looking after a pet because they are fun to do.

Mr. Warren belongs to a group of IT insiders that anticipates a mass displacement of select jobs in the years to come.

“Automation has allowed us to feed a lot more people than we ever could before. It enables us to provide people with healthcare and clean drinking water and a whole bunch of fundamental and transformative things,” he notes.

“But we should also be careful about how we do it and the transition from one to the other because sometimes it’s going to put someone out of a job and if we don’t care about those people, they might not care very much about us.”

This dovetails with what economists at Darmouth and MIT found in their research. “Firms do not necessarily take into account the consequences that automation has for their workers. Instead, they tend to focus on the value that automation will bring to the firm and its shareholders,” one of the research co-authors commented.

The socio-economic implication has caught widespread attention, and a debate is raging over how the technology will restructure workforce and impact labor market dynamics.

Ken Nalbone, specialist engineer and tech leader, holds a different opinion. He argues, “Over and over throughout history, every time somebody automates some old job that somebody was doing manually, there’s “luddites” – literally, that’s where the term comes from – that’s going to throw the contraption overboard because they don’t want to be automated out of a job.”

“But the rest of the world needs to make progress as humanity,” he insists. “And this is something that we don’t need humans to do anymore, and why should they? When they could be doing something else more productive or more fulfilling.”

Like Mr. Nalbone, most people support the idea of replacing process-based routine tasks that do not require human-level creativity to be handled by automation.

Jack Poller who is an industry analyst also shares this view. In the specific context of cloud, Poller says that automation is a smarter alternative to recruiting humans for repeat processes.

“Automating routine tasks enables your cloud employees to go and do stuff that provides greater value,” he says. “The other thing is, so much happens in the cloud so quickly that it is virtually impossible for humans to keep up, and that’s what’s driving the desire to automate these tasks because we really don’t want humans involved because of the mistakes they make and what impact that has on the business.”

In multiple scenarios, automation has the potential to stamp out the occurrence of errors by aiding humans in a diverse set of tasks. In software development for example, tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible and Terraform, and automated processes like CI/CD, IaC and automated testing, have proven helpful in checking human errors by putting manual tasks on a set-and-forget mode leading to improved software quality, faster releases and overall reduced cost.

Nevertheless, the decision to use or to not use automation remains supremely tricky because the technology, by design, is not infallible, or unbreakable.

“Automation is certainly not without peril,” reminds Mr. Foskett. “Most automated systems are extremely fragile and have very little quality control or quality assurance. Basically, they just assume they’re going to do it right and when they don’t, everything falls apart. I think all of us have experienced that, and it’s a fun day.”

Automation systems in certain applications have proven unreliable simply because of technological limitations. The National Library of Medicine published a paper that shows with example how sensors designed to sense states in the environment get things wrong due to limited detection capacity, or in-vehicle navigation guides fail to give users right directions because of using outdated information.

Human management of these automation errors offers a sliver of hope and shows how humans and machines can work together to build the future.

There are in fact ways to steer around the possible “technological unemployment” that automation is predicted to cause, but there are conditions.

One way to keep human expertise from losing its value in the face of innovation is upskilling.

“If we get people to embrace the automation to upscale into the automation, I think it pushes the societal element of cloud forward,” opines Jay Cuthrell, influencer and entrepreneur. “Once they’re in the boat, we can all be much much safer in the boat than in the rapids.”

But no matter what, one cannot overlook that “a lot of understanding gets lost when things are automated,” reminds Mr. Foskett.

“What if we allowed ourselves to automate stuff in a slightly different way?” proposed Mr. Warren.

He believes that through mindful and responsible implementation, automation can be prevented from becoming a threat to the livelihoods of the masses. This would entail avoiding extreme automation, slowing down the current pace of automation and understanding what improves the welfare of the people in the organization, and working out ways to deliver the broad benefits of the technology.

When automation is used to amplify processes rather than to ratchet up business profits at the expense of the workers, everybody gains. Skilled crafts and workers do not need to get replaced every time a groundbreaking technology arrives in the market. Humans and machines are not meant to cancel each other out. If the concept of human-automation interaction is understood and leveraged well, the economy can progress from the momentum of technological advancement, and economic well-being of the people is assured.

For more, be sure to watch the full Delegate Roundtable from the recent Cloud Field Day event.

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The big story this week is the continued fallout from Salt Typhoon. The US government is feeling the heat from the expsoure of so many telecom companies and they want answers. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a proposed set of rules that would require companies that participate in the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to have a yearly requirement to certify their cybersecurity risk management plans to prevent hackers from getting in. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has gone even further and proposed a draft bill to secure telecom networks with the FCC implementing specific requirements instead of simple certifications.

1:21 – StormForge Rightsizes JVMs

StormForge has introduced a new feature for optimizing Java Virtual Machine (JVM) workloads on Kubernetes, focusing on rightsizing these workloads by leveraging JVM-specific metrics. Traditional tools often only consider container-level memory usage, but StormForge’s solution uses machine learning to analyze detailed Java metrics, including heap size requirements. This provides precise recommendations for heap sizing and Kubernetes resource allocations. The platform supports both manual and automated implementation of these recommendations, aiming to enhance resource efficiency, reduce costs, and optimize performance. Currently, this feature is available in limited access, with interested users invited to sign up.

Read More: StormForge Expands Rightsizing Capabilities With JVM Workload Optimization

4:11 – Cisco Switches Vulnerable to Verification Exploit

Cisco NX-OS has a new bug that you need to be aware of. The vulnerability could allow an attacker with physical access to the switch to bypass image signature verification for the operating system. The exploit does require physical access in order to bypass the bootloader because it is in the switch BIOS before the OS loads. Security patches have been released and upgrading is necessary to prevent the bug as no workarounds exist.

Read More: Hundreds of Cisco Switches impacted by Bootloader Flaw

7:29 – VMware by Broadcom Welcomes Partners Back to the Top

VMware by Broadcom has reveresed course on a decision to cut out partners for major accounts. The news comes as Broadcom announced that instead of taking the largest 2,000 customers direct they will instead only be taking the 500 biggest buyers private and will allow channel partners the opportunity to collaborate on deals with the remaining 1,500. The move is seen as a way to stem the flow of companies that are moving away from VMware solutions when license renewals come up by having local resources in partners that can leverage their relationships. While none of the largest VARs in the US have released any statements about the switch the community is generaly skeptical of this announcement and worried what might happen if Broadcom changes their mind again.

Read More: VMware by Broadcom Welcomes Partners Back to the Top

11:16 – Google Stabilizes Quantum Qubit for an Hour

Google released a paper this week that showed how far quantum computing has come in the past few years. The company was able to increase the number of hardware quantum bits, or qubits, dedicated to error correction in order to create a 105-qubit cluster that was stable for over an hour. Given the the life of the average qubit is less than a second under most condititions this feat was incredibly important. For more on what this means for the future of quantum computing let’s turn it over to our expert colleague, Dr. Bob Sutor.

Read More: Google gets an error-corrected quantum bit to be stable for an hour

16:49 – Open Source Flooded by Bad AI Bug Reports

The use of LLMs and GenAI in security is on the rise. However, one area that is seeing some pushback is in bug reporting. Security developers from the Python Software Foundation and the Curl project have noted a signifcant increase in the amount of bug reports that have been generated by AI tools. These reports look valid on the surface and take time to process, usually leading to no action being taken because they are hallucinations. The Curl mantainer specifically has said that he’s frustrated that people are using AI to send in bogus reports and clogging the system to the point where volunteer members are overwhelmed and may seek to stop helping the project.

Read More: Open Source Flooded by Bad AI Bug Reports

21:52 – Salt Typhoon Storms the Government

Read More: Salt Typhoon forces FCC’s hand on making telcos secure their networks

Read More: US Senator announces new bill to secure telecom companies in wake of Chinese hacks

The Weeks Ahead:

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Aviz Networks, the California-based AI networking company, has made entry into the Japanese telecommunications market, offering an open networking solution that is tailored mindfully to the national networking infrastructure and regulatory demands.

The Fuss over QualityCompanies may be waking up to the competitive potential of quality products just now, but the obsession for quality originated in ancient Japan. Japan’s rigorous code of quality is well-known worldwide. It is the force behind the precision and perfection of its goods. Woven into the Japanese culture, nowhere does the value manifest more clearly than in the country’s organizations.

But now a crisis is brewing in the Japanese telecom industry because of it. As a rule, Japanese telco companies are required to provide round-the-clock high-quality connectivity to customers. Any outage, if its non-emergency and lasts upwards of an hour impacting more than 1M users, require regulatory reporting.

To be fair, having a consistently performant network saves companies and customers a multitude of expense, and unnecessary grief down the road. But there are significant challenges to delivering it.

“As 5G SA (standalone) and NSA (non-standalone) grow and probably 6G coming soon, the network is getting larger and larger and even more complicated…The impact range is expanding when an outage occurs making network operations more challenging,” noted Atsuhiro Aiyama, director of Itochu Techno-Solutions America Inc., a Japanese technology reseller that helps Aviz Networks distribute its AI networking technology in the Japanese market.

The companies struck up an alliance to make Aviz Networks solution’s unique advantages available to the Japanese telecom sector.

But penetrating the Japanese market is no small ambition. Despite being an established brand on home soil, Aviz faced substantial hurdles entering Japan. It took understanding the high standards of Japanese patrons, and assembling a product that fully meets the ask.

Preventing Issues with Proactive NetworkingIn partnership with Itochu Techno-Solutions, Aviz Networks ran a proof of concept (PoC) that lasted one year. The payoffs justified the effor – in the end, the quality of the solution was markedly elevated, while costs had shrunken significantly, Aiyama told.

“We were able to not only improve the performance and the quality of the network, we were also able to tremendously reduce cost, both initially and the operational cost, compared with other traditional OPB (Open Packet Broker) kind of products,” he said.

Aviz’s solution constituted some core technologies on its portfolio, namely, the Aviz Networks Open Networking Enterprise Suite (ONES), the Open Packet Broker and Aviz Service Nodes for observability, and the Network Copilot for the coveted AI experience.

“We need more raw data observability to optimize the network performance, and especially improve the quality of the experience to subscribers,” Aiyama pointed out.

Aiming those, Aviz put together the most wholistic solution it could design. “We are building the whole packet monitoring fabric and then putting service nodes on top of it. We’re bringing an end-to-end solution,” said Chid Perumal, CTO, while narrating the success story at the Networking Field Day event.

Open-source by design, ONES allows deployment of multi-vendor SONiC while being compatible with multiple NOSs. It unlocks proactive monitoring and management and streamlined orchestration of network operations.

The Service Nodes, powered by AI, add capabilities like packet processing and high-speed data insights, offering the deepest visibility of the environment.

Lastly, the Aviz Network Copilot, a conversational interface, enables a range of operational tasks like upgrade checks, configuration, capacity planning, troubleshooting and auditing, while facilitating decision-making for operators with real-time insights and intelligence.

“Quality is one of the key requirements for Japan, and we have passed that biggest hurdle which makes us comfortable, and now we can get into any other telcos. The requirement remains the same except for small changes. The overall capability or the features they’re looking for is already there, and it can be easily replicated beyond Japan,” Perumal said.

As advanced technologies like 5G and 6G enter the market turning networks more complex and unmanageable, centralized orchestration and management will play a critical role in stripping away operational inefficiencies. And solutions embedded with GenAI will find the widest use because of their capabilities to lighten the burden.

For more, be sure to check out Aviz Networks’ presentations from the Networking Field Day event at on the Tech Field Day website.

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The IT industry’s reliance on acquisitions is a necessary driver of innovation, though they often seem to get in the way of competition and progress. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, recorded during Cloud Field Day 21, features Ray Lucchesi, Jon Hildebrand, Ken Nalbone, and Stephen Foskett considering whether acquisitions in the IT industry are a necessary evil or a detriment to innovation. Acquisitions are often seen as a double-edged sword, with both positive and negative implications. On one hand, acquisitions can fuel innovation by providing smaller companies with the resources and market access they need to scale their ideas. On the other hand, they can stifle competition, lead to cultural clashes, and sometimes result in the disappearance of promising technologies or products.

See more from Cloud Field Day 21 on the Tech Field Day website or YouTube channel.

We May Not Like Acquisitions in Tech But We Need them!The IT industry has long been shaped by the cycle of acquisitions, with large companies absorbing smaller, innovative startups to bolster their portfolios. This practice is often seen as a double-edged sword. On one hand, acquisitions can inject fresh ideas and technologies into established organizations, enabling them to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. On the other hand, the process can stifle innovation, as smaller companies with promising technologies are often absorbed and their products either languish or are subsumed into larger, less agile corporate structures. The debate over whether acquisitions are a necessary evil or simply detrimental to the industry remains a contentious topic.

One of the key arguments in favor of acquisitions is their role in fostering innovation. Startups often emerge with groundbreaking ideas but lack the resources or market reach to scale effectively. Being acquired by a larger company can provide the necessary capital, infrastructure, and customer base to bring these innovations to a broader audience. However, this process is not without its pitfalls. Many acquisitions result in a clash of corporate cultures, leading to inefficiencies and, in some cases, the eventual dissolution of the acquired entity’s unique value proposition. This raises questions about whether the industry might benefit more from encouraging organic growth rather than relying on acquisitions as a growth strategy.

Critics argue that acquisitions often prioritize short-term financial gains over long-term innovation. Large corporations may acquire smaller companies not to integrate their technologies but to eliminate potential competition. This practice can lead to market consolidation, reducing diversity and stifling the competitive landscape. Furthermore, the focus on financial returns, driven by venture capital and private equity investments, often pressures startups to position themselves as acquisition targets rather than sustainable, standalone businesses. This dynamic can skew the priorities of emerging companies, emphasizing exit strategies over product development and customer satisfaction.

The role of private equity in driving acquisitions adds another layer of complexity. Private equity firms often seek to maximize returns by cutting costs and streamlining operations, which can lead to a loss of innovation and employee morale within the acquired company. While some private equity firms take a more hands-on approach to foster growth and innovation, others focus solely on financial metrics, potentially undermining the long-term viability of the companies they acquire. This dichotomy highlights the need for a more balanced approach to investment, one that prioritizes sustainable growth and innovation over short-term financial gains.

In an ideal world, the IT industry would thrive on organic growth, with companies building sustainable business models and scaling through customer acquisition and market expansion. However, the reality is that acquisitions are deeply ingrained in the industry’s fabric, driven by the need for rapid growth and the financial incentives of venture capital and private equity. While acquisitions may be a necessary evil in the current landscape, the industry must strive to ensure that they are conducted in a way that fosters innovation, benefits customers, and supports the long-term health of the market. The challenge lies in finding a balance that allows both startups and established companies to thrive without compromising the industry’s overall dynamism.

Podcast Information: Stephen Foskett is the President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

Ray Lucchesi is the president of Silverton Consulting and the host of Greybeards on Storage Podcast. You can connect with Ray on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more about Ray on his website and listen to his podcast.

Jon Hildebrand is an automation and observability expert. You can connect with Jon on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more about Jon by reading his personal blog.

Ken Nalbone is a Senior Solutions Architect at AHEAD. You can connect with Ken on X/Twitter, Bluesky, and on LinkedIn. Learn more about Ken on his personal website.

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Cisco is set to merge Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (URWB) and Wi-Fi functionalities in its access points (APs). At the Mobility Field Day event, the company announced that starting 2025, URWB and Wi-Fi will be supported in the same access points whereby both functionalities can be simultaneously used on the same device.

The update came just days after Cisco issued end-of-sale notice for all its LoRaWAN products.

As of today, URWB is deployed on a separate infrastructure comprising its own set of APs and management planes. This requires customers to maintain a parallel overlay to Wi-Fi. With this new update, both the solutions will be on one infrastructure with reduced footprint and overhead.

“The point of all of it is to offer the functionality to customers without needing to double the infrastructure or have two parallel infrastructures of access points and management planes,” said Dave Benham, senior product manager.

Optionally, users can keep using their current URWB architecture should they prefer it. Cisco will continue support for URWB in the usual way. “Think of this as an additional functionality for your existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, not necessarily something we’re forcing you to do.”

Set to be released as a software update, the new feature will provide unified software image and management platforms.

URWB and Wi-Fi images will not be required to boot separately, said Benham. “You boot it one way or the other. It’s only one boot.”

The feature can be enabled on a radio or an access point on both local and Flexconnect modes. “It supports both modes of operation,” he told.

All APs will be managed by the Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) for now, but more options will be supported in the future.

“For cases where you have an IW9165 for example, as the mobile device, that device will be managed by the WLC as well.” This will give users a single point of control to monitor and manage all APs.

The joint solution will include all URWB features – reliable fiber-like wireless connectivity, sub-millisecond low latency, with the added ability to run all critical applications on the same APs.

For fixed infrastructures, URWB supports Point-To-Point, Point-To-Multipoint, mesh and a mix of topologies, and offers zero loss roaming for mobile architectures.

“Have you ever wished that your wireless devices could roam seamlessly with zero packet loss or that you had less latency and jitters so that your critical wireless devices could have redundant connections to multiple APs?”

URWB was created to overcome the reliability limitations of wireless. Its signature “make-before-break” feature enables connections to be moved reliably between APs without service drops.

The Multipath Operations (MPO) technology allows users to route high-priority packets through redundant paths. URWB sends duplicate traffic to two different APs so that if connection is interrupted on one, packets are not lost.

“Basically you can decide which traffic is important enough that you want it redundant,” Benham said. “It doesn’t mean that your entire infrastructure is redundant necessarily. You have certain things that you want to promote the redundancy for,” he added.

Currently, Cisco URWB addresses a spectrum of mobile and fixed use cases in the sectors of manufacturing, rail, mining and smart cities. The new update, however, will not support all of them right out the gate.

“We aren’t going to support all of the elaborate use cases that URWB supports today. There will be a few that we can’t support initially, but we’re moving to that parity of having all of the features there, and I think a lot of use cases will be satisfied with the initial launch.”

Benham named manufacturing, and campus and smart cities as the key use cases that the new update will primarily support, specifically automated ground vehicle (AGV), video surveillance, building to building connectivity, and roadways and intersections connectivity.

Cisco AP models that will add support for URWB next year include older models like C9130 and C9124, as well as recent ones like CW9178, CW9176I and CW9176D1.

Wi-Fi 8 strongly prioritizes reliability, and promises to bring a much-improved roaming experience with multi-AP coordination, but with the standard still in development, it may be a few years before it sees the light of day.

“Wi-Fi 8 may have some things that can make it a bit more graceful, but it may not be in the initial release,” Benham predicted.

For more, be sure to watch Cisco’s presentations from Mobility Field Day on the Tech Field Day website.

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An issue that has plagued enterprises, especially small and mid-size outfits, for most of their operational years is the operational burden of the network. It has piled on over the years as the network has scaled leading to a litany of issues and complaints.

The slow burning complexity of managing a ornate network model has caused frequent burnouts in employees, while cost blowouts from new tech acquisitions strain enterprises’ budgets.

Now companies are taking a decidedly modern approach to tackle this problem – automation.

Automation obscures a lot of the underlying technicalities while getting the bulk of the routine job done with little to no manual intervention. Analysts project that this can transform the way networking activities have been done through the decades.

Yet, implementation has been irregular nationwide. Although the potential of the technology is universally recognized, experts observe that businesses have not been able to derive measurable value owing to a number of factors.

The cost of developing automation solutions is significant, and often beyond the means of companies that have limited resource. This is further exacerbated by sparse availability of deep domain expertise which makes it harder to build the technology inhouse.

Those companies that can devote the necessary resource are unimpressed by the limited usability of homegrown automation solutions.

A NaaS Solution That Offers a Premium Automation ExperienceA network as a service solution like Nile’s is an enticing option for these struggling enterprises. Nile Access Service that includes Day 0 to lifecycle management automation, takes the entire operational load off of their hands, requiring neither to hire expertise, nor bear the costs of adding third-party tools.

“Typically, when you raise an issue, subject matter experts get involved. You have to go through the hard work of writing a runbook, and there is no magic there,” said Dipen Vardhe, head of Wireless Service and AI Automation Center at Nile.

With Nile, all of the manual tasks of configuration, setup and maintenance are carried out behind the scenes and a truly automated network is delivered to the users.

But how does Nile accomplish this? Vardhe gave a sneak peek of the backstage workings at the recent Mobility Field Day event.

A central piece of the service is the Nile AI Automation Center. This is not a solution that customers interface with, but nevertheless, plays a critical role in Nile’s network operation and optimization services.

“Once the network is up and running on Day 1, internally in the AI Automation Center, it’s ready to be operated and optimized by the Nile team,” said Vardhe.

Designed specially for Nile’s internal team of network engineers, the Nile AI Automation Center is a strikingly plain tool whose function is to catalogue and display information and analytics.

To a Nile network engineer, it principally shows the devices under observation, and the automated actions and optimizations performed on them. Users can view detailed reports of auto-detected point tickets, and the automation runbook that have been deployed to resolve the incidents.

Additionally, the solution provides tenants’ network details like activated Nile elements, AP and sensor placement, and open and accepted deviations. In a highly organized but barebone view, the solution highlights these via a digital twin.

Nile’s team gets access to all this information in real-time. Data gets auto-collected and logged into the console as the incidents are happening.

“During Day 2, we want to make sure that the internal line teams, when they are trying to triage an issue, are able to have all this information about the deployment at their fingertips,” said Vardhe.

But blind automation can just as easily break things, and Nile is mindful of that. Internally, their team of SMEs and engineers constantly review the decision graph that powers the automation to make sure that it is working as it should, Vardhe told.

Lastly, all of this is made possible by Nile’s standardized single network architecture, its fleet of physical and virtual sensors, baked-in advanced automation tooling, and a unified data store.

With “no customer-facing knobs”, and a robust team working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep things going like clockwork, Nile’s automation service is designed to deliver a white-glove experience to it users. Not only does it lift the burden substantially by rendering a lot of the operational tasks invisible, it also brings enterprises closer to a “near-autonomous” network that, for all intents and purposes, drives itself.

Watch Nile’s presentations from the Mobility Field Day to learn more about the Nile Access Service.

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The biggest news of the holiday weekend dropped on Monday. Pat Gelsinger has retired from Intel, effective immediately. David Zinsner, CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, newly named CEO of the Intel Product subunit, have been named as Co-CEOs while the board searches for a permanent member. Gelsinger has been the CEO since 2021. He has been focused on returning Intel to dominance in the chip market while also facing headwinds from industry transitions to mobile and AI computing. Intel stock prices rose on the news. This and more on The Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:14 – AWS Announces Nova AI Models

Amazon kicked off re:Invent with a bang, introducing a range of new AI models under the Nova brand. These next-generation models, available on Amazon Bedrock, offer capabilities like text, image, and video processing using generative AI algorithms.

Read More: Introducing Amazon Nova, our new generation of foundation models

5:35 – UK Company Bails on Broadcom Due to 1,000% Hike

UK-based Beeks Group, a cloud operator, announced this week that they are moving over 20,000 virtual machines from VMware to OpenNebula. This represents the majority of their virtual infrastructure. The reason for the move was a 10x increase in licensing costs according to Head of Production Matthew Cretney. The move has resulted in double the efficiency of managing the server infrastructure. The move comes amid changes to the VMware portfolio that have seen introductions of lower cost alternatives to VMware Cloud Foundation.

Read More: Company claims 1,000 percent price hike drove it from VMware to open source rival

9:36 – Chinese Say US Chips No Longer Safe

Chinese chipmakers have urged companies in the country to begin buying locally because US chips are no longer considered safe. The announcement comes after recent moves to restrict exports of technology and chips to China as the US relationship becomes frosty. There has been a bit of back-and-forth with sanctions and retaliations in the past couple of months. What was missing from the annoucement was any specificity about what made the US chips unsafe suddenly. China has recently banned exports of rare minerals needed for advanced manufacturing and today the US administration banned the sale of certain high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to buyers in restricted countries.

Read More: US chips are ‘no longer safe,’ Chinese industry bodies say in latest trade salvo

Read More: Biden Targets China’s Chip Industry With Wider Trade Bans

14:20 – EnGlobal Fighting Cyberattack

In an 8-K filing on Monday, energy sector services company EnGlobal said they are fighting a cyberattack and have restricted access to their systems. The incident occurred on November 25th and was reported inside the SEC window for these kinds of notifications. The attack appears to be encrypting files. EnGlobal does not have a timeline for full restoration of their systems. This incident follows a previous one oat the end of October that targeted another energy industry company, Newpark Resources.

Read More: US government contractor ENGlobal says operations are ‘limited’ following cyberattack

17:49 – Intel Forced to Control Their Own Fabs for CHIPS Cash

Before we take a look at the news of Pat Gelsinger’s retirement as Intel CEO, we have a smaller detail that came out Friday. $7 billion of the CHIPS Act funding that Intel is set to receive requires that Intel maintain control over their foundry operations. Intel must have 50.1% ownership and/or voting rights in the foundry business either directly or in a spin-out situation. The move is seen as a way to ensure that Intel does not take the money and run, so to speak, and continues to invest in their foundry operations over the long term.

Read More: Fine print in Intel’s CHIPS Act deal includes requirement to keep control of its foundries

21:52 – Pat Gelsinger Retires from Intel

Read More: Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

36:50 – The Weeks Ahead

AWS re:Invent – December 2 – 6, 2024

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Not so long ago, perimeter-based security used to be the only form of security needed to guard corporate environments. That was until lateral movement became a common trend in cyberattacks. Bad actors slipped past security at the gate and freely gained command and control of the environment.

Breaking up the environment into secure zones with microsegmentation reduces the risk of unauthorized access, and curbs free movement of entities. Microsegmentation works by limiting access based on need, and provides granular protection by placing security at the inner perimeters.

“Every single cyber security standard has said to segment the network,” says Dana Yanch, director of TME, at Elisity. “It’s a great first place to start.”

But companies have had microsegmentation solutions for years without significant adoption. The projects are prone to failure, say CISOs.

In a survey, Forrester investigated the reason. They found that the primary cause microsegmentation projects get discarded or derailed is snowballing complexity.

“It’s such a massive project and there’s so much complexity in the deployment of some solution to solve those problems that it gets put on the back burner,” says Yanch.

Microsegmentation drops more tooling on the lap of operators than they traditionally had that they are now in charge of managing. The management overhead surges up staggeringly leading to a quick analysis paralysis.

Other leading causes microsegmentation projects are killed off prematurely are insufficient visibility of the environments leading to enforcement anxiety. Being deeply disruptive, the projects end up getting a lot of pushback from the staff.

Policy Management Made EasyIn the last quarter, Forrester named Elisity a “strong performer” in its evaluation report on microsegmentation solutions.

An identity-based microsegmentation platform, Elisity is a software-only product that is designed to make microsegmentation for LAN click-button easy. The platform works by discovering users, devices and applications on the network, and matching them to the right policy, before enforcing the policies on the infrastructure.

“The goal is to mitigate the risk as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible without any disruption to the business,” Yanch says. “The long pole in the tent of deploying a solution is eliminated”.

The platform, Elisity says, is a zero-impact deployment. “We can deploy it without a single second of disruption, not one packet lost, not one outage; you don’t even need change windows.”

Elisity has helped many organizations on segmentation journey to stay on track and achieve the ends at minimum friction and effort.

One example is GSK, a leading pharmaceutical manufacturer with a very large and complex network. GSK’s attempt to do segmentation the traditional way had ended in a disaster with nearly no progress made in 3 years.

“GSK was stuck in an analysis paralysis mode. We came onboard and helped them visualize what’s going on in their network across both their IT and OT environments, and pull it together,” he says.

According to Yanch, GSK now deploys sites at 17 minutes a site, going at 12 sites a month.

Elisity is clear-eyed about “time to value”, and as a result has a very quick and short sales process. It takes half a day for the Proof of Concept, compensating for minor errors and issues, says Yanch. How?

“A lot of the complexity that we’re used to doing in Proof of Value or deploying a solution has been packaged up and delivered as a service in the cloud,” he explained.

At Networking Field Day in California, Yanch took the audience behind the scenes to give a sneak peak of the process flow.

A cloud-delivered interface that serves as the main UI allows administrators to integrate cloud and on-prem solutions with Elisity. Elisity aggregates all identity information from third-party devices like discovery engines, databases, and even spreadsheets that some customers use to this day to store device attributes, and pull that into “one simple view and an easily digestible platform.”

“We don’t just ingest; you can export everything that’s been ingested and processed outbound. We have a very robust API mechanism to export absolutely anything in our product.”

Elisity’s IdentityGraph is a critical component of the solution. It’s an asset engine that triangulates accuracy and serves as the source of truth.

“If you’re doing identity-based and context-based segmentation, the platform that you’re using better have the best view of absolutely everything on the network, whether it’s a user or device.”

That’s what IdentityGraph provides, “the full picture” that tells operators what devices are verified, and which are not, what needs remediation, and what needs to removal. The contextual information from IdentityGraph also guides policy group implementation at a later stage.

Assets, depending on the policies, are grouped under policy groups. When a new device is discovered, it is automatically matched to a group based on the pre-created criteria on the device, and the policy is enforced.

“When it comes to enforcing, everybody’s a little afraid. Nobody wants to accidentally shut down a manufacturing line, or cause an outage where the company loses money.”

Elisity aims to build confidence by transparently showing administrators exactly what policy is enforced, when they are ready to hit the button.

A built-in analytics and reporting plane within the Elisity platform offers insights and tells “what’s real, and what’s rogue” before feeding the data into the CMDB tool in use.

Yanch told that the platform continues with the same level of full-time equivalent (FTE) even when the network grows.

For more, be sure to watch Elisity’s presentations from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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There comes a time in certain relationships where you have to bring them to an end. It could be they’re a drain on resources, where you have to give more than you get. Or it could be that you don’t feel like you own anything anymore. Yeah, I’m talking about working with Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).

The cost of services can exceed the value they provide for hosting, and the ability to schedule tasks on your timeline can be exorbitant. The data you gather and generate is held hostage for a monthly fee, even if it seems insignificant to start with.

Sometimes it really is necessary to say, “It isn’t me, it’s you.” And say goodbye to cloud providers.

Repatriating, or importing data from a cloud provider to a private data center is never an easy task. Building a data center is daunting – you need to get the space, the power, and the bandwidth yourself to make it work.

A Friend to Help You MoveJust like moving yourself or your family, there are some tasks that can be exciting and fun. Figuring out a data center architecture or the provider agreements can be interesting negotiations, just like choosing a new place and finding furnishings.

And then the time comes to move your “stuff.” The boring and tedious part. You can be someone who is okay with scuffed tables, broken kitchenware, and scrambled belongings. Then again, there’s a time to call in professionals.

Interlock Technology is a team of professionals that can help move your data from service providers to your private cloud. Interlock offers what it calls A3 Migration Solutions to facilitate and ease data migration. I participated in a showcase with Noemi Greyzdorf, VP of Operations, and Massimo Yezzi, CTO.

A3 (say “A cubed”) stands for “Any Data, Any Storage, Anywhere,” which is the basis of their solution. Their migration capabilities allow any object and file data to be migrated in an application-aware way. This means the data maintains consonance (if you have to look it up: in agreement and compatible between actions), compliance, permissions and chain of custody. All of these attributes are preserved end to end.

A perfect use case is repatriating application data from a public service provider to your private cloud. The application performance from the customer’s perspective is seamless and transparent.

ScreenshotInterlock’s A3 solutions are offered in two different ways. A3 DF Classic is a managed, professional services engagement with personnel from Interlock ensuring complete and successful data migration. Alternatively, there’s A3 DATAFORGE, a licensed software solution used by a certified migration engineer.

Consulting is available from the Interlock team, but the engagement isn’t a full professional services endeavor.

Fast, Easy DeploymentUnder the hood, the A3 solutions have a couple different components: the Data Application Manager and Data Movers. The Data Application Manager (ForgeManager) is a single instance that oversees the migration and provides the migration engineer a dashboard of progress and status. Multiple Data Movers facilitate the migration, each capable of supplying up to 128 threads of migration. Data Movers are deployed as needed to accomplish the migration at the speed the customer is looking for.

The ForgeManager and the Data Movers are simply VMs that can be deployed into a customer’s existing VMware virtual infrastructure. Interlock supplies them as OVFs that are quickly and easily installed onto existing ESXi instances.

ScreenshotTo pull application data from a source like AWS S3 storage to a target like a local NFS filer, just point the A3 solution at the source and target, connect the correct application-aware modules, and it’s good to go.

Repatriation of cloud data isn’t its only trick. Interlock is just as capable of migrating between disparate storage systems within a single data center or across long distances.

Consistent, Certifiable ResultsInterlock takes pains to ensure that migrated data is exactly the way an application needs it. Metadata, permissions, audit trails and logs are all retained. This is accomplished by using individual, application-aware modules. These can be off-the-shelf applications, or new modules can be developed for custom applications. The available library includes more than 20 commonly-used commercial applications, like NICE, Documentum and SourceOne.

Regulatory compliance is maintained, adhering to stringent requirements concerning data integrity, immutability, chain of custody, authentication and permissions. All ownership and retention information associated with the data is migrated along with the data. Encrypted data isn’t decrypted, and multiple checksums, like MD5 and SHA256, ensure the integrity of the migration.

Finally, audit reports detail each action performed during the migration, guaranteeing that the full data lifecycle is documented.

DATAFORGE migrates data at the storage layer rather than the application layer to speed up the process. This enables large-scale datasets to be migrated in a fraction of the time they would otherwise take. This is useful when data is trapped because an application can no longer access the data where it resides. This could be the case if the license on a particular version of an application expires, or an outdated storage system starts to fail and can’t handle an application workload.

Scalability and ObservabilityInterlock’s A3 solutions provide a framework to easily scale out to numerous migration tasks associated with various applications. It can also scale up to accommodate large-scale applications involving billions of objects and many terabytes of data.

This can all be observed through their ForgeManager as individual tasks with various different states and progress.

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Each task can be expanded to view individual status. Errors can be checked and remediated. Simplicity is one of the goals of the A3 Solution.

ConclusionIn the case of repatriation, the data where it resides is simply costing money, which could be saved in an on-premises data center. Repatriation can also be needed when an application can no longer run on a cloud service provider, either due to enterprise guidelines or regulatory reasons.

Private cloud is the way forward for many organizations. But like it or not, data migration is part of that. The A3 DATAFORGE solution by Interlock Technology provides a consistent, compliant and fast way of leaving public cloud, and move applications and data to the safety of an on-premises data center where you control them.

I’ve written and talked extensively about building private cloud infrastructure in a variety of places where you can learn how to settle into your own data center easier and faster. Talk to Interlock Technology about their case studies to get more info. And make sure to check out more coverage from my fellow panelists on the Tech Field Day Showcase with Interlock.

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We’re closing out 2024 with one last look at the mobility and wireless space at Mobility Field Day 12. This year has seen some huge changes in the market, from new technology releases to massive vendor mergers. While 2025 is going to be a banner year from those that work without wires we wanted to make sure to give the stage to a couple of big names that are hoping to make waves soon.

Mobility Field Day Presentation ScheduleThe event will be taking place on Wednesday, November 20. We’re going to start off with our friends at Cisco. They’re coming off of Cisco Live Australia in Melbourne and they have some big announcements to discuss. One of those is the final combination of Meraki and Catalyst into a single wireless brand. I’m sure we’re going to learn more about this as well as hearing about some of their new advances in technology as well.

Next up is Nile. You’ve already seen them at Networking Field Day earlier this year but they have been one of the most requested companies at Mobility Field Day as well. Their approach to networking-as-a-service has had an impact on the way that organizations think about deploying equipment. Nile has a wireless component as well and our delegates are ready to ask them a lot of questions about how they take on the complex task of proper wireless deployments.

Social Media DetailsThe live stream for Mobility Field Day will be held on Wednesday, November 20. You can watch it on the Mobility Field Day event page, the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page, and even on our sister site TechstrongTV. If you want to be a part of the conversation you can leave a comment on our LinkedIn stream or jump on your favorite social media platform and use the hashtag #MFD12. If you miss any of the event during the live stream you can always head over to our Tech Field Day YouTube channel.

We’re excited to be talking about the state of wireless and we hope that you’ll join us!

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Pay rates for IT security professionals are rising faster than inflation, but burnout and stress are growing faster. A survey of UK security professionals revealed the fast pace of modern security and the risk of unknown failure is causing skilled practitioners to leave the field. Would yet more pay fix the problem, or is there another way to address IT security staff retention? This and more on the Rundown.

1:19 – Can AMD Top NVIDIA?

In her ten years as CEO of AMD, Lisa Su has turned the company around by successfully entering the datacenter CPU and GPU markets, securing major revenues and positioning AMD as a serious competitor to Intel and Nvidia. With record-high revenues, rapid growth in the Instinct GPU business, and increased sales in datacenter products, AMD is on track to potentially achieve parity with Nvidia in datacenter GPU sales and rival Intel in server CPU revenue by 2025 or 2026.

Read More: AMD Will Need Another Decade to Try to Pass NVIDIA

3:50 – Quantum AI Isn’t a Thing

Combining Quantum computing and AI seems like a recipe for headlines and funding. Bob Sutor, an experienced Quantum computing expert, suggests that Quantum computing might solve some problems better than AI but that Quantum computing is still very early. It seems that quantum computing might become another accelerator for specialised computation tasks.

Read More: AI + Quantum: Hype or True Breakthroughs? – Report Summary

7:13 – MinIO Introduces AIStor

We’ve been covering MinIO on the Rundown for years, and they’ve been a frequent Tech Field Day presenter too. Now they have introduced their next-generation enterprise product, dubbed AIStor. This release adds a complete AI storage stack, from key manager, console, to catalog, and has more tricks up its sleeve: The new promptObject capability brings self-describing metadata, AIHub is a drop-in replacement for Hugging Face, and S3 over RDMA challenges NFS over RDMA, not to mention GPUDirect.

Watch: MinIO Presents at AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1

12:23 – Amazon Employee Details Exposed in MoveIt Breach

Doesn’t Amazon have a public cloud platform they use to build software and services for their business? It seems that a breach of the MoveIt secure file transfer service led to the work contact details of 2.8 million Amazon employees being stolen, probably by ransomware organisations.

Read More: Amazon Confirms Employee Contact Info Stolen Through Hack

15:20 – Marslink is Further Away than Starlink

Shouldn’t Starlink be called Earthlink? That would make more sense now that SpaceX proposes putting a system in orbit around Mars, probably called Marslink. Naturally, SpaceX wants NASA to fund the deployment of a satellite network service around Mars as part of Elon’s efforts to reach the red planet.

Read More: SpaceX Pitches NASA on ‘Marslink,’ a Version of Starlink for the Red Planet

18:19 – AI is writing Google’s Code

AI is generating more than 25% of Google’s code, according to Sundar Pichai. That 25% of code still needs to be reviewed by a human before it is accepted, so it is unclear how much productivity Google gains from AI code generation. We wonder whether organisations without Google’s vast code base and extensive AI experience can gain value from AI-generated code.

Read More: Google CEO says more than 25% of the company’s code is now AI-generated – is this the future of software development?

22:05 – Amazon Won’t Go Nuclear

Amazon’s data centers are requiring more and more power, especially now that AI is ramping up. One way that providers are trying to increase power to those data centers is by reviving the nuclear energy industry in the US. For the plants that are still in operation, companies like Amazon are trying to draw more power from the reactors while the older ones are refurbished and reactivated. The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) just issued an order that rejected Amazon’s request to draw an additional 180 megawatts of power from a Susquehanna power plant. The data center in question, built by Talen Energy and acquired by Amazon back in March, was co-located next to the plant in an effort to optimize power delivery. The FERC cited issues with what would happen if the contract for the Talen center preempted power delivery to th rest of the power grid.

Read More: Amazon’s nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

26:41 – Is IT Security Too Stressful for the Money?

Read More: Cybersecurity salaries are rising, but some professionals wonder if the stress and burnout is worth it

The Weeks Ahead:

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The market for enterprise AI platforms is exploding with new companies appearing every day. Many of these are fresh designs built from the ground up around the present wave of large language models (LLMs).

Veritone, with a decade of history, and big-name applications and customers to its credit, is different. Their aiWARE platform is bigger and better than the new crop of competing products, many of which are simply an aggregation of open-source models.

aiWARE represents a fully developed, enterprise-ready AI platform that has a record of successful deployments spanning years. It owes to Veritone’s audio and video processing foundation – one of the early uses of modern AI – now adapted to a wide range of data types and industries.

A Modular, Containerized ArchitectureThe modular, containerized design of aiWARE lends a versatility rare in other products. Built around Docker containers with webhooks for input and output, the architecture allows developers to easily integrate Veritone’s 400+ AI services into cohesive, enterprise-ready applications.

The design makes services event-driven ,and configurable to very specific workflows without extensive customization, said Al Brown, CTO and Lance Gorji, director of product management during a briefing with Gestalt IT this week. Each AI service—whether it’s audio transcription, facial recognition, entity extraction, or geolocation—can be deployed individually or combined into complex workflows, creating a robust foundation for scalable AI applications.

It also positions Veritone to support the emerging Agentic AI trend, where autonomous AI agents act independently based on predefined parameters. Because aiWARE is inherently event-driven, developers can easily set up AI agents that trigger, process, and act upon data inputs without manual intervention, making it highly adaptable for applications that require real-time responsiveness.

The webhook-based design supports would-be agents to be deployed in different configurations, with filters and processing steps plugged in where needed.

Vertical-Specific Solutions that Highlight Flexibility and ScalabilityaiWARE aims to meet the unique demands of sectors like Media & Entertainment, Public Sector, and Human Resources (HR), where specialized workflows require more than generic AI capabilities.

In Media & Entertainment, for instance, Veritone has deployed its platform to enhance live event broadcasting at NASCAR: aiWARE analyzes and transcribes driver communications in real-time, adding timecoded context to generate searchable records. Broadcasters and team analysts use these insights for content creation, detecting trends during the race.

In healthcare, Veritone supports patient care through processing and summarization of data from audio and video interactions with patients. Healthcare providers take advantage of its actionable treatment summaries to make more informed decision.

By combining its cognitive engines—such as speech-to-text, entity recognition, and natural language processing—Veritone also enables healthcare teams to monitor and document patient interactions, ensuring that essential information is accessible for review and oversight.

Veritone’s capabilities support the Public Sector with deployments that include solutions for government operations like the Joint AI Command, where Veritone’s platform aggregates and analyzes data from public and private sources to generate timely intelligence.

In all of these scenarios, Veritone demonstrates a commitment to keeping humans “on the loop” but not as roadblocks. aiWARE’s design allows human operators to supervise and intervene in workflows, ensuring ethical and transparent use of AI in areas where accountability is essential.

aiWARE as an Enterprise AI Operating SystemThe aiWARE AI operating system is designed to handle large-scale, complex data processing tasks across various domains. Hosted in the cloud, on AWS or Azure, it is secure, scalable, and adaptable to a broad range of enterprise needs.

The platform’s cognitive engines are organized into categories that serve as specialized transformers—for example, an audio stream can be transformed into a searchable transcript complete with timecodes, ready for further analysis, filtering, or output.

The AI services available on aiWARE support both real-time and batch processing, making it versatile enough to meet the needs of time-sensitive applications, as well as those that require in-depth analysis over longer periods. Because of its event-based design, each service can trigger additional workflows or connect with other cognitive engines to create dynamic, multi-step processes. Coupled with Veritone’s containerized architecture, it provides enterprises with a powerful toolkit for deploying AI in complex, data-intensive settings.

Ready for Agentic AI and BeyondWith a modular, containerized architecture, an extensive array of AI services, and a proven commitment to responsible AI practices, Veritone has built a solid and proven foundation. That and the platform’s modular and action-based design give it a head start in the development of Agentic AI solutions in the future. However, that’s not the most impressive thing about Veritone aiWARE. It is its long history of real-world use by major customers that few other enterprise AI platforms can match.

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Generative AI is transforming many industries where people create content. Software development is no different; AI agents are in almost every development platform. But is AI improving application development and software quality? This episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast looks at some of the issues revolving around AI and App Dev with Alastair Cooke, Guy Currier, Jack Poller, and Stephen Foskett. The ultimate objective of a software development team is to deliver an application that fulfills a business need and helps the organization be more successful. An AI that can recommend basic code snippets doesn’t move that needle far. More sophistication is needed to get value from AI in the development process. The objective should be to have AI handle the repetitive tasks and allow humans to focus on innovative tasks where generative AI is less capable. AI agents must handle building tests and reviewing code for security and correctness to enable developers to concentrate on building better applications that help organizations.

Learn more about AppDev Field Day 2 on the Tech Field Day website, including information on presenting companies, delegates, analysts, and more.

AI Doesn’t Make AI Any BetterThe ultimate objective of a software development team is to deliver an application that fulfils a business need and helps the organization be more successful. An AI that can recommend basic code snippets doesn’t move that needle far. More sophistication is needed to get value from AI in the development process. The objective should be to have AI handle the repetitive tasks and allow humans to focus on innovative tasks where generative AI is less capable. A vital first step is making the AI aware of the unique parts of the organization where it is used, such as the standards, existing applications and data. A human developer is more effective as they learn more about the team and organization where they work, and so can an AI assistant.

One of the ways AI can be used to improve software development is in data normalization, taking a diverse set of data and presenting it in a way that allows simple access to that data. An example is a data lake with social media content, email archives, and copies of past transactions from our sales application, all in one place. An AI tool that reads the unstructured social media and emails, presenting it as more structured data for SQL-based querying. Handling these types of low-precision data is an ideal generative AI task; reporting on the exact data in the sales records is not somewhere we want hallucinations. Generative AI might also be great for working out my address from my vague description rather than demanding that I enter my street address and postcode precisely as they are recorded in the postal service database.

Software testing is another place where AI assistants or agents can help by taking care of routine and tedious tasks. Testing every new feature is essential to automating software development and deployment, but writing tests is much less satisfying than writing new features. An AI agent that creates the tests from a description of how the feature should work is a massive assistance to a developer and ensures code quality through good test coverage. Similarly, AI-based code review can reduce the effort required to ensure new developers write good code and implement new features well. Reviews for style, correctness, and security are all critical for software quality. Both testing and code review are vital parts of good software development and take considerable developer effort. Reducing these tedious tasks would leave more time for developers to work on innovation and align better with business needs.

The challenge of AI agents and assistants is that we don’t yet trust the results and still need a human to review any changes proposed by the AI. Tabnine reports that up to 50% of the changes suggested by their AI are accepted without modification. That leaves 50% of suggestions that aren’t wholly acceptable. That rate must be much higher before this AI can operate without human oversight. Ideally, the AI could identify which changes will likely be accepted and flag a confidence rating. Over time, we might set a confidence threshold that requires human review. Similarly, we might take a manufacturing approach to code reviews and tests. Allow the AI to operate autonomously and sample test the resulting code every ten or hundred changes.

Podcast Information: Alastair Cooke is a Tech Field Day Event Lead, now part of The Futurum Group. You can connect with Alastair on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and you can read more of his research notes and insights on The Futurum Group’s website.

Guy Currier is the VP and CTO of Visible Impact, part of The Futurum Group. You can connect with Guy on X/Twitter and on LinkedIn. Learn more about Visible Impact on their website. For more insights, go to The Futurum Group’s website.

Jack Poller is and industry leading cybersecurity analyst and Founder of Paradigm Technica. You can connect with Jack on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more on Paradigm Technica’s website.

Stephen Foskett is the Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

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As an old-school database administrator (DBA), I’ve overseen more than my share of migrations between database platforms, both on-premises and in the cloud. The projects required considerable planning, experimentation, and zero tolerance for data loss.

Fortunately, they were all successful because modern databases have robust backup and recovery mechanisms in addition to sophisticated transaction logging to guarantee data synchronicity during transference.

Databases depend on block storage for data retention, and that moreover enables DBAs to easily ascertain accidental corruptions, if any, within a single block.

But when dealing with data that’s read and written at the application level – often stored within thousands, even millions of individual files and retained within object storage – migrating entire applications without losing any data while keeping them executing is a much trickier challenge. The process can consume days or even weeks as files containing terabytes of critical application data are ported between source and target environments.

Consonance, Security, and Chain of CustodyAny migration process must guarantee application consonance, in other words, seamless execution while the app’s underlying data resides at the source or target. Consonance must be maintained regardless of the file’s current location – be it a local file storage or a cloud “bucket”, and the access method, whether using REST APIs or application-specific protocols.

But consonance is only the first concern. Data that’s encrypted for security purposes must remain encrypted during transfers. In cases of extremely sensitive data, it must be seen that only the migration tool touches it, so that a legal chain of custody is maintained.

Even more problematic is that it can take considerable computing power and reliable networking to migrate application files at speed, and that could mean compromising current hardware and bandwidth at the source right in the middle of crucial business cycles.

DATAFORGE: A Migration Solution, CubedI recently came to know about a comprehensive solution that squarely addresses these data migration challenges. From Noemi Greyzdorf (VP ofOperations) and Massimo Yezzi (CTO) of Interlock, I heard about DATAFORGE, a solution designed to satisfy the potentially tricky and voluminous object migration requirements.

Interlock calls DATAFORGE their A-cubed (A3) solution for object migration. Designed to move any data between any storage, anywhere, it guarantees application consonance while handling all the other aforementioned issues.

ScreenshotDATAFORGE currently comes in two flavors:

For IT teams that are overwhelmed with work, Interlock offers DATAFORGE Classic. DATAFORGE Classic comes with Interlock’s team of experienced and certified migration engineers who handle the solution deployment and migration process end to end for enterprises.
For organizations that can spare resources, Interlock allows members of the staff to train to be DATAFORGE-certified migration engineers and manage the migration in-house.

Nuts and BoltsAt its heart, DATAFORGE uses a series of Data Movers – usually a VMware virtual machines configured via ESXi – and managed by a single DATAFORGE application node. As the name implies, Data Movers move application files from source to target, but what makes them unique is Interlock’s proprietary software.

As Data Movers continually copy data to the target system, the apps continue to communicate with the files stored at the source until cutover is completed at the target, thus ensuring application consonance. DATAFORGE remains outside the migration path, and since the Data Movers migrate data at the storage level only, this keeps them focused on completing the process as rapidly as possible.

DATAFORGE provides a web-based UI that constantly monitors the migration progress, and includes the ability to migrate files via multi-threaded migration processes.

Migration engineers can use DATAFORGE’s built-in performance scheduler to control the number of threads each Data Mover is using allowing them to throttle migration during peak application business hours, and ramp up migration processing during off-peak periods.

Migration is not just about moving files. It’s also crucial to maintain individual file’s metadata for handling security and retention requirements post-migration. Data Mover processes can be tuned to accommodate files whose contents rarely change – long-archived logs, documents, or images – that need to be retained historically for regulatory purposes. Data Movers interrogate those files’ metadata less frequently, and focus more efforts on volatile ones.

ScreenshotMaintaining Consonance Regardless of FormatMaintaining application consonance during migration is trickier than it appears. For one, the application may use several different connection methods to read from or write data to files. They may be using a vendor-defined REST API or even content-addressable storage (CAS) if there are specific security requirements to access and write data via cryptographic means.

Data within the files themselves are likely to be stored in any one of a plethora of proprietary formats: images (JPEG, JIFF, PNG), audio-visual recordings (MP4, M4A), geographic information systems (GeoJSON, GML, KML), standard documents (JSON, XML), and so on.

DATAFORGE’s software is designed to handle this seamlessly regardless of the file format. If required, Interlock can even build a custom application connector so that it appears to the application as though it had written data directly to the target storage system.

Never Break the ChainMaintaining the chain of custody for any secured data stored within the object file system is a crucial requisite. An encrypted file must remain so during the transfer process without the need to first decrypt it. Otherwise, data might be corrupted, to say nothing of the risks of security regulation violation through accidental glancing of the data.

DATAFORGE’s software calculates a hash on every bit comprising the file as the transfer proceeds, meaning it can guarantee that the file and its metadata is never modified while migrating. Interlock guarantees that its chain of custody reporting is solid enough to stand up in a court of law.

So How Fast is Fast?Interlock says that as long as there are adequate resources – essentially, a sufficient number of Data Movers and a robust network connectivity between source and target environments – a migration engineer should be able to move over 20 terabytes of files per day, and up to a billion files per week. That’s a pretty bold claim, but not one that is unsupported by successful customer stories:

The closing of an on-premises datacenter necessitated a complete migration to AWS S3 buckets in the cloud. This required DATAFORGE to migrate 176 million files over a 14-day period at a daily transfer rate of 24 terabytes. This case was rather unique, as the data was essentially trapped within the customer’s application but needed to be retained for 10 years to satisfy regulatory requirements. DATAFORGE satisfied the need to reliably migrate file metadata ensuring that individual retention periods for each file is honored at the target system.
For a very different customer use case, a financial institution specifically, a DATAFORGE configuration of eight multi-threaded Data Movers leveraged a 1GbE network connection to copy over 220 terabytes of data from the source system to its new target – an on-prem object store. DATAFORGE maintained application consonance during the 30-day period during which over three billion files with an average size of 75KB were successfully migrated across multiple protocols. DATAFORGE also produced a chain-of-custody report to satisfy regulatory requirements.

Conclusion: In closing, though my object storage migration experience is admittedly limited, I believe that Interlock’s DATAFORGE solution appears to check all the boxes I’d be concerned about when tasked with a cross-platform migration project.

For more, head over to the Tech Field Day website or YouTube channel to see videos from the Interlock Tech Field Day Showcase.

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From IT operations, platform engineering, and DevOps to application development, we’re considering the complete software lifecycle. That’s the focus at the next Tech Field Day event, AppDev Field Day, which we’re co-locating with the incredible KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, thanks to our partners at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and TechStrong TV. We’ll be coming to you live and direct from Salt Lake City on November 12th and 13th. Tune in live on LinkedIn, DevOps.com, Techstrong TV, and check out the Tech Field Day website for the complete schedule.

Tech Field Day has partnered with Mitch Ashley of the Futurum Group to organize the AppDev Field Day event. We’re kicking off our next event in this series next week, broadcasting live from Salt Lake City on Techstrong TV.

Event ScheduleWe’ll kick things off at AppDev Field Day on Tuesday at 1:00 MT, 12:00 PT with SOUTHWORKS. They’ll explore the future of cloud migration and multi-cloud strategies, demonstrating how SOUTHWORKS leverages CNCF technologies to help customers realize the potential of multi-cloud.

At 2:30 MT, we’re welcoming Heroku, a Salesforce company, to AppDev Field Day. Heroku will showcase its evolving platform capabilities, including new developments in Cloud Native Buildpacks and OpenTelemetry, while reflecting on a decade of container-driven transformation in application development.

On Wednesday at 12:00 MT, 11:00 PT, we’ll be introduced to Codiac, a new company that simplifies container and cluster management, allowing organizations to focus on software development and applications.

Watch AppDev Field Day LiveAll of our sessions are broadcast live on LinkedIn and Techstrong TV, as well as the Tech Field Day website and partner sites including DevOps.com. The presentations are recorded and shared on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel as well as on TechStrong TV. We welcome participation on X/Twitter or Mastodon using #ADFD2, as well as on LinkedIn.

You can learn more about the event and our panel of independent technical influencers on the Tech field Day website as well. Each of our delegates has their own blog, podcast, or social media platform where they share their thoughts on enterprise technology.

Thank you for joining AppDev Field Day live on November 12th and 13th on our social media channels. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on X/Twitter, Mastodon, or LinkedIn for more Field Day updates.

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In IT, one thing you learn very quickly is that the only constant in this career path is change. Things in an environment are always moving and changing – including critical data. Cloud and hybrid-cloud transitions have caused legacy and application data to be shuttled between on-premise datacenters and the cloud, and now, back to the datacenter all over again.

ScreenshotIntroduction to DATAFORGEInterlock’s solution comes in two flavors – A3 DATAFORGE and A3 DF Classic. Released last year, A3 DATAFORGE is a software solution that allows scalable, managed migration between protocols and APIs like SMB, NFS, S3 or REST. It is designed to allow for scale up and scale out deployments that ensure both data integrity and regulatory compliance needs are met when the final cutover happens.

The platform supports migration of Any data to Any storage to Any Destination (A3), says Interlock.

ScreenshotDF Classic is a fully-managed solution that supports cross-protocol migrations using predeveloped connectors and custom versions as needed. It includes support for migration engineers to setup, monitor and cutover end-state data for a truly end-to-end solution.

The latter is a more SaaS option which can be licensed on a storage transferred basis and after initial assessment, is available to use by organizations’ own staff.

In either options, A3 DATAFORGE relies on 2 base components – DATAFORGE Manager and application nodes, that must be deployed close to the source or destination storage for reduced latency.

DATAFORGE Manager is a deployable OVA for VMware environments that acts as a management overlay for the entire system. The nodes are the actual data movers which can be package installed on any supported variant of Microsoft Windows in either a scale up or scale out model. Users can right-size the data mover throughput by either scaling up, making each VM larger in the number of cores assigned, or by scaling out and having multiple nodes with each capable of 128 threads, depending on the use case.

Regardless of what you choose, Interlock will assess what is to be moved and provide guidance on sizing of the solution.

ScreenshotWhen performing assessment, Interlock’s migration engineers focus not only on size and number of files but also the type of data. This assessment allows users to be more cost-efficient and prioritized in their migrations as they can identify data that may not need moving at all vs. that which must be prioritized.

For services such as Content Addressable Storage (CAS), Interlock can leverage its collector code to support application-aware migration.

ConclusionData migration is a service many companies are competing to provide. A very large segment of the IT world requires it to for their on-going hybrid multi-cloud journey. Unfortunately, migration can often be bulky, cumbersome and prolonged taking weeks to years on end. The processes are riddled with data loss scenarios. By creating a framework service that can be consumed in both a managed and self-service fashion, Interlock addresses many of these challenges of legacy migration enabling seamless data mobility and access of assets across platforms.

For more, head over to the Tech Field Day website or YouTube channel to see videos from the Interlock Tech Field Day Showcase.

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Another Trump presidency could bring significant implications for enterprise tech, particularly through a focus on deregulation, increased M&A, and expanded Big Tech investments. this also extends to advancements in military technology, Israel’s influence on cybersecurity, the impact of initiatives like StarLink and rural broadband on connectivity, nuclear energy, AI, the CHIPS Act, and the expanding space industry. Altogether, these insights suggest that a pro-deregulation agenda, aiming to remove ten regulations for each new one introduced, could profoundly shape the future of enterprise technology. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:54 – Log-in Bug Infects Okta

Okta recently disclosed a security vulnerability that allowed users to log in without a correct password under specific conditions, such as usernames over 52 characters, the presence of a stored cache key, no two-factor authentication, and Okta’s authentication agent being down or overloaded. Okta has since fixed the issue by updating its cryptographic algorithm and advises affected customers to review access logs from the past three months.

Read More: Okta Bug Allowed Log-Ins Without a Correct Password

4:14 – Nuclear Amazon Datacenters Denied over Safety Concerns

Back on Oct 2, Tom and I talked about nuclear power for AI datacenters. Amazon’s plans to power new U.S. datacenters with nuclear energy faced a setback after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected an agreement allowing it to draw additional power from the Susquehanna nuclear plant, citing potential impacts on grid reliability and consumer costs. Despite FERC Chairman Willie L. Phillips advocating for approval, FERC ruled that the proposal lacked sufficient support, raising concerns over preferential treatment and the potential effects of similar arrangements on the grid in future cases.

Read More: Amazon’s nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

Read More: Endangered bees stop Meta’s plan for nuclear-powered AI data center

7:56 – Microsoft Recalls Recall. Again.

Microsoft has once again delayed the release of its new AI Recall feature for Copilot Plus PCs, pushing the preview for Windows Insiders to December. Recall, which was originally slated for an October release, has been plagued by concerns about its security and privacy implications. The delays stem from Microsoft’s efforts to address these concerns by making Recall an opt-in feature that can be fully uninstalled. Microsoft has been working to fix bugs in how the feature appears and is controlled in Windows 11. The company remains committed to delivering a secure and trusted experience with Recall.

Read More: Microsoft is delaying the recall feature for CoPilot Plus PCs again, all we know

10:58 – Cloudera Launches Private Link

Cloudera recently launched the Cloudera Private Link Network, a service designed to provide secure, internet-free connectivity across multi-cloud environments. This network allows data to travel securely between customer workloads and Cloudera’s Control Plane without traversing the public internet, addressing privacy and regulatory concerns for industries like finance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. By using services like AWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link, the Private Link Network enables consistent security across cloud providers, reducing the complexities of cross-cloud setups and lowering total costs by simplifying network management. This development marks Cloudera’s effort to support enterprises with strict data protection needs in leveraging multi-cloud environments efficiently. For more on this, let’s turn to our colleague Mitch Ashley.

Read More: Cloudera Launches Private Link for Secure Multi-Cloud Connectivity

14:50 – Google Cloud gets Multi-Factor Authentication

In response to rising cyber threats and high-profile data breaches, Google has announced that it will require all Google Cloud users to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) by 2025. Starting this month, users will receive reminders to implement MFA, with mandatory enforcement beginning in the new year. This policy shift, aimed at protecting against unauthorized access through stolen credentials, aligns Google with other cloud giants like AWS and Microsoft, which have also moved to enforce MFA. Google says this requirement addresses the heightened security risks in enterprise cloud environments, where sensitive data remains a prime target for cyberattacks.

Read More: Google Cloud to make multi-factor authentication mandatory in 2025

17:33 – Supermicro Faces Financial Woes as NVIDIA Seeks New Suppliers

Needham suspended its buy rating for Super Micro Computer (SMCI) after Ernst & Young resigned as auditor, citing governance issues and concerns about financial transparency amid an ongoing DOJ investigation and Hindenburg Research’s allegations of accounting manipulation. In response, NVIDIA is redirecting AI server orders to other suppliers to maintain supply chain stability, as Supermicro’s stock faces volatility and potential delisting risk.

Read More: Super Micro shares tumble following disturbing news

Read More: Nvidia steps in to restructure Supermicro orders, reshaping AI supply chain

22:07 – What Another Trump Presidency Means for Enterprise Tech

The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Artificial Intelligence is creating the kind of paradigm shifts not seen since the cloud revolution. Everyone is changing the way their IT infrastructure operates in order to make AI work better. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by John Freeman, Scott Robohn, and Ron Westfall as they discuss how AI is driving innovation in the networking market. They talk about how the toolsets are changing to incorporate AI features as well as how the need to push massive amounts of data into LLMs and generative AI constructs is creating opportunities for companies to show innovation. They also talk about how Ethernet is becoming ascendant in the AI market.

Learn more about Networking Field Day 36 and the presenting companies on the Tech Field Day website.

AI is the Enabler of Network InnovationArtificial Intelligence is creating the kind of paradigm shifts not seen since the cloud revolution. Everyone is changing the way their IT infrastructure operates in order to make AI work better. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by John Freeman, Scott Robohn, and Ron Westfall as they discuss how AI is driving innovation in the networking market. They talk about how the toolsets are changing to incorporate AI features as well as how the need to push massive amounts of data into LLMs and generative AI constructs is creating opportunities for companies to show innovation. They also talk about how Ethernet is becoming ascendant in the AI market.

Modern network operations and engineering teams have a bevy of tools they need to leverage like Python, GitHub, and cloud platforms. AI is just another one of those tools, such as using natural language conversational interfaces to glean information from a dashboard. This can also be seen in the way that AI is having a societal impact on the way that we live and work. The move toward incorporating AI into every aspect of software can’t help but sweep up networking as well.

Large amounts of data are being sent to large language models (LLMs) for storage and processing. Much like the big data crazy of years gone by we’re pushing more and more information into systems that will operate on it to discover context and meaning. Even more than before, however, is the need to deliver the data to the AI compute clusters that need to do the operations. The idea of data gravity is lost when the AI clusters have an even stronger pull. That means that the network must be optimized even more than ever before.

Ethernet is quickly becoming the more preferred alternative to traditional InfiniBand. While there are clear advantages in some use cases, InfiniBand’s dominance is waning as Ethernet fabrics gain ground in performance. When you add in the ease with which Ethernet can scale to hundreds of thousands of nodes you can see why providers, especially those that are offering AI-as-a-Service, would prefer to install Ethernet today instead of spending money on a technology that has an uncertain future.

Lastly, we discuss what happens if the AI bubble finally bursts and what may drive innovation in the market from there. This isn’t the first time that networking has faced a challenge from drivers of feature development. It wasn’t that long ago that OpenFlow and SDN were the hottest ticket around and everything was going to be running in software sooner or later. While that trend has definitely cooled we now see the benefits of the innovation it spurred and how we can continue to create value even if the primary driver for that innovation is now a footnote.

Podcast Information: Tom Hollingsworth is the Networking Analyst for The Futurum Group and Event Lead for Tech Field Day. You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Find out more on his blog or on the Tech Field Day website.

Scott Robohn is the VP of Technology at Cypress Consulting and Cofounder of Network Automation Forum. You can connect with Scott on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more on the Network Automation Forum.

John Freeman is an equity analyst at Ravenswood Partners. Connect with John on LinkedIn and learn more about him over on Ravenswood Partners’ website.

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In the latest Tech Field Day Showcase, I alongside a group of other delegates, met with Interlock Technology. Interlock is a company that specializes in supporting highly complex data migration projects with a particular focus on critical and compliance data.

Data consistency and integrity are two absolute precursors in any data storage architecture stack, and were among the key differentiators pitched during the discussion. So why is this relevant in the context of data migration? Let me explain.

There are several ways to look at data consistency and integrity through the various layers of IT infrastructure stack. At the lowest layer, you want to ensure that integrity is embedded into the system by making certain that the endless chains of ones and zeroes that constitute a file or object are properly written, readable, and protected against common hardware failures.

As you move up the stack, data integrity is essential to ensuring that data hasn’t been tampered with, notably when it comes to regulated data. This is the case for any WORM type data.

Nearly every IT professional must deal with data migration activities at some point in their career. Most times, these are small to moderate scale activities that are carried over through system utilities such as rsync or robocopy. Preserving state is paramount in these operations. At the bare minimum, you want to maintain or transpose access permissions to ensure only authorized individuals have access to specific datasets, files or buckets.

With metadata being pervasive nowadays, especially with object storage, metadata attributes must also be maintained and data integrity must be carried over from source to the target system.

System utilities are not able to maintain or transpose those attributes between source and target systems. They also remain limited from a manageability and scalability perspective, not to mention incapable of performing cross-protocol migration, making them ill-suited for enterprise-grade migration projects involving critical data and systems.

How Interlock HelpsEnter Interlock, a private company founded in 2009 with the precise mission of accelerating enterprise-grade, complex, cross-protocol, and at scale data migration with stringent compliance requirements.

Interlock’s expertise in the data migration space is consumable via two different service offerings:

A3 DATAFORGE Classic which is available as a fully managed professional services engagement offering the most comprehensive level of support, even for the most complex projects. This includes use of commercial and custom-built data connectors to ensure seamless migration while maintaining the data consonance imperatives highlighted earlier.
A3 DATAFORGE is a software data migration solution usable by certified professionals. Compared to DATAFORGE Classic, this solution offers a self-service turnkey approach that is suitable for most migration activities, with the ability to consume professional services as an addition to the licensing costs.

From an architectural standpoint, the solution consists of two pieces – a DATAFORGE Application Node, which acts as the management plane, and data movers. Those components are deployed as virtual machine templates (OVA files) on VMware vSphere.

ScreenshotWith A3 DATAFORGE and A3 DATAFORGE Classic, migrations are executed in five distinct phases:

Planning phase: This initial phase entails mapping of application and data types, understanding the impact of migration activities, defining the data migration strategy, and identifying timelines and any potential challenges.
Pre-migration phase: A preparatory phase that is all about assessment and risk mitigation. Some activities include mapping of initial source/target, backups and dry run tests, resolution of potential issues and implementation of secure data migration requirements.
Migration execution phase: Data migration activities occur with data movers being actively used to parallelize data transfers and achieve higher throughput rates compared to the standard copy tools. If necessary, gateways are bypassed, and in-flight optimizations are made to maintain consistency during cross-protocol migrations.
Post-migration phase: Post-migration, data validation and verification activities are performed to ensure that there was no loss or corruption. Additionally, application functionality is tested in this phase, and, in the case of subsequent migration activities, performance too is measured and tuned.
Completion and Reporting phase: This last phase involves final health and consistency checks, delivery of migration reports, and handover activities.

Key Differentiators of A3 DATAFORGEA3 DATAFORGE is one of the many data migration solutions available to organizations. But there are some big differentiators that sets it apart from competing solutions.

Cross-protocol Migration and Application Consonance – This ensures that applications remain functional even during migration, and that all data and metadata attributes remain unaltered to avoid any application-level changes.
Scalability and Throughput – The solution is designed with massive scalability and throughput in mind. Data movers can operate with up to 128 threads per mover, and they can be deployed in as many numbers as needed to parallelize operations, making bandwidth between source and target the only limiting factor.
Integration and Connectors – In addition to providing standard connectors for the most popular applications, the company also offers custom-built connectors allowing migration activities to reach a much deeper level of data awareness, thus delivering much better data consistency.
Storage Layer Migrations and Data Gateway Bypass – This significantly speeds up data migration activities compared to native data migration tools or system utilities
Legacy System Expertise: Although perfectly capable of managing modern workloads, Interlock Technology has considerable experience with migration of legacy systems, allowing it to transform data while keeping compliance attributes intact.

ConclusionIntegrity and consistency remain essential requirements for any dataset, structured or unstructured. Yet they are often overlooked in migration activities simply because it is a given.

With cross-protocol migrations (often happening when legacy source systems are being retired and replaced with modern incompatible solutions), there is no simple or straightforward way to ensure that data consistency and ancillary data attributes, permissions, and integrity stamps are maintained.

For such migrations, the capabilities delivered by Interlock’s A3 DATAFORGE solutions provide not only assurance that data migration projects will be a success, but also surety that data consistency and consonance are maintained throughout the application’s lifecycle.

For more, head over to the Tech Field Day website or YouTube channel to see videos from the Interlock Tech Field Day Showcase.

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We’re thrilled to be bringing you the latest edition of Networking Field Day coming up November 6-7, 2024 in Silicon Valley. The reason why is because of the way that Networking Field Day advances the industry from a technology perspective but also from an eduction position as well. Our presenting companies and delegates bring the best discussion and content to the entire community. This edition of the event promises to raise the bar across the board.

Networking Field Day Presentation LineupThe event starts on Wednesday, November 6. We’re kicking off with Arista Networks and a look at CloudVision. They’ve been working hard to add new features and they can’t wait to give us an overview of the latest editions. The next presenter is a new part of the event, Elisity. They’re very focused on microsegementation and they have a novel way of making it happen in your network. This first look promises to be a refreshing way to think about network security for the delegates. The final presenter on Wednesday is Itential. There have been some great advances with their platform, including some interesting new workflow automation features. I’m sure their demo is going to be amazing and I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with.

Thursday, November 7 starts out with an update from PathSolutions. They realize that troubleshooting is hard and they have some new features in TotalView that should make it easier like help with unified communications and NetOps. They’re followed by another new presenter to the event, Meter. The network-as-a-service space has been very hot lately and Meter is one of the companies making waves there. They’ll be talking about their end-to-end solution with a live demonstration of bringing a network up from 0 to 1. This demo will showcase Meter’s end-to-end solution—including our new generative UI product, Meter Command—empowering customers with deep visibility and granular control of their networks. Then we will wrap up with a presentation from Aviz Networks. You’ve seen them already this year back in February but they are back to tell you what they’ve been working on over the last year.

Social Media DetailsThe live stream for Networking Field Day starts on Wednesday, November 6. You can watch it on our Tech Field Day Event page, the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page, and on TechStrongTV. You can ask questions or make comments on any social media platform using the event hashtag #NFD36. If you miss any of the live videos you can always watch the replay on LinkedIn or check out the Tech Field Day Youtube channel for on-demand content.

We’re ready to raise the bar for technical education in the enterprise networking market and we hope to see you there!

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Hatfields and McCoys. Lakers and Celtics. GIF versus GIF. The rivalries of our time are always storied. One of the biggest seems to be cooling, however. AMD and Intel have announced a new partnership aimed at countering the surge of ARM-based designs. The companies are trying to standardize aspects of the x86 instruction set in order to make it easier for ISVs to write code that runs on both Intel and AMD chips without a fragmented code base that reduces performance and encourages developers to move to a more unified architecture like ARM. This and more on this week’s Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:41 – Platform9 Launches Private Cloud Director

Platform9 has a new solution for private clouds. Private Cloud Director helps you build solutions that run on any infrastructure using distributed software defined networking (SDN) and cluster resource management. The details were shown during Cloud Field Day 21 as well as demos of the platform.

Watch Platform9’s Videos: Platform9 Presents at Cloud Field Day 21

5:45 – xAI Builds The Biggest AI Supercomputer

There’s a new big dog in the AI supercomputer space and it DOESN’T run on InfiniBand. xAI’s Colossus is powered by 100,000 NVIDIA Grace Hopper GPUs, with plans to double that number. It took 122 days to design Colossus and only 19 days to install all the racks and get to the training. How can you run a massive project like this without InfiniBand? Well that’s thanks to Spectrum-X Ethernet, the custom AI-focused version developed by NVIDIA. The core of the xAI Spectrum-X network runs at 800Gbps and is used to feed systems running the Bluefield-3 DPU in order to accelerate performance.

Read More: NVIDIA Ethernet Networking Accelerates World’s Largest AI Supercomputer, Built by xAI

9:53 – Evading Sanctions for Profit

With AI becoming a hot new area for chip manufacturers to make a mountain of money, everyone wants to get in on the action. One of the ways that companies are skirting the rules to keep the money machine going is by adjusting technology to evade export restrictions. As we’ve covered on the Rundown many times, the US is restricting export of certain types of chips and chipmaking tools to China. That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying to get around it. Companies facing export bans are using creative interpretations of the rules to evade sanctions and importing large numbers of chips through shell companies.

Read More: Fab Whack-A-Mole: Chinese Companies are Evading U.S. Sanctions

15:34 – Satya Nadella Takes Pay Cut for Security Issues

It’s been a bad year for Microsoft on the security front. Between all the email compromises and password spraying attacks the tech giant has gotten a black eye. It’s so bad that Satya Nadella released a memo stating that employee pay would be lined to security expectations and milestones in some cases. And one of those cases appears to be his. In a new filing with the SEC, Nadella has asked the Microsoft board to reduce his incentives by 50%. Granted, he’s only losing about $5.5 million but it’s a step in the right direction.

Read More: UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

19:06 – OpenAI in Talks with Broadcom for Custom Chips

OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Broadcom to develop AI chips that are specific to OpenAI inferencing models according to a Bloomberg report. The people sourced in the reporting also mentioned that OpenAI is talking to TSMC for custom chips as well. The move would be a big shift away from using GPU-based models like the ones favored by NVIDIA. Stocks for both companies rose on the news.

Read More: OpenAI, Broadcom Working to Develop AI Inference Chip

24:13 – Salt Typhoon Sweeps Up Political Audio

Earlier this month we discussed the hacking group Salt Typhoon and how they had gained access to lawful intercept recording data in major US telecom companies. During that story we discussed the far-reaching impact of intelligence gathering. This week we saw reports that Salt Typhoon has been gathering data on US politicians, including Donald Trump, JD Vance, and other parts of their campaign. The group has also compromised devices for politicans on the other side of the political spectrum, including Chuck Schumer.

Read More: Chinese Hackers said to have collected audio of American Calls

28:40 – AMD and Intel Reach Historic Partnership

Read More: Collaborations and Innovations in Tech – A Recap from The Six Five Webcast

Read More: Hell Freezes Over as AMD and Intel Come Together for x86

Read More: Intel and AMD Form x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group to Accelerate Innovation for Developers and Customers

41:08 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Edge computing is one of the areas where we see startup vendors offering innovative solutions, enabling applications to operate where the business operates rather than where the IT team sit. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast focuses on the melting pot of edge computing and features Guy Currier, John Osmon, Ivan McPhee, and host Alastair Cooke, all of whom attended the recent Edge Field Day in September. To accommodate the unique nature of the diverse and unusual locations where businesses operate, many different technologies are brought together to form the melting pot of edge computing. Containers and AI applications are coming from the massive public cloud data centres to a range of embedded computers on factory floors, industrial sites, and farm equipment. ARM CPUs, sensors, and low-power hardware accelerators are coming from mobile phones to power applications in new locations. Enterprise organizations must still control and manage data and applications across these locations and platforms. Security must be built into the edge from the beginning; edge computing often happens in an unsecured location and often with no human oversight. This melting pot of technology and innovation makes edge computing an innovative part of IT.

Edge Computing is a Melting Pot of TechnologyThe edge computing landscape sometimes feels like a cross between the public cloud and ROBO, yet edge computing is neither of these things. The collection of unique drivers bringing advanced applications and platforms to ever more remote locations requires a unique collection of capabilities. Edge computing is a melting pot of existing technologies and techniques, with innovation filling the gaps to bring real business value.

The original AI meme application, Hotdog or Not, has become a farming application, Weed or Crop. An AI application runs on a computer equipped with cameras and mounted to a tractor as it drives down the rows in a field, identifying whether the plants it sees are the desired crop or an undesirable weed. The weeds get zapped with a laser, so there is no need for chemical weed killers as the tractor physically targets individual pest plants. The AI runs on a specialized computer designed to survive hostile conditions on a farm, such as dust, rain, heat, and cold. The tractor needs some of the capabilities of a mobile phone, connectivity back to a central control and management system, plus operation on a limited power supply. Is there enough power to run an NVIDIA H100 GPU on the tractor? I doubt it. This Weed vs Crop AI must run on a low-power accelerator on the tractor. Self-driving capabilities get melted into the solution; a tractor that drives itself can keep roaming the field all day. Freed from the limitations of a human driver, the tractor can move slower and may even use solar power for continuous operation.

There is an argument that the edge is the same as the cloud, a tiny cloud located where the data is generated and a response is required. This often has a foundation in attempts to solve edge problems by being cloud-first and reusing cloud-native technologies at edge locations. From the broader business perspective, cloud and edge are implementation details for gaining insight, agility, and profit. The implementation details are very different. Simply lifting methodologies and technologies from a large data centre and applying them to every restaurant in your burger chain is unlikely to end well. Containerization of applications has also been seen as a cloud technology that is easily applied to the edge. Containers are a great way to package an application for distribution, and the edge is a very distributed use case. At the edge, we often need these containers to run on small and resource-limited devices. Edge locations usually have little elasticity, which is a core feature of public cloud infrastructure. Container orchestration must be lightweight and self-contained at the edge. Management through a cloud service is good, but disconnected operation is essential.

Surprisingly, edge locations also lack the ubiquitous connectivity part of the NIST cloud definition. Individual edge sites seldom have redundant network links and usually have low-cost links with low service levels. Applications running at an edge location must be able to operate when there is no off-site network connectivity. The edge location might be a gas station operating in a snowstorm; the pumps must keep running even if the phone lines are down. This feels more like a laptop user use case, where the device may be disconnected, and IT support is usually remote. Device fleet management is essential for edge deployments. A thousand retail locations will have more than a thousand computers, so managing the fleet through policies and profiles is far better than one by one.

Security at the edge also differs from data centre and cloud security; edge locations seldom have physical security controls. Even our staff working for minimum wage at these locations may not be trusted. The idea of zero trust gets melted into many edge computing solutions. Validating every part of the device and application startup to ensure nothing has been tampered with or removed. Zero trust may extend to the device’s supply chain when sent to the edge location. Many edge platform vendors pride themselves on the ability of an untrained worker to deploy the device at the edge, a long way from the safe-hands deployments we see in public cloud and enterprise data centres.

Edge computing has a unique set of challenges that demand multiple technologies combined in new ways to fulfil business requirements. This melting pot of technologies is producing new solutions and unlocking value in new use cases.

Podcast InformationAlastair Cooke is a Tech Field Day Event Lead, now part of The Futurum Group. You can connect with Alastair on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and you can read more of his research notes and insights on The Futurum Group’s website.

John Osmon is a consultant and a network designer / coordinator. You can connect with John on Twitter or on LinkedIn and check out his writing on Miscreants in Action.

Ivan McPhee is a Senior Security and Networking Analyst at GigaOm. You can connect with Ivan on LinkedIn and on X/Twitter. You can learn more about his work on the GigaOm website.

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Erwan James is one of the champions of automation in the data center. He has a long association with the technology behind making the data center a better place for operations teams. I talked to him about Nokia Event Driven Automation (EDA), an exciting new platform that will help this process along.

Erwan talked about three big pillars in this interview that are crucial to the vision for Nokia EDA. The first is abstraction. By abstracting the implementation details of a fabric away from the underlying hardware you can focus more on the intent of what you want to accomplish instead of worrying about things like CLI commands or platform capabilities. Nokia EDA understands the components of the system that it operations so all you need to do is declare what you want to happen and the platform will take care of the rest. Today it supports Nokia SR-Linux but soon it will support even more operating systems.

The second pillar is reliablity. Declaring your intent for the network and actually making it happen are two different things. Half-baked automation implementations usually fail when the network crashes because of bad commands or because the system decides to make changes outside of approved windows. Nokia focused on ensuring that EDA was reliable and predictable so that changes and updates were easy to do but also easy to roll back in the event that something is amiss. With the database of modifications that Nokia tracks you can even rollback device software upgrades!

The final pillar is extensiblity. It’s one thing to build a fabric. It’s another to build a good one. Vendors will all tell you that their approach is the best, even if everyone builds them the same way from standards like EVPN and VXLAN. However, the implementation details do matter once you start trying to build systems that interact with each other. Nokia recognized that having a strong opinion about how to build something is an asset, but so too is being able to relax that opinion to make a data center fabric consumable to the masses.

If you want to learn more about the Nokia EDA platform and how Event Driven Automation can help you, please make sure to check out the Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia videos available on the Tech Field Day website

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I sat down for a great interview with Michael Bushong of Nokia to talk about why automation seems to have stalled out in enterprises. He had some great insights around this topic. He noted that automation has been around in some form or another for almost two decades and it’s something that everyone seems to do but never really commits to.

The assumption is that most people start small by doing something he calls keystroke removal. By automating easy tasks that feel repetitive people have a sense of accomplishment. However, that’s not where the majority of time accumulates inside of an organization. Instead, the handoffs between people and organizations is where the majority of waiting is occurring. When you also factor in how big the efficiency gap is between on-site IT and cloud-based solutions it leads organizations to shelve their attempts.

The advice? Focus on the big workflows and go deeper than simple scripting. Understand those workflows and ensure that you’re solving the right problems instead of the easy ones. Another great suggestion is using Nokia EDA for your rollout. The platform uses common, familiar tools to overcome adoption hurdles while also allowing you to build out your automation projects on your terms with no need to rearchitect the entire enterprise or hire a lot of new staff.

If you want to learn more about what Nokia EDA can help you accomplish, please make sure to check out the Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia videos available on the Tech Field Day website

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AI technologies like robotics, computer vision, 3D printing, and advanced analytics have grown into mainstays in manufacturing plants. These smart technologies are evolving and enhancing assembly lines, supply chains, quality control, procurement and a host of other processes across the factory floor.

Big automakers like Audi, Tesla and BMW have made big commitments to realize this planned digital manufacturing initiative. BMW, using stunningly realistic simulation of entire factories and manufacturing processes, has streamlined and optimized production lines in some of its biggest factories. Audi, on the other hand, is building edge clouds with VMware to optimize processes on the shop floor.

Market intelligence shows that integration of AI technologies in the manufacturing market is growing at 45.6% CAGR, and by 2028, it is projected to reach $20.8 billion.

SetbacksDespite the positive predictions, it’s observed that many manufacturing companies are facing pilot fails in their initiatives to implement and scale Industry 4.0 technologies. According to estimates by the World Economic Forum, over 70% of the companies investing in smart technologies never make it beyond the pilot phase of development.

This is no surprise. There are some clear barriers to harnessing complex technologies like AI, especially for an industry that has chronically stumbled to adopt new technologies.

Making the Edge SmarterVMware by Broadcom is working at the intersection of traditional and new, helping manufacturers embrace smart technologies with what it calls a “software-defined edge”.

Chris Taylor, product marketing manager, and Alan Renouf, technology product manager, explained the concept while presenting at the Edge Field Day event in California. “The software-defined edge is a distributed digital infrastructure for running workloads across dispersed locations, placed close to where endpoints are producing or consuming data.”

To make Industry 4.0 a successful and sustainable movement across manufacturing, enterprises need to transform operations at the edge such that it resembles the rest of IT.

VMware offers a platform solution – the VMware Edge Compute Stack – that is edge-optimized and designed to help manage edge at scale with limited resources.

Designed addressing the radical constraints at the edge such as scale, lack of stable inbound network connections, edge hardware and protocols, and shortage of onsite personnel, the Edge Compute stack aims to provide a resilient and automated cloud-like compute infrastructure at the edge.

“We’re working with new smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 technologies, and we’re also helping manufacturers virtualize their manufacturing floor with edge computing.”

The goal, VMware says, is to reduce the number of dedicated function devices and enforce a single operating model to manage workloads at factories.

The VMware Edge Compute Stack is based on VMware ESXi which provides it real-time capabilities to keep applications up-to-date automatically.

The Edge Compute Stack adopts a proven management model called pull mode approach. This ensures that connected devices scan for updates and maintain a desired state autonomously.

“It’s like updating your iPhone,” said Taylor. “Your iPhone sees the updates, pulls it down and installs it when you’re sleeping.”

“It’s using a GitOps and desired state methodology which works really well when you have the scale of edge sites.”

The star of the show, VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator is designed to offer a painless management experience for heterogenous edge applications and infrastructure. Launched last year, the orchestrator makes it simple to deploy disparate edge deployments without IT staff on-site.

Leveraging the pull-based orchestration, it provides zero-touch provisioning ensuring that all security and administrative updates are pulled in timely by the workloads, keeping even the most remote and disconnected sites operational 24/7.

Renouf said, “This is about providing that full stack that everybody needs at the edge. If you have the complete picture of all the data that’s at the edge all the way from the sensors and the applications that are running there and the infrastructure they’re running on, together with the network layer, you can really start to do useful things and optimize for what that edge location does.”

In Aug, VMware released v3.6 of the VMware Edge Compute Stack. The new version comes loaded with additional new features like, a friendly host identifier that allows users to name and identify hosts easily, and the ability to assign static IP addresses to host components instead of setting up DHCP service separately for every site.

To learn more, check out VMware’s presentations from the Edge Field Day event, or head over to VMware’s website for more resources on the Edge Compute Stack.

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Microsoft has revamped its AI-powered Recall feature, shifting from automatic to opt-in use with enhanced security measures like full encryption and Windows Hello authentication, addressing privacy concerns. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB-1047, which aimed to regulate AI models, citing concerns that smaller models outside the regulation’s scope might pose greater risks. Meanwhile, OpenAI is facing a leadership shakeup as CTO Mira Murati and other key executives depart, coinciding with a shift in the company’s focus toward a more traditional startup model under Sam Altman’s leadership. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

0:58 – Rackspace Gets Attacked, Logically

Hosting provider Rackspace realized they had a problem on their hands when one of their third party tools was exploited to gain access to monitoring servers. While the name of the tool wasn’t publicly disclosed at the time of the breach it was later determined that a component of ScienceLogic was at fault. The self-hosted install fell victim to a zero-day exploit that doesn’t currently have a CVE attached. Rackspace quickly took the interface offline to mitigate the damage. When pressed, ScienceLogic didn’t disclose anything had happened or which tool was at risk to prevent further exploitation.

Read More: Rackspace internal monitoring web servers hit by zero-day

4:09 – Hurricane Helene Disrupts Critical Supply Chain

Devastating floods in North Carolina’s tiny town of Spruce Pine, America’s sole source of high-purity quartz, threaten to disrupt the global supply chain for microchips and solar panels. The town, battered by Hurricane Helene, produces ultra-high-quality quartz essential for manufacturing semiconductors and solar panels, with experts warning that prolonged disruption could have far-reaching consequences. As recovery efforts continue, the world holds its breath, awaiting the full extent of damage to Spruce Pine’s critical quartz mines and the potential ripple effects on the tech industry.

Read More: A tiny town just got slammed by Helene. It could massively disrupt the tech industry

8:34 – Tech Giants and Government Support Spark a New Nuclear Renaissance?

The rapidly growing demands of artificial intelligence are sparking a new era in nuclear energy, as tech giants and the US government join forces to meet the power-hungry needs of AI data centers. With AI’s insatiable thirst for energy driving a surge in electricity demand, major players like Microsoft and Google are turning to nuclear power as a clean and reliable solution. From restarting dormant reactors to investing in cutting-edge nuclear technology, the AI revolution is breathing new life into the US nuclear energy sector.

Read More: Nuclear power’s AI renaissance

14:11 – F5 Launches NGINX One

F5 has launched NGINX One, an integrated application networking platform that simplifies the management of load balancing, APIs, and cybersecurity across hybrid cloud environments. This SaaS platform centralizes the deployment and management of NGINX instances, providing additional telemetry and AI capabilities to streamline DevOps workflows and reduce the complexity of managing modern cloud-native applications. By enabling more dynamic and flexible provisioning of networking services, NGINX One aims to replace rigid legacy approaches and adapt to evolving IT needs.

Read More: F5 Delivers on NGINX One Platform Promise

17:34 – NIST Gives Tips on Passwords

It looks like NIST is ready to put some password guidelines in place. In a new draft with a boring number for a name, NIST is making some suggestions about password policies. Things like maximum lengths of 64 characters, Unicode options, and even guidance on knowledge-based questions and password hints are included. However, the wording of the prompts does fall back on SHALL and SHOULD variations which means we may not get everything we want.

Read More: NIST Recommends Some Common-Sense Password Rules

22:20 – AI Safety Roundup

Recall Reloaded: Microsoft Unleashes Enhanced AI Search, Now with Added Safeguards

Microsoft has announced a significant overhaul of its controversial AI-powered Recall feature, transforming it from an automatic function to an opt-in experience with enhanced security measures. The tech giant has responded to privacy concerns by implementing full encryption, virtualization-based security, and Windows Hello authentication for the feature that captures screenshots of user activity. This revamp, which includes the ability to completely uninstall Recall, marks a major shift in Microsoft’s approach to integrating AI capabilities in Windows while prioritizing user control and data protection.

Read More: Microsoft’s more secure Windows Recall feature can also be uninstalled by users

AI Safety Bill Vetoed by California Governor

California governor Gavin Newsome vetoed SB-1047 this week. The bill was aimed at regulating AI models and forcing developers to impose safety kits and kill switches. The state reason behind the veto is the specifics behind the size of the model that would be subject to scrutiny, with Newsome saying that smaller models that are not subject to the regulations could end up being more harmful as a result. The bill had been hotly debated on both sides of the AI aisle, with proponents saying regulation was crucial to growth and opponents saying it didn’t go far enough.

Read More: California governor vetoes controversial AI safety bill

Mass Executive Exodus at OpenAI

Ah, remember the great OpenAI power struggle? Seems like it was forever ago, but it’s been eleven months. Guess it’s time for another one! In this case, CTO Mira Murati, Research VP Barret Zoph, and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew all announced they are leaving. This news comes on the heels of a story from Reuters that OpenAI is restructuring away from their non-profit focus and more toward a traditional startup model that would consolidate power with Altman. Fears that Altman was too powerful led to his ouster back in November of 2023 but he was rehired very shortly and his opponents at the time eventually left the company.

Read More: OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman

40:39 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Commvault Shift – October 8 – 9

Security Field Day 12 – October 16 – 17

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The rise of AI and the importance of data to modern businesses has driven us too recognize that data matters, not storage. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast focuses on AI data infrastructure and features Camberley Bates, Andy Banta, David Klee, and host Stephen Foskett, all of whom will be attending our AI Data Infrastructure Field Day this week. We’ve known for decades that storage solutions must provide the right access method for applications, not just performance, capacity, and reliability. Today’s enterprise storage solutions have specialized data services and interfaces to enable AI workloads, even as capacity has been driven beyond what we’ve seen in the past. Power and cooling is another critical element, since AI systems are optimized to make the most of expensive GPUs and accelerators. AI also requires extensive preparation and organization of data as well as traceability and records of metadata for compliance and reproducibility. Another question is interfaces, with modern storage turning to object stores or even vector database interfaces rather than traditional block and file. AI is driving a profound transformation of storage and data.

Infrastructure Beyond StorageThe rise of AI has fundamentally shifted the way we think about data infrastructure. Historically, storage was the primary focus, with businesses and IT professionals concerned about performance, capacity, and reliability. However, as AI becomes more integral to modern business operations, it’s clear that data infrastructure is about much more than just storage. The focus has shifted from simply storing data to managing, accessing, and utilizing it in ways that support AI workloads and other advanced applications.

One of the key realizations is that storage, in and of itself, is not the end goal. Data is what matters. Storage is merely a means to an end, a place to put data so that it can be accessed and used effectively. This shift in perspective has been driven by the increasing complexity of AI workloads, which require not just vast amounts of data but also the ability to access and process that data in real-time or near real-time. AI systems are highly dependent on the right data being available at the right time, and this has led to a rethinking of how data infrastructure is designed and implemented.

In the past, storage systems were often designed with a one-size-fits-all approach. Whether you were running a database, a data warehouse, or a simple file system, the storage system was largely the same. But AI has changed that. AI workloads are highly specialized, and they require storage systems that are equally specialized. For example, AI systems often need to access large datasets quickly, which means that traditional storage systems that rely on spinning disks or even slower SSDs may not be sufficient. Instead, AI systems are increasingly turning to high-performance storage solutions that can deliver the necessary bandwidth and low latency.

Moreover, AI workloads often require specialized data services that go beyond simple storage. These include things like data replication, data reduction, and cybersecurity features. AI systems also need to be able to classify and organize data in ways that make it easy to access and use. This is where metadata management becomes critical. AI systems need to be able to track not just the data itself but also the context in which that data was created and used. This is especially important for compliance and reproducibility, as AI systems are often used in regulated industries where traceability is a legal requirement.

Another important aspect of AI data infrastructure is the interface between the storage system and the AI system. Traditional storage systems often relied on block or file-based interfaces, but AI systems are increasingly turning to object storage or even more specialized interfaces like vector databases. These new interfaces are better suited to the needs of AI workloads, which often involve large, unstructured datasets that need to be accessed in non-linear ways.

Power and cooling are also critical considerations in AI data infrastructure. AI systems are highly resource-intensive, particularly when it comes to GPUs and other accelerators. These systems generate a lot of heat and consume a lot of power, which means that the data infrastructure supporting them needs to be optimized for energy efficiency. This has led to a shift away from traditional spinning disks, which consume a lot of power, and towards more energy-efficient storage solutions like SSDs and even tape for long-term storage.

The rise of AI has also blurred the lines between storage and memory. With the advent of technologies like CXL (Compute Express Link), the distinction between memory and storage is becoming less clear. AI systems often need to access data so quickly that traditional storage solutions are not fast enough. In these cases, data is often stored in memory, which offers much faster access times. However, memory is also more expensive and less persistent than traditional storage, which means that data infrastructure needs to be able to balance these competing demands.

In addition to the technical challenges, AI data infrastructure also needs to address the growing need for traceability and compliance. As AI systems are increasingly used to make decisions that impact people’s lives, whether in healthcare, finance, or other industries, there is a growing need to be able to trace how those decisions were made. This requires not just storing the data that was used to train the AI system but also keeping detailed records of how that data was processed and used. This is where metadata management becomes critical, as it allows organizations to track the entire lifecycle of the data used in their AI systems.

In conclusion, AI is driving a profound transformation in the way we think about data infrastructure. Storage is no longer just about performance, capacity, and reliability. It’s about managing data in ways that support the unique needs of AI workloads. This includes everything from specialized data services and interfaces to energy-efficient storage solutions and advanced metadata management. As AI continues to evolve, so too will the data infrastructure that supports it, and organizations that can adapt to these changes will be well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that AI presents.

Learn more about AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 on the Tech Field Day website. Watch the event live on LinkedIn or on Techstrong TV.

Podcast Information: Stephen Foskett is the Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

Camberley Bates is the VP and Practice Lead at The Futurum Group. You can connect with Camberley on LinkedIn and her podcast Infrastructure Matters through The Futurum Group.

Andy Banta is a consultant at MagnitionIO and a storage expert promoting simplicity and economy. You can connect with Andy on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more about Andy on his Substack.

David Klee is the Founder at Heraflux Technologies. You can connect with David on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more about David on his personal website or about Heraflux Technologies on their website.

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Stephen Foskett talk with Field Day Delegate Ziv Levy discussing key insights on modernizing applications and infrastructure in today’s landscape. Ziv shares his expertise on modernizing applications and infrastructure, highlighting key strategies for success. He discusses the importance of setting clear goals, building trust within teams, and making informed technology choices. Ziv also addresses current trends like cloud repatriation and the effective use of artificial intelligence, urging businesses to focus on practical solutions that genuinely benefit customers, as well as how organizations can navigate their modernization journeys and achieve meaningful results.

For more from AI Field Day 5, head to the event page on the Tech Field Day website.

Simplifying a Path to Modernization with Ziv LevyMany organizations are eager to modernize their applications and infrastructure in today’s evolving landscape. Whether choosing cloud solutions or improving on-premises systems, the goal is to become more efficient and innovative. Ziv Levy, an expert in application modernization, emphasizes the importance of clearly understanding what a business wants to achieve. This involves breaking down goals into smaller, manageable steps, identifying key people who can help, and setting milestones to track progress. Evaluating different technologies and methods is essential for making smart choices that align with these objectives.

Building trust is a crucial part of successful modernization. Gaining buy-in from key team members is essential for creating a collaborative atmosphere. Additionally, selecting the right technologies helps ease the transition. Recently, cloud repatriation has gained attention as companies feel pressure to modernize quickly. However, significant changes aren’t always necessary; small, gradual improvements can help organizations stay competitive without overwhelming their staff.

AI has also been the industry’s topic of the year. While many companies are excited about the possibilities of AI, not everyone uses it effectively. Some businesses jump on the AI bandwagon just to keep up with trends, which can lead to wasted investments without real benefits. Levy stresses the importance of asking how new technologies will genuinely improve operations and benefit customers. Decision-makers should continually evaluate whether these technologies are practical and worthwhile, ensuring they address real challenges while being mindful of potential risks. By focusing on practical solutions, businesses can successfully navigate the modernization journey, as highlighted by Ziv Levy’s insights.

Connect with Ziv LevyZiv Levy is the Founder and CEO at Cloudsulting, LLC. You can connect with Ziv on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Read more about his thoughts through his LinkedIn updates.

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Stephen Foskett and Jay Cuthrell discuss the increasing connectivity of everyday devices and the implications for data privacy and ethics. Jay emphasizes the importance of integrating empathy and ethical considerations into technology development, suggesting that the next generation of engineers can lead to more human-centered outcomes. Jay also explores the evolving landscape of telecommunications, including the potential of low Earth orbit satellites for faster communication. He highlights the mixed messages companies face regarding sustainability and short-term profits, advocating for a shift towards ethical growth.

https://youtu.be/_lE_SnupZ24For more from AI Field Day 5, head to the event page on the Tech Field Day website.

Navigating Ethics and ConnectivityThe world is becoming increasingly interconnected, from the appliances in our homes to infrastructure systems that govern entire cities. Jay Cuthrell emphasizes that this trend goes far beyond smart refrigerators or washing machines, pointing to the rise of embedded intelligence in a wide range of objects, from household devices to large-scale systems like SCADA and even orbiting satellites. This connectivity raises important issues around data collection, privacy, and geopolitical challenges. Jay advocates for a balanced approach to managing this connected future, calling for better coordination, attention to privacy, and the ethical use of technology.

Jay is optimistic about the future of technology, but insists that ethics must play a central role. He suggests evolving STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—into “ESTEEM,” where the added “E” stands for empathy. By incorporating empathy and ethics into technological development, engineers can ensure more human-centered outcomes. Jay believes the next generation of engineers, with the right ethical mindset, will help create a world where technology is used not just because it’s possible, but because it benefits humanity.

In the business world, there may be a growing interest in sustainability alongside traditional profit motives. Companies, particularly public ones, tend to focus on short-term returns, but Jay encourages them to think longer-term, especially regarding environmental impact. By fostering a mindset that prioritizes the market’s sustainability, businesses can thrive in a way that aligns with broader goals. Jay also highlights how advancements in low Earth orbit satellites present a unique opportunity for more efficient communication and data collection, offering a glimpse into a future where technological innovation and environmental consciousness go hand-in-hand.

Connect with Jay CuthrellJay Cuthrell is the Principal Consultant at Cuthrell Consulting. You can connect with Jay on LinkedIn and learn more about him on his website.

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The use of artificial intelligence technology is taking hold in the enterprise, and many are discovering the importance of a solid data infrastructure for these new applications. No matter what model or technology is used, or whether it’s part of training or inferencing or RAG, data is the foundation for productive AI applications. That’s why the next Tech Field Day event will focus on AI Data Infrastructure, serving as a companion to our recent AI Field Day event, happening October 2 and 3. Tune in live or watch our recordings. Here’s a quick overview of what to look forward to.

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day is broadcast live on LinkedIn and Techstrong TV starting at 8:00 AM Pacific time Wednesday and Thursday, with more presentations throughout the day. All of our sessions will be recorded and posted to YouTube in case you miss anything!

Kicking things off Wednesday October 2 at 8:00 AM Pacific with MinIO, who are building an enterprise object store for AI data. MinIO will discuss the considerations for large-scale object storage for AI, including connectivity, caching, and observability. Google Cloud presents at 10:30 AM, focusing on storage solutions for different stages of the AI pipeline. We recently heard about Google Cloud storage at our Cloud Field Day event, and this will dive deep into Vertex integration and managed AI services. After lunch we’ll hear from HPE at 1:30 PM. HPE recently announced NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE, a new private AI solution that provides turnkey accelerated computing.

On Thursday we will start with Infinidat at 8:00 AM. They are bringing advanced cybersecurity and AI features to their leading enterprise storage platform. At 10:30 AM we welcome enterprise SSD leader Solidigm back to Tech Field Day. Their presentation focuses on the way SSDs can bring TCO and performance benefits to AI workloads. We’ll wrap up AI Data Infrastructure Field Day at 2:00 PM with Pure Storage. Their consolidated scale-out storage platform known as FlashBlade is seeing rapid adoption with AI workloads.

You can also catch the AI Data Infrastructure Field Day delegates on our Tech Field Day podcast, including two special episodes recorded next week. Check out our appearances on Techstrong Gang and the Gestalt IT Rundown, too. And tune in for behind-the-scenes shorts, Tech Talks, and extras recorded in Silicon Valley!

All of our sessions are broadcast live on LinkedIn at the Tech Field Day page and recorded and shared on YouTube. You can also catch the sessions on Techstrong TV, with our coverage continuing on Techstrong AI. We welcome participation on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and Mastodon using hashtag AIDIFD1.

You can learn more about the event and our panel of independent technical influencers by The Tech Field Day website. Each of our delegates has their own blog, podcast, or social media platform where they share their thoughts on enterprise technology from servers to storage to networking and beyond. We’re proud to have Camberley Bates and Steven Dickens from The Futurum Group joining us on the delegate panel, and we look forward to their analysis and reactions.

Thank you for joining AI Data Infrastructure Field Day live October 2 and 3. While you are on YouTube, please subscribe to our channel, and please follow our LinkedIn page for more Field Day content.

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We’re happy to have Dr. Bob Sutor joining us this week on the Rundown, since he covers quantum and advanced computing for The Futurum Group. IBM made two important announcements in the quantum space this week. The first announcement was Qiskit, a quantum SDK that runs on Python for quantum computers. This promises to bring quantum compute to a more mainstream audience and converting the underlying code to Rust. This solution is much faster than competing solutions from Google, Amazon, and Quantinuuum. IBM is also putting together an app store for quantum applications and runtime functions, including from third-party developers. This matches the moves that we have seen in areas like cloud and AI, and serves to push IBM as the leader in quantum computing. This and more on The Rundown.

1:57 – Qualcomm to Buy Intel?

Qualcomm is exploring a potential acquisition of Intel, a move that could strengthen both companies and enhance U.S. leadership in the chip industry, despite potential antitrust review. Intel, under CEO Pat Gelsinger, is pursuing strategic changes to boost its competitive edge, including expanding its manufacturing capabilities and investing in next-generation technologies. A successful deal would significantly broaden Qualcomm’s portfolio and position both companies for growth in the rapidly evolving AI and semiconductor markets.

Read More: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

4:11 – Kioxia No Longer Planning IPO

Kioxia has postponed its planned IPO, which we discussed on the August 28 show, due to challenges in achieving its target valuation amid a broader market downturn. Despite recent improvements in memory chip prices, the company has been impacted by a slump in the chip market, which they had already previously delayed its IPO in 2020. Kioxia, with a 14% share in the flash memory market, remains focused on listing when market conditions improve.

Read More: Exclusive: Bain-backed chipmaker Kioxia scraps October IPO plan, sources say

6:42 – Announcements from Dreamforce

At its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce introduced Agentforce, a suite of AI-powered agents designed to streamline app development and improve customer experiences across industries. The platform’s low-code AI tools, new partnerships, and enhanced AI models aim to drive adoption of these autonomous agents, helping businesses automate tasks and unlock the full potential of their data. By integrating AI more deeply across its ecosystem, Salesforce seeks to differentiate its offering and support customers in modernizing operations and achieving higher ROI through scalable AI solutions. For more on this, let’s turn it over to The Futurum Group’s Keith Kirkpatrick who was at the event.

Read More: Dreamforce Announcements Focus on AI, Agentforce, and Cloud Enhancements

16:32 – Commvault Buys Clumio

Commvault just announced its acquisition of Clumio, an AWS data protection specialist we’ve previously discussed here on the Rundown. The acquisition enhances Commvault’s cyber resilience capabilities for cloud-native applications and allows the company to leverage Clumio’s innovations, including rapid access to Amazon S3 data during critical recovery operations, expanding its offerings for AWS-based businesses. Clumio’s expertise in protecting complex data sets will now reach a global scale through Commvault’s platform.

Read More: Commvault Accelerates Cyber Resilience Capabilities for AWS with Acquisition of Clumio

20:07 – CISA Wants to Say Ciao to Ivanti EOL Units

In a very telling move, CISA has made a statement telling customers to move off of Ivanti Cloud Services Appliance 4.6. The notice comes as yet another security update has been released and Ivanti is not porting it to versions prior to 5.0. The CISA has been very up front about exploits this year and Ivanti is no stranger to having issues with their underlying code quality.

Read More: Ivanti Releases Security Update for Cloud Services Appliance

22:47 – Veeam Acquires Alcion

Veeam announced today that they are acquiring Alcion. Alcion has focused on SaaS backups since being founded back in 2022. Veeam had led an investment round for Alcion in 2023 and Veeam had also acquired Kasten, which was the startup that had been founded previously by Alcion founders. In addition to the acquisition, Niraj Tolia will move into the vacant CTO role at Veeam to help guide the integration between all the products.

Read More: Veeam, the #1 Data Resilience Company, Appoints Niraj Tolia as Chief Technology Officer to Accelerate Innovation of Data Resilience as a Service

25:29 – Qiskit and IBM’s New Quantum Innovations

We’re happy to have Dr. Bob Sutor joining us this week on the Rundown, since he covers quantum and advanced computing for The Futurum Group. IBM made two important announcements in the quantum space this week. The first announcement was Qiskit, a quantum SDK that runs on Python for quantum computers. This promises to bring quantum compute to a more mainstream audience and converting the underlying code to Rust. This solution is much faster than competing solutions from Google, Amazon, and Quantinuuum. IBM is also putting togetther an app store for quantum applications and runtime functions, including from third-party developers. This matches the moves that we have seen in areas like cloud and AI, and serves to push IBM as the leader in quantum computing.

Read More: Quantum in Context: IBM Qiskit Boosts Software Development Speed

Read More: Microsoft unveils new quantum computing hybrid solution in Azure

34:27 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia – September 24

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Commvault Shift – October 8 – 9

Security Field Day 12 – October 16 – 17

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Stephen Foskett and Jack Poller discuss the evolving challenges in cybersecurity. Jack explains how the shift to modern computing environments, such as the cloud, AI, and DevOps, changes the landscape while highlighting the importance of fundamental security principles. Jack explores the cat-and-mouse dynamic between attackers and defenders, the role of automation and AI in cybersecurity, and the risks of over-reliance on automated systems. He also emphasizes the need for security to be built into software and IT solutions from the start, offering valuable insights for professionals navigating the modern security landscape.

https://youtu.be/Go1Ewzdbk1kFor more from AI Field Day 5, head to the event page on the Tech Field Day website.

Navigating Modern Cybersecurity Challenges in an AI WorldJack Poller, a cybersecurity expert and founder of Paradigm Technica, offers valuable insights into the constantly shifting landscape of cybersecurity. While new technologies such as cloud computing, AI, and DevOps bring change, the foundational principles of security remain the same. Cybersecurity is an ongoing battle between attackers who are innovating and defenders working to stay ahead. The main challenge lies in adapting these principles—identifying, detecting, and responding to threats—across emerging domains like cloud and AI.

A significant concern Poller addresses is the potential impact of AI on cybersecurity. Attackers could leverage AI to automate and adapt attacks, potentially overwhelming defenders. Although defenders can also use AI to enhance security, many organizations hesitate to fully automate due to concerns about business disruptions caused by mistakes. This careful balance between implementing stronger security and maintaining business functionality is a growing challenge in today’s AI-driven environment.

Poller also stresses the importance of embedding security into the core of software development and IT product design, rather than treating it as an afterthought. He believes that rewarding engineers for building secure systems, instead of merely meeting feature and deadline goals, would significantly enhance organizational security. This holistic approach ensures that security is ingrained from the outset, addressing various IT domains like edge computing and cloud environments to create more scalable, secure solutions.

Connect with Jack PollerJack Poller is and industry leading cybersecurity analyst and Founder of Paradigm Technica. You can connect with Jack on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more on Paradigm Technica’s website.

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As companies are exposed to more and more attackers, they’re realizing that cyber resilience is increasingly important. On this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, presented by Commvault, Senior Director of Product and Ecosystem Strategy Michael Stempf joins Justin Warren, Karen Lopez, and Stephen Foskett to discuss the growing challenges companies face in today’s cybersecurity landscape. As more organizations transition to a cloud-first operation, they’re recognizing the heightened exposure of their data protection strategies to global compliance mandates like DORA and SCI. Adding to this complexity is the emerging threat of AI, raising important questions about how businesses can adapt and maintain resilience in the face of these evolving risks.

Cyber Resilience in the Cloud-First WorldIn today’s rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of cyber resilience, especially as they transition to cloud-first operations. The shift to cloud environments has exposed organizations to new risks, including compliance mandates like DORA and SOCI, which require more stringent data protection strategies. Additionally, the rise of AI introduces further complexities, as businesses must now consider how AI can both enhance and threaten their cybersecurity efforts. The conversation around cyber resilience is no longer just about preventing attacks but ensuring that organizations can recover quickly and effectively when breaches inevitably occur.

One of the key challenges in achieving cyber resilience is the lack of a clear, standardized definition of what it means to be resilient in the face of cyber threats. Unlike disaster recovery, which has well-established methodologies, cyber resilience is still a moving target. The nature of cyberattacks, which are often malicious and unpredictable, makes it difficult to apply traditional disaster recovery strategies. For example, while a natural disaster like a tornado may damage infrastructure, it doesn’t actively seek to corrupt data or systems. In contrast, a cyberattack forces organizations to question the integrity of their entire environment, from networks to cloud architectures. This uncertainty underscores the need for continuous testing and preparedness to ensure that recovery is possible after an attack.

The complexity of modern IT environments, particularly with the widespread adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud setups, further complicates the task of maintaining cyber resilience. As organizations spread their data across various cloud platforms and on-premises systems, the number of moving parts increases, making it difficult for administrators to manage and protect everything manually. Automation and orchestration tools are becoming essential to handle the scale and complexity of these environments. Solutions like Commvault’s clean room recovery, which allows for dynamic scaling in the cloud and cross-platform data restoration, are helping to simplify the recovery process and reduce the time it takes to bounce back from a cyber incident.

Compliance is another critical factor in the conversation about cyber resilience. With regulations varying across jurisdictions and industries, organizations must navigate a complex web of requirements to ensure they are protecting their data appropriately. The involvement of legal teams in discussions about data protection is becoming more common, as companies recognize the legal and financial risks associated with non-compliance. Tools that can help organizations track and manage their compliance obligations, without exposing sensitive data, are becoming increasingly valuable. Commvault’s approach, which focuses on analyzing metadata rather than customer data, allows organizations to stay compliant while minimizing the risk of data exposure.

Finally, the role of AI in cybersecurity cannot be ignored. While AI offers powerful tools for automating tasks and identifying threats, it also presents new risks, particularly when it comes to data privacy and security. Responsible AI practices, like those advocated by Commvault, emphasize the importance of using AI in a way that respects customer data and focuses on operational improvements rather than invasive data scanning. By leveraging AI to enhance breach management and compliance tracking, organizations can improve their cyber resilience without compromising the integrity of their data. As AI continues to evolve, it will be crucial for companies to adopt thoughtful, responsible approaches to integrating these technologies into their cybersecurity strategies.

Podcast Information:Stephen Foskett is the Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

Michael Stempf is the Senior Director of Product and Ecosystem Strategy at Commvault. You can connect with Michael on LinkedIn. Learn more about Commvault and Commvault Shift on their website.

Justin Warren is the Founder and Chief Analyst at PivotNine. You can connect with Justin on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn. Learn more on PivotNine’s website. See Justin’s website to read more.

Karen Lopez is a Senior Project Manager and Architect at InfoAdvisors. You can connect with Karen on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn.

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Oracle teams up with AWS to make its database services – Autonomous Database and Exadata Database Services – available on the hyperscaler’s infrastructure.

The launch of Oracle Database@AWS will allow Oracle customers on AWS to access the services directly within AWS.

This is Oracle’s third collaboration that collocates the service to a bigger cloud platform. The company previously signed deals with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud making its database services available to a broader userbase.

In the press release, Oracle said that the ability to connect enterprise data to applications on Amazon EC2 and AI services will allow for a “unified experience” for the customers.

Oracle Database@AWS will run on dedicated hardware within AWS. Unified customer support will be provided to all customers using Oracle services on AWS, accompanied by combined billing and database administration services.

Oracle Database@AWS is currently in preview, and will GA in 2025.

“This is a very impactful announcement, and a key takeaway is that it’s giving Oracle more multi-cloud credibility,” said Ron Westfall, analyst with The Futurum Group. “Oracle has been most proactive amongst the major cloud providers addressing customer demand for multi-cloud flexibility. They already have a relationship with Microsoft Azure and as well as Google Cloud, and following up with AWS was a highly anticipated and most welcomed move.”

Watch this week’s Gestalt IT News Rundown for a detailed coverage of this report.

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The landscape of the data center is being transformed. Applications like AI are forcing design and operations teams to understand the new usage patterns for users. Shrinking budgets mean management has to do more with less. How can companies get ready for complex new ideas while also keeping their existing data center infrastructure running in prime condition?

Enter Nokia. A stalwart in the enterprise IT space, Nokia has been a fixture in a number of advanced IT disciplines for decades. However, Nokia may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think about enterprise IT networking. They produce a lot of great solutions and are highly regarded by a number of practitioners. Once you get a look at their solutions you will be pleasantly surprised with their capabilities.

Networking Field Day Exclusive with NokiaThat’s where Tech Field Day comes in. We’re excited to be partnering with Nokia to bring you Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia. This is a one-day special event happening on September 24 will look at the solutions that Nokia is bringing to the table to help shape the future of data center networking. Nokia’s solutions are built to help operations teams keep up with technical advances as well as making the network easier to configure and consume.

One of the key places that Nokia will be focusing on during this event is automation. Thanks to platforms like SR-Linux they already have a great baseline for making the network behave like the cloud. Our Field Day delegates will also get a look at the newest innovations in the Nokia lineup as well as getting hands-on time to see how it all works.

Our Field Day delegates will make sure to ask all the right questions to help the community understand where these solutions make sense and why it matters to modern organizations. We’ll make sure to ask the questions that are important to the audience and discuss the drivers in the industry that keep networking moving toward a better future.

Join Us LiveWe will be streaming live on our website on Tuesday, September 24th. You can follow along on on the Tech Field Day website, TechStrong TV, and our Tech Field Day LinkedIn page. Make sure you tune in and be ready with questions. We’ll be using the hashtag #NFDxNokia on social media so you can ask away and our delegates will relay the questions into the room. If you can’t catch the live stream on the 24th we will be posting the entire presentation to our Tech Field Day YouTube channel soon after.

We hope to see you on September 24th with Nokia!

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Most of IT by now is familiar with DevOps as the movement that steered organizations away from yesterday’s defunct methods of software development towards smarter more efficient ways of building applications. 5 out of 10 organizations practice DevOps, and out of those, a majority says that DevOps practices have helped them improve team performance and collaboration, finds a survey of 500 DevOps practitioners by Atlassian.

Although originated in IT, DevOps appears everywhere in diverse forms, and its principles are applied in all places of business.

DevOps speaker, Chrystina Nguyen observed, “DevOps is everywhere.”

“It is a culture, a group of people working together to produce a product and having that seamless teamwork culture conversation,” she said while giving an Ignite Talk at the AppDev Field Day event in May.

Drawing on a 2019 talk of her’s, Nguyen’s speech provides a refreshing view of the universality of DevOps principles and practices, and its application within the restaurant industry.

The DevOps Cycle Is at the Core of Iterative Improvement in Restaurant BusinessThe DevOps lifecycle is often represented through a diagram called the DevOps loop. The DevOps loop is an infinity loop that represents the continuous nature of the methodology.

It visualizes various phases of the DevOps lifecycle – plan, code, test, release, deploy, operate and monitor. The phases sequentially flow from one to the next leading back to the start again, forming a closed loop.

The loop aims to show that every phase in the development lifecycle builds on the previous one and a change in one reflects a change in the other.

As feedback from a last cycle comes through, this loop allows them to be absorbed in the new cycle for enhancement of the following phases.

The constant optimization helps ensure that there are fewer bugs and errors, and the products are optimized for a rich user experience.

The loop of continual improvement is the secret sauce of restaurant operations. For decades, restauranters have intuitively practiced the feedback loop to enhance and personalize customer experience.

When a diner sends back a dish, the chefs and cooks back of the house instantly replace it with something better curated to the customers’ palate, while taking notes for future deliveries.

Nguyen who transitioned from a long career in the restaurant industry to public speaking owns a firm called Ghost Management LLC that provides event marketing for small businesses. In her business, she leans on DevOps principles as a way to regularly check-in with clients and connect their preferences and suggestions with business goals.

“Communication is key,” she said. “Just like it is in your relationships and friendships and in events like this, having a space where people can communicate is important.”

Nguyen borrowed from her experiences and takeaways from her restaurant days to support her statement. She pointed to four elements as the building blocks of the DevOps culture – communication, shared accountability, results and a recognition that all units are different.

“There’s a lot of teams involved when it comes to restaurants, and between them, they have a shared accountability that if something goes down, everybody goes down. It’s not just a siloed effect,” she said.

Achieving Operational Efficiencies with through Transparent CommunicationThe staff at the back of the house and front of the house are joined by this continuous system that allows customer inputs to be shared in a series of ongoing and structured conversations.

Nyugen says that even a casual exchange in the hallway about a client’s remark or a concern they raised regarding the service can go a long a way in making small improvements happen over time. Every rating or comment yields precious bytes of information that if utilized can help make the process more rigorous.

The DevOps loop kickstarts with such inputs. “The DevOps processes is so agile that they can get a new plate, a new product, or a new line of code, right back out to you so that it can help you get out of a downtime or whatever it may be, in mostly minutes,” she said.

This underlines the importance and effectivity of sharing and communication in business. If clients do not shy away from sharing difficult feedback, and if that message is responsibly carried back to the managers and developers, it can unlock improvements in product quality, employee productivity and ultimately customer satisfaction.

However, one must respect the fine line between being candid and being picky, says Nyugen.

If done properly, the DevOps loop can allow developers to deliver products aligned with the business needs and customer expectations as opposed to deploying them blindly without an afterthought. And in restaurants, it can help the staff better connect with the diners and build a stronger engagement.

Adopting the agile methodology which involves distributing work among various groups of people further reinforces the DevOps culture.

“Small batch size is king,” says Nyugen. “You’re not cooking huge batches of soups and freezing them. Instead, you have small batches that is a quicker process and easier to fix versus taking down a whole dish and recreating it from scratch.”

“You already have some of the items prepped and ready. It’s about putting them together quick enough so that the dish reaches the customer, and they’re not left waiting while the rest of the tables eat.”

This division of labor promotes agility leading to significantly shorter release cycles. “Speed and quality come into play when all the teams are working cohesively much like a very well-thought-out DevOps team.”

Wrapping Up

No strategy can fully eliminate the occasional slipups that’re inevitable with humans being part of the loop. Preventing those isolated bad experiences from becoming a standard is where the true power of DevOps lies. A forceful collaborative effort wins out against all odds.

“There’s a lot that can happen in any environment and you can’t predict everything but if you have good processes and good team communication, it really helps the DevOps process.”

To know more, check out Chrystina’s Ignite Talk – DevOps on the Menu – from the AppDev Field Day event at Gestaltit.com.

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We have talked at length this year about Intel’s efforts to turn the ship and add more profitability to the ledger. One of the crown jewels in that portfolio is the foundry business. It has been the recipient of a large amount of government funding through the CHIPS Act. But it is also playing catch up with TSMC and others. New broke yesterday that Intel has announced that the foundry business will be spun off into separate subsidiary entity. The new unit will have it’s own board and be free to seek outside funding, perhaps even going public at some point. Intel stock jumped 8% in after hours trading on the news. This follows a long string of changes for the company during Pat Gelsinger’s tenure.

0:55 – OpenAI and o1

A new AI model from OpenAI, code-named “Strawberry” that can perform human-like reasoning tasks, could give it a temporary edge in a crowded field. But should humanity be happy? The o1 model series is designed to spend more time computing the answer before responding to user queries, though it can’t browse the web or analyze files yet. OpenAI, which is expected to announce a $6.5 billion round of funding any day, said the o1 series works best in math and coding.

Read More: OpenAI’s New Strawberry Model Can Think Like A Human

3:22 – Fortinet Suffers Data Breach (Again)

Fortinet is back in the news for yet another data breach. This time, attackers were able to nab about 440 GB of data from a misconfigured Azure Sharepoint server. The culprit, calling themselves “Forti – (B-word)” uploaded the data to Amazon and shared the credentials to an S3 bucket for verification. The attacker tried to extort money from the security firm but was rebuffed so they moved to next step. Fortinet has not confirmed the nature of the stolen files but has notified affected customers.

Read More: Fortinet confirms data breach after hacker claims to steal 440GB of files

6:18 – Salesforce, NVIDIA get together to develop AI-powered avatars.

The Jensen Huang world tour continues. This week, the leather jacketed AI guru had Marc Benioff open for him during Dreamforce 2024 where it was announced that Salesforce is the latest company to cozy up to the AI giant. The outcomes of all this new hardware? Autonomous agents and interactive avatars. The move is part of the larger AgentForce announcement from last week that has SalesForce gearing up to take on Microsoft.

Read More: Salesforce, NVIDIA Forge AI Alliance Over Autonomous Agents, Avatars

9:35 – Mastercard Acquires RecordedFuture

When you’re MasterCard, you have unlimited credit. So why not go shopping? In this case, the credit card giant is paying $2.65 billion for threat intelligence firm RecordedFuture. The two companies already have a robust partnership with RecordedFuture helping prevent credit card fraud. The current plan is to integrate fraud prevention and identity services together to provide more holistic threat intelligence, both for MasterCard customers as well as others in need of cybersecurity help.

Read More: Mastercard splurges $2.65B on another big cyber purchase – Recorded Future

12:17 – HPE Pursues $4 Billion in Damages

The saga of HPE and Autonomy isn’t quite finished yet. After a successful trial aagainst former CFO Sushovan Hussain back in Janaury, HPE is now seeking $4 billion in damages from Mike Lynch. You may pause at that statement because Lynch and five others were killed when their yacht sank in a freak storm. CEO Antonio Neri says that HPE has a fiduciary responsiblity to get that money back from the estate of Lynch. They are also seeking repayment of legal fees in the neighborhood of $50 million.

Read More: HPE CEO: ‘Best interest of shareholders’ to pursue $4B damages from Lynch estate

14:36 – Kubecost Acquired by IBM

IBM wants to keep a close eye on the bottom line for their customers, so they’re picking up Kubecost to make it happen. The startup helps people monitor their cloud spending by controlling and optimzing container usage. It helps avoid overprovisioning and also has API access to billing which means customers get up-to-the-minute pricing for their deployments. The acquisition is specifically targeting FinOps teams. With more on this story let’s go to our cloud expert Steven Dickens.

Read More: IBM Acquires Kubecost to Broaden Hybrid Cloud Cost Management Capabilities

18:56 – Intel Foundry Business To Become Subsidiary

Read More: Intel stock jumps on plan to turn foundry business into subsidiary and allow for outside funding

28:59 – The Weeks Ahead

Edge Field Day 3 – September 18 – 19

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia – September 24

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Hardware innovation at the edge is driven by diverse and challenging environments found outside traditional data centers. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast features Jack Poller, Stephen Foskett, and Alastair Cooke considering the special requirements of hardware in edge computing prior to Edge Field Day this week. Edge locations, including energy, military, retail, and more, demand robust, tamper-resistant hardware that can endure harsh conditions like extreme temperatures and vibrations. This shift is fostering new hardware designs, drawing inspiration from industries like mobile technology, to support real-time data processing and AI applications. As edge computing grows, the interplay between durable hardware and adaptive software, including containerized platforms, will be crucial for maximizing efficiency and unlocking new capabilities in these dynamic environments.

Mobile and AI Feeds Edge Hardware DesignIn the new world of edge computing, hardware innovation is rapidly emerging. Unlike the standardized, controlled environments of data centers, edge locations present a diverse array of challenges that necessitate unique hardware solutions. This diversity is driving a wave of innovation in server and infrastructure hardware that hasn’t been seen in traditional data centers for quite some time.

The edge is essentially defined as any location that is not a data center or cloud environment. This could range from the top of a wind turbine to a main battle tank on a battlefield, a grocery store, or even underneath the fryers at a quick-serve restaurant. Each of these locations has distinct physical and operational requirements, such as varying power supplies, cooling needs, and network connectivity. Unlike data centers, where the environment is tailored to be conducive to server longevity and performance, edge environments are often hostile, with factors like extreme temperatures, vibrations, and even potential tampering by humans.

This necessitates a shift in design paradigms. Edge hardware must be robust enough to withstand these harsh conditions. For instance, the vibrations in a main battle tank are far more severe than what typical data center hardware can endure. Additionally, edge devices must be secure against physical tampering and theft, considerations that are not as critical in the controlled environment of a data center.

Interestingly, the concept of edge computing is not entirely new. Decades ago, mini-computers were deployed in grocery stores, often encased in large, durable boxes to protect against spills and physical damage. Today, the resurgence of edge computing is driven by the explosion of data and the need for real-time processing, particularly with the advent of AI. In scenarios like oil and gas exploration, where seismic data needs to be processed immediately, edge computing offers significant efficiency gains by eliminating the need to transport vast amounts of data back to a central location.

The hardware used at the edge often borrows from other industries. For example, the form factors of edge servers are reminiscent of industrial computers and fixed wireless devices, featuring big heat sinks, die-cast chassis, and power-over-Ethernet capabilities. These designs are optimized for durability and low power consumption, essential for edge environments.

Moreover, advancements in mobile technology are influencing edge hardware. Mobile devices, with their powerful yet low-power GPUs and neural processing capabilities, are paving the way for AI applications at the edge. This convergence of technologies means that edge servers are increasingly resembling high-performance laptops, repurposed to handle the unique demands of edge computing.

On the software side, virtualization and containerization are transforming how applications are deployed at the edge. However, these technologies must be adapted to the constraints of edge environments, such as intermittent connectivity and limited computational resources. Traditional assumptions about network reliability and computational power do not hold at the edge, necessitating innovative approaches to software development and deployment.

The synergy between hardware and software is crucial for the success of edge computing. As edge locations become more general-purpose, capable of running multiple applications over their lifetime, the need for flexible, containerized platforms grows. However, managing these platforms in intermittently connected environments poses significant challenges in terms of distribution and control.

AI at the edge is a particularly hot topic. The need to process data locally to avoid the inefficiencies of transporting it to a central location is driving the development of edge AI hardware. These devices must balance power consumption, cooling, and data throughput within compact, durable form factors. The IT industry’s relentless drive to make technology smaller, more powerful, and more efficient is enabling these advancements.

The edge represents a dynamic and challenging frontier for IT innovation. The unique requirements of edge environments are driving significant advancements in hardware design, influenced by technologies from various fields. As AI and other data-intensive applications move to the edge, the synergy between innovative hardware and adaptive software will be key to unlocking new efficiencies and capabilities.

Podcast InformationAlastair Cooke is a CTO Advisor at The Futurum Group. You can connect with Alastair on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and you can read more of his research notes and insights on The Futurum Group’s website.

Jack Poller is and industry leading cybersecurity analyst and Founder of Paradigm Technica. You can connect with Jack on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more on Paradigm Technica’s website.

Stephen Foskett is the Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

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AI networking is making huge strides toward standardization but Ethernet isn’t ready to displace the leading incumbent InfiniBand yet. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Scott Robohn and Ray Lucchesi to discuss the state of Ethernet today and how it is continuing to improve. The guests discuss topics such as the dominance of InfiniBand, why basic Ethernet isn’t suited to latency-sensitive workloads, and how the future will improve the technology.

Ethernet is not Ready to Replace InfiniBand YetAI networking is making huge strides toward standardization but Ethernet isn’t ready to displace the leading incumbent InfiniBand yet. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Scott Robohn and Ray Lucchesi to discuss the state of Ethernet today and how it is continuing to improve. The guests discuss topics such as the dominance of InfiniBand, why basic Ethernet isn’t suited to latency-sensitive workloads, and how the future will improve the technology.

InfiniBand has been the dominant technology for AI networking since NVIDIA asserted itself as the leader in the market. The reasons for this a varied. NVIDIA acquired the technology from their 2019 acquisition of Mellanox. InfiniBand has been used extensively in high performance computing (HPC) systems for a number of years. Using it for AI, which is a very hungry application, was a natural fit. Since then, InfiniBand has continued to be the preferred solution due to low latency and the lossless nature of packet exchange.

Companies such as Cisco, Broadcom, and Intel have championed the use of Ethernet as an alternative to InfiniBand for GPU-to-GPU communications. They’ve even founded a consortium dedicated to standardizing Ethernet fabrics focused on AI. However, even though Ethernet is a very flexible technology it’s not uniquely suited to AI networking in the same way that InfiniBand has shown. Lossy transmissions and high overhead are only two of the major issues that plague standard Ethernet when it comes to latency-sensitive information exchange. The Ultra Ethernet Consortium was founded to provide mechanisms to make Ethernet more competitive in the AI space but it still has a lot of work to do in order to standardize the technology.

The future of Ethernet is bright. InfiniBand is seemingly being put into maintenance mode as even NVIDIA has started to develop Ethernet options with Spectrum-X using Bluefield-3 DPUs. Cloud providers offering AI services are also mandating the use of standard cost-effective Ethernet over proprietary InfiniBand. AI workloads are also undergoing significant changes due to the nature of infrastructure catching up to their needs. As the technology and software continue to develop there is no doubt that Ethernet will eventually return to being the dominant communications technology. However, that change won’t happen for a few years to come.

Podcast Information:Tom Hollingsworth is a Networking and Security Specialist at Gestalt IT and Event Lead for Tech Field Day. You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Find out more on his blog or on the Tech Field Day website.

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This week kicked off the annual Hot Chips conference and AI has once again dominated the conversation. There were a lot of stories to talk about, from wafer scale chips to silicon photonics, Cerebras’ giant leap into AI Inferencing, Microsoft Azure’s MAIA 100 AI Accelerator, IBM’s On-Chip DPU, Broadcom’s AI Compute ASIC, Intel’s Guadi 3, and more. Let’s dive in on this episode of The Rundown.

0:54 – Kioxa Files for IPO

It’s IPO time for Kioxia! The storage giant has filed paperwork with the Tokyo Stock Exchange to go public in October. Kioxia is valued at 1 trillion yen, or approximately $10.3 billion. Kioxia has been planning to go public for several years but thanks to COVID and a momentary slowdown in the NAND flash market it has taken some time to recover. The primary investor in Kioxia is Bain Capital, with Toshiba having the remaining 40% stake.

Read More: BMC to Acquire Netreo

Red More from The Futurum Group’s Steven Dickens: BMC Scoops Up Netreo for Big Buy in IT Monitoring and Management

15:04 – IBM Closes In on Acquiring HashiCorp

Reuters is reporting that IBM is nearing a deal to acquire HashiCorp. The move is reported to be in furtherance of their cloud offerings. HashiCorp stocks surged on the rumors and pushed the market cap of the company past $6 billion. Neither party is commenting and Reuters mentioned that while talks are expected to be finalized in the coming days there is also a chance that no deal could come out of the reports.

Read More: IBM nearing deal for cloud software provider HashiCorp, source says

18:01 – Security Exploit Targeting VMware EXSi

The VMware by Broadcom ESXi hypervisor is being exploited again. This time, the attack involves an authentication bypass through compromised file upload. The zero day exploit in the Shell Service was uncovered on hacker forums this week and is apparently being actively used in the wild right now. There is a patch available to remedy the situation but questions remain about how companies that are not signed up for Service and Support contracts can obtain the patch.

Read More: VMware ESXi Shell Service Exploit on Hacking Forums: Patch Now

21:31 – FTC Bans Non-Compete Clauses

In a landmark ruling from the US Federal Trade Commission, non-compete clauses in employment agreements are no longer valid and all existing non-compete clauses are null and void starting in 120 days. The government argues that non-competes stifle wages and reduce the talent pool for companies to draw from. Businesses counter that argument with the need to protect intellectual property. The ruling came after nearly 26,000 public comments. After the ruling was issued, the US Chamber of Commerce immediately filed suit, challenging the ruling and the standing of the FTC to decide it. Simliar action was expected from the National Labor Relations Board in the near future, with some saying the FTC action may have been a race to see who could get the news out the fastest.

Read More: U.S. Chamber to Sue FTC Over Unlawful Power Grab on Noncompete Agreements Ban

Read More: After 26,000 public comments, FTC to vote on rule banning noncompete agreements

32:32 – The Weeks Ahead

Mobile Field Day 11 – May 15 – 16

AppDev Field Day 1 – May 29 – 30

Tech Field Day Experience at Qlik Connect – June 3 – 5

The Six Five Summit – June 11 – 13

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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In a rapidly evolving tech landscape, the intersection of AI and storage is becoming increasingly pivotal. The storage infrastructure plays an outsize role in optimizing AI workflows. From efficient checkpointing mechanisms to scalability, to high throughput, a good storage solution provides all the imperatives to tap into artificial intelligence.

To delve into this intricate overlap of the two domains, Roger Corell, Director of Solutions Marketing and Corporate Communications at Solidigm, and Subramanian Kartik, Global VP of Systems Engineering, for VAST Data, sit down for a chat. Their conversation explores the multifaceted phases of the AI pipeline, and the corresponding storage demands.

The Five Phases in an AI Pipeline“Storage plays a pivotal role in the efficiency and performance of AI workflows, encompassing the diverse phases from data ingestion to inference,” comments Kartik.

There are five distinct phases in the AI workflow –

Data Ingestion: It is a critical process where raw data is pulled from multiple sources for processing and analysis. This phase involves heavy inbound writes. Data is typically sourced from cloud repositories or internal databases.

“Efficient handling of large datasets is crucial to ensuring smooth operations,” says Kartik.

Data Preparation: In the second step, the data is cleansed and normalized before being pumped into the model. “Data tends to be dirty and needs to go through normalization of some kind,” Kartik explains.

It is predominantly CPU-bound, and despite substantial reading, the volume of data written back is significantly less at this stage.

Model Training: This where the learning begin. Model training necessitates random IO patterns to prevent model memorization. Optimal batch sizes and GPU utilization are key factors influencing model convergence.
Model Checkpointing: The neural network’s weights and other parameters need to be preserved periodically as training continues so that it can be rolled back to a previous state if anything goes sideways. This phase involves large block sequential writes. Efficient IO operations are critical in minimizing downtime and data loss. The caveat though, is, checkpointing doesn’t always work. “Bad things happen,” says Kartik.
Inference: If everything goes right, at this point, the model should be able to make inferences from data. Primarily IO-bound, inference demands high-throughput reads, especially with larger datasets. Efficient storage performance is essential, particularly for tasks like image generation.

The significance of a robust storage solution in optimizing these phases is undebatable. Notably, Solidigm’s architecture provides certain unique advantageous in handling AI workloads’ asymmetric demands. Designed to support data and read-intensive workloads, its superior read capabilities, high capacity, endurance, and overall efficiency, are key to enhancing processes like checkpointing and inferencing.

ScreenshotSSDs for AI Data StorageUnderstanding and addressing the storage challenges inherent in AI pipelines is critical for organizations in the frontline of innovation. At the AI Field Day event in February, Ace Stryker and Alan Bumgarner built on Kartik’s point in their presentation that underlines the need for a robust storage to handle AI’s data explosion.

Their presentation highlights SSDs as game-changers for AI workflows – from data ingestion to real-time inferencing – echoing Kartik’s insights on scalable architectures and efficient checkpointing.

ScreenshotWrapping UpIn the realm of AI-driven transformation, Kartik’s breakdown paints a clear picture of how computational power and storage go hand in hand. Each AI phase has a mix of hurdles and opportunities, which underscore just how crucial storage is in the making or breaking of the workflows.

Businesses need top-notch storage that can handle this flood of info. Whether it’s gathering data, or making sense of it all, AI’s success hinges on storage that’s tough and flexible. And as deployments get more intricate, companies need to rethink how they approach storage altogether.

Give the conversation a listen at Solidigm’s website. For a technical deep-dive, be sure to watch Solidigm’s presentation from the recent AI Field Day event.

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Security audits are painful and often required for compliance but they aren’t adversarial unless you have a bad auditor or bad policy compliance. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth sits down with Teren Bryson, Skye Fugate, and Ben Story to discuss the nuances of audits. The panel discusses the discovery of technical debt, external versus internal auditing, the need for flexibility in procedures. and how good auditors can make for a more positive outcomes.

Thorough audits will uncover issues with compliance as well as technical debt. This could include older devices that should have been replaced at the end of their life. It could also find code versions that are vulnerable to exploits and could lead to more issues. While operations teams don’t like being told things aren’t as they should be it’s better to know about those problems early before they get out of control.

It is also important to understand that there are different reasons to have an audit. The most common perception is that external organizations are auditing your enterprise to comply with their polices and procedures, such as a partnership or acquisition. However, internal audits carried out by third parties to verify compliance with your own polices are much more frequent. How can you ensure that you are doing what you say you’re doing if you don’t have someone else take a look at your polices to ensure they’re being followed? This is also the place where you find issues with user compliance, such as executives that believe the rules don’t apply to them.

A good auditor can make the difference in your audit experience. The best auditors are knowledgeable in the subject area and understand what is needed for compliance. They also ensure that you have time to remediate the issues. A bad auditor is one that only follows the strict procedures and doesn’t understand the nuance in auditing. They are often perceived as adversarial and cause IT teams to dread audits.

If you want to have a good audit experience you should keep two things in mind. The first is that you should assume that it will be a positive experience. The auditors are doing a job and they aren’t trying to hurt you or your company. The second thing to keep in mind is to answer the questions asked without volunteering information. You can innocently offer additional information to a question that leads to a negative experience because it forces the auditor to uncover things they weren’t originally tasked to find.

Podcast Information: Tom Hollingsworth is a Networking and Security Specialist at Gestalt IT and Event Lead for Tech Field Day. You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Find out more on his blog or on the Tech Field Day website.

Ben Story is a Network and Cybersecurity Engineer and Field Day veteran. You can connect with Ben on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and read more on his personal website.

Skye Fugate is a dedicated cybersecurity expert. You can connect with Skye on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter and learn more about his work on his website.

Teren Bryson is a Director of Engineering and Operations. You can connect with Teren on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more about Teren on his website.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast. If you enjoyed the discussion, please remember to subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast application so you don’t miss an episode. Please do give us a rating and a review, it helps with discoverability. This podcast was brought to you by Tech Field Day, home of IT experts from across the enterprise, now part of The Futurum Group. For upcoming events and more episodes, head to the Tech Field Day website.

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As we consider the impact of AI on modern applications, we should consider the ways that this technology will improve these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Matthew Wallace, CTO of Kamiwaza AI, to discuss the adoption of AI in application development with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Large SaaS providers were the first to add AI-powered features but this technology is rapidly coming to market across the spectrum of applications. Matthew likens this to the evolution from spreadsheets to SaaS tools and cloud, which was a similar revolution. He mentions tools like ?, Cursor, Llama2, Mixtral, and more. We also discuss retrieval-automated generation (RAG), which enables LLMs to bring in external data at run time. We must also consider the source of the data, both in training and RAG, and questions of sovereignty, privacy, copyright, and safety. Looking forward, Matthew expects companies to customize their own models based on use case specific data. Looking forward, we expect new frameworks and models to be adopted rapidly to bring maturity and reliability to AI in enterprise applications throughout 2024.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Audio | UtilizingTech.com

Adoption of AI in App DevelopmentAI has spurred a gold rush across economies. Companies are moving fast with internalizing the technology in all corners of business. A spectrum of well-qualified use cases is giving adoption momentum.

One of the areas where AI has found a permanent place is app development. For this episode of Utilizing AI Podcast, co-hosts, Stephen Foskett and Allyson Klein, meet with Co-Founder and CTO of Kamiwaza, Matthew Wallace, to talk AI adoption, and its growing use in app development.

Wallace describes himself as “an early drinker of the AI Kool-Aid”. Much before adoption took off with the launch of ChatGPT, Kamiwaza has been tinkering with AI, building a full-stack solution that provides unlimited AI scalability.

AI Adoption, Now and in the FutureAI is leaping ahead, but rapid adoption is still not a reality for enterprises. Many early adopters are seen deploying it gingerly in limited business areas before going all in.

A lot of the companies that are dabbling in AI are actually experimenting with it, with only a small percentage adopting it widely in the business. “There’s a bell curve of adoption with AI same as with any leading technology,” says Wallace, “but it is still quite nascent, and most companies are in the experimental phase.”

Commenting on how companies are going to make the most out of their AI investments, and at what scale we will see the technology get deployed, going forward, he says, “It’s hard to imagine how pervasive it’s going to be. It’s hard to go back to the time when we did bookkeeping on a physical ledger. The pre-generative AI world will someday look very much like that.”

The gamut of use cases that AI powers today is spectacular. “GenAI touches so many different use cases, from coding assistance to advanced marketing to copywriting,” he says.

But a lot more is on the horizon. “This is going to a place where we actually automate a whole lot of communication, thinking and processing, to put the world of information at your fingertips,” he predicts.

As companies expand their use of AI in 2024, the industry will see a flurry of activities around innovation. While on one hand, efforts are being made to supercharge existing tooling with it, on the other hand, new tools will be rolled out to perform new work.

“You’ll see people getting excited across enterprises, and they’ll put their own spin on the technology. They’ll get it deployed and there will be evolution, but it’ll hit many different areas at different paces.”

Depending on where they are in their AI journey, organizations will reach maturity at different times. “It’s hard to say both when that starts and when those different things land because it’s really up to the individuals that are working on them, but I think you’re going to see a much more scattershot adoption to get to the final state, if there’s a final state,” he comments.

Nevertheless, Wallace is optimistic about the future. “I am a firm believer that AI going to touch almost everything that we do. It’s hard to say in how many years, but it’s going to be pervasive. I’m definitely recommending that everybody really jump in with both feet because the time to learn about it is now,” he says enthusiastically.

Generative AI in the Field of App DevelopmentAI breakthroughs in the developer’s space has precipitated significant shifts. Of late, there has been a shockingly large adoption of tools like Microsoft and GitHub Copilots in development workflows.

The biggest driver for that is tools like these can perform role-specific specialized tasks that can yield massive time and cost savings. “These are fantastic tools and I have no qualms in saying that I feel that the set of AI tools that I use day-to-day truly makes me about 10 times, if not more, as productive as I was before,” Wallace says.

Boosting productivity and eliminating errors have been two of AI’s biggest accomplishments, but it is still a long way away from being completely self-driven, where developers can step away from their desks, leaving AI to independently take over intricate actions, cognitively auto-completing processes without guidance.

There is also a prevailing lack of understanding around data sovereignty. It is a pressing issue that organizations are trying to get their arms around. Governments around the world are enforcing rules and regulations to help countries better adapt AI.

“As you start to get into use cases where you have information that’s all over the enterprise, there’re different rules, access controls, and security levels, sometimes in different countries. Different regulatory regimes apply to it. Those become very large challenges.”

Restrictions like these, while being pivotal on one hand, also tend to labor adoption.

Today, just one small impromptu change made from one corner of the world can bring down the entire model. Through its solution, Kamiwaza offers the much-needed operational stability that affords companies to deploy private GenAI smoothly. This is to ensure that professionals can work with private data across locations confidently and in a risk-free manner, without losing sleep over regional restrictions.

As companies embrace private AI, fine-tuning of pre-trained models is going to become prevalent. “Fine tuning for specific use cases makes models almost superhumanly good, and so you can actually surpass something like GPT4 when you’re training a model on a specific use case,” says Wallace.

For smaller companies, fine-tuning is an opportunity to have tight control over model behavior while performing cheaper inference at a large scale. “We want to see enterprises running trillions of inference calls so that we could just automate all the kind of crowd work of our day, and get on doing bigger, better and more powerful things.”

As AI becomes mainstay, organizations will meet many curveballs and surprises. But if there is one thing that is certain, it is that “AI seems to be the tsunami that will wash us over,” Wallace concludes.

Head over to Kamiwaza’s website, or check out Kamiwaza’s presentation with Intel from the AI Field Day event, to learn about their fully-opinionated GenAI stack. Also listen to Wallace’s podcast – AI Everyday – for more conversations on AI. For more stats on AI, be sure to check out The Futurum Group’s research reports on AI.

Podcast InformationStephen Foskett is the Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event Series, now part of The Futurum Group. Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter.

Allyson Klein, Global Marketing and Communications Leader and Founder of The Tech Arena. You can connect with Allyson on Twitter or LinkedIn. Find out more information on the Tech Arena website.

Matthew Wallace is the Cofounder and CTO at KamiwazaAI. You can connect with Matthew on LinkedIn and learn more about KamiwazaAI and their AI efforts on their website.

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Organizations all over the world are getting hit by ransomware. A cyber threat report published by SonicWall states that over 300 million ransomware attacks were recorded in just the first half of 2021. Although the number tumbled slightly in 2022, attacks went back up in 2023 by a shocking 37%. The volume of double extortion and repeat attacks too is spiraling.

Zerto is one of the companies in the cybersecurity front that is keeping the fight against ransomware going with increasingly sophisticated security solutions. At the recent Security Field Day event in Silicon Valley, the company showcased two solutions within the Zerto Platform that isolate and lock data from bad actors, making recovery swift and unfussy.

Zerto’s Core DR TechnologiesAfter an attack has run its course, it takes a tremendous amount of cleanup to get things back to the former state. It is a slow and punishing undertaking. Just conducting a thorough investigation alone takes weeks. The hardest part of all is to push the recovery efforts in a level-headed manner.

Zerto takes a proactive approach for dealing with ransomware crisis. It believes that there is value in keeping data in. As a disaster recovery solution provider, Zerto leans on data replication. Data is continuously copied and written to a storage in a secondary location. This allows granular recovery, ensuring little to no data loss.

To take it a step further and provide continuous data protection and enable recovery to any point in time, Zerto offers journaling as opposed to traditional snapshots. Zerto journals are dynamic logs of changes happening at the VM level. A user can set up the journal history to up to 30 days, and Zerto will automatically checkpoint the data at an interval of 5 to 15 seconds. Journaling tapers down the storage expense, which is typically high with snapshots, and allows full recovery of files to sites within seconds.

Zerto Public Cloud Isolation and ImmutabilityBut once attackers make their way into the environment, they can seize control of the journals, and make recovery extremely complicated. So, as an extra line of defense, Zerto offers Public Cloud Isolation and Immutability. This capability produces immutable copies of the journals and saves them in public cloud.

The copies are taken straight out of production VMs, and therefore no impact is made on the workload performance.

“It doesn’t impact the production workloads because we are not stopping them to pause to snapshot. We are taking it out of a copy that we already own in our environment on a secondary or local site,” says Sr. Technology Evangelist, Chris Rogers, during the presentation.

This copy is secured with an object lock. “It’s your last line of recovery. It’s probably not something you are going to do every 10 minutes,” reminds Rogers, “But you can. It’s completely down to the customer.” The standard frequency is once every day.

Marked as immutable on a different format of storage, this repo comes handy when data needs to be recovered. The repo can be remounted to a clean infrastructure, where all the VMs can be pulled back from that point in time.

“In this case, the RPO will obviously be longer than a few seconds because Zerto is taking those copies on a periodic instance, but if you can’t recover using the journal, this is a great option, and it is relatively low cost,” he says.

This repo can be optionally disconnected to prevent infections.

The capability comes at no extra cost to the users. It is bundled with the Zerto license. The only thing they need to pay is for storage in public cloud.

Zerto Cyber Resilience VaultThe second feature is the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault, a fully isolated, air-gapped and immutable data vault that keeps data safe from ransomware. Leveraging Zerto’s data replication and journaling technologies, the Cyber Resilience Vault is customers’ “last resort in worst-cast scenarios”.

“This isn’t bolting on other bits and pieces in our existing platform that we had. This is purpose-built for cyber recovery. The vault is for the most sophisticated and large-scale attacks,” says Rogers.

Unlike a backup appliance, the vault sits on a production-based infrastructure architected with HPE Alletra and ProLiant for storage and compute, HPE Aruba Networking, and the Zerto recovery software on top. “It’s not slow and low and deep-capacity. This is all-flash hardware.”

ScreenshotRogers offered a quick peek of the architecture which comprises a landing zone to land the data in, and a collocated vault zone, which is a clean room where data is stored with no access to the Internet or the production network.

Restores are hands-off for maximum convenience. Located at the bottom left side of the UI is the Failover button that lets users start the failover by selecting the VMs or applications and the exact point in time they want to recover to. Zerto automatically sets up the VMs on the chosen storage on the network with the right IPs.

DR testing is undisruptive in Zerto’s on-demand sandbox. “We failover VMs while production is still running, in an isolated environment, then attach the replica disks to those, and create a scratch volume which is a temporary volume. Users can go can do whatever they need to do in this massive sandbox environment.”

Rogers informs that customers perform over 18000 DR and cyber resiliency tests in them monthly. The average RTO they experience is 3 minutes and 19 seconds, which is massively time-saving.

“We still maintain that 5 to 10 seconds RPO across all of those virtual machines that are testing at the same time,” says Rogers.

Additionally, the sandbox can be used for patch testing, vulnerability scanning, data analytics, and data forensics.

For more, be sure to watch Zerto’s in-depth presentations and demos from the recent Security Field Day event.

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AI’s complex workloads require extreme computing, the kind that only the fastest accelerators are known to provide. It is little surprise that GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) have emerged as the holy grail of compute as AI gains ground. But exorbitant pricing and scarce access, not to mention heavy power consumption and cooling requirements, raise barriers for enterprise adoption.

What if IT shops truly didn’t need these silicon beasts for the bulk of their AI works?

An Affordable Alternative for AI Workloads below 20B ParametersIntel has closely followed the GPU trend over the past few years. To gauge the depth of need of GPUs for AI workloads, the teams have run a series of trials, and they’ve arrived at an interesting conclusion. Based on their findings, CPUs can accommodate almost all AI workloads, with the exception of the insanely intense ones.

For example, the most intense large language model (LLM)-based AI workloads, like Meta’s LLAMA2, typically fluctuate within the range of 7 and 30 billion.

Figure 1. The Reality of AI: GPUs Are Needed Only For Insanely Intense Workloads Intel found that a majority of AI workloads remain below 20 billion parameters. The Xeon chipsets meet almost all latency requirements for the general-purpose workloads in that category. There is rarely the need to leverage the massive acceleration of the GPU technology for these AI workloads, Intel says.

Intel shared benchmarks from real-world scenarios to back this up. In one example of an inference-heavy AI implementation, a customer used Intel Xeon CPUs to perform extremely rapid image processing. The Xeon CPU family was able to scale from a not-insignificant scanning speed of 400 frames per second (fps) using 24 AVX2 CPUs, to over 19,000 fps using 64 cores of their AMX-powered Emerald Rapids processors.

The test results revealed that the newest AMX chipsets engineered with power efficiency kept the 64-core configuration’s energy consumption even with the 24 AVX2.

Figure 2. Same Wattage, Dramatically Increased Workloads: 24 AVX2 Cores vs. 64 AMX Cores Another real-world use case Intel shared is of a customer adding speech translation and real-time transcription services to an existing video conferencing offering. Intel engineers put together a solution with just a few additional servers using Intel CPUs.

Figure 3. Handling LLM Demands: Response Time Latencies Kept Below 100 ms (1/10th of a second)This configuration was particularly interesting because it had to deal with two different AI workloads. Imagine translating the phrase “Pleased to meet you, sir!” to Spanish. The latency for the first word returned in the sequence – “Mucho” – tends to be compute-bound because the AI model needs to find exactly the right word. However, retrieving each of the next words that would be returned in the phrase may also depend on contexts, like the formality of the greeting (e.g. ?Mucho gusto! versus ?Mucho gusto, a sus ordenes!) and tends to be a memory-bound operation.

Intel’s hardware solutions work well for complex AI workloads like the above. Intel has heavily invested in native software support for OSS solutions for data analytics, like Pandas, NumPy, and Apache Spark. Likewise, their commitment to support popular machine learning and deep learning toolsets like PyTorch, TensorFlow, and AutoML (Figure 4) go a long way to extend support to the userbase.

Figure 4. It’s Not Just the Hardware: Intel’s Array of Software Support For Analytics and MLTo GPU, Or Not To GPU?Intel positions its current array of Xeon CPU chipsets for organizations that are grappling with the pressures of providing adequate compute power for AI workloads. Only the most intense AI workloads – specifically, those north of 20 billion parameters – require GPU-level computing power. For everything below that, Intel’s offerings appear to fill the bill. Additionally, their deep support for software compatible with common analytics, machine learning, and deep learning requirements, make their hardware a compelling choice.

Be sure to check out Intel’s presentations on CPUs for AI workloads from the recent AI Field Day event to get a technical deep-dive.

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As AI deployments continue to dominate the business scene, companies are recalibrating and adjusting their backend infrastructures to support AI’s lofty demands.

At the recent AI Field Day event, VAST Data presented a Showcase of their newly unveiled DASE (Disaggregated Shared Everything) architecture that cleverly offloads storage services on to DPUs. DASE is an AI cloud architecture that is built on the NVIDIA BlueField Networking Platform. The solution, VAST says, provides extreme performance and QoS for the AI factory.

Powered by the DASE architecture, the VAST Data Platform is a high-performance solution that brings together the best of parallel file system and network-attached storage (NAS). It is aimed at accelerating high performance computing (HPC), and is deployed at many notable organizations, including names like NASA, Harvard Medical School, and NIH.

John Mao, VP of Technology Alliance at VAST Data, and John Kim, Director of Storage Marketing for NVIDIA, gave a quick flyover of the new architecture and its highlights.

Inside the New VAST DASE ArchitectureUnder the hood, the VAST DASE architecture constitutes CNodes for compute, and DNodes for performance and capacity. Disaggregated, they can be scaled independently based on business requirements.

In the new architecture, the VAST CNodes are deployed on the 3rd generation NVIDIA BlueField DPUs residing inside the NVIDIA servers. This brings to life a holistic solution, that, for one, is mind-blowingly simply to operate, and for another, deliver tremendous cost savings.

“We’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of cloud service providers over the last months. We’ve had this idea in the works for quite some time now. We’ve customers like CoreWeave that have deployed this into production” Mao informs.

DPUs are becoming increasingly common in hyperscale infrastructures of late. “When you have a very large-scale cloud infrastructure where every server wants to have accelerated networking, storage, virtualization and encryption, DPUs make sense.”

An equally advantageous attribute of DPUs is functional isolation. DPUs afford these cloud providers the rare ability to offer a host of management and diagnostic functions off of them, without the use of additional container management systems. For tenants renting bare metal servers, “they can make that capability available without interfering with the tenants’ use of the server,” says Kim.

Parallel Data Services for Unprecedented QoSThe VAST architecture uses BlueField-3 DPUs. NVIDIA calls the platform “infrastructure-on-a-chip”. The DPUs provide a software-defined, hardware-accelerated infrastructure connected via Ethernet or InfiniBand. The BlueField DPUs work by offloading and isolating pieces of storage, networking, security and management functions, delivering much-improved efficiency all around.

“This solution, working together with VAST, is one way of bringing that storage and that data right to the compute layer where the GPUs are,” says Kim.

The VAST architecture design entails putting a dedicated NVIDIA DPU inside each GPU server. This allows storage and data processing to be embedded directly in the server unlocking linear data services available inside the client’s own PCIe bus, that can be scaled across thousands of GPUS. By letting each server have its own parallel storage and database container, the contention for data services is entirely bypassed. There is no sharing of the DPU with other machines. The dedicated parallel data services amount to unprecedented QoS.

By design, this architecture offers enhanced security. With data and data management isolated from the host operating systems, the software delivers a protected environment with data and access isolation. It can run NAS, object and database services off of the DPUs, without exposing the underlying protocols and platforms.

The existing VAST Data Platform CNodes are based on x86 hardware. Porting them over to the NVIDIA DPUs frees up a chunk of them that users can either rip out or use up. The free CPU cycles can be used to run AI or other management tasks unrelated to the storage, says Kim.

Trading the x86 servers for the NVIDIA DPUs instantly drops the overall physical and energy footprint of the VAST infrastructure by 70%. When compared to deploying NVIDIA-powered supercomputers with VAST, “the overall the energy savings nets out to be somewhere around 5% of datacenter power which when we are talking in megawatts, is not nothing. It’s a lot – hundreds of kilowatts that you could save by moving to this architecture and deployment model,” says Mao.

Be sure to watch the VAST Data Showcase with NVIDIA from the AI Field Day event for more information.

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Our eyes were on Google Cloud Next last week, as the hyperscaler announced new ARM chips, lots of partnerships, and of course wall-to-wall AI. Google’s Vertex AI Agent Builder allows no-code deployment of agents, Google Vids targets video editing, and the search giant is leaning into Retrieval-Augmented Generation or RAG.

0:40 – BREAKING: The Futurum Group Acquires Techstrong Group

We have some breaking news about our own company this morning! The Futurum Group just announced that it is acquiring Techstrong Group, producers of Techstrong TV, DevOps.com, Security Boulevard, and more. We expect that Gestalt IT will become part of their tech media offerings, expanding our reach and viewership! Want to catch the Rundown on your smart TV or see us live at an event? It sounds like it’s going to happen!

Read More: Exclusive: The Futurum Group to acquire TechStrong

2:23 – Commvault Acquires Appranix

Commvault is enhancing its capabilities in cloud resiliency by acquiring Appranix, a startup specializing in cloud application recovery. Founded in 2016 by Govind Rangasamy and based in Boston, Appranix software quickly restores applications disrupted by outages or cyberattacks, leveraging cloud storage and advanced services. With this acquisition, Commvault aims to merge its risk management and recovery tools with Appranix’s cloud-native rebuild technologies, broadening its offerings to include both data and application resiliency.

Read More: Commvault acquires Appranix for recovery automation

4:53 – IBM Invests in $150 Million Fundin Round for Cohesity

Cohesity has closed their lastest funding round, Series F, which was led by IBM. The round totalled $150 million and included other investors like Nvidia. This brings Cohesity’s total funding to $850 million. This comes after the blockbuster news that Cohesity was acquiring the data protection side of Veritas. IBM has partnered with Cohesity on the cyber resilience platform, integrating CyberDefender into IBM Storage Defender.

Read More: IBM Invests in Cohesity for Series F Financing of $150 Million

7:20 – Meta Introduces New Chips for AI Hyperscalers

Meta is ready to build their next big chip. A year after the announcement of the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA), the parent company of Facebook said they are nearing completion of the successor. The chip doubles the compute and memory bandwidth of the first version and is set to power models that drive ranking and recommendations on the various platforms under Meta’s dominion.

Read More: Meta’s new silicon shows a growing trend for AI hyperscalers

10:08 – Zscaler Acquiring Airgap

Zscaler is continuing to build out their zero trust offerings with news they are acquiring AirGap. The startup, founded in 2019, uses an agentless architecture to isolate devices and apply polices based on context and identity. AirGap is reported to be integrated into the Zscaler SD-WAN solution. Terms of the deal were not announced but AirGap did have a Series A funding round in 2022 valued at $13 million. This is the second acquisition from Zscaler this year.

Read More: Zscaler To Acquire Network Segmentation Startup Airgap

12:51 – SK hynix Gets Packaging and Samsung Gets Their Share

SK hynix recently announced plans to construct an advanced memory packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana. Valued at $3.87 billion, this is the first packaging facility in the United States for the memory giant, and is expected to be up and running in 2028. In another story, Samsung is set to receive their own CHIPS Act funding, supporting advanced chip manufacturing in Texas. With up to $6.4 billion in funding, this matches TSMC but trails behind Intel in government manufacturing support.

Read More: SK hynix to Build $3.87 Billion Memory Packaging Fab in the U.S. for HBM4 and Beyond

Read More: Samsung electronics to receive up to $6.4 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act

17:13 – VMware’s Perpetual License Support Extended

The ongoing saga of VMware and Broadcom has a new aspect this week. After months of informing customers that VMware licensing was too complex and not well integrated, which meant big changes toward subscription licensing, Hock Tan has offered a new option. VMware by Broadcom has announced they will be offering support extensions to some customers that came up for renewal during the changeover and are having issues adjusting to the subscription model. Also of note is that VMware announced they will be offering zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere even if support contacts have lapsed. The announcement from the company comes on the same day that European anti-trust regulators are reportedly asking questions about the new licensing model.

Read More: Broadcom throws VMware customers on perpetual licenses a lifeline

21:32 – Google Cloud Next

Dynatrace and Google Cloud have announced a go-to-market partnership to bring advanced AI analytics and automation to enterprise customers. The companies claim they will accelerate digital transformation by integrating cutting-edge AI capabilities into cloud-native environments, streamlining operations and enhancing organizational agility. The partnership is all about cloud-based observability and security, a topic we’re hearing a lot about these days.

Read More on The Futurum Group: Google Cloud Next: My Four Key Takeaways by Keith Kirkpatrick

Read More: Google unveils custom Arm-based chips, following similar efforts at rivals Amazon and Microsoft

Read More: Introducing Google Axion Processors, our new Arm-based CPUs

Read More: Dynatrace and Google Cloud Unite for AI Analytics and Automation

33:25 – The Weeks Ahead

Mobile Field Day 11 – May 15 – 16

AppDev Field Day 1 – May 29 – 30

The Six Five Summit – June 11 – 13

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Artificial intelligence workloads are taxing traditional datacenter infrastructure in unexpected ways. Their need for faster compute, denser memory, and more direct access to GPUs is breaking the limits of what most platforms are capable of offering.

Supermicro, in collaboration with Solidigm, is taking on this challenge. Their mission is to deliver single-sourced, highly efficient, rack-sized storage solutions for AI workloads. March of this year, they made a joint presentation at the AI Field Day event in California, where Wendell Wenjen and Paul McLeod, elaborated on how they are maximizing storage density in datacenter chassis.

What AI Workloads Look LikeThere is a variety of workloads that falls into a single AI workflow. It starts with data ingestion in which raw data is fetched from a variety of different sources. This includes generated data, media content, telemetry from an array of sensors, and so on. This data can be characterized as unstructured, and growing over time. A scale-out object storage solution is ideal for gathering this data.

ScreenshotIn the next step, data is cleaned and transformed to make it usable. This is often a distributed and iterative process. The storage needed for this is high-speed, indexable, and must offer shared access, like a distributed filesystem.

Once groomed, data is poured into the models, and the training process begins. For the learning process, high-performance access to a variety of concurrent processes is a must, prompting the need for a parallel variant of the distributed filesystem.

Inference cycles are performed on individual nodes drawing on their own dense, speedy storage.

Finding a Method in the MadnessIn a survey conducted by WEKA, a majority of the respondents said that data management is the biggest pain they face for AI and machine learning (ML).

Supermicro and Solidigm have conceptualized a platform that can handle the different AI workloads and meet their changing needs efficiently. It’s a three-tiered arrangement, with GPU-laden servers up top doing the grunt work. These servers make heavy use of High Bandwidth Memory and very fast solid-state drives, courtesy of Solidigm (An example might be the D5-P5430 covered in this article).

The second tier is an all-flash, high-speed storage stack for handling transient working sets for AI and ML solutions. Less compute and inference-intensive than the top tier, these however need much more storage. Once again, Solidigm to the rescue.

ScreenshotThe bottom-most tier is a data lake. This serves as the repository for the source data, if it isn’t culled from other sources (like sensor data, not something scraped off of the Internet). Archived and intermediate results that aren’t being crunched also end up here. This tier may not necessarily be all-flash, but it uses some flash drives for caching.

Making the Dirty Work Clean and GreenHigh on the agenda of Supermicro and Solidigm, is to make AI datacenters green. Solidigm SSDs are already known for their industry-leading physical and power density. These solutions shrink physical footprint by almost 90%, and reduce power consumption by 77%, says Solidigm.

Supermicro is also building systems with incrementally more cores, more PCIe channels, and higher EDSFF drive slots. Additionally, they are running an industry-wide green computing adoption which they predict might save $10B in energy costs each year.

Supermicro platforms now offer GPUDirect storage in which GPUs have DMA capabilities with storage. Combined with higher efficiency processors, these are making power-hungry AI workloads relatively affordable.

ScreenshotSupermicro projects its turnover to reach $14B in 2024, which is double the $7.1B recorded in 2023. In the talk, they attribute this growth to the rising need for AI and ML engines.

ConclusionAI and ML introduces a new and steep set of requirements around processing, memory and storage. Supermicro and Solidigm are making good on their efforts to provide compact, power-efficient, and environmentally cleaner solutions that meet those needs squarely, making infrastructures ready for the future.

Supermicro and Solidigm have a lot more to say on this subject than is covered in this article. So be sure to check out Supermicro’s complete set of AI storage solutions, and for technical details, read their whitepaper on Accelerating AI Data Pipelines. Also check out Solidigm’s presentation on AI storage from the AI Field Day event.

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The rapidly-evolving field of AI relies on powerful computing for tasks like training and making predictions. Up until now, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have been the go-to hardware for these workloads. They are powerful, robust and capable of handling complex calculations. But for a minute, let’s explore a viable alternative – the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

CPUs offer significant advantages in cost and availability compared to GPUs. And some new generations of processors packs enhanced compute power to process certain AI applications reliably. But as with most things, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

ScreenshotDon’t Rule Out the Humble CPU Training AI models typically involves massive datasets and complex calculations. The muscle behind the models, GPUs, have hefty computational and parallel processing prowess to handle this. But now CPUs too are rising through the ranks. It turns out that the modern crop of CPUs proves fairly reliable for a process called inferencing.

Inference deals with using trained models on new and smaller sets of data. The overall computational load is far lower than the training process. CPUs, being more affordable and ubiquitous than GPUs, can be thrown at these smaller problems, especially where the models have been optimized for inferencing on CPU accelerators.

Making the Right Pick is KeyThe choice between a CPU and a GPU for AI inference comes down to three key factors:

BudgetAcquisition costs for CPUs is significantly cheaper taking into account that companies already use CPU accelerators in other aspects of their applications, and they can perform both general compute and inferencing of smaller models or applications with infrequent tasks on them. In the long run, leveraging a single accelerator for varied workloads unlock significant cost-savings.

Workload SizeWhen evaluating workload size, the complexity and size of the model are key considerations. Smaller models have fewer parameters which CPUs can handle efficiently. North of 14 billion, and reaching the trillion parameter range, a GPU is a more suitable alternative.

The frequency of inference is also a deciding factor. For one-time tasks or something that occurs less frequently, CPUs are adequate. But for continuous inference cycles, and applications processing a high volume of users or data streams, GPU’s ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously is critical.

LatencyRelated to workload size, but more specifically aligned with the application requirements, is latency. CPUs can sufficiently support applications that can tolerate slightly slower processing (inference time), and have proven, for certain workloads, to exceed latency requirements for common user experience guidelines. However, GPU is your best bet if the applications have very low latency thresholds.

The takeaway here is, CPUs are cheaper and more than suitable for trained AI models, especially lighter ones requiring less frequent tasks. By comparison, GPUs are faster, and therefore better suited for highly complex models, big data loads, and situations requiring ultra-fast turnaround.

Intel Is Committed to AIA longstanding leader in accelerators, Intel has big AI ambitions. The company has recently launched its 5th generation of Xeon processors. This isn’t a minor update. Xeon 5th generation reflects a strategic focus that goes much wider than just the generational gains on the silicon.

The 5th gen Xeon is purpose-built for AI workloads from the edge to the datacentre. It delivers a massive 36% performance improvement for specialized AI workloads, unlocked by the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX). AMX handles the matrix math operations essential for training and inference. Already proven with large language models of up to 20 billion parameters, it optimizes and accelerates deep learning, delivering impressive vision model performance.

Intel’s commitment to the broader AI ecosystem is equally noteworthy. The company actively collaborates with a growing pool of software vendors and projects to ensure that developers can easily harness the power of the Intel AMX instructions. Their open-source OpenVINO toolkit simplifies AI deployment by optimizing models from popular frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch, for diverse hardware platforms.

By actively supporting developers and prepping software for hardware, Intel demonstrates a comprehensive AI strategy that builds upon the strengths of their 4th Gen Xeon processors (Sapphire Rapids) to deliver a powerful silicon-to-software solution for future AI.

Wrapping UpWhile GPUs remain the holy grail for complex AI training, CPUs offer a compelling alternative for the lighter inference tasks. Their affordability, efficiency, and advancements as seen in Intel’s 5th generation Xeon with AMX instructions, make them a strong contender for AI workloads. But the choice between the two boils down to the users’ specific needs, budget, workload complexity, and latency requirements.

For more, be sure to check out Intel’s presentations with partners at the recent AI Field Day event.

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As enterprises try to deploy infrastructure to support AI applications they generally discover that the demands of this application can disrupt their architecture plans. This episode of On-Premise IT, sponsored by Pure Storage, discusses the disruptive impact of AI on the enterprise with Justin Emerson, Allyson Klein, Keith Townsend, and Stephen Foskett. Heavy duty AI processing requires specialized hardware that more resembles High-Performance Computing (HPC) than conventional enterprise IT architecture. But as more enterprise applications leverage accelerators like GPUs and DPUs, and become more disaggregated, AI starts to make more sense. Power is one key consideration, since companies are more aware of sustainability and are impacted by limited power availability in the datacenter, and efficient external storage can be a real benefit here. This is still general-purpose infrastructure but it increasingly incorporates accelerators to improve power efficiency. One issue for general purpose infrastructure is the concern over security, and enterprise AI applications will certainly benefit from broad access to a variety of enterprise data. Enterprise use of AI will require a new data infrastructure that supports the demands of AI applications but also enables data sharing and integration with AI applications.

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In this Tech Field Day Extra article from VMware Explore, Sulagna Saha discusses how VMware delivers smart migration with HCX+. The biggest stumbling block that faces organizations’ multi-cloud aspirations is adoption complexity, a thing that is at the root of every new innovation, and hence, is inescapable. With solutions that help abstract away complexities and facilitate uptake, technologies like multi-cloud can enjoy greater adoption. HCX+ is, without a doubt, a key solution for companies trying to walk down the multi-cloud road, going from traditional datacenters to modern cloud platforms. It extends the legacy of HCX, enabling enterprises to cleanly lift and shift workloads to where they perform best, sans the usual troubles and crisis of migration.

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Although blockchain technology has been tainted by scammers, the core idea of distributed consensus is relevant for certain edge applications. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on practical application of blockchain technology in edge and IoT, featuring Jason Benedicic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Two key concepts in blockchain are the distributed ledger and consensus approach. There is a lot of work being done to apply blockchain in medical, finance, IoT, and proof of provenance. Although many applications can rely on authority or quorum, larger and more heterogeneous applications might benefit from consensus instead. The other aspect of blockchain, chain of custody and immutability of data, is potentially relevant in preventing supply chain attacks and dealing with transient devices. It's important to remember that many of the things that have put people off blockchain, from financialization to public exposure of transactions, are not necessarily required in all blockchains.

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Perhaps no computing technology has been as consistently-compatible and yet cutting edge as PCI Express (PCIe). This Gestalt IT Tech Talk features Richard Solomon of the PCI-SIG discussing the journey of PCI through decades of compatibility and innovation with Stephen Foskett. Uncover the story behind the backbone of modern computing systems and gain insights into the future of PCIe’s evolution.

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In this Tech Field Day Extra article from VMware Explore, Sulagna Saha discusses VMware NXS+. There is one rule that is always safe to live by in IT – keep adapting to the changes, and right now, the biggest change happening is the transition to multi-cloud. VMware NSX+ with its latest features, opens up a direct ramp to multi-cloud free of complexities and inconsistencies. NSX+ bypasses the passive approach of meeting problems on the go which is limiting and frankly no-longer sufficient. To keep the digital transformation going uneventfully, supporting technologies need to evolve in advance to meet customers’ changing requirements, and VMware is champion for that. With NSX+, it provides a complete solution that gives organizations the tools, the strategy and ultimately, the skill to embrace multi-cloud in a clean and fuss-free way.

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In this episode Tom discusses the dominance of InfiniBand as well as the way Ethernet is changing to support large latency-sensitive flows in the modern AI networking world. We look at the companies leading the way in the Ethernet world and how the formation of the UEC is the first step to unseating InfiniBand.

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In the multi-cloud world we live in, data protection is more complex than ever. In this Gestalt IT Tech Talk recorded at VMware Explore US 2023, Stephen Foskett chats with Shiva Raja about how HYCU tackles the challenges of multi-cloud and offers broad protection for VMware resources on public cloud. HYCU offers a one-of-a-kind backup and data protection solution that allows users to backup, recover and migrate VMware workloads between cloud platforms, risk-free. Watch the full interview to learn more about HYCU.

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Dell Technologies and AMD are at the forefront of high-performance computing (HPC), driving innovation in various fields, such as space exploration, wildfire prevention, and neuroscience research. Their HPC solutions are in high demand, revolutionizing industries by accelerating productivity, enabling faster market entry, and offering energy-efficient infrastructure modernization. Dell's PowerEdge servers, equipped with the latest AMD 4th Gen EPYC™ processors, provide accessible and easy-to-deploy high-performance solutions for partners serving customers of all sizes, emphasizing optimization for maximum performance right out of the box. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

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Ransomware protection is one of the top priorities of organizations and Zerto has a new solution for it. In the Tech Talk recorded at VMware Explore US 2023, Tom Hollingsworth talks to David Aldrich about the newest additions on Zerto 10. Zerto 10 released in May of this year offering customers the power of real-time encryption detection for inspection of data inline and rapid recovery with Cyber Resilience Vault. With integration built into the solution, Zerto 10 can connect with a plethora of security solutions offering maximum protection and resilience against ransomware. Listen to the Gestalt IT Tech Talk to learn more about Zerto 10.

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Snapshots are still not backups but the nature of data storage means care must be taken to determine data retention requirements. In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Brian Knudtson, Matt Tyrer, and Richard Kenyan discuss the nature of data protection and recovery point objectives. The rapid pace of cloud storage growth as well as the shift toward using microservices and serverless computing have added additional challenges to the definition of data that needs to be backed up. In addition, the terminology changes with major companies in the space have created confusion in features.

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In this Networking Field Day article, Sulagna Saha writes on Edge Networking and how it potentially could have the same or bigger impact than edge computing.

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As tech giants struggle to adapt to changing business conditions, startups are quick to blaze new trails. This episode of On-Premise IT, hosted by Stephen Foskett and featuring Rose Ross, Tim Crawford, and Justin Warren, compares the tech world to an environment where small, innovative startups are advancing while larger, traditional companies fight to keep their market dominance. Companies can only flourish if they are able to understand the evolving needs of the industry, while startups can close the gap in markets they overlook. When it comes to IT products, CIOs are no longer the primary customer, necessitating a better understanding of who the target audience is and how to communicate effectively with them.

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In this Networking Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Broadcom’s specialized solutions for AI processing bypass the imposing challenges that stifle enterprises’ AI/ML initiatives. The fabrics greatly reduce networking time with maximum I/O, creating an opportunity for organizations to accelerate training time and ensure faster job completion. In the process, they unlock substantial savings not typically achievable with AI training.

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Media and entertainment is one industry generating and moving vast amounts of data at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Jimmy Fusil of Tsecond into a discussion with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett about the unique data challenges in media and entertainment. There is a great need for local processing, secure data transport, and efficient storage utilization in managing the ever-increasing volume of data generated during film and TV production. The podcast explores the continued relevance of physical media, like tape, for long-term archiving, while also emphasizing the security measures necessary to protect creative privacy and prevent potential plot leaks in the industry. Fusil also discusses Tsecond’s groundbreaking product, Bryck, a portable NVMe storage device capable of holding up to a petabyte of data with a remarkable 40GBps data transfer speed. The discussion highlights how Bryck’s high-performance storage facilitates on-device data processing, ensuring quick backups and maintaining data integrity. It’s critical to consider edge storage solutions like Bryck in many data-intensive sectors beyond media and entertainment as well.

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In this Tech Talk, Mohammad Ali discusses Private 5G. He talks about the origins of the technology and how it’s different from standard 5G available to consumers as well as Wi-Fi networking. He talks about the advantages of using this new protocol to cover large areas and which applications would benefit the most from deployment. He also talks about the challenges faced by client devices and how practitioners can ensure Private 5G installations work smoothly for operations teams and end users alike.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha highlights Sara Lean's roundup of the key infrastructure announcements on her website.

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In this Networking Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Anuta Networks' Anuta ATOM sobers the demands of automation and helps it reach all corners of the business without seeking big financial commitments. As enterprises look ahead to a future where automation leads the way, they need a tool like ATOM that unleashes its full potential, and help automation be the groundbreaking technology that is meant to be.

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Live events are back, baby! It's event season, and hotels are filling up for in-person tech events. But the pandemic has changed everything, including event participation. What should we expect from returning favorites like re:Invent, in-flux standbys like VMware Explore, and smaller events like Flash Memory Summit? This and more on this week's Gestalt IT Rundown.

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In this exclusive article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Lenovo has created a value network that is exemplary through innovations and breakthroughs with partners upstream, and distribution of products in native and foreign markets through partners downstream. It goes to show that businesses operating in the same industry need to be overly competitive with each other to stay in the race. In fact, some of the biggest engineering feats in technology have been the result of strong collaborations between organizations. As they say, two heads are better than one. If more companies can keep their ego aside and see opportunity where others see buyouts and acquisitions, businesses do not need to sideswipe each other off the road or squabble over the bigger market share. United, they can create a climate and culture of participation and shared values that promote new opportunities and fuel innovation, in the end, driving growth and revenue for all involved.

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VAST Data is one of the leading innovators in enterprise storage, winning customers and partnerships with its scale-out storage platform. But the company is emphasizing the "Data" part of their name with a new platform designed to support data, analytics, and AI. The VAST DataPlatform is designed to merge storage and data to enable AI-assisted computation. Let's take a look at the core features of this new VAST DataPlatform and its potential impact on the data and AI landscape.

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In this Cloud Field Day Tech Note presented by RackN, Adam Fisher discusses how RackN provides IT Ops with a powerful platform to bring infrastructure provisioning up to speed with the demands of modern enterprise IT. The ability for IT Ops to manage infrastructure with cloud-like efficiency powers innovation for the applications that drive a business. The true value of RackN isn’t just for IT Ops or developers; it’s the snowball effect of improved collaboration between groups that ultimately leads to a better bottom line. Digital Rebar is a key to unlocking that value.

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The importance of testing cannot be understated. Network testing is more than just working bandwidth or certifying network components. Applications play an important role in determining how networks should operate. So too does the role of components integrated with each other at the unit and system level. The sponsor of this episode, Keysight, brings a wealth of knowledge to the discussion borne from years of experience in the networking testing space. Learn how Keysight uses that knowledge and experience to the modern world of high speed Ethernet and the needs of companies deploying it at scale.

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In this Security Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Commvault Metallic ThreatWise brings to enterprises a workhorse of a tool that provides the forceful combination of insights and observability which quantifies to effective risk management and broader protection by surfacing threats accurately and early in the chain that other tools overlook and underestimate.

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In this article presented by Pure Storage, Stephen Foskett discusses the FlashArray R4 platform and how it can empower organizations with high-performance storage arrays tailored to their specific requirements.

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Although we use Intel's NUC as a shorthand for the type of hardware deployed at the far edge, this recently-cancelled platform isn't all there is. This episode of Utilizing Edge looks beyond the NUC, to platforms from Lenovo, Nvidia, and more, with Julian Chesterfield of Sunlight, Andrew Green, and Stephen Foskett. ARM-based solutions, many using the Nvidia Jetson platform, are particularly interesting given their low cost and power consumption and strong GPUs for edge AI. A hyperconverged stack runs all of the components required for high availability, including storage and networking, in software spanning all of the nodes in a cluster, and this is commonly deployed on low-cost devices at the far edge. The trend to deploying applications at the edge is driven both by new hardware and software capabilities and the changing expectation of consumers and businesses.

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In this Security Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses HashiCorp Boundary and how it provides a way to sharpen organizations’ identity metrics, allowing them to standardize a least privileged access model that dynamically authenticates, grants and revokes accesses with the end goal of protecting user identities within and without organizations, and the data and resources in the network. In a time when organizations cannot afford to give in to the temptation of skipping past access security, Boundary offers a simplified way to embrace security automation that covers all connection points and entities with a solid, zero-trust security.

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In this Gestalt IT Tech Talk, Stephen Foskett interviews Steve McDowell, a principal analyst at NAND Research, about the concept of disaggregated architecture. They discuss the benefits of hiding complexity through disaggregation, the role of accelerators like GPUs and IO accelerators, and the potential of technologies like CXL (Compute Express Link) in enabling seamless expansion and interconnectivity of system components. They also touch upon examples of disaggregated systems and express excitement about the future possibilities of leveraging hardware resources in a more seamless and abstracted manner.

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In this Tech Note presented by Solidigm, Max Mortillaro discuses how the Solidigm P5-D5430 QLC SSD drive establishes a new milestone for QLC flash. Its massive improvements in endurance and capacity demonstrate that QLC flash is the new normal in mainstream, read-intensive workloads. Clearly aimed at large datacenters and hyperscalers where storage density, outstanding reliability, and low cost per GB are key factors, the P5-D5430 QLC SSDs is a key enabler to even more robust and massively scalable data stores, allowing better energy efficiency and storage density.

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In this Security Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses Cribl Search and how it lets organizations get value out of their data without losing dollars. It presents a sustainable way to search a subset of data bypassing the unprofitable and sloppy method of making new copies and taking up expensive storage space every time someone decides to type in a question. Whether data is in public or private infrastructure, this may be the default choice of users.

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The Linux world is abuzz with controversy as IBM Red Hat puts the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) behind a paywall, leaving CentOS Stream as the only accessible option. Meanwhile, Oracle emphasizes its commitment to Linux freedom, offering open access to binaries and source code for their RHEL-compatible distribution, Oracle Linux. On the other hand, SUSE takes a bold step by forking RHEL and investing millions in developing their own RHEL-compatible distribution, free from restrictions. The battle for Linux supremacy is heating up, with each company vying for dominance and championing their respective visions of openness and innovation.

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In this Security Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Noname Security's Active Testing v2 is a clear winner because it enables teams to integrate security organically in the CI/CD processes, and in doing so, it makes it possible to weed out all culprits in the earliest stages of application building, nipping any chances of API exploits in the bud.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how the Morpheus platform’s extensibility feature enables users to bypass using too many solutions to get the desired feature set and altering their business needs and ways of working to make it work. Built with usability and agility top of mind, it serves organizations in the way they need and not the way it can. The long-term viability of a solution like this is unquestionable.

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You may be intimately familiar with brands and their products for some lines but not everything is iconic. Companies rebrand products all the time in order to get rid of per performers or try to increase sales. In the world of enterprise IT does that mean it’s more difficult to figure out what you’ve bought? Or how best to support it? In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Zoe Rose, Eric Steward, and Josh Warcop discuss the challenges faced in constant rebranding and how your efforts to put on a fresh face may lead to hard feelings.

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Stephen Foskett and Eric Wright discuss service mesh, a networking tool for secure communication between services and applications in cloud environments. It is commonly used in cloud-native setups like Kubernetes and addresses the challenge of limited IPv4 addresses through dynamic networks and load balancers. Service mesh enhances application performance, ensures secure communication, and enables automation, though implementation requires organizational alignment.

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Between the so-called last mile and first mile lies the middle mile, the realm of colocation and network service providers. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Roy Chua and Allyson Klein, discussing the middle mile with Stephen Foskett. This middle area includes content delivery services like Varnish and Akamai, as well as companies like Cloudflare that are delivering content and compute there. The middle network includes providers like Equinix, Digital Realty, and Megaport, which provide connectivity to the cloud and service providers, the hyperscalers themselves, and some interesting networking startups like Packet Fabric and Graphiant. We must also consider observability, with companies like cPacket and Kentik as well as companies like Cisco and Juniper Networks.

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During Cloud Field Day in June, Stephen Foskett sat down with Michael Levan to discuss his contributions to the Kubernetes community as part of the release team. Michael's role primarily involves documenting features and providing technical insights to the community, a path others can follow to get more involved. The discussion also dives into the effectiveness of concise content on LinkedIn and the significance of audience engagement.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha brings to light Brian Greenberg's top five cybersecurity issues of 2023 and ways to protect yourself from them.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Zerto's Zerto 10 strikes at the heart of the ransomware scourge with advanced and real-time capabilities. With real-time detection, Zerto 10 continuously scans and searches for signs of encryption, enabling swift discovery and speedy action.

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In this Storage Field Day Tech Note presented by StorPool, Jim Czuprynski discusses how radically different StorPool's storage model is. By standardizing storage nodes on commodity hardware, and concentrating on provisioning capacity in an as-a-service orientation, it’s much simpler for storage to become and remain what everyone in IT wants - always on, non-disruptive, reliable, and performant.

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In this Networking Field Day Tech Note presented by Catchpoint, Peter Welcher discusses how Catchpoint can monitor and display valuable BGP information over time, allowing staff to keep an eye on, spot problems in, and troubleshoot global or large scale routing.

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We're at Pure Storage's Pure Accelerate conference this week, and the buzz is focused on the company's continuing quest to push hard disk drives out of the datacenter. The new FlashArray R4 products are faster, while the new "E family" of FlashBlade and FlashArray target capacity-focused applications like data protection and logging. Another announcement focuses on ransomware recovery, with Pure offering a temporary replacement array on demand. Let's talk about these stories in more detail. This and more on this on-site Rundown at Pure Accelerate.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Capella from Couchbase and how the database platform addresses the inefficiencies of traditional databases and embraces a new approach that drives value of applications. It impresses by delivering the speed and scale that otherwise take several legacy databases to match, making other contemporary databases look archaic.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha highlights Jody Gajic's thoughts on the generative AI wave and the facts behind the tech.

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Although artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning and large language models, is in the news, it isn’t very useful in enterprise IT. In this episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, Karen Lopez, W. Curtis Preston, Michael Levan, and Stephen Foskett discuss the use case for AI in security. The panel acknowledges that machine learning can be beneficial in identifying anomalies and patterns that humans may overlook. It can assist in generating policies, templates, and rule sets, as well as providing best practices based on aggregated data. However, they also express concerns about the responsible use of AI and the need for training models on specific environments to ensure effectiveness. They highlight the importance of having the right data sets and the challenges of dealing with the black box nature of machine learning. Despite potential exploits and limitations, they agree that AI is currently the best tool available for detecting and addressing security threats, such as data exfiltration and unauthorized access.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how enterprises have been dreaming of a solution like HYCU R-Cloud for years that would bring new smarts to the anachronistic field of data protection. R-Cloud not only saves data from potential jeopardy, but by extending pervasive data protection to assets anywhere in the distributed environment, it lets SaaS vendors to offer data protection as native service. SaaS users can granularly enable data protection, review their protection status and analyze their posture using an automation framework that is simple, reliable and works equally in all environments.

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In this Tech Field Day article, Denny Cherry discusses how any company that is worried about ransomware should regularly scan their enterprise for ransomware. CyberSense by Index Engines can do that scanning for them, detecting all signs of corruption before a full-scale attack unfolds.

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When it comes to edge computing, money is not limitless. Joining us for this episode of Utilizing Edge is Carlo Daffara of NodeWeaver, who discusses the unique economic challenges of edge with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Cost is always a factor for technology decisions, but every decision is multiplied when designing edge infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of nodes. Total Cost of Ownership is a critical consideration, especially operations and deployment on-site at remote locations, and the duration of deployment must also be taken into consideration. Part of the solution is designing a very compact and flexible system, but the system must also work with nearly any configuration, from virtual machines to Kubernetes. Another issue is the fact that technology will change over time and the system must be adaptable to different hardware platforms. It is critical to consider not just the cost of hardware but also the cost of maintenance and long-term operation.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how JetStream delivers extended protection to data, be it in the public or private cloud. But more importantly, by delivering the service over software, it spares users the troubles of engaging with the mechanics of DR and the costs of investing in questionable solutions. It is ready-to-use, automatic and offers the best of cloud economics.

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At Cisco Live 2023, Cisco unveiled a range of solutions for SSE, network management, observability, and a new cloud-native application security solution called Panoptica. The event, which includes a performance by comedian Jim Gaffigan, highlighted Cisco's focus on simplifying user experiences and addressing the evolving needs of organizations. The security service edge (SSE) solution aims to streamline access and enhance hybrid work experiences, while the integration of generative AI into the Security Cloud improves security operations and efficiency. Cisco Networking Cloud offers a unified platform for network management, addressing challenges of complexity and fragmentation. The Full-Stack Observability (FSO) Platform brings together data from multiple domains, enabling comprehensive insights, while Panoptica provides end-to-end lifecycle protection for cloud native applications. We're getting more details on all of these products as part of Tech Field Day at Cisco Live, which included presentations from Cisco Security, ThousandEyes, and Enterprise Networking yesterday and cloud and compute, secure policy, and IoT today.

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In this Mobility Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Cisco, with the kind of observability it has achieved through the Meraki Dashboard, is aiming to unlock incredible transparency and control over deployments and consumption and find signals in the noise, making networking easy and future-proof.

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In this Cloud Field Day Tech Note presented by Forward Networks, Chris Grundemann discusses how Network observability serves as a linchpin for maintaining a secure and resilient network infrastructure. In the realm of multi-cloud, achieving that observability is even more challenging due to the absence of unified visibility across cloud platforms. Forward Networks has risen to that challenge by extending their digital twin technology to major cloud providers. Their solutions not only deliver deep observability, but also enhance security through tools like Path, Posture, and Blast Radius. With Forward Networks' comprehensive approach to multi-cloud observability and security, businesses can unlock the full potential of their networks, and ensure a robust and protected digital ecosystem.

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In this Edge Field Day Plus article presented by Mako Networks, Ben Young discusses how Mako Networks has positioned themselves as a must-have solution in the retail edge space. Having PCI compliance taken care of at the network layer is a massive burden for organizations and often a stumbling block in maintaining compliance. Mako Networks help offload that with ready compliance. Its centralized management reduces infrastructure workloads while saving time with the ability to push out templated policy changes and software updates through a single portal.

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In this Mobility Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Arista Networks’ CloudVision AGNI offers a wide set of AI features that allows it to carry out certain lifelong processes quickly and competently that take operators with fair amounts of experience a long longer. Leveraging ML models and a modern architecture, it makes identity enforcement and management less harrowing and incrementally streamlined, showcasing the power of AI.

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Can a remote predictive wireless survey achieve the same results as something on-site? Can the current generation of modeling give you the assurances that your design is going to work? And does the coming future of AI-driven development offer any additional capabilities that we don’t see today? In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Kerry Kulp, Peter Mackenzie, and Mohammad Ali discuss the trends of predictive surveys and how we can improve overall design satisfaction.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsKerry Kulp

Peter Mackenzie

Mohammad Ali

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@KeKulp

@MackenzieWiFi

@malief46

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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“Great wine starts with great grapes. Great AI starts with great data,” said Bob Friday, Juniper Networks’ CTO and Chief AI Officer, while presenting at the recent Mobility Field Day event in California.

One of Juniper Networks’ biggest story this quarter is updates around its AI assistant, Marvis. The company announced that it is expanding Marvis with Zoom data and ChatGPT, further augmenting its ability to respond to complex networking questions.

Errors and DisconnectionsVideo conferencing apps like Zoom are some of the most widely used applications running on corporate networks. A workday calendar packed with Zoom meetings is business per usual for the distributed workforce. As we are filling our calendars with more virtual meetings than we did in normal office settings, it is vital that the platforms hosting these meetings run flawlessly.

Contrary to the expectation, Zoom and many other conferencing apps are often failing, freezing and crashing frequently, often several times a day.

“Video applications are probably the hardest applications to run on a network. If anything’s going to break first, it’s going to be your real-time video collaboration experience,” noted Mr. Friday.

Such errors can stop important collaborative sessions mid-way, hurting productivity, and slowing down innovation. Owing to poor call quality, a quick half-hour meeting can stretch to hours without satisfactory results. It is a frustrating struggle for employees, as many of them are working this much out of office for the first time.

An even bigger puzzle is identifying the root of the problem. An application outage can happen for a myriad of reasons – poor Wi-Fi, overworked devices, software errors, service downtime. Having to figure out the origin of the problem does nothing to move the real work forward, and only adds an extra layer of stress.

Turning the PageAIOPs has come a long way with helping companies turn the page on distracting technical errors. It is making already headlines with how easy it has made leveraging everyday technologies.

AI algorithms are trained on billions of datasets that allow them to mark and magnify nuances, nipping a problem off before it becomes an anomaly that diminishes the user experience.

“AI is the next evolution in automation. We’ve always been doing automation with scripts. AI is just taking that automation to the next level, doing things on par with humans,” commented Mr. Friday. “The paradigm shift is around AIOPs moving us from client to cloud tradition. We want to make sure that the connection is good,” he added.

Core to AI’s success is good-quality data, which allows algorithms to process an input efficiently and produce definite diagnosis. This requires cycles after cycles of training, state-of-art infrastructure, and a stellar data science team behind the whole operation.

Juniper Networks’ AI JourneyAbout some years back Juniper Networks debuted Mist AI, a solution that combines AI, ML and data science. Fundamental to all of their subsequent AI initiatives, Mist AI furthers the goal to expedite operations and optimize user experience.

The Mist journey started when Bob Friday was still working his 9-year-old job at Cisco as the VP.

“We were hearing from some of our very large customers that they wanted us to have the controllers stop crashing. They wanted to get things moving quicker, and a space to innovate faster and keep up their digital transformation. But most importantly, before they were going to put anything critical on the consumer device, like an app, or on the network, they wanted to make sure that it was going to be a good experience,” he remembered.

Ensuring this requires a lot of data. To get customers that data that they need, Juniper Networks built its catalogue of APs with Mist AI integrations. The new Marvis updates take that work forward.

“When we started the journey, we started with the wireless access points because that’s what allowed us to answer the question of why you are having a poor internet experience. What you saw us do at Juniper was basically extend that across the access point to switch, and the router” said Mr. Friday.

Likewise with the Zoom data, Juniper Networks is taking steps towards understanding and answering questions specifically about Zoom user experience.

“This is basically going to let us to start leveraging technologies like ChatGPT and taking terabytes of data, training models that can actually predict user performance, and start to understand why you’re having a poor experience,” he said.

Continuous LearningWith the goal to reduce barriers and defeat more difficult problems, Juniper Networks has constantly experimented with AI models, refining training and inferencing to achieve better results. Ingesting Zoom data on Marvis is part of that effort.

Up until recently, Marvis had two key components – the conversational interface which provided answers to queries in natural language. Juniper Networks recently expanded this by integrating with ChatGPT. The second is Marvis Actions, a self-driving feature that proactively highlights user-impacting issues by automatically creating RMA tickets.

The third and the brand-new element is continuous user experience learning. This lets Marvis consume labelled session data in real-time from public cloud applications – in this case Zoom – at the rate of per-minute, and continually monitor its user experience. This labeled data helps create models that can predict the performance of applications in machine learning.

This runs natively in Marvis giving operators feedback of the Zoom experience in real time.

“This is where we’re leveraging ChatGPT. We’re taking these deep learning models with terabytes of data, and training them to predict your Zoom audio-video latency, and performance. We’re getting down to predicting Zoom latency, plus or minus 5 milliseconds 90% of the time,” informed Mr. Friday.

Juniper Networks distills down the AI findings with Shapley that tells which network feature is responsible for the problem.

“The good news is when we get data from Zoom, they give us information about the client. Turns out a lot of the problems have nothing to do with the network at all. It has to do with downloading a video while on call, an overloaded CPU, etc.”

Mr. Friday emphasized that the key difference with Marvis is not the algorithm, but Juniper Networks’ robust data science team that is working behind the scenes. The company has recently expanded its in-house data science team, adding new members, paving the path to faster innovation.

Customers can talk directly to the support team when they have a problem. The support team works closely with the data science team at the back end. They meet weekly going through the existing tickets and deciding which ones AI can help resolve. This helps improve the models’ accuracy and optimize user experience leading to fewer support tickets.

Wrapping UpWith consistent improvement of AI solutions, and integration with other breakthrough technologies, users are on the cusp of using AI as an everyday tool across domains and disciplines. Marvis is a fine example of that. The new feature will serve to make Zoom user experience so much more predictable and consistent. Thanks to its AI-powered predictive observability, thousands of hours of painstaking rooting around is an effortless push notification.

For a demo of the new feature, be sure to watch Juniper Networks’ presentations from the recent Mobility Field Day event.

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We’re thrilled to be back in sunny Las Vegas again for Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2023. There is a lot of excitement around some of the big announcements Cisco is preparing and our group of delegates will be there to give you all the information you need to know about what’s in store.

We have a packed schedule of presentations from several companies that you’re not going to want to miss.

Event ScheduleTuesday, June 6 is the first day of Tech Field Day Extra and kicks off with our friends at Opengear. They’re back once more to share updates with us and show us how they’re continuing to provide value to operations teams in need of console solutions for a variety of unique applications. The afternoon features Cisco presentations from Enterprise Networks, ThousandEyes, and Cisco Security.

The second day is Wednesday, June 7 and we’re featuring another great presentation from our friends at BackBox. They’re fresh off an appearance at Networking Field Day 31 and they have so much more they want to show our eager delegates. The second half of the day will feature more great content from Cisco, including IoT presentations, Cloud and Compute, and a discussion around secure policy.

Be A Part of the ActionMake sure your calendars are set for June 6-7. You can find the full event schedule at TechFieldDay.com as well as at the Tech Field Day Extra event page. If you miss any of the exciting announcements you can always catch the on-demand sessions at the Tech Field Day YouTube channel. If you prefer to watch your live streaming video on LinkedIn make sure to follow the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page. We will be using the hashtag #TFDx for all our social media presences for you to join the conversation and follow along. You can also tag your questions with #CiscoLive to share with the rest of the conference.

We can’t wait for more great fun with Tech Field Day Extra and we hope to see you there!

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Although everyone wants high availability from IT systems, the cost to achieve it must be weighed against the benefits. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on HA solutions at the edge with Bruce Kornfeld of StorMagic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Although it might be tempting to build the same infrastructure at the edge as in the data center, but this can get very expensive. Thinking about multi-node server clusters and RAID storage, the risk of a so-called split brain means not just two nodes but three must be deployed in most cases. StorMagic addresses this issue in a novel way, with a remote node providing a quorum witness and reducing the need for on-site hardware. Edge infrastructure also relies on so-called hyperconverged systems, which use software to create advanced services on simple and inexpensive hardware.

Achieving High Availability at the Edge: Balancing Cost and ReliabilityHigh availability and continuous availability are critical requirements for edge computing, enabling organizations to ensure uninterrupted operations for their critical use cases. However, achieving high availability in edge environments comes with its own set of challenges, particularly in terms of cost and hardware redundancy. In this article, we explore the cost considerations, emerging technologies, and strategies for implementing cost-effective high availability solutions at the edge.

Redundant hardware for high availability can be expensive, especially when multiplied across multiple edge nodes. Many organizations struggle to justify the additional costs associated with hardware and software for achieving high availability. As a result, they often settle for single-node setups that may experience potential downtime and risk data loss.

Advancements in technology and decreasing hardware costs are enabling organizations to explore more cost-effective ways of achieving high availability in edge environments. Efficient storage utilization and solutions tailored for small-scale deployments are becoming more accessible and affordable.

StorMagic offers a technology solution that challenges the traditional three-node setup for high availability. By utilizing a two-node setup, StorMagic significantly reduces costs, particularly when dealing with numerous edge sites. To avoid split-brain scenarios and ensure coordination, StorMagic’s software-defined storage solution allows the third node to be located in the cloud or a central data center.

The management of thousands of edge clusters requires a different approach than traditional data center or remote office/branch office solutions. Cloud-based solutions or a reduced number of witness virtual machines (VMs) can enhance manageability at scale and streamline operations.

Edge solutions are increasingly adopting software-defined approaches, running on affordable commodity hardware such as x86 or ARM devices. This shift allows for redundant hardware deployments at the edge, reducing costs and increasing reliability.

Virtualization remains predominant at the edge, with hypervisors like VMware and Microsoft widely used. While containers are gaining popularity, their adoption at the edge is still evolving. The long-term goal is to run everything in containers to eliminate the hypervisor layer, but it is expected to be a gradual transition over the next five years.

SMBs may face challenges in adopting containers at the edge due to limited IT skills and resources. Containers may take longer to become pervasive in the SMB world compared to larger enterprises. Virtualization, particularly using hypervisors, remains crucial at the edge, providing compatibility and flexibility for running legacy applications.

Keeping cost considerations in mind, clustering different types of servers, regardless of brand, model, or age, can help organizations achieve high availability while leveraging existing infrastructure. This approach allows for a two-node solution and adds resiliency without requiring substantial hardware investments.

Replacing hardware on a rolling basis aligns with budget cycles and helps spread costs over time. This approach ensures continuous availability while minimizing upfront expenditure. Companies are embracing this strategy to maximize the lifespan of their hardware and optimize cost-effectiveness.

Edge computing presents an opportunity to reevaluate decisions and find the right solutions tailored to specific business needs. Just as the cloud revolutionized data centers, the lessons learned in the edge space will likely influence future decisions in other computing environments, emphasizing cost optimization and reliability.

Achieving high availability in edge environments is challenging but crucial for critical use cases. Balancing cost and reliability is essential when designing high availability solutions at the edge. The emergence of cost-effective technologies, software-defined approaches, and the gradual adoption of containers offer promising avenues for organizations to implement robust and affordable high availability solutions in their edge deployments.

Podcast Information* Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett. * Alastair Cooke, independent analyst and consultant working with virtualization and data center technologies. Connect with Alastair on LinkedIn and Twitter at @DemitasseNZ. Read his articles on his website. * Bruce Kornfeld, Chief Marketing and Product Officer, at StorMagic. You can connect with Bruce on LinkedIn and find out more about StorMagic on their Website. You can also see presentations from StorMagic at Edge Field Day 2 in July.

For your weekly dose of Utilizing Edge, subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast app through Anchor FM and check out more Utilizing Tech podcast episodes on the dedicated website, https://utilizingtech.com/.

Edge Field Day 2 is being held July 12-13, 2023. Be sure to check out the Tech Field Day website for the schedule and more information.

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We live in a world where AI drives imagination and utility. AIOps has proven to be extremely useful for businesses, and we are starting to see the beginning of its real-world applications.

Among the companies in the frontline that are working at a frenzied pace to solve grand operational challenges with AIOps, Fortinet is a notable name. After FortiAIOps, the company is on track to release the next iteration of the solution featuring a combination of augmented insights and advanced troubleshooting.

In a presentation that combined a walk-through of the new features and a technical demo, Alex Vizzari, Sr. Director of Product Management, detailed the capabilities that are arriving soon in FortiAIOps, and features that are on the roadmap, at the recent Mobility Field Day event.

One Is Better than TwoFor a typical network that spans datacenter to edge, Fortinet offers a bundle of solutions, namely FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and FortiAIOps to help operators navigate and perform complex networking and security tasks.

“A lot of customers have multiple branches that we call the SD branch. Data within this branch is managed by FortiGate – the switch, the APs, the 4G/5G connectivity being the extender – all going into the datacenter where they have the FortiManager. We also have an analytics and a reporting engine, the FortiAnalyzer and FortiAIOps inside the datacenter” said Mr. Vizzari.

For monitoring, troubleshooting and insights specifically, Fortinet offered FortiWLM and FortiAIOps. The company has merged the capabilities of these two into a single solution to create FortiAIOps v2.0.

“It’s good to have two different products, but customers want to have everything in a single pane-of-glass management. They want to go back and forth between monitoring, seeing different things and switching sites. So knowing that we had two different products, we came up with a solution merging monitoring, troubleshooting and AI insights inside a single platform,” said Mr. Vizzari.

The new FortiAIOps brings with it the deep monitoring and troubleshooting of FortiWLM with the swift diagnostics and analytics of FortiAIOps that companies need on a day-to-day basis.

New GoalsFortiAIOps v2.0 furthers three key goals of its makers – to provide faster root cause analysis, ensure improved network and application availability, and make advanced troubleshooting tools available.

“With wireless, switching and potentially SD-WAN, it’s really tough for people to go deep into an issue. We know that to be experts, to know all the different gears of the vendor – be it Fortinet or anyone else – is hard for an IT person,” noted Mr. Vizzari.

With the new FortiAIOps, Fortinet dials down the requirement of technical expertise for operators by amplifying the solution’s innate RTA capabilities with suggested answers to address issues, delivering faster MTTR.

FortiAIOps 2.0 aims to optimize network and application availability by providing users data on key performance metrics and highlighting negative trends, so that they can be on top of issues the moment they show up, and ensure users a higher level of experience.

New FeaturesFortiAIOps 2.0 provides a holistic view of the network that includes wireless, switching and SD-WAN, ensuring that operators do not have to shuttle between multiple solutions.

“With the ability to go from top to bottom within a few clicks – from the FortiGate level to the switch to the APs and the stations – it drives the IT guy towards the problematic stations,” said Mr. Vizzari.

The AI piece is built into the solution. “There are a few additions like troubleshooting tools and the full LAN and WAN view from a single platform,” he informed. With the improved AI, it can cross-correlate events and data from across the deployment providing deeper insights.

A set of built-in troubleshooting tools validate deployment at all network levels ensuring reduced MTTR. Advanced tools like route checks, process monitor, heatmaps, VLAN probe, cable diagnostics and RF perf statistics augment its troubleshooting capabilities.

In terms of scalability, Fortinet offers three models – low, medium and high, depending on the type of network. Customers can start with a small number of devices and can go up to thousands.

As of right now, the FortiAIOps v2.0 is a virtual machine. Mr. Vizzari said that it is fully relying on the Fortinet Neutrino framework.

Mr. Vizzari informed that Fortinet is working on dedicated hardware which will be released in the future.

FortiAIOps v2.0 is a subscription-based solution that is available in a flexible licensing model. It comes in an annual per-device subscription model. Monitoring and insights are offered both separately, and in bundles.

“We see that some customers want just monitoring, while some want insights. Some want a bundle of both, and others would want the full lot with SD-WAN,” said Mr. Vizzari.

Wrapping upTraining humans to code has been one of our biggest successes so far. Solutions like the new FortiAIOps flip the script by training computers to do the heavy-lifting with AI, thus relieving the pressure off of IT personnel. FortiAIOps massively broadens their access to effective monitoring and troubleshooting, and instant insights critical to delivering even network performance and improved quality of experience, regardless of the operators’ technical abilities.

For more, be sure to watch the demo in the second part of Fortinet’s presentation from the recent Mobility Field Day event.

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The constantly shifting digital age has laid the world at our feet. One can connect to a friend sitting halfway across the world from a coffee shop, stream podcasts all the way on a cross-country road trip in an RV, and remotely activate a home alarm system from outside the country – all with just a tap of a finger.

But this new-age mobility comes at a cost to the providers. Free mobility strikes at the heart of network security, leaving providers to make amends while users enjoy uninterrupted access.

Sites Are ComplexSite mobility has become a complex piece of engineering over the passing years. As providers have jumped from milestones to milestones – Power over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, BYOD, 5G –clients of technology have evolved.

There are more clients than ever now – more dispersed and more transitory – and use cases are multiplying everyday. Audio/video conferencing, utility management, digital signage, energy, voice and cellular, HVAC, video surveillance, the list is endless.

Supporting these cutting edge technologies isn’t enough. The network also has to continue to support legacy applications many of which are not a hand-in-glove fit for the modern architecture.

Over the past couple years of COVID, we have seen a rise in mobile sites like roaming studios and pop-up hospitals.

“When you think about sites, it’s the sheer amount of complexity that’s come along. You started with PC and then they added VoIP and that brought in PoE, and then Wi-Fi, and more and more devices,” said James Kahkoska, CTO at NetAlly at the recent Mobility Field Day event in California where NetAlly presented CyberScope, a hand-held security risk assessment and analysis tool for Wi-Fi.

He explained, “What’s really happened here is a massive convergence and it’s getting deep.”

Managing sites is complex work because of the endless monitoring and management overheads. There is tension around site size and costs of deployment, and recurring cases of cyberattacks make things all the more unpredictable.

“What’s becoming more and more clear to us is when you’re at the NOC (Network Operations Center) level – you’re not on the site that you’re getting alarms and stuff going on – you don’t really understand the physicality of anything, So there’s a lot of power in the point of presence,” he noted.

Techniques like network segmentation provides a way to isolate mission-critical applications from less important ones, or keep departments apart so that they don’t mix and create disruptions in the services. But network segmentation is neither easy, nor immune to errors.

NetAllyAs a company focusing on cybersecurity, NetAlly gives top priority to visibility. Its Link/Scan architecture is designed to allow operators to link and scan devices, and interrogate what services each is consuming and what other devices it is connecting to in the network.

In 2019, NetAlly spun out of NETSCOUT of which it was a business unit, to make foray into the handheld network testing market more independently.

“We didn’t really have a product or EtherScope yet. So we spent a lot of time building street credibility, and almost leaned back into the fluke years,” said Mr. Kahkoska.

With always one foot in cybersecurity, NetAlly recently went all in and augmented its products with a spectrum of advanced cybersecurity features.

NetAlly’s CyberScopeCyberScope offers total and complete visibility. Low visibility obstructs control and opens up vulnerability gaps in the network. CyberScope is a portable analyzer that comes with comprehensive site security assessment capabilities that include device discovery, identification, locating, analyzing and reporting.

Any security assessment must start with knowing the network well. CyberScope surveys and discovers all devices – APs and clients – across up to 96 channels, analyzing the scope of RF reach within the premises and outside.

It can examine endpoints and classify them into authorized and unauthorized devices, and unfamiliar ones into neighbor and unknown. When a vulnerability is detected, it automatically generates a warning notification telling the operator what needs remedying.

CyberScope can scan switch ports and provide detailed information about port configurations and provisioning, and client attributes through API queries.

Technicians of any skill level can perform analysis of network segmentation and provisioning, and study the connections, or lack thereof, with CyberScope. It automatically examines and verifies all wired and wireless network segmentation and configuration with clear and failed indications.

Connections between devices can be viewed in topology maps that operators can generate with near real-time accuracy on the gadget’s reporting and analysis platform. This helps understand network paths, and spot rogue devices both on the wire and in the air.

Wrapping UpWith more doors for bad actors to try, there is now a rising urgency to actively monitor and secure networks. NetAlly’s CyberScope is an all-in-one tool for Wi-Fi site assessment. It provides a deep dive into device attributes, finds unauthorized endpoints, and points out errors and failures, making it possible to spot outliers efficiently on a walk-through. Designed to both survey the network, and collaborate with smart hands in the field, it provides the data required to perform proactive and reactive fixes, keeping the network secure at all times.

For more information, check out NetAlly’s in-depth presentations from the recent Mobility Field Day event on Tech Field Day website.

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Dell Tech World was the talk of the industry last week. In part it’s because Dell is rolling out initiatives to try and address their key areas as those technologies move closer to the cloud. Dell APEX storage for public cloud was a key piece. APEX is a software defined storage platform for AWS and Azure that integrates with existing tools to create a hybrid multicloud experience. Also of note was Dell NativeEdge, a software platform that can help manage deployment of applications and devices at the edge of the enterprise. Also announced along with NativeEdge is Project Fort Zero, Dell’s implementation of zero trust network architecture (ZTNA). The last big announcement was a partnership with Nvidia to provide the Project Helix platform to run Nvidia generative AI. Helix sees Nvidia H100 GPUs running in PowerEdge servers.

0:46 – Red Hat Summit Headlined With Ansible Announcements

Red Hat Summit was the other big event happening last week and the biggest announcements from the show happened around Ansible. The first was Ansible Lightspeed, an AI-assisted code creation platform powered by IBM Watson. Users can input natural language prompts and recieve YAML code in response for playbooks. Ansible also gains an event-driven capability in version 2.4 that rolls out in June. This increases the number of ways that users can activate Ansible scripts across hybrid cloud instances. You can now trigger scripts to run based on outage information, service ticket creation, and even configuration drift.

Read More: Red Hat Summit 2023: The Biggest Announcements

6:46 – Mirantis Introduces Centralized, Enterprise-Wide Management of Lens Pro for Simple, Secure Operations

Mirantis announced a new feature to help manage Kubernetes this week. Lens Control Center is a follow up to their successful Lens Pro release last year. Lens Control Center has enterprise SSO capabilities, centralized management of Lens Pro deployments, and accounting and billing enhancements. Lens Control Center is aimed to help companies successfully scale out their deployments of Lens and Lens Pro to keep their Kubernetes farms corralled.

Read More: Mirantis Releases Lens Control Center for Centralized Management of Lens Pro for Large Enterprises

10:53 – A Real Backdoor Did the Trick for Barracuda

The email security team at Barracuda Networks needs to come up with something quick. That’s because they announced CVE-2023-2868, which is a backdoor remote command injection that has been actively exploited since October. The exploit can ambush operations teams with specially crafted TAR files. Barrracuda suggests you burn, burn, burn the affected appliances and contact them for a replacement.

Read More: Critical Barracuda 0-day was used to backdoor networks for 8 months

14:48 – HPE Results Buoyed By Aruba

HPE released their quarterly results this week. Results were mostly in line with expectations although there was a miss of their previous guidance. The big news is that HPE Aruba Networking rose to become the second-biggest division of HPE by revenue, sliding past storage for the first time. Given the focus of the deepening of the relationship between the two during Aruba Atmosphere last month and the announcements coming during HPE DIscover in June, what do you think this means for the future of HPE?

Read More: Hewlett Packard Enterprise reports fiscal 2022 results with record Q4 performance

18:25 – Dell Tech World Looks to Appeal to All

Read More: 4 top takeaways from Dell Technologies World (from AI to cloud to edge)

29:02 – The Weeks Ahead

Cloud Field Day 17 May 31 – June 1, 2023

Cisco Live US June 6-7, 2023

Security Field Day June 28-29, 2023

The Gestalt IT Rundown is a weekly look at the IT news of the week. You can catch it as a YouTube video and on your favorite podcast application every Wednesday. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The enterprise world is embracing a growing arsenal of open-source tools, and it is giving companies a major competitive advantage in the market.

Enterprises that develop software in-house do not need to be sold on the benefits of open source. Open source constitutes over 70% of modern software solutions. Over 50% Fortune 500 behemoths already use it for mission-critical works.

Properly adopted, open-source projects can greatly improve the value of software companies are building, and tailor them to individual use cases. But much like automation, leveraging open-source projects comes with a heavy technical burden. Without expertise to integrate and support, the freedom and flexibility they bring is moot.

In a conversation with Miroslav Miklus, Chief Product Officer at PANTHEON.tech, we learned how adoption of free-for-all open-source technologies can be made easy for organizations.

PANTHEON.tech provides technical expertise and support to integrate open-source alternatives with datacenter solutions, promoting growth of businesses and value of products.

PANTHEON.techBorn in Slovakia, PANTHEON.tech is a software company that provides global organizations development, support and consulting services. Established in 2001, PANTHEON.tech started out as a contractor for telecommunication companies making bespoke projects. To this day, most of its development team operates out of Slovakia.

PANTHEON.tech focuses on network technologies, and has over 200 successful projects with the world’s top service providers and network vendors under its belt.

But PANTHEON.tech is not just a service company. It has its own line of solutions as well.

“There is a half and half division. We have developers who are directly working with customers providing support of their own deployments, and then we have a product team that is developing the products that we are selling based on licensing model,” explained Mr. Miklus.

Since the last couple years, PANTHEON.tech has expanded its footprint by developing its own line of products around open-source projects it supports.

Powering Open SourceThe company has been a close contributor of the OpenDaylight Project since its launch in 2013. OpenDaylight was founded by Linux Foundation as an open-source platform for customizing and automating networks of any size and scale. Its goal is to accelerate adoption of software-defined networking (SDN), and support network standardization.

PANTHEON.tech helps companies integrate projects like OpenDaylight into their production and operational networks, by bringing them the support and expertise they require.

Being closely associated with the project through ten years of its life puts PANTHEON.tech in the league with household names like Verizon and Rakuten.

“We have a quite large team that is currently providing support for the OpenDaylight Project, and we have products that are built on top of that, like Lighty.io and SandWork,” said Mr. Miklus.

Solutions Surrounding Open SourcePANTHEON.tech’s product portfolio focuses on customers’ commercial, technical and operational network challenges providing solutions derived from open-source projects in Network Functions, Automation, Orchestration and Virtual Private Networking.

Lighty.io is one of their automation solutions. Powered by OpenDaylight, it is a software development kit designed for programmers and architects to develop software-defined networking solutions in Java and Python.

PANTHEON.tech leverages the inherent capabilities of open-source projects in its products.

“We are using OpenDaylight to talk to the network elements. So, when we find a bug or develop a new feature which is not directly related to the orchestration part of the software, we push it upstream. It helps to better integrate with various vendors,” he said.

Latest ReleaseTheir latest release is a SONiC Enterprise fabric orchestrator called SandWork. SONiC, a project developed and open-sourced by Microsoft, is a network operating system based on Linux. Short for Software for Open Networking in the Cloud, it provides a set of functionalities for building network solutions. Increasingly popular in the recent years, SONiC is in use at large enterprises and hyperscalers.

SandWork builds on the capabilities of SONiC. As a programmable platform, it helps operators to automate configuration and manage network devices and overlay services at the datacenter. SandWork boasts of a modular design that is customizable to fit a wide array of customer use cases. SandWork is available for general consumption since April.

In ConclusionOpen-source solutions have some wide and clear benefits. They provide low-cost alternatives to proprietary solutions, and open companies up to a realm of enterprise tech environment that was formerly siloed and privatized. But without prior experience and support, adopting open source is tricky.

PANTHEON.tech helps companies leverage open-source platforms, and build a financially sustainable tech ecosystem within the organization that yields immense value. Its portfolio of support services and solutions is engineered to enable easy integration of open-source tools, and help increase adoption of technologies at enterprise level. The painless management and orchestration enabled by some of its products is key to reaping the benefits of open-source products for organizations.

Check out PANTHEON.tech’s products and services at their website. For more stories like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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This week Mirantis announced the launch of Lens Control Center, a solution for big corporations using Lens Pro to centrally manage and operate their deployments.

Kubernetes Complexity Fatigue Is a Real ProblemAfter Kubernetes became the standard platform for cloud-native computing, the tone shifted markedly as developers and operators hit a wall with the platform’s ceaseless complexity.

Most companies are still experimenting with how to use Kubernetes. For those getting started, Kubernetes sets a high bar. It has a highly dynamic architecture which requires keeping a firm grip over the many moving parts. This opens up rooms for oversights and slips, making the development loop lengthy, cumbersome and error-prone.

Operators’ opinions of Kubernetes oscillate between good and bad. 4 out 5 people say that they find Kubernetes more difficult than the other technologies they have used in past.

For companies using the orchestrator as a de-facto system, it has brough both gains and losses. Statics show that while on one hand inescapable complexity has slowed down productivity, those with adequate support and resources to spare have made huge gains from the platform’s spectrum of services.

As a way out, a lot of companies are resorting to using an assortment of third-party tools to offload portions of the operational overhead.

But using too many software can also stifle productivity and slow down innovation.

Getting Comfortable with KubernetesSome years back, Mirantis launched a product called Lens that offers IT teams working with Kubernetes a chance to avoid dealing with its complexity on a daily basis. Lens was designed to enhance developers’ experience with Kubernetes and drive up mainstream adoption. Today there are over 1 million Lens users that benefit from the application’s low-touch, auto-pilot capabilities.

Lens runs on all major operating systems, namely Linux, Windows and macOS.

Since its launch, Mirantis has pushed out many versions of Lens. With each version, Lens has provided developers a more intuitive experience, and more time to code. Without the repeatable DevOps tasks that no developer loves, Kubernetes has become more and more powerful.

Lens Pro, which released mid-year in 2022, provides users a breadth of advanced capabilities aimed at improving developers’ productivity. These accumulate to fuss-free and seamless management, development, deployment, monitoring and troubleshooting of applications. This ease and speed is consistent across all workloads and clusters.

Lens Pro added on-demand live support, vulnerability reporting, built-in local K8s cluster, and easy setup of container image scanning, to the platform’s existing capabilities.

The All New Lens Control CentralOnce again, Mirantis is flexing its Lens’ muscle, this time, with the release of the Lens Control Center. The Lens Control Center provides large corporations the ability to centrally manage their Lens Pro deployments.

The new product comes with a bundle of features designed to improve network control and enable easier management.

Lens Control Center adds support for SAML and OIDCSecurity gets tighter with Lens Control Center’s Single Sign-On (SSO) integration, enabling individuals to sign in securely into Lens using credentials generated by identity management services like Active Directory and Okta.

Where disparate policies create operational issues causing tension and friction between teams, Lens Control Center enables centralized control. This allows teams to manage Lens configurations and Lens Pro features centrally across users. With it, Lens Pro features can be centrally turned on and off making sure that teams enjoy a consistent experience across the board.

Lens Control Center also allows business divisions to consolidate bills. With its a single pane-of-glass view of the customer accounts, teams can control feature configurations, and mange billing centrally in a coherent fashion.

Better enforcement of network security policies is ensured with a new feature that restricts Lens from connecting to the Internet for all outbound traffic where policy forbids it. This is particularly helpful in maintaining air-tight security that highly regulated industries need.

In ConclusionDespite advances in software management and operations, Kubernetes is still out of reach of many companies, on account of operational complexity. Lens Pro is designed to undo these barriers and expose the intelligent and useful parts of the platform to the users. Lens Control Center provides teams greater firepower. With its advanced controls, users can further eliminate management pains, and get more out of Len Pro.

For more information, check out Mirantis’ website. For more stories like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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Raymond Hendrix is the owner of Wi-Fi Wise International and one of our newest Field Day delegates. He started in IT after obtaining a degree in economics with a focus on databases. Raymond served in the Dutch military, where he gained expertise in electronic warfare and expanded his IT knowledge through training. His interest in RF and antennas stemmed from his experience operating a powerful jamming vehicle. Raymond’s favorite aspect of his work is making Wi-Fi solutions seamlessly function for customers. However, a significant challenge he faces, along with other Wi-Fi engineers, is obtaining clear communication from clients. Raymond acknowledges that effective communication skills are crucial in his field, even though IT professionals tend to be more focused on technical aspects. Attending Mobility Field Day, Raymond looks forward to exploring the latest advancements in the industry, assessing their practicality and real-world use cases. When asked about an alternative career, he expresses an interest in forestry work and even reveals a talent for axe throwing. You can see more of Raymond and Mobility Field Day 9 on the Tech Field Day website or YouTube channel.

Connect with RaymondRaymond Hendrix is the owner of Wi-Fi Wise International. You can connect with Raymond on Twitter or on LinkedIn. Find out more about what he does over on the Wi-Fi Wise International website.

Transcript from the InterviewRaymond Hendrix: I’m Raymond Hendrix, owner of Wi-Fi Wise International

Tom Hollingsworth: All right Raymond you’re one of our new delegates here at Mobility Field Day and we’re very excited to get to know you a little bit better. So why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do right now

Raymond: so who I am, as I said I’m the owner of Wi-Fi Wise which is a company which focuses on the RF side of things of communication. So we we started in in Wi-Fi now transitioning into other technologies as

well like WAN, but we try to stay clear of all the other layers. We do need to know of course about, for example, DNS because it’s always DNS when stuff doesn’t work. We try to focus on the wireless side of things.

Tom: So not everybody starts out doing IT. How did you get into the IT space?

Raymond: Well I did start out in the IT space but I… after I did my, well I think a bachelor-ish a degree, um for economics and which I had an in-depth I think the English word is in IT so it did databases and stuff. And then I got drafted in the Dutch military so and I kind of liked it so I stuck around for six years. I did training and did electronic warfare over there and then expanded my IT knowledge, military paid for a lot of training. I did my MCC so started with NT35 back in the day, learned about token ring networking, but in electronic warfare I had this big vehicle which was a jamming vehicle and it had 16 kilowatts of EIRP. So I always tell students as well like 16,000 Watts we heat our food with a thousand Watts now we’re doing Wi-Fi with a hundred milliwatts so different in power but that is what got me interested in RF, in antennas, and so that’s why I got started in IT.

Tom: So what’s your favorite thing about what you do?

Raymond: That for the customer it automagically works.

Tom: I like that! But obviously making it work magically doesn’t happen every time the same way. What are some of the challenges that you face in what you do?

Raymond: I think the biggest challenge, but that’s not just for me but probably every Wi-Fi engineer, is getting clear requirement from the customer.

Tom: Now I’m assuming that requires a lot of communication skills being able to ask the right questions but also being able to understand that maybe the answers aren’t where you need to be and find a different way to ask that question?

Raymond: Yeah and as IT people we’re kind of autistic, right? So communication might, even though we’re in in wireless communication, people to people communication might not be our strong suit so getting that information from the customer is most challenging.

Tom: Right and a lot of communication happens here at Mobility Field Day when we get our presentations. What are some of the things you’re most excited to see while you’re here?

Raymond: Um well I’m just excited to be here and to see the the newest and latest and greatest and just soak it all in. But also um trying to clear the marketing fluff and get down to, okay, what’s the actual use case can we use it and is it usable

Tom: Yeah, that’s kind of what we do around here and I’m glad that that’s something you’re kind of interested in. Now let’s just step back for a minute, if you weren’t doing this job, if you weren’t involved in IT, what would you be doing?

Raymond: I always thought forestry work would be nice, a lumberjack or like, yeah, stuff like that.

Tom: Yeah it’d be fun. You learn how to swing an axe, fell a tree.

Raymond: Yeah I’ve done that at when we had a trainer as an account trainer at GT Hills Place, we threw axes and turns out I have a talent for it so.

Tom: That’s impressive not only are you great at training wi-fi people but you might be able to use an axe in creative ways if you have to.

Raymond: I can.

Tom: Well, Raymond, thank you very much for being a part of Mobility Field Day we’re very excited to have you here. If you’d like to see more interviews like this, you can head over to our website at gestaltit.com and if you’d like to learn a little bit more about the interview that Raymond and many other people are involved in head over to techfieldday.com and look for Mobility Field Day 9 which will be streaming live May 17th, 18th, and 19th. We’ll see you there.

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Companies seeking a secure and reliable network connectivity at the edge today have an extraordinary number of vendors to choose from. The competition gets intense as more enterprises dump traditional WAN technologies. But not everyone has the same set of requirements or priorities.

At the recent Edge Field Day event, Mako Networks showcased the Mako System – a solution purpose-built to solve networking problems in retail sites. The presentations revealed how Mako is taking a different approach to networking at the edge.

Tuning into the Specific Needs The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and secure access service edge (SASE) markets have experienced significant growth in the recent years due to various changes in the IT landscape. One of the most significant shifts has been the transition away from private WAN connections such as MPLS, toward a public WAN-first strategy consisting of broadband and wireless internet services.

Despite facing cut-throat competition, not many vendors have chosen to differentiate themselves by honing in on the unique challenges of retail, MNSPs, healthcare and other verticals they serve. These industries face steep challenges relating to security, privacy and regulatory concerns that only the most purpose-built network solutions can help overcome.

For instance, businesses in the retail industry need to ensure the protection of customer data and comply with PCI DSS standards, while MNSPs require a secure and manageable distributed network management solution. Healthcare organizations have complex and strict regulatory and compliance requirements like HIPAA to meet to ensure patient data protection.

Companies that have designed their products to squarely meet these unique needs have a distinct leg up over others in the race.

Separate from the Rest of the PackOne company that has plugged significant effort towards addressing these challenges, and in the process differentiating itself from others, is Mako Networks. Mako was founded in 2000, long before the terms “SD-WAN” and “SASE” were coined. Over the last two decades, it has curved a niche for itself in the networking space by committing to the needs of what they describe as “distributed enterprises”.

Working closely with clients across the retail sector, Mako has developed a deep understanding of both the business and technical barriers.

The Mako stack, from network devices to the management system, was the first to receive a PCI DSS Level 1 certification. This feature alone dials down the risks, overheads and efforts of achieving full compliance.

In a time when businesses are under constant attack, this steadfast focus on security is critical to maintaining a strong security front. The cost of compliance alone, in time and money, takes away from organizations the ability to produce better products and services for their customers.

Everything Expected and MoreMako offers a comprehensive set of network appliances and services, including security gateways, managed switches and access points. Ethernet and LTE/5G capable security gateways serve as the edge router, providing a full set of SD-WAN and SASE capabilities.

One of the unique features that Mako has incorporated in its hardware design to receive PCI certification is the removal of local control and reset features. This ensures that tampering is limited to just turning off the device.

The Mako System is centered around a cloud-based platform called the Mako Central Management System (CMS). This hosted network management plane provides full configuration, observability and operational management of all Mako products from security gateways to access points.

Administrative functions are controlled not only based on role, but also by ‘network function’. This allows the service provider or brand to delegate management of back-office control to others such as franchise operators.

Closing ThoughtsProfessionals working with SD-WAN and SASE offerings on a daily basis will find Mako Networks’ almost obsessive focus on differentiating their products impressive. They have uniquely positioned themselves as a must-have solution for retail environments and sectors where governance and compliance are critical requirements. The multi-operator management model which enables independent management of different network zones at a site is a feature not encountered on other like products. Hopefully, more companies will follow Mako’s lead in targeting features that support specialized use cases in the future.

Mako Networks provided a detailed brief of their solution stack at the recent Edge Field Day event, if you are interested in getting more information.

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Enterprise IT is constantly oscillating between centralized and distributed, and we're currently in a period of repatriation of workloads from the cloud. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast features three delegates from Cloud Field Day 17, Joey D'Andoni, Eric Wright, and Jason Benecicic, discussing the reality of repatriation of cloud applications with Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT. Pundits constantly tout the money they save by repatriating from public cloud, but this might not be the best choice especially for smaller organizations. The only way to ensure functionality between on-prem, hybrid, and public cloud is to use them and use each where it is the best solution. Repatriation is especially challenging for today's SaaS-oriented businesses, since most of these solutions can't be run on-prem. But even workloads that can be run outside the cloud will likely require re-architecting to run locally. Yet many companies are developing software to ease the transition to and from the cloud, and these make it much easier to repatriate.

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The edge isn’t the same thing to everyone: Some talk about equipment for use outside the datacenter, while others talk about equipment that lives in someone else’s location. The difference between this far edge and near edge is the topic of Utilizing Edge, with Andrew Green and Alastair Cooke, Research Analysts at Gigaom, and Stephen Foskett. Andrew is drawing a line at 20 ms roundtrip, the point at which a user feels that a resource is remote rather than local. From the perspective of an application or service, this limit requires a different approach to delivery. One approach is to distribute points of presence around the world closer to users, including compute and storage, not just caching. This would entail deploying hundreds of points of presence around the world, and perhaps even more. Technologies like Kubernetes, serverless, and function-as-a-service are being used today, and these are being deployed even beyond service provider locations.

Exploring the Distinction Between Near Edge and Far Edge ComputingIn the latest episode of the Utilizing Edge podcast from Gestalt IT, Stephen Foskett and Alistair Cooke delve into the world of edge computing, specifically focusing on the differentiation between “near edge” and “far edge” solutions. Joined by Andrew Green, a research analyst specializing in edge computing, the podcast examines various infrastructure options for both types of edge computing and highlights the significance of low latency in delivering content and services closer to end users.

Andrew Green sheds light on his work in defining and studying edge computing, with a particular emphasis on latency. He distinguishes near edge as locations that offer a round-trip latency of 20 ms or less, while far edge targets extremely low latency in the microseconds range. The primary objective is to provide content and services in proximity to end users to minimize latency, thus enhancing user experience.

Delivering services closer to end users is crucial for minimizing latency, as simply increasing network speed cannot overcome the limitations of signal propagation delay. Higher latency can negatively impact real-time interactive applications such as gaming. The concept of a unified edge fabric enables service providers to deploy points of presence (PoPs) globally, reducing latency and improving interactivity for users.

Overcoming the challenge of bridging the 20 ms latency threshold has been tackled through the distribution of PoPs globally. This distribution allows users to access services with lower latency regardless of their location, thus enhancing the overall user experience.

The choice of technology at the edge depends on specific use cases. This can involve leveraging existing cloud providers’ offerings or building custom infrastructure for distributed edge locations. Large-scale implementations, such as Kubernetes, are well-suited for running distributed edge applications and accelerating their delivery to end users.

The deployment of edge technologies varies from globally distributed service provider locations to more localized deployments at retail, industrial, or user-level locations. Each deployment state offers distinct benefits, but the feasibility of deploying edge infrastructure extensively is still a matter of discussion and practicality.

The deployment of edge computing is heavily influenced by economic and financial considerations. Edge infrastructure can be placed anywhere along the network, from home routers to last-mile providers. The decision depends on the specific use case and cost efficiency.

Real-world use cases for distributed networks include gaming, media delivery, and video on demand, where minimizing latency and data transfer costs are essential. For applications like video surveillance, processing data locally at the edge is preferable over streaming it to a central location for analysis.

Deploying compute and storage at the edge enables various real-world use cases, such as local video analytics and fraud detection. The advantages include low latency, cost of data transfer, and scalability requirements. With edge computing exhibiting cloud-like behavior, on-demand consumption and scalability are optimized through concepts like cloudbursting. Integrating multiple environments and orchestrating across edge and cloud resources is crucial for seamless connectivity and efficient management.

The concept of an abstracted edge platform is intriguing, spanning from the near edge to the far edge and integrating local processing with cloud services. Intelligent routers with virtualization capabilities are evolving into general-purpose tools, enabling the execution of multiple applications at the edge.

Local processing acts as a data filter, down-sampling and sending only the relevant data for further processing at higher levels. As data generation and processing move closer to the edge, the need for extensive data storage is reduced, with a focus on identifying and retaining valuable data while discarding the rest. Threat detection using AI and machine learning becomes crucial in this context.

This episode of Utilizing Edge offers valuable insights into the world of edge computing, emphasizing the distinction between near edge and far edge solutions. The discussion highlights the significance of low latency in delivering content and services closer to end users. With ongoing advancements and deployments, edge computing continues to evolve, unlocking new possibilities and use cases across various industries.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Alastair Cooke, independent analyst and consultant working with virtualization and data center technologies. Connect with Alastair on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read his articles on his website.
Andrew Green, research analyst at GigaOm. Check out his work on the GigaOm website and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Kerry Kulp, a founding partner at Velaspan, is one of our new delegates for Mobility Field Day 9. Speaking with Tom Hollingsworth, Kerry discusses his various roles in the company, including business leadership, business development, and consulting. He shares his journey into the IT industry, starting with computer training while studying criminal justice and sociology in college. Kerry reminisces about his early days in the wireless and mobility industry and the advancements that have taken place since then. He expresses excitement about attending the event, particularly to hear presentations from the companies on products he is both familiar and unfamiliar with in his day-to-day work. Kerry also talks about the challenges faced at Velaspan, such as searching for the right people with the depth of knowledge in wireless, networking, and security. When asked about his dream job, Kerry jokingly mentions cutting grass but expresses a continued interest in technology, particularly in the field of cybersecurity. Thanks Kerry for being a part of Mobility Field Day 9! You can catch all of the videos from Mobility Field Day on the Tech Field Day website or YouTube Channel.

Connect with KerryKerry Kulp is a founding partner at Velaspan. You can connect with Kerry on Twitter or on LinkedIn and find out more about Velaspan on their website.

Transcript from the InterviewKerry Kulp: I’m Kerry Kulp, founding member of Velaspan.

Tom Hollingsworth: And I am Tom Hollingsworth, event lead for Mobility Field Day. We’re here with Kerry, he is a brand new delegate to Mobility Field Day and we are very excited to meet you. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are. What’s your job role and what do you do?

Kerry: That’s a great question. I wear a lot of hats. As a founding partner of Velaspan I still have to fulfill some business leadership roles, business development roles, presale goals. I have a team of my own that I lead. Also still handle consulting, so some of the more technical side of things. It’s definitely the definition of a man with many hats.

Tom: How did you get into IT?

Kerry: So I started in IT doing computer training. I was actually in college for, of all things, criminal justice and sociology. Had every intention of going into the criminal justice field, planned to be a cop, maybe the FBI or Secret Service, something like that. I kind of always had a knack for IT and things like that and I had the opportunity to do some computer training, and I was good at it. From there I went into network engineering at a local ISP. From there, all the way back in 1998, is when I got my first job in the wireless and mobility industry.

Tom: That’s back in the day, that’s kind of around when it started.

Kerry: I was very much around when it started. That was still proprietary radio systems, we were doing a lot of prox and range LAN, deployments in hospitals. It was kind of crazy, we to deploy a proxem access point and put a proxem radio card in the device. Those were the days.

Tom: You’re taking me back. Now what are you most excited to see at the event this week?

Kerry: besides the people, because I’ve gotten to know, at least, a handful of the folks, the other delegates. I’ve known them for many years. Besides that I am just really excited to hear the presentations, learn more from, some of them that I know a lot about, like Cisco, Juniper, some of those. But maybe more importantly some that I don’t spend as much time with. I think those are going to be the really interesting ones, and that’s the Fortinets, the RUCKUSes (RUCKUS Networks), things like that that I just don’t spend that much time with on a daily basis.

Tom: That’s awesome. You’re in a very unique role in Velaspan, what are some of the challenges that you face regularly?

Kerry: Some of the challenges… We’re lucky. A couple of my partners that run our service delivery team have done a tremendous job of building a process for onboarding new resources so they have a tremendously successful process to bring in really green engineers, folks that might not have any experience in the industry and then build them very quickly into folks that can go out and do site surveys, do some basic design. Obviously some higher level leadership to guide them and mentor them, but they do a great job on that side. On my side, the kind of the consulting and managing services side, we really haven’t figured that part out as well yet. It’s a little bit harder to find the folks who have the depth of knowledge to kind of roll right in and start doing things meaningfully. So really its personnel, right now, and it’s trying to find folks that have enough experience on both the wireless side, networking side, security side, ranging across so many technology platforms and vendors, its just hard to find.

Tom: I like that approach because it cultivates the right mindset, it cultivates the right training set to someone to where they need to be in their career. It lends well to the fact that so many people speak highly of the work that you do. Putting yourself in a different set of shoes, If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing, what is your dream job?

Kerry: Wow that is a tough one. I tell people I cut grass, but I do that because if I tell them what I really do, they always have home network questions that they want answered so when I say I cut grass, nobody really has any questions. But that would probably rank pretty highly up there as something I would like to do. It’s kind of, it’s immediately rewarding. You take a messy grass field and turn it into something nice. But all kidding aside I would probably still do something in technology. We’re branching out a little bit into some cybersecurity stuff. We’ve always kind of done it for you know, probably about two thirds, three quarters of Velaspan’s history. We’ve been doing some cybersecurity stuff but not formally. We’re formalizing that now. It’s kind of got me excited. I’d probably still be doing a lot of the same things, just maybe with a cybersecurity focus. And that’s if I’m not cutting grass.

Tom: I appreciate the time today Kerry and thank you for teaching us a little bit about who you are and a little bit about what you do. For those of you out there that are interested, you can check out more of these Meet The Delegate interviews on our website at Gestalt IT dot com. If you want to learn more about the event that Kerry will be attending, check out Tech Field Day dot com and search for Mobility Field Day and we’d love to see you online.

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Amid record adoption of automation in factory floors, enterprises in industrial sectors are increasingly considering private 5G LAN. Ostensibly, a 5G LAN provides what no other network has before – coverage without blind spots or service drops.

At the recent Mobility Field Day event in California, Celona showcased the Celona 5G LAN.

A Silicon Valley startup, Celona was formed four years ago by founders of mixed pedigree in cellular and Wi-Fi. As a result, from get go, the focus has been on the private wireless sector.

Backed by Tier-1 investors like Qualcomm and NTT, the company is growing at a fast pace with its wireless solutions gathering interest of a growing worldwide audience.

In the presentation, Celona showed how it has hardened its offering to better serve the customers.

A Trend Impacting IndustriesAcross industries – from healthcare to education to utilities – there is a prevailing lack of consistent network connectivity in outdoor spaces and extended areas, particularly in parts where signal reception is poor. This is increasingly driving industries towards private wireless alternatives for mission-critical use cases.

“A lot of the need for private wireless within the enterprise, in the last three years, has been driven by what, internally at Celona, we call “uncarpeted or non-carpeted enterprise”. These are industrial verticals like manufacturing, logistics, transportation, construction, oil and gas – where you require to provide connectivity typically in a large outdoor setting where the RF environments are not very friendly. Hence the existing solutions that they have just don’t cut it,” said Puneet Shetty, VP of Product Management at Celona.

Inside offices, Wi-Fi has provided fast-paced, reliable connectivity for people sitting at screens. But those working on factory floors have, for the most part, been lacking the technology to keep pace with their corporate peers.

But now the OT workforce is set to experience digital growth of their own. Advances in sectors like AI, IoT and robotics have changed consumption patterns of technology in critical industries, indicating an industrial automation boom in the horizon.

Demands for robots and other automation solutions in factories and warehouses have soared, and companies running these environments, are overwhelmingly falling off the non-automotive wagon. AI-powered cranes, health-monitoring sensors, augmented reality shopping, etc. are rapidly changing the landscape.

“Warehouses and manufacturing floors are going through a level of automation that requires them to introduce devices and applications that ask for a certain level of predictability, reliability, and SLA that their current network infrastructure is not able to provide – unless they actually wire these things. But in terms of automation, they’re really trying to cut the wire as much as possible,” noted Shetty.

Problems like poor outdoor coverage, service disruptions and ineffective roaming have made existing networks “ a burning platform” to deploy advanced technologies on, “leading companies to look at alternatives such as private 4G and private 5G.”

Celona 5G LANLeveling the playing field for these industries is Celona. As a pioneer in private wireless, Celona’s goal is to provide a network that is easy to bring up, use and manage at scale. The result is a 5G LAN that provides uninterrupted mobility, strong wireless security, and consistent coverage across noisy and unfriendly outdoor locations, and operates like the corporate Wi-Fi.

Celona’s 5G LAN is engineered to deploy in extended outdoor places, production environments, and uncarpeted areas that make low-quality RF environments.

Celona has assembled a fairly broad 5G portfolio since their last year’s presentation at Mobility Field Day. The list includes physical and digital SIMs, indoor/outdoor APs, a 5G LAN operating system, and the Celona Orchestrator for LAN operations.

“We have built a solution from scratch that has all the different pieces that you need to run and operate your own private wireless network,” said Shetty.

Celona has recently added high-performance 5G access points to its portfolio. Available in both the US and global markets, the APs provide interference-free 5G coverage in both indoor and outdoor locations.

Celona’s 5G APs promise the same ease of deployment and deterministic performance that rings through all of Celona’s portfolio, making them the perfect devices for rugged industrial environments.

The Latest Version of Celona OrchestratorAcross the board, Celona’s products have the Celona software footprint enabling a coherent operation model, akin to a Wi-Fi network’s. The Celona Orchestrator, which is the brains of the platform, offers a breadth of administrative capabilities for easy and effortless deployment, management and operations of the LAN.

The Celona Orchestrator DashboardThe latest version of the Orchestrator includes one-click inventory onboarding and zero-touch bring up from day 1. It has a built-in channel planning tool for bringing up the cellular network in the orchestrator. Device Experience Analytics provides a holistic view of the state of the overall network, combined with device analytics.

One of the most notable changes that Celona is bringing to the platform is turning over more control to the customers. In response to a growing demand for autonomy in MSPs that serve enterprises with low or no on-site skills, the new Orchestrator offers advanced troubleshooting, easy configuration, diagnostic tools and self-service workflows. These allow users to be high touch with the solution without the support and assistance of field experts and engineering teams.

Wrapping UpA bulk of the world’s economy balances on digital transformation, and it ties directly to wireless networks. In industrial environments where there is a burst of noise and signal reception is weak, a private 5G LAN augments the network, providing 10 times more bandwidth, ultra-low latency for faster compute, and blazing fast speeds. In plain-speak, all these amount to high-quality Internet access necessary for OT adoption. Celona’s private 5G solution promises all these with lower deployment and maintenance hassles, and a lower housekeeping. It is designed to serve a wide variety of use cases and accelerate time-to-market, enabling a rapid-paced digital transformation.

For more information on Celona’s private 5G solution, be sure to watch Celona’s full presentation and the demo in the following session from the recent Mobility Field Day event on the Tech Field Day website.

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This week we invited “Mr. Backup”, W. Curtis Preston, to join us on the most recent episode of our weekly Rundown of the week’s news, focusing on the escalating ransomware landscape. These attacks continue to wreak havoc across various sectors, targeting critical industries and inflicting substantial financial and operational losses.

Ransomware EverywhereFederal authorities have issued warnings about the surge in cyber attacks exploiting high severity vulnerabilities, notably within Veeam software, which not only allows unauthorized access but also amplifies the risk of ransomware deployment. The implications are dire, particularly for healthcare organizations heavily reliant on Veeam for robust data protection, exacerbating concerns regarding these attacks.

Moreover, specific incidents like the ransomware attack on Dole have demonstrated the severe consequences, resulting in a direct cost impact of $10.5 million. Although their data protection system performed as designed, the subsequent restoration process incurred an additional cost of approximately $6 million. This hefty price tag, coupled with the operational disruptions endured while their systems were down, further underscores the detrimental aftermath of ransomware attacks.

Another case in point is the ongoing assault on the Dallas municipal court building, which has not only disrupted legal proceedings but also potentially exposed sensitive information. Regrettably, these instances are not isolated, as demonstrated by a ransomware group’s assault on Costa Rica’s federal infrastructure. In a single blow, the group incapacitated crucial federal agencies akin to the FBI, CIA, and Supreme Court, even targeting their backup systems. The repercussions persist even a year later, with Costa Rica still grappling to rebuild their federal infrastructure from scratch. These alarming events underscore the importance of contemplating the broader ramifications—ransomware attacks threaten not only financial losses but also the very existence of an organization.

What Can Be Done About Ransomware?W. Curtis Preston emphasized the criticality of understanding the gravity of the ransomware landscape. The potential for a company’s demise looms large, making it imperative to secure backup infrastructure as the last line of defense. Safeguarding the backup system requires implementing preventive measures to detect and prevent ransomware, alongside bolstering overall infrastructure security. One key aspect is to disallow direct access to the backup system from active directories, minimizing vulnerabilities. Additionally, data stored for backups should possess a high level of immutability, rendering it resistant to unauthorized alterations. One recommended approach is storing at least one backup copy in the cloud using write-protected immutable storage.

In the face of the alarming number of Veeam customers who have yet to apply the necessary patch, Preston expressed his disappointment. He urges these organizations to take immediate action by reaching out to their backup vendors for guidance on implementing essential security measures. By leveraging the expertise of backup vendors, organizations can enhance the security of their backups and fortify their defenses against ransomware threats. In a landscape where company survival is at stake, comprehensive security measures and prompt response are paramount to mitigating the risks and consequences of ransomware attacks.

The Evolving Nature of RansomwareStephen Foskett raised concerns about the widespread prevalence of unpatched and outdated systems, emphasizing the need for proactive measures. He called attention to the disparity in responses between physical attacks and cyber attacks, highlighting the urgent need for a shift in mindset and treating cyber attacks with the same gravity. Stephen anticipates that governments may eventually intervene more actively in cyber attacks, but acknowledged the potential escalation and advises IT professionals to take responsibility for protecting their systems.

The conversation then turned to the evolving nature of ransomware attacks, with Stephen reflecting on the growing trend of double extortion tactics. W. Curtis Preston discussed how threat actors leverage data exfiltration as leverage, threatening to release sensitive information unless the ransom is paid. He disapproves of paying ransoms, as it perpetuates the cycle and incentivizes further attacks. Instead, he emphasized the importance of having robust backup systems and implementing measures like DNS, DHCP, and IPAM (DDI) and intrusion detection prevention systems (IDPS) to detect and prevent data exfiltration.

Preston acknowledged the challenge posed by attacks that involve the extortion of sensitive information, highlighting the difficulty in remediation compared to attacks that solely rely on encryption. He stressed the need for organizations to invest in DDI systems and proactive security measures to address data exfiltration attempts. However, he expressed frustration with companies neglecting fundamental security practices, such as enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) and implementing proper password management.

Take Action to Protect and PrepareIn conclusion, Preston emphasized the significance of implementing basic security measures, including patch management, password hygiene, and MFA, as they can significantly mitigate a large percentage of attacks. Foskett concluded by emphasizing the importance of taking control over what can be controlled and preparing for the inevitability of encountering ransomware attacks in the future.

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Be ready for a broad overview of modern enterprise cloud technology as we’re delighted to invite you to tune in to Cloud Field Day 17 taking place May 31 and June 1, 2023. In an era where the cloud has revolutionized industries, cyber security, platform operations, data protection and true integration take center stage. At Cloud Field Day we’ll immerse ourselves in the world of cloud technology along with independent technical content creators and pioneering companies.

Event ScheduleThe event begins Wednesday, May 31 at 9AM Eastern with HYCU, who’s hosting us at their Boston office. Join us as we delve into HYCU Protégé, data protection as a service, and Rcloud, the first low-code development platform for data protection. We’ll see how HYCU brings data protection everywhere including key platforms like Atlassian, AWS, and Google Cloud. Continuing the journey at 11:30 AM, Morpheus Data will share their expertise on the transition from cloud management to platform operations. Discover how Morpheus fosters enhanced connectivity across developers, security, operations, and finance teams, unifying hybrid private cloud environments, and spanning VMware, Nutanix, AWS, and Azure. At 2:30 PM, RackN will take the stage, shedding light on the operations side of platform engineering. Gain valuable insights into ensuring reliability, availability, and speed with RackN Digital ReBar Infrastructure as Code.

On Thursday, June 1, we start out at 8AM ET with Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, presenting an exciting session on real time detection and protection against ransomware. Learn more about the recently launched Zerto 10 Platform for an innovative solution that combines cutting edge technology with robust data security measures. At 10:30 AM, Couchbase will bring National Cloud Database Day to the audience with a discussion on their groundbreaking Capella platform, architecture insights, and compelling customer stories. We’ll also get a live demo showing the Couchbase Cloud Database platform. Then at 1:30 PM JetStream Software will demonstrate the cloud’s transformative impact on disaster recovery and cost-effective data storage. Learn about the seamless integration with Microsoft Azure VMware services and Azure NetApp files empowering organizations to optimize resources and enhance operational efficiency.

Watch the Sessions LiveAll of our sessions are broadcast live on LinkedIn with recordings available there all week long. For those of you unable to join us live, all of our sessions are recorded and shared on our YouTube channel. Engage with us and the rest of the cloud community by joining the conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Mastodon using the #CFD17. To stay informed and explore the expertise of our independent technical experts, we invite you to visit TechFieldDay.com. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for a wealth of Field Day content. For real time updates and thought provoking discussions, Follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn.

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Ransomware attacks continue to pose a significant threat across various sectors, with recent incidents targeting critical industries and causing substantial financial and operational damages. Federal authorities have issued warnings about a surge in cyberattacks exploiting a high-severity vulnerability in Veeam software that enables unauthorized access and raises the risk of data heft and ransomware deployment. With healthcare organizations heavily reliant on Veeam software for data protection, the implications of these attacks are particularly concerning. But the impact of ransomware attacks extends beyond healthcare, as demonstrated by recent incidents faced by companies like Dole, which incurred $10.5 million in direct costs following a ransomware attack, and the ongoing attack on the Dallas Municipal Court Building, disrupting legal proceedings and potentially exposing sensitive personal and case-related information. Since we have an expert in data protection joining us today, let’s take a closer look at the face of ransomware. This and more on the Rundown.

1:06 – Micron is Kicked Out of China (Again)

The recent ruling by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) to prevent Micron Technology products from being used in critical information systems marks a significant development in the ongoing trade war between China and the United States. This move, stemming from allegations of cybersecurity crimes, not only impacts Micron but also highlights the broader complexities surrounding global semiconductor supply chains and the pursuit of self-sufficiency in key technologies. What are the implications of Micron’s exclusion from Chinese markets, and what does this mean for the ongoing financial struggle between China and the west?

Read More: Micron Closed Out of Some China Markets

5:07 – Cohesity Partners with Google Cloud for Data Insights and Security

Cohesity recently announced a significant expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud. The collaboration aims to leverage large language models (LLMs) and advanced AI technologies to enhance data insights and strengthen data security. The joint effort was unveiled during Cohesity’s Catalyst virtual conference, where the companies highlighted their focus on generative AI, data analytics, and the expansion of the Data Security Alliance. Will this have real impact or is it just more AI noise?

Read More: Cohesity RAGs large language models coming through Google Cloud

8:17 – Cloud, AI, and Business Messenger Unit Spun out from Alibaba

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has announced plans to spin off its intelligence group, which includes its cloud, AI, and business messenger units, as an independent publicly listed company. Alibaba saus this will unlock value from its businesses and attract external investors, but it is surprising that Alibaba Cloud, which dominates the Chinese market, would be spun out. What’s happening here?

Read More: Alibaba to spin off its cloud, AI and business messenger unit

10:36 – Microsoft Builds In the AI

Microsoft Build 2023 was all about AI integration. Windows 11 will feature an AI Copilot for text-related tasks, while Microsoft 365 Copilot now supports plug-ins, including Teams messages extensions and Power Platform connectors. Additionally, Edge browser will integrate 365 Copilot, Windows Terminal will incorporate an AI-powered chatbot, and of course there’s Bing, which becomes the default search engine for ChatGPT, with expanded plug-in support. Microsoft is certainly leaning into AI!

Read More: The 5 biggest announcements from Microsoft Build 2023

13:10 – BlueCat Acquires Men&Mice DDI Platform

BlueCat Networks has acquired Men&Mice, a recent Tech Field Day presenter with an industry-leading DDI platform. The acquisition strengthens BlueCat’s position in the market and allows them to offer advanced network tools to organizations of all sizes. This move comes in response to the increasing demand for DDI management, and fits well with BlueCat’s portfolio for mid-market and enterprise organizations. What’s your take?

Read More: BlueCat acquires Men&Mice to boost its industry-leading DDI platform

Tech Field Day 27 Presentation: Men&Mice Presents at Tech Field Day 27

15:37 – Supreme Court Sides with Tech Platforms on Section 230

The recent rulings by the US Supreme Court in cases involving Google and Twitter have reaffirmed the legal protections for major tech platforms. The court found that these platforms cannot be held liable for the content posted by users, specifically in relation to terrorism-related content. Let’s consider the importance of Section 230, a telecommunications law that shields tech companies from liability and the implications of these rulings, the ongoing debate around Section 230, and the potential impact on the future of social media moderation. What does this mean for the future of social platforms?

Read More: Supreme Court sides with Twitter, Google over tech platform liability

18:33 – Pliops Plus Redis Equals for In-Memory Performance

Pliops introduced an efficient Redis cluster powered by XDP-Rocks, delivering in-memory performance and SSD-like cost economics. The collaboration optimizes Redis on flash performance using hardware acceleration, allowing economical scaling of application data footprints. Pliops is also expanding its partnership with phoenixNAP, offering Pliops-powered Bare Metal Cloud instances for Redis on Flash clusters, enabling faster data processing, sub-millisecond latency, and significant cost savings. When you saw Pliops at Cloud Field Day a few years ago, would you have predicted this?

Read More: New Redis Cluster from Pliops Accelerates Redis Services, Delivers In-Memory Type Performance and SSD-like Cost Economics

21:28 – Ransomware Rampage

Read More: Dallas Municipal Court Building Closed This Week Due to Ongoing Ransomware Attack

Read More: Dole incurs $10.5M in direct costs from February ransomware attack

Read More: Feds Warn of Rise in Attacks Involving Veeam Software Flaw

36:49 – The Weeks Ahead

Cloud Field Day 17 May 31 – June 1, 2023

Cisco Live US June 6-7, 2023

Security Field Day June 28-29, 2023

The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. It broadcasts live on Facebook every Wednesday at 12:30pm ET. To watch along, “Like” our Facebook page. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

Episode TranscriptStephen Foskett: Welcome to the Gestalt IT Rundown! Each time we meet, we run down the IT news of the week with a variable degree of snarkiness. I’m your host, Stephen Foskett, and joining me today is Tom Hollingsworth. Wait, that’s not Tom! Who is that? Hey hey, it’s W Curtis Preston. Welcome to the show, Mr. Curtis!

W. Curtis Preston: Very much not Tom, but I’m glad to be here.

Stephen Foskett: It’s nice to have you here, my friend. You and I have been friends for a long, long time. I’ve always wanted to get you on the show, and I’m thrilled to have you join us. Today is National Brothers Day, and you’re like a brother to me.

W. Curtis Preston: You know, it’s also National Scavenger Hunt Day. I love a good scavenger hunt. How about you? And what about Yucatán Shrimp Day? What do you think?

Stephen Foskett: Yucatán shrimp sounds kind of yucky to me, but I don’t know. Maybe they’re delicious. I’m gonna take my brother on a scavenger hunt for Yucatán shrimp. But in the meantime, let’s turn to some of the news of the week.

W. Curtis Preston: The recent ruling by the Cyberspace Administration of China to prevent Micron technology products from being used in critical information systems marks a significant development in the ongoing trade war between China and the United States. This move, stemming from allegations of cybersecurity crimes, not only impacts Micron but also highlights the broader complexity surrounding global semiconductor supply chains and the pursuit of self-sufficiency in key technologies. What are the implications of Micron’s exclusion from the Chinese market, and what does this mean for the ongoing financial struggle between China and the West? What do you think, Stephen?

Stephen Foskett: Yeah, it’s an interesting story. When I first heard wind of this, I was really scratching my head because I’m saying, you know, what is Micron again? So Micron is one of the leading producers of DRAM and flash memory, in competition with two Korean companies, SK Hynix and Samsung. What does Micron have to do with cybersecurity, and what kind of possible cybersecurity threat could there be from Micron DRAM and flash memory products? I mean, we’re not even talking necessarily assembled components here; we’re talking literally memory chips. And then it occurred to me that this has nothing to do with Micron’s products whatsoever. In fact, as my good friend Jim Handy points out, this is really more about the trade war between China and the US than it is about anything else. Previously, China did block Micron products very verbally and vocally, and then didn’t really block them at all once it became obvious what that would do to production. Now, I don’t know what this is going to mean for Micron overall, but I will say that maybe this is more bluster than it is reality.

Stephen Foskett: So, a couple of things to know. Number one, this only blocks the use of Micron products in what the CAC is calling “critical sensitive systems.” This doesn’t block China from importing or using Micron memory or SSDs in products for export or even just general products, at least that’s my read on this for use in China. It really is focused on blocking, basically striking a blow against a US company that’s supplying a critical component to Chinese intelligence and systems. Frankly, it strikes me that Micron was picked mainly because the other choice would have been Intel. And maybe China didn’t want to block Intel products, even though many of those are restricted now from the China market. I should also mention, as I said, this is not the first time that Micron has been blocked, and the other time didn’t have much impact overall. Micron themselves stated that the most impact it would have would be about a 25% reduction in the company’s product consumption, and probably a lot less than that. And also, I should mention that the other companies that I mentioned, Samsung and SK Hynix, well, they don’t seem all that optimistic and positive about one of their big key competitors being blocked in this market. And that’s because the memory RAM and flash market, although it is competitive, I think that there’s an understanding that there needs to be competition, there needs to be multiple suppliers in this market, and no one wants to see their market hit by basically a political game. So frankly, I really don’t see this being more than another round of bluster in the international relations game and not too much impact on Micron.

Stephen Foskett: Cohesity recently announced a significant expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud. The collaboration aims to leverage large language models and advanced AI technologies to enhance data insights and strengthen data security. The joint effort was unveiled during Cohesity’s Catalyst virtual conference, where the companies emphasized their focus on generative AI, data analytics, and the expansion of the data security alliance. We’ve been hearing a lot about large language models in cybersecurity, but you know this market better than me. What does this mean? Is this really impactful, or is it just more AI noise?

W. Curtis Preston: Well, when I saw the story, my first reaction was, “Oh, more AI news.” But I do think it’s a big deal, especially since it’s encroaching on my area of expertise. Machine learning has been used in backup and recovery technology for a while, but crossing over into the AI world is significant. The difference lies in using data to train the model. AI goes beyond just finding patterns, and Cohesity is talking about ransomware anomaly detection, which is a major concern. Detecting threats in the backup system is crucial, although it’s preferable to address them before they reach that stage. Cohesity is also exploring threat intelligence, data classification, and predictive capacity planning, which are all important aspects.

W. Curtis Preston: There’s also mention of a retrieval augmented generation model, and I’m curious to see what that entails. It could potentially assist in data retrieval and restores, but I’ll reserve judgment until I have more information. It’s commendable that Cohesity is openly using AI, unlike some other vendors who claim AI but mainly refer to AI/ML.

W. Curtis Preston: Let’s take a look at the next thing here. Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has announced plans to spin off its intelligence group, which includes its cloud, AI, and business messenger units, as an independent publicly listed company. Alibaba believes this move will unlock value from its businesses and attract external investors. However, it’s surprising that Alibaba Cloud, which dominates the Chinese market, would be spun out. What do you think is happening here, Stephen?

Stephen Foskett: On the surface, it may appear as though a new competitor for Google and Amazon is emerging, potentially making a big impact in China. But upon further reading, it seems that this decision says more about Alibaba and its recent success or lack thereof in the Chinese consumer market. You may be familiar with Alibaba as a website where you can get anything delivered from China, but it’s also essentially the Amazon of China, including AWS. Alibaba Cloud is a powerful and versatile cloud computing environment extensively used by various applications in the Chinese market.

Stephen Foskett: The spin-off may seem peculiar because why would a company separate such a valuable component? Well, imagine Amazon separating out AWS. Actually, yeah, they might do it for similar reasons. Essentially, what Alibaba is doing here is a financial maneuver. They are spinning off the cloud business as a separate company while retaining partial ownership. This allows them to generate additional revenue from the most valuable part of their business, which is the cloud, and protect it from the potential impacts of slowing consumer spending, shifts in consumer demand, and changes in cloud usage in the Chinese market.

Stephen Foskett: In conclusion, I wouldn’t read too much into this other than it being a strategic move to safeguard their cloud business and generate more income. It likely indicates that the economic slowdown experienced in the US is also affecting China, including Chinese cloud companies.

Stephen Foskett: Microsoft Build 2023 was all about AI integration. Windows 11 will feature an AI copilot for text-related tasks. Microsoft 365 copilot now supports plug-ins, including Teams, Messages, Extensions, and Power Platform Connectors. Moreover, the Edge browser will integrate a 365 copilot, and even Windows Terminal will incorporate an AI-powered chatbot. Additionally, Bing becomes the default search engine for ChatGPT with expanded plug-in support. Microsoft is clearly embracing AI and labeling everything as “copilot.” So what’s going on here?

W. Curtis Preston: It’s intriguing that Bing is mentioned as the default search engine for ChatGPT. This caught my attention because just recently, Bill Gates mentioned that AI would eventually replace search engines in the near future. This interesting phrase stood out to me. Microsoft is certainly leaning into AI, but the question remains: how significant is this development? Moreover, when using interactive AI like ChatGPT, users need to actively engage with it to fully benefit from its functionalities. Even if they make the functionality of ChatGPT or something similar available to the average user, the benefits will be minimal unless users specifically interact with it as they would with ChatGPT. The success of this integration will depend on how well users embrace and utilize it. It’s uncertain if the average user is ready to engage with an AI chatbot. Personally, I have interacted quite a bit with ChatGPT and find it fascinating, but I’m unsure if the average user is prepared for that level of interaction. Only time will tell.

Stephen Foskett: So let’s talk about BlueCat Networks acquiring Men&Mice, a recent tech field presenter with an industry-leading DDI platform. The acquisition strengthens BlueCat’s position in the market and allows them to offer advanced network tools to organizations of all sizes. This move comes in response to the increasing demand for DDI management and fits well with BlueCat’s portfolio for mid-market and enterprise organizations. What’s your take, Stephen?

Stephen Foskett: I was not really surprised that this happened. I could’ve predicted exactly when it would happen, and maybe even exactly who the acquiring company would be. But Men&Mice has built a really nice product, as we saw actually on my birthday at the Tech Field Day. The product is great and it addresses a big hole in the market. We actually even did a field roundtable discussion talking about the challenges of DDI, basically managing IP addresses, managing DHCP, managing DNS. If just hearing those phrases makes you shutter, then you must be an IT person because they’re terrible.

Stephen Foskett: And BlueCat has been working in the space for a long time, or at least adjacent spaces. Men&Mice was basically founded to attack this problem, and they’ve created a solution that was pretty appealing. I have to say the Tech Field Day delegates were pretty impressed by it, and frankly, it’s no wonder that one of the major companies in the space said, “We need to have that as part of our portfolio.” The whole thing makes a lot of sense.

Stephen Foskett: I would say that overall, having it be BlueCat is probably better than having it be some big multi-product company where this would get lost. And I think this will be a big and important feature, an important highlight for BlueCat. I think BlueCat’s customers are gonna benefit, and I think the exposure to greater customer environments from Men&Mice products, I think that’s going to help them as well. So overall, I’d say this is a pretty nice acquisition. I’m pretty happy with it. And also, I will say that if you’re wondering exactly what I’m talking about, just use your favorite search engine, search for Men&Mice in Tech Field, and you’ll see their recent presentation which goes over all about the product and its features and what it’s all about.

Stephen Foskett: The recent rulings by the US Supreme Court in cases involving Google and Twitter have reaffirmed the legal protections for major tech platforms. The courts found that these platforms cannot be held liable for content posted by users, specifically in relation to terrorism-related content. But I think that this goes a little bit broader than that. The decisions emphasize the importance of Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act, which shields tech companies from liability, and that has become a bit of a political football lately. This discussion explores the implications of these rulings and what it means for the future of social media platforms.

W. Curtis Preston: Well, I think that this is definitely the most political of any of the things that we’re discussing today. I think this is pretty straightforward, and basically, they ruled that it didn’t violate Section 230 and that it protects these platforms. We can argue all day long that there were a lot of people who were upset about there not being any accountability for things that some of these tech platforms have allowed to happen. And there has been a lot of noise about going after the tech platforms for things that they have allowed to happen. The problem is, for those people that are saying that, is that Section 230 backs these platforms. The idea was that since they’re just aggregating other people’s content, they’re not liable for the content. The people that did it are liable. I think that this allows those companies to breathe a little bit for the moment. But I also think that they should look forward to, and when I said ‘look forward,’ are we meeting in a positive way, they should look forward to something that isn’t Section 230.

W. Curtis Preston: I think that at some point, whether or not it comes out of this current Congress or any of our Congresses, is a different discussion point. But basically, what this really said was you can’t count on Section 230 if you want to go after these companies. Or I can put that in a different order: you can’t go after these companies as long as Section 230 is the rule of the land. So if you want to do that, you need to change the laws. I think it’s a huge ruling, and I think that the social media platforms can probably breathe a sigh of relief for the moment.

W. Curtis Preston: So let’s talk about Pliops, introducing an efficient Redis cluster powered by XDP rocks, delivering in-memory performance and SSD-like cost economics. The collaboration optimizes Redis on flash performance using hardware acceleration, allowing for an economic scaling of application data footprints. Pliops is also expanding its partnership with PhoenixNAP, offering Pliops power to bare metal cloud instances for Redis on flash clusters, enabling faster data processing, sub-millisecond latency, and significant cost savings.

Stephen Foskett: I’m actually really excited to see Pliops doing this. They presented a couple of times at Tech Field Day, and I have to say that it always seems like the product was undersold as basically a RAID card or a storage controller. What Pliops is doing with their card isn’t what you would expect a RAID card to do. It really is fundamentally taking the data and creating a new storage platform for it. Now, wisely, the company decided to offer storage on the thing because that’s what applications want. But really, what’s going on under the hood is a key-value store and something that is essentially a hardware-accelerated database that’s optimized for flash. Yeah, you can put regular data on that, but that’s sort of a waste of the platform.

Stephen Foskett: I was really excited to hear about this because, frankly, it seems to me that Redis is an ideal front-end candidate for the Pliops XDP platform, and this really showcases what this product is capable of. I would love to see more and more of this. I’d love to see Pliops not be thought of as just doing RAID, data protection, and storage, but as offering in-memory performance of databases using flash as the backend, which is a lot cheaper and more accessible to more people in the market. So overall, good move, Pliops. I’m glad to see this happening. I’m also glad to see that they’ve managed to roll this out with a cloud partner. Now, you may not know too much about PhoenixNAP, and I certainly don’t, but it’s nice to see that people can explore this product, try it out, and see if it really delivers the goods without having to go out and build a whole infrastructure of their own. So overall, nice move, Pliops, and I’m glad to hear that things are moving in the right direction.

Stephen Foskett: Curtis, we’ve got you on the rundown this weekend. Everybody knows you as Mr. Backup, Mr. Data Protection, Mr. Ransomware. Frankly, that’s why I wanted to take a closer look at some ransomware stories this week because I believe your expertise in this matter surpasses mine and many others. Ransomware attacks continue to pose a significant threat across various sectors, targeting critical industries and causing substantial financial and operational damages. Federal authorities have issued warnings about the surge in cyber attacks exploiting high severity vulnerabilities, particularly in Veeam software, which enables unauthorized access and increases the risk of ransomware deployment. Healthcare organizations heavily rely on this software for data protection, which raises huge concerns regarding these attacks. Additionally, there have been other incidents, such as the ransomware attack on Dole, resulting in a direct cost impact of $10.5 million, and the ongoing attack on the Dallas municipal court building, disrupting legal proceedings and potentially exposing sensitive information. As an expert in this field, please help us understand what is happening with ransomware.

W. Curtis Preston: Well, you know, this is one of those situations where I feel like Henny Penny saying the sky is falling, but the reality is that it is getting really bad. These are some great stories, and the first one frustrates me the most. The vulnerability in Veeam software was announced back in March, and Veeam announced a fix for it shortly afterward. It bothers me that, even two months later, we are still talking about this vulnerability being actively exploited. I mean, how is it possible that anyone who values their data hasn’t addressed this vulnerability in their backup servers? I just don’t understand it.

W. Curtis Preston: Regarding the Dole story, it was interesting to see that their data protection system worked as designed, but the restore process cost them around $6 million. That’s a significant amount, not to mention the additional costs associated with continuing operations while they were down. In the case of the Dallas municipal court building, they are still down this whole week, and the impact on legal proceedings is substantial. There’s another story that wasn’t on this list, but it’s worth mentioning. In Chile, a ransomware group took out almost all of the country’s federal infrastructure, including their equivalent of the FBI, CIA, and Supreme Court. They even attacked their backup system, and to this day, a year later, they are still rebuilding their federal infrastructure from scratch. This is something people need to think about. It’s not just about paying the ransom; your entire existence as a company could be at risk.

W. Curtis Preston: If you’re not absolutely terrified about ransomware, I don’t know what to tell you. Your company could cease to exist tomorrow. It’s crucial to secure your backup infrastructure. As Mr. Backup, I emphasize that it’s your last line of defense. You need to make sure it’s secure. Implement measures to prevent and detect ransomware, but also focus on securing your infrastructure. For example, don’t allow direct access to your backup system from your active directories. The data stored for backups should be as immutable as possible. Storing at least one copy in the cloud using write-protected immutable storage is recommended. Consult your backup vendor to enhance the security of your backups; they will have answers to your questions.

W. Curtis Preston: To go back to the Veeam customers who haven’t applied the patch, it’s disheartening. I urge you to contact your backup vendor immediately and inquire about necessary security measures. I’m sure they will provide guidance. That’s my thoughts on the matter.

Stephen Foskett: But of course, those of us who have been in IT for a long time understand that the breadth of unpatched, out-of-date systems is large. The number of systems that are exposed, either through misconfiguration or, in some cases, intentional misconfiguration just to make life easier on a day-to-day basis, is large. I think it’s remarkable to consider that when it comes to ransomware, imagine if this was a physical attack instead of a cyber attack. Imagine if the government of Chile was physically invaded by a gang of criminals who blocked and destroyed all government services. What would the response be? Would it be, ‘Oh well, we better buy some new buildings and set up some new government services over there’? Imagine if Joel Corporation had a group of criminals burst into the lobby and burn the building down. Would their response be, ‘Oh well, we better build a new one’? There would be a different response. The fact that this is a cyber, virtual attack really changes the way people approach these things, and not in a positive way. I mean, think about it. If the Dallas municipal court was shut down by people with guns or bombs, there would be not just a federal, but an international response. It wouldn’t be down for 234 weeks. It would be a massive government response. Honestly, my expectation is that eventually people in governments around the world are going to say, ‘You know what? We need to treat these things like real physical attacks,’ and that is not necessarily going to be a great day because having the government, military, and intelligence agencies suddenly getting involved in these things escalates the whole situation. I don’t know what to say about it except that our audience of IT practitioners and IT pros should listen to Curtis on this one. Update your systems, apply the patches, ask your providers what you can do to mitigate this stuff because it’s going to happen, and you can’t rely on the NSA or the army to protect you from ransomware. It’s gonna happen, and you’ve got to protect yourself from it.

Stephen Foskett: The other thing that occurs to me about this stuff is that it’s important to realize that as you’re putting out the fire, the ransomware gangs are always after the ransom. And in some cases, they may not even have the ability to decrypt the data. I’ve heard that as well. I mean, there’s wiper ransomware that is actually not encryption at all. And of course, there are now disclosures happening as a result. And data protection doesn’t protect you from that. I wonder what you think about that angle, Curtis?

W. Curtis Preston: For example, in the Dallas case, if these guys exfiltrated all sorts of sensitive case files and things like that, they could theoretically be in a much different ransom position than just basically saying, ‘Add the stuff, delete it, good luck restoring that.’ This so-called double extortion has now become the most common method. They stay exfiltration some data, and then they say, ‘Well, we have the data, and we will release it if you don’t pay the ransom.’

W. Curtis Preston: I’ll just say I’m not a fan of paying the ransom because paying the ransom just encourages more ransoms, and it also encourages even more specifically the group that targets you. It will make other ransomware groups say, ‘Oh, here’s a group that paid the ransom. Maybe they’ll pay one from us.’ Not a fan. The difficulty is with the extortion or ransomware where they say they have information. In the case of the Dallas situation, they’re saying they have some data that they’re going to publish. What Dallas is saying is that there is no evidence that they actually have it. They’re just saying that there are ways for the groups to prove it privately. They’ll say, ‘This is why we have, buddy, go look,’ and then you look, and you see, and you’re like, ‘Okay, well, we need to do something.’ And it’s much harder to deal with than simply having a good backup system. The only way to fix that one is to have a time machine, right? It is to go back to when the attack happened in the first place. So that’s why you talked with, you know, we talked earlier about DDI (Data Domain Integrity). It is one of the ways that you can have a good DDI system that can actually help on the front end of looking for and hunting down and stopping data exfiltration. I think that’s what companies and organizations need to do: to add this to the things they need to look for.

W. Curtis Preston: But, you know, I know that so many companies already aren’t doing the basics. There was an attack yesterday that I forget who it was, but in the story, it said that if they had enabled MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication), it would’ve stopped the attack. I just want to say, I get very frustrated. We’re talking about complicated things that we want people to go out and do, use DDI and other systems to look for data exfiltration, and they’re not even turning on MFA. You know, I don’t know, dude, do the simple things first. Do the simple things. Have a good password management system, have MFA. These things, you know, make sure you’re using a different password everywhere. All of those things. Do the basic things. Owen and patch management are crucial. Those are the top three. You do those three, and you’re gonna stop about 80% to 90% of the attacks. And then, if you’re serious, do these other things.

Stephen Foskett: Do the simple things. Control what you can control and try to prepare for the inevitable, which is that eventually these things are going to start or already are going to appear in your environment as well.

Stephen Foskett: Thanks so much for joining us for the Rundown this week. Curtis, it’s been great to have you on here. Before we go, where can people find more of your work and continue this conversation with you?

W. Curtis Preston: Well, if they want to hear me talk more, they can go to the Backup Central Restore It All podcast. We do a weekly podcast over there where Persona and I talk about things such as these. We talk about ransomware quite a bit. You may hear the term ‘321 rule’ come up once or twice. And also, if you want to follow me on Twitter, it’s @WCPreston. If you want to contact me, it’s W Curtis Preston at Gmail.

Stephen Foskett: Let’s take a look at some of the events that are going on this week and the week ahead. Next week, I will be in Boston for Cloud Field Day. I’m pretty excited about that one. Wednesday and Thursday, you’ll hear from Couchbase, HYCU, JetStream Software, Morpheus Data, RackN, and Zerto. So please do tune in on LinkedIn or the Tech Field Day website for those, or check out the recordings on YouTube after the event. We’re also headed to Cisco Live on June 6th and 7th. We have Cisco presenting, and of course, we’ve got a lot of Cisco content coming there as well as our friends from BackBox and OpenGear. And of course, we have a Security Field Event and Edge Field Event coming up as well. So stay tuned, and we’ll tell you more about those.

Stephen Foskett: Also, I would mention that this is a pretty busy week in the event schedule. Of course, you may have heard of Dell Tech World happening right now, or the Red Hat Summit, also ISC High Performance, and KubeCon. All of those things are happening this week, so check out your favorite sources for live updates from that, and we’ll bring the highlights from those events to the Rundown next week.

Stephen Foskett: Thanks for watching the Gestalt IT Rundown. You can catch new episodes every Wednesday as a YouTube video or in your favorite podcast application. We’ll be back next Wednesday to talk about all of the IT news from those events and more. But until then, for myself, for Curtis, for Tom Hollingsworth, and all of us here at the Gestalt IT family, have a great week, and we’ll see you next Wednesday.”

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E.S.G. or environmental, social and governance is part of the mainstream thinking, and at the core of every leading organization. Trillions of dollars of yearly investments that take into account E.S.G. concerns are proof of that.

But E.S.G. initiatives are in a similar position to where climate change was a few years ago – not ready to affect extreme changes at all levels.

The widespread deployment of technology – IoT being the most prominent example- has a way to change this. Tech companies making notable strides in enterprise IoT believe that Internet of Things can be the key to close the Pandora’s box of concerns that unsustainable business practices have opened up.

At last week’s Mobility Field Day event in California, Ruckus Networks demonstrated an analytics platform that provides bespoke application-level solutions that power organizations’ E.S.G. efforts, and serve some very important real-world use cases.

The presentation showcased Ruckus IoT Insights, “an application-level data processor” that is part of the Ruckus IoT Suite. Ruckus is building a catalogue of applications on it to solve real-world problems at enterprise level, and “deliver outcomes for end users”.

Assessing ImpactsTo be E.S.G.-focused, organizations need data to draw intelligence from. By tapping into the reserves of data flowing in through IoT devices, enterprises in any vertical can become good corporate citizens, and fulfill certain E.S.G. goals.

Ruckus Networks recognizes that with the quick rise and implementation of IoT across sectors, there’s sufficient data to power E.S.G. practices. But lack of analytics has left a majority of organizations unable to quantify this data to environmental and social parameters.

With its eyes set on a range of vertical-led applications, Ruckus Networks is trying to solve this problem with the IoT data that is processed by the IoT Insights platform.

The Ruckus IoT Suite comprises a set of technologies designed to enable IoT adoption in enterprises. It comprises IoT gateway access points that connect devices to the Ruckus management platform – the IoT Controller.

The IoT Controller is the central management server that does security, management and connectivity of IoT network and deployments. Inside the Controller, the IoT Insights is a program that performs application-level analysis and logging of events.

The Ruckus IoT Insights DashboardFocused on app-level solution, IoT Insights features an intuitive display which constitutes a floor plan, and events metrics shown in the form of diagrams. Sensors in the building show up on the map, changing color as they trigger.

The platform can pull up data from all available IoT devices, from very simple to advanced sensors. “Our Insights platform brings in real world data from a whole range of different access points and sensors into our platform,” said Andy Barnes, Sr. director of Product Management, Ruckus Networks.

Real-World ApplicationsThe Solution Panel features all the solutions that Ruckus is offering. These include energy management, water management, environmental monitoring, space optimization, building health and environmental carbon footprint.

“The solutions are next-generation. These are the things that people are interested in, because IoT is all about the data,” said Barnes.

He demonstrated some of the solutions that Ruckus has built on top of its IoT data.

Energy management is a priority in almost all the verticals Ruckus Networks plays in. With energy costs spiraling out of control, this is a solution that most deserves a spot on the list.

“When you’re running very large buildings in education or hospitality, where you have huge energy consumption bills, if you can get an understanding of how much energy is being used, where and when it’s being used, you can start to get to grips with it, and reduce your energy usage,” said Barnes.

This in turn helps curb carbon emissions and manage the overall CO2 footprint of the building.

“When we’re developing solutions and working on how those solutions are going to be integrated into our platform, we look at it from a very wide range about how we are going to solve things for environmental and social governance,” informed Barnes.

Ruckus’ solutions enable smart energy management with insights on metrics like power consumption, power cuts, distribution and utilization.

Ruckus also has a host of safety and tracking solutions like Staff Safety, Medical Assistance and Location Services.

Ruckus IoT InsightsData is fed into the IoT Insights platform by connected IoT devices deployed in different locations. “We’ve mapped those locations into our IoT ecosystem,” informed Barnes.

Depending on the application, IoT Insights analyzes the data and sends out insights matching the use case. For E.S.G. use cases, the application cranks out insights on things like power consumption, space utilization, water usage, plumbing pipe bursts, mold growth, the health of residents, CO2 levels, air quality – all of which are critical to the overall health of spaces and their occupants.

For a safety solution, the application produces different insights using the same data, such as location of an employee, movement of assets, events like gunshots and fire breakouts, and triggers an alarm in real-time.

The events are captured and logged quickly into the system. When an alert shows up, it is geolocated for the operator to know the exact location where the event is happening. If there’s a camera nearby, they can pull up the footage, see what happened, and use the data for auditing.

Wrapping UpAt its core, E.S.G. is just common sense. It is doing more with less, and saving costs in the process. Ruckus’ solutions are aimed at meeting long-term E.S.G. goals, and empowering verticals like hospitality, education and rental real estate. Even if a solution does not produce immediate effects for a customer, in the long run, it will help realign with the rising urgency for sustainable practices, and secure substantial cost benefits.

With a few changes consistently applied, it maybe possible one day for even the smallest organization to become a green business. Ruckus’ solutions provide the push and pace critical to powering E.S.G. uses cases and elevating awareness, and in the recessionary economy of today, where E.S.G. sometimes takes a back seat, it helps organizations of all sizes adopt it.

For more information on the solution, and for all their latest updates, be sure to watch Ruckus’ presentations from the recent Mobility Field Day event on the Tech Field Day website.

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Data management is a critical aspect of business operations, but traditional databases require dedicated hardware and extensive maintenance, which can be expensive and time-consuming. Cloud databases offer a flexible and scalable alternative, and enable access to data from anywhere in the world. In this article, I will explore the definition, benefits, and considerations of cloud databases.

June 1 is National Cloud Database Day! Gestalt IT is celebrating along with Couchbase, and we’re integrating this with Cloud Field Day 17, which takes place May 31 and June 1.A Database in the CloudPut simply, a cloud database is a database service that is accessed through a cloud platform. It is hosted, managed, and maintained remotely on cloud infrastructure rather than locally. The database can be implemented and managed by a service provider or provisioned in a cloud by the end user, but is not managed in the traditional way on an ongoing basis. Various database management systems are supported, including relational databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL, and NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Apache CouchDB, and Couchbase.

Cloud databases offer several benefits over traditional databases, including ease of access, scalability, and disaster recovery. One of the primary advantages of cloud databases is their ease of access. Users can access cloud databases from virtually anywhere, using a vendor’s API or web interface. This allows for increased productivity and flexibility in accessing and managing data.

Scalability is another significant benefit of cloud databases. Cloud databases can expand their storage capacities on run-time to accommodate changing needs. Organizations only pay for what they use, allowing for cost-efficient management of data storage.

In addition to these benefits, cloud databases also offer robust disaster recovery options. In the event of a natural disaster, equipment failure, or power outage, data is kept secure through backups on remote servers. This ensures the continuity of business operations, even in challenging situations.

ConsiderationsWhen considering a cloud database, there are several variables and considerations to keep in mind. Users can opt for a virtual machine image managed like a traditional database or a provider’s database as a service (DBaaS). DBaaS options allow for less management and maintenance, but they also provide less control over the database’s configuration.

Database technology is another crucial factor to consider. SQL databases are difficult to scale but are very common. NoSQL databases scale more easily but do not work with some applications. Security is also a vital consideration. Most cloud database providers encrypt data and provide other security measures, but organizations should research their options carefully.

Finally, maintenance is another consideration. When using a virtual machine image, one should ensure that IT staffers can maintain the underlying infrastructure. Organizations need to consider their requirements, budgets, and technical expertise before choosing a cloud database solution.

Stephen’s StanceCloud databases offer a flexible and scalable solution to data management. They provide many benefits over traditional databases, including ease of access, scalability, and disaster recovery. However, organizations must consider various factors before choosing a cloud database solution. By carefully evaluating their options, organizations can choose the right cloud database solution to meet their specific needs.

Learn more about cloud databases at the Couchbase National Cloud Database Day page, and tune live in for the Couchbase presentation at Cloud Field Day on June 1 at 10:30 US/Eastern time, or watch for the recording on the Tech Field Day YouTube page!

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I recently wrote about Catchpoint’s presentation at Network Field Day 29, That blog compared Catchpoint to some competing products or at least other products that include some similar capabilities. Catchpoint’s stated goal is to be the Best at Internet Resilience.

This article provides a mildly deeper dive into products’ relative capabilities, and then looks at Catchpoint from the Internet Monitoring and Resilience perspective, trying to answer the question: What are the top differentiating capabilities Catchpoint provides for Internet Monitoring, etc.?

We’ll finish up with a Troubleshooting Use Case walk-through, looking at how the readily available reports in Catchpoint solved an actual SaaS app slowness problem.

Network/App Response Monitoring ProductsIn the network and application performance monitoring (etc.) space there are several products. There are overlaps in some or many capabilities, but it can be hard to tell the products’ capabilities apart. However, Catchpoint differs in that it’s a solution that monitors your entire internet stack, rather than just applications and network traffic. To that end, it’s focused on the experience of the user through the entire digital service delivery chain.

Take a Closer Look with Catchpoint: Synthetic Monitoring Live Demo – Networking Field Day 29Catchpoint’s PositioningCatchpoint’s intent is to be the best at Internet Resilience (including monitoring and reporting) overall.

That’s quite a goal! The word “resilience” suggests “fast troubleshooting” to me, but in this context it’s about developing a comprehensive monitoring strategy that enables predictive insights, contingency planning and continuous improvement over time. A company with a resilient internet should be able to proactively deal with issues before they impact their users and be able to implement alternative paths that prevent outages. We’ll take a look at how they do that below.

Why Best at Internet resilience? Well, just about everything lately depends on the Internet. Especially delivery of Internet application content to customers and WFH staff. Or Internet access to office apps from home or while travelling.

Datacenter, CoLo, and Cloud traffic between apps and data storage may travel over dedicated links. But dedicated links are subject to much less variability. So, the entire Internet is the bigger challenge, and requires an application focus. Catchpoint of course handles other types of links as well.

What are the Top Catchpoint Internet Capabilities?I asked Catchpoint about this: what are the top Catchpoint capabilities regarding Internet Resilience?

The answer:

Catchpoint has the most global monitoring points for customers to leverage. At the time of this writing, (2022) Catchpoint has over 2000 vantage points across the Internet, including monitoring points in China which makes them less impacted by the Great Firewall.
Catchpoint can do outside-inwards monitoring/troubleshooting, e.g., from the desktop of a user travelling in Dubai having problems accessing corporate apps or SaaS. This can provide data on problems invisible to competing products.
Catchpoint provides focus: monitoring, reporting, and alerting on issues you care about. E.g., the latency of an application to, say, 3 locations. It does RUM (Real User transaction Monitoring if desired. It also does synthetics. I’ve been cautioned that “synthetics” means different things to different vendors. Catchpoint can do basic RUM (web URL request components: DNS, connect, SSL establishment, wait time, etc.). Or “synthetics 360”: deeper dive diagnostics, providing developer support. (For more on this, see also this set of web pages.) Catchpoint monitors key statistics Google uses to score websites. And Catchpoint has plug-ins for the Chrome and Edge browsers that can capture additional useful data.
Catchpoint reports “User Sentiment” – monitoring third parties for user comments, down detection, etc. In other words, reporting on external perceptions of performance as well as the hard network performance data points.
Catchpoint includes an Internet Weather Report and can monitor as much or as little of the Internet as the customer wishes (and wishes to pay for).
Catchpoint is independent, not tied to a hardware vendor or other functions. It is agnostic about your network, server, cloud, CoLo, and other brands.
Expertise. Catchpoint includes consulting services by a value engineer and a customer service engineer to new customers. This ensures identifying key use cases, setting up data collection, and demonstration of how to use the various relevant reports Staff augmentation or further consulting services are also available.

What else makes Catchpoint different aside from its enormous global observability network? One item mentioned is finer data granularity, with no limit on retention.

Note also that Catchpoint has a lot of basic to intermediate documentation about various skills relating to monitoring and troubleshooting. This includes some good how-to documents.

About Catchpoint’s MeasurementsCatchpoint’s “web RUM” allows monitoring of the various components of a web-based application. Consider that such an application might have multiple global users accessing micro-services scattered around various sites.

Public-facing web apps require many Internet services. That starts with DNS, but includes Content Delivery Networks (CDN’s) as well. If their response is slow, the application experience will be degraded. One common potential problem is mis-configured global CDN services, where a user is hitting a CDN in remote location, rather than a closer one.

Another key set of measurements relate to Internet path. What path is a given user’s or site’s traffic taking, and is some segment of that path performing poorly?

In relation to Internet path, BGP is of course of major interest. Monitoring BGP peering, Internet paths for various IP prefixes, etc. is important. Catchpoint’s capabilities around BGP and Internet paths will be discussed in a follow-on article.

Catchpoint does also provide end-user WiFi and other monitoring for user-centric problems. But that’s a topic for another time and article.

The reason we use networks is of course applications, in the broad sense. Catchpoint can monitor:

DNS
CDN’s
BGP
Voice (VoIP) and video quality
SaaS apps (like Salesforce)
Cloud apps (like Teams and Zoom)
API’s

To sum up, Catchpoint monitors web application and component performance.

One valuable use of Catchpoint is working with the application owners to determine the slowest components to load, with the objective of speeding up page loads.

The following example walks through troubleshooting an actual problem. One consequence of finding the cause might be a change in the web page to improve performance under adverse conditions.

Take a Closer Look with Catchpoint: BGP Monitoring Live Demo – Networking Field Day 29Internet Troubleshooting ExampleI’m a classic techie: show me some details! I hope you feel the same way. Let’s look at some detail!

Catchpoint walked me through a real-world example. They have a SaaS CRM app that we won’t name used by some of their staff. (Note: all of their staff is WFH, Work From Home or wherever.)

The app had some problems. This section showcases the data provided by Catchpoint. We start with an overview page.

Notice the first “tile”, top-left in the following screen capture (I added the red rectangular border).

Catchpoint measures the availability of applications from different vantage points. It provides insight directly on the backbone of Internet from Data Centers and ISPs all over the Globe. Many times SaaS applications are available from the vendor’s perspective but users are still unable to access them. This gauge represents the reachability to actual end user devices regardless of their location.

Looking at the two bottom left tiles (see below for close-ups), red is bad, as usual: higher page load times and page load failures.

The bottom left tile shows synthetic monitoring from the end user device, the next tile to the right shows actual real user experience as rendered in the browser. If you home in on the time (x-axis), the left tile shows problem onset before the middle one: apparently there were no real users of the app at 9 AM.

Then there’s the right bottom tile:

The bottom right tile shows synthetic testing response times as measured from the Enterprise Nodes. These would be agents on nodes in the organization’s network, but dedicated machines with no user workload. They can do browser emulation.

So why are the red datapoints on the right lower? Answer: failure is faster. Those web page loads failed to complete and timed out.

The upper world chart tile shows real user performance, color-coded.

This helps you quickly see where affected real users are.

Hovering over a data point, brings up some additional data. (Not shown here.)

But there’s even more data readily available!

Clicking on a data point and then on the 3rd icon on the left side bar brings up a different set of information, shown below.

The top shows a timeline of measurements. Selecting one shows further data below the timeline: What the web page looked like, and various statistics. The bottom “filmstrip” shows what the web page looked like at various times as it rendered. This can help you see where things slowed down or failed.

If you look again at the top set of data points over time, notice that some successful page loads were twice as fast as others. This suggests some random delay somewhere.

Scrolling down provides more information, a waterfall chart of objects loaded. The highlighted line shows a moderately long wait for that object.

Clicking on that brings up more details:

Scrolling further down, we see:

The video in row 32 is taking about 4 seconds to load. Slow!

And that was the actual problem: the web page includes a MP4 video clip. It is larger content and was taking a longer than usual time to download and render.

This provides the basis for an informed decision. You (and any other parties involved) might consider:

Do you put up with occasional page fails (timeouts) due to the video clip when some sites or regions are experiencing congestion and slowness?
Or do you remove the video clip, or reduce its resolution to reduce the number of bytes transferred, etc.?

That also gives the flavor of how this might be used in developing or maintaining a web app: use the RUM data to optimize web page load times, etc. Additionally, it allows you to hold SaaS Vendors accountable for content on their sites. Catchpoint RUM data shows how many times a page was loaded over time so quantifying the impact that a slow page has on employee productivity is easy!

If you go back to the original screen and then scroll down, there was more data available there.

The upper right tile clearly shows a spike in average load times.

The bottom left tile breaks out load times by ISP, with the small squares representing one user. This helps spot where there is an ISP problem. The bottom right tile summarizes the per-ISP data in text form.

Catchpoint’s Day 1 SupportI’m seeing a growing trend in networking and IT awareness that buying software or doing automation can result in “shelfware”. Staff needs to know how to use the new tool and have a good reason to do so.

As part of its process, Catchpoint includes services by a “value engineer” as well as a “customer success engineer”. The value engineer’s job is to understand top use cases and get the customer set up to monitor what is needed and understand the reporting.

Deeper dive and site staffing are also available for a fee.

ConclusionCatchpoint provides a lot of reporting out of the box. I’ve found myself somewhat overwhelmed by fast presentations (e.g., at Network Field Day). Catchpoint staff walking me through the above use case helped, and I’ve tried to share that in this article.

My hope is that sharing that experience with you, the reader, will help you envision how Catchpoint might be useful for monitoring your Internet stack as well as other applications, re-engineering them to be more tolerant of slowdowns, and respond to outages more rapidly through well-organized pre-analyzed data. Catchpoint makes your Internet more resilient which requires more than traditional application or network performance monitoring. The breadth and depth of monitoring capabilities shown to me suggest that they can do just that.

Watch all of Catchpoint’s videos and demos from Networking Field Day 29 on the Tech Field Day website.

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As NAND flash memory technology has evolved, MLC, TLC, and QLC has been perceived to compromise both reliability and performance. In this episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, we confront the reality of Quad-Level Cell (QLC) SSDs, shedding light on their capabilities and suitability for today’s workloads. Roger Corell of Solidigm, who sponsored this episode, discuss QLC SSD with Karen Lopez, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. The industry is increasingly embracing the benefits of QLC SSDs for mainstream workloads, and this discussion debunks common misconceptions, emphasizing the equivalent reliability, performance, and quality of QLC, TLC, and MLC SSDs. With the shifting landscape of read-intensive workloads and the growing data demands, QLC SSDs offer an efficient and cost-effective solution for mainstream applications.

On-Premises for Today’s Spotlight Podcast:PanelistsKaren Lopez

Alastair Cooke

Twitter@DataChick

@DemitasseNZ

Solidigm Panelist:Roger Corell, Director Solution Marketing at Solidigm. Find out more about Solidigm’s SSDs and other products on their website.

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@SFoskett

The Rise of QLC SSDs for Mainstream WorkloadsAs technology evolves, there are often trade-offs between reliability, performance, and capacity. This has been especially true in the world of NAND flash memory, where multi-level cell (MLC) technology has long been perceived to compromise both reliability and performance. However, in this episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, sponsored by Solidigm, industry experts confront the reality of Quad-Level Cell (QLC) SSDs, shedding light on their capabilities and suitability for today’s workloads. Roger Corell of Solidigm is joined by Karen Lopez, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett, in a discussion of the advantages of QLC SSDs.

In recent years, workloads have shifted towards being more read-intensive, aligning perfectly with the capabilities of QLC flash technology. Solidigm’s fourth-generation QLC SSD drives are a testament to this evolution, delivering impressive capacities of up to 32 TB, a wide range of high-density form factors, and cost-effectiveness tailored for mainstream workloads. These SSDs have even made their way into new form factors like EDSFF E3, offering improved cooling and density for applications beyond traditional data centers and the cloud.

One of the persistent misconceptions surrounding QLC SSDs is the belief that increased bit per cell density significantly impacts read performance. However, the latest generation of QLC products provide equivalent read performance to TLC SSDs, effectively debunking this perception. Users can expect reliable and fast read speeds, enabling efficient data access and retrieval.

Another concern often raised is the potential compromise of write performance in QLC SSDs. However, Solidigm’s latest QLC drives offer write performance that is within 20-67% of certain TLC SSDs, making them highly suitable for mainstream and read-intensive workloads. Furthermore, these drives boast impressive endurance with 3,000 program/erase (PE) cycles, ensuring their reliability and longevity even under demanding usage scenarios.

Contrary to the belief that QLC compromises reliability and performance, Solidigm emphasizes that QLC, TLC, and MLC SSDs all offer equivalent quality and reliability in terms of drive reliability and data integrity. By optimizing technology for specific use cases, any expected differences can be effectively alleviated, providing peace of mind for organizations adopting QLC SSDs.

The need to efficiently store and access vast amounts of data is on the rise. With read-intensive workloads becoming more prevalent and the ever-increasing size of AI models and HD movies, QLC SSDs prove to be an ideal solution for mainstream and read-intensive workloads. These drives can handle the demands of data-intensive applications, providing the required speed and capacity while maintaining cost-effectiveness.

The discussion also highlights the value and extended lifespan of solid-state storage. Retired systems often have significant life left in them, demonstrating that the limited write cycles of NAND flash isn’t usually a restriction. It is likely that QLC SSDs will similarly outlast the servers in which they are used.

As the perception-reality gap narrows, the industry is increasingly embracing the benefits of QLC SSDs for mainstream workloads. The panel’s insights debunk common misconceptions, emphasizing the equivalent reliability, performance, and quality of QLC SSDs. With the shifting landscape of read-intensive workloads and the growing data demands, QLC SSDs offer an efficient and cost-effective solution for organizations across various sectors, empowering them to unlock the full potential of their data-driven initiatives.

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One of the main differentiators for edge computing is developing a scalable architecture that works everywhere, from deployment to support to updates. This episode of Utilizing Edge welcomes Dave Demlow of Scale Computing discussing the need for scalable architecture at the edge. Scale Computing discussed Zero-Touch Provisioning and Disposable Units of Compute at their Edge Field Day presentation, and we kick off the discussion with these concepts. We also consider the undifferentiated heavy lifting of cloud infrastructure and the tools for infrastructure as code and patch management in this different environment. Ultimately the differentiator is scale, and the key challenge for designing infrastructure for the edge is making sure it can be deployed and supported at hundreds or thousands of sites.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Brian Chambers, Technologist and Chief Architect at Chick-fil-A. Connect with Brian on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read his blog on Substack.
Dave Demlow, Vice President Of Product Strategy at Scale Computing. You can connect with Dave on LinkedIn or find out more on Scale Computing’s website.

Key PointsOne of the main differentiators for edge computing is the development of a scalable architecture that can function effectively in various environments, from initial deployment to ongoing support and updates. In this episode of Utilizing Edge, Dave Demlow from Scale Computing highlights the significance of scalable architecture for edge deployments. During their Edge Field Day presentation, Scale Computing discussed the concepts of Zero-Touch Provisioning and Disposable Units of Compute, which set the stage for the conversation. They also explore the challenges and opportunities presented by managing multiple copies and footprints of applications in edge environments.

Zero-touch provisioning plays a vital role in enabling seamless deployment, scaling, and management of resources at the edge without requiring human intervention. It ensures that the necessary infrastructure is provisioned automatically, eliminating manual efforts and streamlining operations. Disposable units of compute are a key design goal in edge infrastructure, prioritizing resilience and automated handling of failures. This approach allows for efficient resource allocation and facilitates the management of a distributed and scalable edge infrastructure.

Edge deployments demand cost-effective, disposable hardware due to the scale and distributed nature of the infrastructure. Unlike the high-reliability systems found in enterprise data centers, the edge requires a different approach. Resilient edge infrastructure requires careful consideration of cost-effectiveness, scalability, and resource allocation to accommodate the unique demands of edge environments.

Automation plays a crucial role in managing and scaling edge deployments efficiently. By reducing manual efforts and ensuring consistency across multiple locations, automation enables developers and operators to focus on their core applications and services. This abstraction of underlying infrastructure complexities enhances the overall experience for developers and operators, streamlining operations and promoting scalability.

In summary, the key to successful edge deployments lies in developing a scalable architecture that can be deployed and supported at numerous sites. This involves leveraging concepts such as zero-touch provisioning and disposable units of compute, prioritizing automation, and considering the specific constraints and challenges of edge environments. By designing for scalability, cost-effectiveness, and resilience, organizations can effectively harness the potential of edge computing and deliver valuable applications and services.

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With uncertainty rife in the world today, businesses need resiliency in order to survive and move forward. Polls say that while almost all businesses believe that resilience is critical, less than half say that their organization is resilient.

A business faces many costly interruptions in the form of cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and failures all of which accumulate to downtimes accruing huge loses. But production stoppages and revenue losses aren’t always caused by unplanned downtime. Scheduled downtimes too mount to millions over time. Although anticipated in advance, planned downtime for routine upgrades breaks continuity, and set businesses up for losses.

Thankfully, technologies have come a long way to enable business continuity. HPE Aruba is one of the companies in that front pioneering ways to ensure continuity. One of the ways Aruba promotes business resiliency is through software redundancy.

At the recent Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023, HPE Aruba demoed its zero-downtime software upgrades with the Aruba CX 6400 switch series. Ed Chang, VP of Campus Switching and TME, Yash Nagaraju, Sr. Manager, TME Global Wired Enterprise Switching, and Anup Mehta, Product Line Manager gave a joint presentation that explained how the CX 6400 series minimizes, even eliminates downtime during software upgrades, and provides always-on networking.

Ways to Build a Resilient Network There are many ways to build a business resilient network. Resiliency can be ensured through operation of assets, such as configuration, deployment and monitoring . Having physical redundancy within switches like the power supply too provides resiliency. The physical network itself can be made resilient by deploying a dual system where a secondary network provides connectivity when the primary network goes down.

Redundancy is also achievable through routing protocols like multipath routing where alternative paths are used through the network to route traffic ensuring fault tolerance and better bandwidth.

At the software level, upgrades typically entail a downtime during which firmware are downloaded, codes are refreshed, and switches are rebooted, and that has a cost to the company and its users. Software redundancy ensures continuity of performance through these upgrade windows.

Aruba CX 6400“Aruba 6400 gets deployed all the way from access, aggregation to core. Each one of this upgrade process has to be zero-downtime, because they deploy in hospital environments,” says Mr. Nagaraju.

Aruba CX 6400 switches power mission-critical networks that have zero tolerance to downtimes. So maintaining high availability around the clock is non-negotiable.

Inside the ArchitectureThe secret to the always-on availability of 6400 switches is the CX software operating system – AOS-CX – that is built within all HPE Aruba switches.

“It is a common operating system across all of our portfolio, from campus to datacenter, and there are some key tenants that help us enable this high resiliency to help customers when they want to do upgrades,” says Chang.

AOS-CX has a modular, database-centric, microservices architecture. With microservices, entire applications are broken down into smaller parts that run independently. State synchronization ensures all states are synced in the database for users to access.

“We have separate databases that keep information on state, as well as performance series database that keeps information about what’s going on within the switch,” says Mr. Chang.

Although running independently with their own realm of responsibility, the services are accessible to each other, and at the same time available to the users for monitoring, configuring and managing.

“It really leverages the databases as well as the independent microservices,” says Mr. Chang.

The switch architecture allows for physical redundancy with cluster and stacking, hot-swappable ports and always-on PoE. Built-in analytics provide additional management and configuration controls for added redundancy.

Upgrade without DowntimeHPE Aruba looks at the full scope of frequency, cost, cause and consequence of planned downtime to minimize the same. Currently, it provides two services for this – hot-patching and in-service software upgrades or ISSU.

Hot-patching offers targeted, customer fixes for specific defects, bugs and vulnerabilities. Customers can report isolated issues, and get patches for them when the goal is to avoid a physical reboot. Aruba TAC updates the code, and delivers it directly to the customers. At the customer end, all they need to do is deploy the fix.

“The process is simple – they call in, we identify it, create a patch, and give them an image. They update this,” says Chang.

All hot patches are automatically re-applied to future reboots and rolled into future releases.

Customers prefer hot-patching as it has a quick turnaround, and is non-disruptive – it does not affect the network or the traffic when applied.

The second is in-service software upgrades. This too is an interruption-less upgrade that includes bugs as well as feature updates. ISSU ensures rapid software upgrades within a release, without any traffic interference.

“Typically in an update of a software, there is a maintenance window, and some downtime scheduled. To help customers in the chassis-based systems, we allow updating that software without a reboot of the system itself.”

Benefits of ISSU include increased availability, continued connectivity with end-points and applications, and a fully working data plane, through the upgrade process.

“We roll this to future releases so that customers can use the ISSU process to update again,” said Mr. Chang.

Wrapping UpUpgrading a fleet of network switches is never easy. All devices must stop working when an upgrade is underway. Aruba’s zero-downtime upgrade provides a way to download a version or hot patch without having to take the system offline. The upgrade process neither interferes with the availability of the switches, nor diminishes their performance. If anything, it makes sure that bugs and vulnerabilities are timely fixed, and new features are installed non-disruptively. By rolling updates into future releases, Aruba ensures that systems perform with maximum efficiency, and at minimum risk.

For more information, check out Aruba’s demo of this from the recent Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023.

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If I asked you to build a table you might be able to figure it out. You’d look for drawings or some other kind of plans online and get to work. Maybe you’re the kind of person that will just start cutting some lumber and figuring out how to put it together. If I asked you to build a computer desk with integrated power, motors to raise it to a standing desk, and some LED lighting for ambiance you might have a hard time, right? After all you’re not an expert in building desks with all those additional features that have to work well together.

The expertise that people have in their chosen field cannot be understated. The time and effort that professionals put in when it comes to learning the regulations, analyzing the data, and making expert recommendations is beyond useful to those that need it. We go to doctors and lawyers for their expert opinions. Likewise, when it comes to IT solutions you need to consult with the experts as well.

The Antenna ExpertsVentev is a company that is experienced in the field of wireless antennas and power. They have spent years building solutions for organizations that need something more than a standard omnidirectional antenna for a wireless access point. Perhaps you’re trying to cover the seating at a stadium. You could be trying to deal with a room that has solid ceilings that can’t be modified. Perhaps you’re looking to deploy the new Wi-Fi 6E standard when it is ratified for use by the FCC and you don’t know the first place to start.

Ventev has spent thousands of hours building solutions for these problems. They know exactly how to engineer an antenna to operate in all three spectrum bands available to wireless professionals today. One antenna that covers all your needs. They also have specialized solutions to address things like the solid ceilings. Ventev can give you a way to conceal the equipment in a floor tile to make the wireless coverage flow up instead of down.

Image provided by VentevThe Challenges of IoTIn a recent interview with Jared van Allen, I talked to him about the solutions that Ventev has for one of the fastest growing segments of the market. IoT is more than just thermostats and smart toasters. Industrial IoT is one of the biggest segments of Venter’s customer base. Their solutions for a variety of hostile environments are unmatched. It starts with the understanding of how to integrate systems.

The Aruba CX4100iis a rugged IoT access switch with PoE+ and 60-watt PoE ports to run all manner of devices, from access points to cameras and more. It can operate in a variety of environmental extremes and offers you the capability to extend your network right to the edge to bring industrial IoT devices online. However, the switch is only part of the story. As Jared points out, if you buy a switch and an access point you have an angry customer because you don’t have a way to power those devices.

Ventev has an integrated enclosure solution that offers a cooled NEMA 3R box to contain your new Aruba switch. The enclosure also has AC and DC power as well as an integrated UPS to ensure that your devices stay powered during a potential outage. More importantly, the CX4100i and the UPS can communicate and use intelligence to know which ports of the switch to disable to preserve runtime for connected devices. You can tag certain ports to shut down in the event of a power loss first and preserve other ports with critical machinery as long as possible. This ensures flexibility and can keep your remote devices running longer than a less capable system.

The entire unit makes it easy to install as well. You can configure the switch on the ground by hooking up the box to power before climbing up to mount it. As someone that has found themselves typing in CLI commands from the top of a shaky ladder I can appreciate the simplicity of being able to do it from the ground to allow someone without a fear of heights to scale that ladder and get your device mounted and operational. Add in the IP68 connectors for your connections and you can see how the Ventev enclosure is a much more serene environment as compared to the typical hostile atmosphere found on a shop or manufacturing floor.

Image provided by VentevBringing It All TogetherVentev has the experts and the expertise to help you with your challenges. They know how to put together a winning combination of antenna designs, power, and more to solve your wireless and IoT needs. They don’t just start building without doing the research and providing the data you need to address your unique concerns. When it comes to projects that challenge your knowledge don’t be afraid to engage the power of those that know.

For more information about Ventev and their lineup of IoT solutions, including their integrated IoT solutions, make sure to check out their Aruba product page.

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Edge has many different stakeholders, applications, and needs, and this is especially true in distributed retail environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Simon Gamble of Mako Networks talking with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the complexities of technology at the retail edge. The key according to Gamble is segmentation of brands, franchisees, and technical applications. In some cases a single location might even include multiple separate companies or tenants under the same roof. Video, sensors, IoT, and location-based services are coming to retail locations as well, and some of these leverage outside service providers as well. Although sharing infrastructure is desirable, segmentation and security is key. Retail edge environments are increasingly complicated, but there are many ways to consolidate, converge, and standardize to make them practical to implement.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Brian Chambers, Technologist and Chief Architect at Chick-fil-A. Connect with Brian on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read his blog on Substack.
Simon Gamble, President of Mako Networks. You can connect with Simon on LinkedIn and find out more on the Mako Networks website.

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Businesses are set to modernize their IT infrastructures, turning to cloud and edge computing as they move out of datacenters.

To shift from the static datacenter to a more dynamic and geo-distributed setup, they wind up using a mix of cloud services, colocation datacenters, and edge facilities. This move that has set in motion a series of changes in the network topology, and unlocked a floodgate of data, opening them up to vulnerabilities from within.

At the recent Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023, one of the solutions HPE Aruba showcased was the Aruba CX 10000 Series. Designed for modern distributed datacenters, the CX10000 represents a new category of switches that enable a network fabric immune to legacy limitations.

Designed jointly with AMD Pensando, CX 10000 is a switch engineered for data-first modernization. Director of Data Center Switching PLM, Todd McDole gave an overview of the market context, while Sr. Manager TME Global Wired Enterprise Switching, Yash Nagaraju demoed the product making it visual to the audience.

Opportunities and ChallengesThe evolution of network over the years happened at a cadence of ten years. If you rewind the clock back to 1990, this was the era of first-generation datacenters. Flat networks and layer 2 switches made the basic construct.

Cut to 2010, datacenters have entered the third generation, which is characterized by hardware appliance and software agent-based security, emergence of spine-leaf architecture with its twin layers of access switches, and microservices applications, among other things. The legacy architecture did not lend well to this wave of modernization.

Although the third generation is a gigantic leap forward, the design has several drawbacks. The way that third-generation datacenters are built is a combination of units of compute – the racks – and a spine-leaf topology that houses bolt-on applications like firewall and load balancers, that are added on an ad-hoc basis.

As microservices causes containers to talk to each other, the usual north-south traffic – that simply enters and exits the network – is now joined by a rush of east-west traffic that move laterally from server to server. This causes enterprises to use a technique called hairpinning in which packets make multiple hops and traverse the network twice, to get security checked.

“It’s a really inefficient use of this very elegant scale up, scale out spine-leaf architecture,” pointed Mr. McDole.

More hops introduce latency, and takes a heavy toll on performance, making the design inefficient, and complex, not to mention costly.

A Different PathHPE Aruba is doing things differently. In 2021, Aruba started a new category of distributed services switching. The architecture takes bolt-on services from the service leaf, and places them in their logical place in the network – inside the rack itself.

Powered by the AMD Pensando P4 processor, HPE Aruba CX 10000 offers the best of L2/3 switching for modern datacenter fabrics.“You already need a leaf switch within every rack. So why not logically move these services into that top-of-rack switch? We’re essentially providing a firewall behind every port on the switch,” said Mr. McDole.

Aruba CX 10000 SeriesShipping since 2022, the CX 10000 resembles a typical top-of-rack switch, but has a major point of difference. The new architecture allows services to be applied where the workload is running.

It provides 800G of stateful layer 4 through 7 packet processing. Software-defined stateful services such as firewall, DDoS, telemetry, encryption services and network address translation (NAT) can be deployed inline, as and when the services are required.

The racks can be scaled linearly to match the growing capacity, as opposed to adding a new firewall every time capacity is exceeded, thus saving cost and administrative burden.

The CX 10000 uses the Pensando Elba P4 DPU. “It’s a fully programmable pipeline. It has lots of additional capabilities that can be added over time directly into the switch through software, instead of adding in additional appliances dedicated to a singular function in the network,” says Mr. McDole.

By enforcing security at the network access layer edge, the CX 10000 enables security implementation within the rack, saving traffic multiple hops and significantly improving latency. Services are delivered inline across all ports.

In many scenarios, customers are “seeing an 83% decrease in cost versus how they’re doing things today with the traditional 3rd generation model,” says Mr. McDole.

The CX 10000 platform is managed centrally via the Aruba Fabric Composer. The orchestration layer provides automated configuration and unified security policy management across the fabric.

The platform integrates with a broad ecosystem of security and network performance solutions like the GitHub Advanced Security.

The CX 10000 Series mounts in any EIA standard 19-inch rack or cabinet, on horizontal surfaces only. 2 and 4-post mounting kits are sold separately.

Wrapping UpThe CX 10000 pioneers a new era of switching that elevates the present-day architecture by defeating its limitations. Cut for the changing network topology, it unlocks new levels of performance and efficiency. Most importantly, it fuels a new generation of datacenter fabrics that can support modern applications infinitely more efficiently and cost-effectively.

For more information on the Aruba CX 10000, be sure to watch the full presentation from the recent Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023.

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According to Gartner, roughly 92% organizations have a multi-cloud roadmap for the future. With companies always on the swivel, racing towards the newest trends and technologies, this is not surprising. The cloud multiverse holds infinite promises, providing big thrusts to innovation and pouring out a steady stream of cutting-edge capabilities. But multi-cloud adoption is a zigzag course that has many highs and lows.

We, recently met up with Kumorai, a startup that works in the lower layers of multi-cloud enablement to talk about the journey, and the way to achieve multi-cloud resiliency. In an interview with Harris Haider, Founder and CEO, we learned about the biggest barrier to multi-cloud adoption, and what Kumorai is doing to solve problems for the long haul.

A Hard RealityAn IT veteran with experience working for both technology provider and consumer companies, Mr. Haider has watched the seismic shifts in IT from close quarters. The early idea of Kumorai took seed when differing infrastructures of multi-cloud opened up a skill gap, and a need for an orchestration platform was born from it.

“I was working with some large financial institutions where we saw the CIO had a mandate of migrating all their sixteen thousand applications in the cloud. I knew immediately that lifting and shifting applications in the cloud in the form of virtualized VMs as well as containers is easier than the network and security piece,” said Mr. Haider.

Multi-cloud brings with it demands for very specific skillsets that are imperative to understanding, managing and securing multi-cloud.

“There’s a knowledge gap when it comes to the understanding of cloud, along with the automation skillset that the network and security teams have – they are busy managing and operating their existing datacenter networks, and trying to automate. Now they’re tasked with additional responsibility of cloud and automation,” he comments.

The Way AroundKumorai was founded with the vision to bridge this gap. Based out of San Francisco, Kumorai is plugging efforts toward making it possible to adopt and migrate to multi-cloud in a frictionless fashion.

For an IT company, the name Kumorai sparks curiosity. Mr. Haider revealed that Kumorai is Japanese for “cloud” and “lightning fast” – in its case lightning-fast orchestration of multi-cloud.

A No-Code Orchestration Layer that Ties It all TogetherKumorai is a cloud-hosted SaaS platform, designed to offer “automation as a service” for Infra teams to quickly build standardized and repeatable application infrastructure in minutes and securely connect across multi-cloud universe.

Kumorai describes it as “multi-cloud management platform for infrastructure teams to design, deploy, modify and operate cloud infrastructure in an efficient and cost-effective manner.” It helps Infra teams become efficient service providers, giving DevOps teams self-service capabilities.

Where Infrastructure as Code makes it possible for teams to provision infrastructure, it does not provide end-to-end service lifecycle management, such as audit trail, compliance validation and approval processes. Kumorai fills in the gap and takes it a step further with what Mr. Haider calls infrastructure as design (IaD). It helps IT teams to visually design their application infrastructure, and the platform is smart enough to translate into IaC code such as Terraform.

Kumorai ties together disparate public cloud infrastructures into a single plane of abstraction that enables seamless, no-fuss management.Kumorai leverages cloud-native technologies for scalability and security, and integrates with popular configuration engines to eliminate configuration drift. In multi-cloud, configuration drift, caused by unrecorded ad hoc changes, often leads to unexpected system behavior, opening up infrastructures to security vulnerabilities. Kumorai “enforces deployment standardization across cloud and eliminates configuration drift.”

Its key capability is that it’s a no-code platform. As network and security teams are left with no time on their hands to learn cloud or coding, the platform “creates a framework of its own that translates visual designs to appropriate codes.” This lets them have the same level of control that they had on-premises, without writing their own code.

Under the hood, the platform framework reveals modules that are plugged in to provide end-to-end process automation, and centralized security and management across cloud providers.

“Our goal is to bridge the gap between the Net, Sec and DevOps. So, we’re trying to build a whole NetSecDevOps platform where we can accommodate all different types of IT personas,” informs Mr. Haider.

With provisioning being one of its key functions, Kumorai has been previously mistaken for a rival of Terraform. Mr. Haider explained that the goal by no means is to replace Terraform. Instead, Kumorai provides a layer of abstraction on top of underlying provisioning engines like Ansible, Terraform and CloudFormation.

“Think of it as nothing more than a management plane in the world of SDN that unifies your multi-cloud data plane infrastructure to a centralized engine,” he says.

Kumorai is non-disruptive, meaning that the code configurations it generates stays even if a user decides to rip and replace it.

In ConclusionThe growing vacuum of critical knowledge makes engagement with technologies increasingly harder. It a problem too big to be compensated by upskilling employees, and too unpredictable to be ready for ahead of time. Kumorai’s zero-code orchestration capabilities are built to ease skill gap woes. It lends multi-cloud organizations a code-free, low-cost way of adopting multi-cloud, that infuses well in the existing system, and can be used across the board. Its seamless integration with the underlying systems is more than we can say for many products.

For more information, head over to Kumorai’s website. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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In the always-on digital world of today, businesses have inherently low tolerance for operational downtime. To avert halts and outages, many resort to AIOps to manage, monitor and troubleshoot their networks. AIOps leverages AI/ML algorithms to automate triaging, root cause analysis, and closed-loop remediation of events. Its value comes from using artificial intelligence to automatically resolve growing management pains that emerge as the network expands.

At the Aruba Atmosphere 2023, HPE Aruba launched the next generation of Aruba Networking Central. A product already widely used for a spectrum of monitoring and management capabilities, the new generation builds on it with advanced AI-powered visualization and closed-loop remediation.

At the recent Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023, VP of Aruba AIOps, Jose Tellado, and Director of Product Management, Frank Jas, showcased the new features, and gave a demo of the solution.

The Anatomy of AIOpsTypically, AIOps maturation happens in a series of stages. At the data level, it starts with basic data collection, cleaning and enrichment of data at source, and building siloed data lakes which accumulate into a global data lake, before reaching the ultimate data federation.

The models that learn from this data too evolve alongside – going from basic statistics and alerting to anomaly detection and finding correlations. In later stages, the models can go across multiple dimensions finding patterns and making recommendations. At maturity, they can be deployed in a set and forget fashion. The models’ lifecycle needs to be continually managed with routine refreshes, making sure that the metrics are not getting anonymized as that can degrade the outcome.

The most interesting part is how the progression at the lower levels ties together at the customer end. For customers, they start with the basic alerting functions which require the IT teams to handle the deeper details of the anomalies. As the models evolve, they are able to perform root cause analysis (RCA) on their own, aggregating and correlating data, and making appropriate recommendations. At the final stage of AIOps maturity, customers can leverage self-driving AI algorithms for automated troubleshooting.

Global AIAruba has a mature AIOps model that constitutes a global data lake streaming data through data federation as a single source of data, AI models that can tell users what or where the problem is, and lifecycle management support for all models.

In the presentation, Mr. Tellado offered a look under the layers showing what the workflows currently look like. At a high level, the production clusters are where all the AI models are run and trained. Although running in a shared production environment, the models don’t learn from each other, but from individual customer data. They are trained and inferred locally, so that they can detect anomalies based on the particular customer trends to enable predictive maintenance.

Data from the production clusters is PII anonymized and streamed into the Global AI Data Lake that carries stats, states, flow and model metrics. “This global data lake trains models that apply to all customers based on anonymized data,” says Mr. Tellado.

Aruba takes this a step further by allowing customers to enrich the data coming in from production clusters by injecting it with complimentary data such as device capabilities and security vulnerabilities. Customers can additionally ingest support cases and Aruba documentation.

This creates a model “that mixes up telemetry from the devices” with Aruba’s internal data, and in addition “pushing models to the production clusters that are based on this multidimensional data to actually create internal use cases.”

The models then go into the clusters for individual customers.

With the models running globally across Aruba’s 200,000 customers and 2.5 million devices, it makes it possible to find fine-grained anomalies like interoperability issues between clients and software versions, or silicon partners.

“We could also find new use cases to actually push to customers,” informs Mr. Tellado.

The Next Generation Aruba Networking CentralIn the new generation of Central, Aruba made a breath of enhancements. The changes take effect across multiple dimensions including AI and analytics, visualization and configuration.

The new design presents AI and analytics in a different view. This is backed by a new data processing pipeline in the cloud which offers improved latency, allowing the analytics to run faster and fetch quicker responses for users.

“Mostly on the redesign of the user experience, you’re going to see a completely different look and feel with the new Central,” said Mr. Jas.

The Solar System is an entity-centric navigation tool that allows users to choose what parameters they want to focus on, and view changes around it.The new Central can be activated with a single click from the Central dashboard. Just visually, the interface looks markedly different from the older display. One of goals of changing the design is to make sure that all the data that Aruba Central has access to across numerous customers and devices are easily navigable to the customers, and that operators can pan into relevant information granularly.

Aruba calls the new navigation tool Solar System in keeping with its planetary mapping style. Data is visualized in contexts and sub contexts with the thumbnails displaying summarized information that operators can click on to get more details.

One of the features highlighted in the presentation was the new Firmware Recommender introduced a month back. With it, customers can get data-driven recommendations for the best firmware for every device in the environment.

“The reason we did this is because we were already clustering algorithms in our support database, and we found out that 10% of the support cases were related to programs, whether it was the upgrade of the firmware – given the topology of mix and match devices types, customers put the wrong firmware – or they’re wondering what’s the next firmware for them, given their desire,” explains Mr. Tellado.

With a model running on top of it, the Firmware Recommender can run through a wide range of metrics such as popularity, client topology, config, security vulnerabilities and bugs, and come up with the best recommendation. This eliminates guesswork and errors, and ensures fewer support calls while enabling better performance and faster fixes.

The new Central will also have more feature releases on a monthly basis with hitless upgrades.

“We are changing our development process to follow a more continuous integration, continuous development process, doing releases on a monthly cadence. That’s much more frequent than we support with Central. That will mean that features roll out continuously, as we improve the infrastructure,” said Mr. Has.

Other enhancements focused on the platform’s operator experience include improved AI efficacy with fewer false positives and false negatives, unified telemetry pipeline, richer actionable insights, and easily executable intent-driven automation.

To know more about the new HPE Aruba Central, be sure to check out Aruba’s presentation from the Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023.

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Thanks to Gina Rosenthal for sharing a wonderful article from Wired about the details behind the SolarWinds Orion supply chain hack that we covered back at the end of 2020. You may recall that SolarWinds was compromised by Russian hackers and their software was infected and used to breach the US government as well as Microsoft, Mandiant, and more. In this article we’re learning even more interesting information, such as the source of the attacks from the Russian SVR which is their version of the CIA, to the fact that the US DOJ detected signs of the attack just a couple of months after the infiltration and didn’t pick up on the possibility of it being a larger issue. The whole article is a fascinating read but what strikes me is that we’re now 2.5 years past this earth shattering situation and we still don’t know for certain if we could be impacted by it again. Chris, have we learned any lessons from this?

0:31 – Meteor Lake Ramping Up

During Intel’s Q1 call last week they gave everyone an update on the status of their latest client processor. Meteor Lake is the first disaggregated CPU that will be offered on the Intel 4 process node. Intel 4 is the basis for Intel offering chiplet technology that allows them to use different chips for I/O, graphics, and more. Meteor Lake is seen as the first big test of the new tech before it moves into server CPU production. This status update comes almost one year after we’ve last heard about the product line. Chris, will Intel manage to roll out Meteor Lake on time? And will their new process node succeed?

Read More: Intel: Meteor Lake & Intel 4 Process Now Ramping for Production

3:30 – WANDisco Sales Rep Costs Company Big Time

If you don’t think you can have an impact on your company then we need to tell you about WANDisco. The company announced back in March that they could not certifiy their 2022 sales numbers and that their booked revenue was significantly lower than reported. At the time we didn’t report on it because it wasn’t a huge news item. However, this week WANDisco has confirmed that a single sales rep created $15 million worth of sales that almost doubled the amount brought in by the rest of the sales team. This false reporting caused their stock price to soar and their CEO to believe they had cornered the market. Today that CEO and the CFO at the time have departed and their replacments are trying to sort through the mess. WANDisco stock trading has been halted until the situation can be resolved. Tom, one rep caused all this?

Read More: Single sales rep inflated WANdisco numbers

7:22 – Ubuntu Pro Now Available on AWS

Ubuntu fans can rejoice today because Canonical has announced a subscription-based Ubuntu Pro offering is now available on AWS. Ubuntu Pro provides critical enterprise support out of the box such as security maintenance and hardening scripts. The idea is that you can pull down the image from the AWS marketplace and launch instances to let you purchase Ubuntu Pro Compute Service Plans as needed. Given the focus on federal standards like FIPS, is this designed to help governements and other regulated industries jump in the cloud quickly with approved solutions? And how will Canonical make people prefer the paid version?

Read More: Ubuntu Pro Upgrade – Annual Subscription

11:22 – Apple and Nuvia Drop Lawsuit

Way back in 2019 we reported that Apple had sued the CEO of Nuvia, Gerard Williams, claiming he had breached his contract by founding the Arm-based CPU company. Nuvia was snapped up by Qualcomm last year but the lawsuit still lingered as Apple wanted Williams to admit to what he was accused of doing. At least until this week, as Apple has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. There is talk that part of this reluctance stems from the lawsuit that Arm filed against Qualcomm claiming that they have no rights to use the Nuvia technology and that all designs need to be destroyed as per the licensing breach. Tom, is Apple letting Williams off the hook? Or do they see Arm succeeding in squashing the Nuvia tech?

Read More: Apple gives up legal war on iPhone CPU wizard who co-founded Nuvia

15:56 – The Legacy of the Biggest Supply Chain Hack

Read More: The Untold Story of the Boldest Supply-Chain Hack Ever

26:04 – The Weeks Ahead

Mobility Field Day 9 – May 17-19, 2023

Cloud Field Day 17 May 31 – June 1, 2023

Cisco Live US June 6-7, 2023

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One of the top trends shaping industries right now is application sprawl. Enterprises have a ballooning number of applications deployed on their IT systems, and it is a crucial element to their becoming first-class enterprises.

We are surrounded by an infinite number of software that are designed to trim down the slog and struggle with quick and easy one-click operations. There are wealth management apps to help plan and monitor investments from self-service dashboards, cybersecurity applications to keep you in the know, and predict and prevent attacks, analytics applications providing pre-packaged intelligence.

But as diverse an ecosystem as it is, modern applications all aim to serve the same set of requirements – lightning-fast access – in real-time or near real-time, rich user experience with ready predictive analytics, effortless scalability, and easy deployment.

For the past several years, SingleStore has been working towards transforming the environments that modern applications sit in. All of their research work and innovation have been around expanding the capabilities of these applications from within. Their goal is to guarantee better analytics, flashing-fast access, friction-less scalability, and cost optimization.

We met with Vijay Raja, Sr. Director of Product Marketing to learn how SingleStore is helping enterprises get ahead of the curve.

An Overflowing Architecture“Companies are carrying a lot of legacy baggage today,” said Mr. Raja.

The modern database ecosystem is a full house of applications, both legacy and modern kinds. A different database for a different use case accumulates to an absurdly large number of applications, making the environment excruciatingly complex to navigate, and painfully slow to scale.

With low latency still the expectation no matter what the supporting architecture looks like, the pressure of speed rests squarely on the developers.

“This whole thing is a rather inefficient and complex way to power your applications, because you are managing multiple systems, you’re moving data around, it starts to impact the performance, and you can’t scale fast enough,” told Mr. Raja.

A rich variety of data – real-time, operational, analytics, ML – compels teams to top the existing stack with new sets of analytics engines, machine learning libraries, so on.

One of the biggest hurdles that engineers face with an overcrowded environment is data bottleneck that makes applications frustratingly slow. The slack leaves teams with stale data and slow queries to work with, and users with irresponsive applications. Factor in the cost of moving data around via replication, and you have a system that works more than it needs to, and costs twice than it should.

SingleStoreDB – One Database for Many Use CasesSingleStoreDB is a silver-bullet to the myriad of problems stemming from such environments. To begin with, it is a single store that is designed for operational analytics. Users can bring in batch, operational and third-party data for quick processing.

With built-in capabilities to process different types of data, SingleStoreDB eliminates the need for different databases and separate analytics engines.

Primarily a relational database, SingleStore says that it is the “world’s fastest real-time distributed SQL database.”

SingleStoreDB combines transactions and analytics into one engine, providing blazing fast access to data-intensive applications.SingleStoreDB is multi-model, that “beyond structural or relational data”, can also handle “JSON data, key value data, time series, geospatial, full text search” and much more. It treats JSON as first-class citizen.

But the real power of SingleStoreDB is not that it’s a transactional database. “We combine transactions and analytics in a single engine and that’s really what makes us unique,” says Mr. Raja.

SingleStoreDB is a performance- first database that delivers low latency analytics on transactional data at scale.

“You no longer need to do ETL (extract, transform and load) between one set of engines to other engines. This makes it incredibly simple, easy, fast and efficient.”

Mr. Raja informed that what’s driving the adoption of SingleStoreDB is not the opportunity to cut out databases, but the ability to “power both applications as well as analytics”, and scale easily.

With no replication involved, data is accessible in a single domain, but placed in different tiers based on the data type. SingleStore offers three tiers of storage – in-memory row store, disk-based column store and cloud-based object store. Data moves fluidly between the tiers offering consistently low-latency access.

“Hot data will probably rest in memory. Warm data is probably on the disk, and the cooler data is probably on the cloud,” says Mr. Raja.

SingleStore is designed for varied use cases – real-time customer analytics, real-time applications, cyber security, fraud analytics, IoT. “We have customers who are bringing time-series data and then doing analytics on this exact same storage engine. It’s just another data type that we process.”

The Inside TechnologySingleStore leverages a patented technology that it calls “Universal Storage.” The secret to SingleStoreDB’s broad compatibility is that it combines both in-memory row-based store of transactional databases, and on-disk column-based store of analytical databases.

“Universal store brings together the best of row and column store into a single table type,” says Mr. Raja.

Analytics can be performed on data as it lands without any movement. The SingleStore engine can process both transactions and analytics on the same table.

Similar to hybrid transaction analytical processing (HTAP) engines, SingleStore sits between the older OLTP applications and OLAP engines. Its key capabilities are unified transactions and analytics in the same engine, and a scale-out architecture optimized for the cloud that allows easy scaling up and out. Others features include ultra-fast data ingestion, low-latency processing, and simple deployment.

In ConclusionWith most organizations still preoccupied with learning how to power data-intensive applications effectively, SingleStoreDB offers a way to nimbly adapt to the changing digital realities. It is a stand-off product because where no one database is good at everything, it is a multi-purpose one that serves numerous use cases. Brownie points for performance gains and cost cuts.

For more information, visit SingleStore’s website. For more stories like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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In 2021, public records show that one in five businesses in Canada was hit with an information security breach. Larger businesses were most often targeted at 37% of the reported incidents, followed by medium businesses at 25%, and small businesses reporting at 16%.

If we break these numbers down, large businesses make up 0.2% of the reports at 2,936 organizations, medium businesses make up 1.9% at 22,725 and small businesses come in at 97.9% with a count of 1.2 million.

Of the $10B spent nationally in 2021 on information security remediation, almost half of that ($4.4B) came from large businesses, $2.9B from medium businesses, and the smallest amount, $2.4B from small businesses.

Put these together and we get a disproportional 62% of information security incidents targeting the top 2.1% of businesses. Budgets allocated to remediation follow this pattern with almost three-quarters of the money spent coming from that same sector.

Large organizations recognize that they’re a major target and invest appropriately. Smaller businesses however tend to look at these same statistics and conclude that they’re not significant targets, failing to take steps to protect their assets as a result. This turns them into even bigger targets in the process.

While it is true that the largest entities out there are more likely to experience an incident, the need for cybersecurity is universal.

BrickStor SPRackTop presents BrickStor SP (Security Platform), a cyberstorage solution that functions as a high-security NAS by front-ending block storage and providing SMB and NFS access through a high-speed access/analytics/audit/encryption engine.

Rolling SnapshotsA rolling snapshot of every file on the system is taken every minute, allowing for easy rollback to a known-good state.

When data is compromised through ransomware attacks and the like, it is relatively easy to recover the file and also examine what changes were made as part of a forensic investigation.

Professionals who are regularly involved in ransomware recovery know that undoing the rapid encryption process of a ransomware attack and detecting internal data modifications that are out of the normal patterns, such as hiding embezzlement, changing academic results, and are are two very different things.

Active DefenseThe core strength of the BrickStor SP platform is high-speed monitoring and remediation of unusual activity with the filesystem. Normal activity is constantly analyzed and factored into its learning engine. Abnormal activity is flagged and halted in short order, generating an alert to be dealt with by appropriate staff and/or processes.

Data exfiltration, where files are being copied rapidly from the storage system to local devices, is caught as soon as it goes over the system’s threshold for “normal” activity. High-speed data modifications, such as those found in ransomware attacks, are stopped in their tracks.

The Tech Field Day Showcase demonstration showed a ransomware process known to be able to encrypt files at speeds in the range of hundreds of thousands of files per second was stopped after changing only four, which could be recovered via the rolling snapshot functionality.

One Size Fits AllOne of the refreshing aspects of BrickStor SP is its market placement, or lack thereof. The product can easily scale from being a single VM front-ending on-board storage from a server’s directly-attached disks, to RackTop’s own SAS-attached hardware offerings, to front-ending large block-based SANs. Whether we’re coming into the game as a small organization or a large one, there’s a fit.

For the small organization with limited oversight capacity, BrickStor SP can be left to its own devices, providing data encryption, active defense and reporting. Larger organizations can customize this to meet their own processes such as requiring approval before active defense mitigation steps are taken. The administrative overhead of running the system can be as little or as much as is required by the business.

Regardless of how hands-off or hands-on the deployment, BrickStor SP learns from user patterns and provides an audit trail for post-incident forensics.

A Thought on “Cyberstorage” as a Term“Cyberstorage” initially seems like a strange word because the prefix “cyber” traditionally has nothing to do with security. It’s all about maximizing human intent by leveraging machine processes, for better or worse. Cybernetics, cyberbullying, and Kubernetes all fit into this. Modern definitions broaden this to include anything to do with machines or the Internet, but this still doesn’t have anything to do with security, so what’s with the term?

The major threat that the BrickStor SP solution is addressing is the one presented by human elements being influenced for improper access to information. Traditional information security is good at addressing who should be accessing something, but it tends to assume that the weak human link is much stronger than it is, or at least that there’s little to be easily done about it. The RackTop approach gets into the patterns of how they should be accessing things and takes action based on suspicious activity regardless of the permissions granted. It’s taking the zero trust concept beyond the individual and factoring in the activity itself.

Cyberstorage actively polices human/storage interaction and may well be one of the more aptly-named “cyber-” technologies out there.

The Whisper in the WiresMost organizations don’t have a team of people managing their cybersecurity policy and response. Many are lucky to have a team managing IT at all. The BrickStor SP product lends itself well to either, which is a refreshing turn in an industry that tends to focus on the top of the market.

Smaller companies that need a fire-and-forget solution that can prevent a breach in real-time and report the incident will find exactly what they’re looking for in this solution. Conversely, those who have large data sets with complex and granular access policies and controls will appreciate BrickStor SP’s flexibility to adapt to these. Best of all, there’s an easy migration path within the platform as the business grows.

Pricing is a discussion to be had with RackTop’s sales folks, but it’s well worth having that conversation.

Watch the RackTop BrickStor Showcase and more on the Tech Field Day website for more information.

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Calyptia is an enterprise observability platform based on Fluent Bit, a lightweight data collector and forwarder. The platform aims to help customers extract more value from their data by filtering noisy data, routing it to the right location, and removing redundant data. By providing real-time alerts and advanced business logic in pipelines, Calyptia simplifies observability, allowing customers to be more productive and efficient.

Observability and Telemetry PipelinesObservability is a critical aspect of modern IT operations. The term refers to the ability to measure and understand the behavior of complex systems. In the context of IT operations, observability involves monitoring and collecting data from various sources, such as applications, infrastructure, and network devices, to gain insights into the system’s behavior and performance. Observability is essential for detecting and resolving issues quickly and efficiently, as well as improving the overall quality and reliability of the system.

Telemetry pipelines are responsible for collecting, processing, and analyzing data from various sources, such as logs, metrics, traces, and events, and transforming it into meaningful insights. They provide a centralized and scalable way to collect and manage data from distributed systems, which is critical for observability. Telemetry pipelines also provide filtering, aggregation, and enrichment capabilities, allowing users to focus on the most relevant data and gain deeper insights into system behavior.

From Fluent Bit to CalyptiaCalyptia is a company that specializes in enterprise observability solutions, specifically in the area of telemetry pipelines. The company was founded by the same people responsible for the development of Fluentd and Fluent Bit, and Calyptia builds on this work. Calyptia Core extends Fluent Bit’s capabilities with enterprise-grade features, such as low-code data filtering, routing, and redaction, as well as integration with popular monitoring and analytics tools, such as MongoDB, Splunk, Prometheus, Elasticsearch, and many more.

Calyptia Core is designed to help organizations gain deeper insights into their systems by providing a scalable and efficient way to collect and manage telemetry data. It can handle data from various sources and provides a flexible and extensible platform for filtering and processing the data. Calyptia Core’s filtering capabilities allow users to remove noisy or irrelevant data, while routing and redaction capabilities ensure that sensitive data is protected and compliance requirements are met.

Calyptia Core is also designed to be easy to use and integrate with existing monitoring and analytics tools. It provides a simple and intuitive user interface for configuring data sources and destinations, as well as a comprehensive set of APIs for programmatic integration. They also offer an enterprise-grade supported LTS edition of Fluent Bit.

Stephen’s StanceObservability and telemetry pipelines are critical components of modern software development and operations. Calyptia provides enterprise-grade observability solutions, specifically in the area of telemetry pipelines, to help organizations gain deeper insights into their systems and improve their overall quality and reliability. With its efficient and scalable platform, flexible filtering and processing capabilities, and easy integration with existing tools, Calyptia Core is a powerful solution for any organization looking to improve its observability capabilities.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Calyptia offering is the possibility that it could enable new value to be extracted from data. By reducing the amount of data to be stored and directing data to the correct location, applications can be more effective while also reducing overall storage and transmission cost. This is the central paradox of data: By processing close to the source and reducing redundancy we can handle larger volumes, include new data sources, and ultimately reveal more value. Learn more about Calyptia on their website.

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More than 70% IT leaders acknowledge that incorporating automation has helped save employees 10 to 50% of their time. Across industries, enterprises and startups are building increasingly automated value chains, achieving unimaginably low housekeeping and faster time-to-market. Gartner says that the adoption will continue to quicken as companies head into the later quarters of this year.

In the Delegate Roundtable recorded at the recent Networking Field Day event in California, attending delegates picked apart the automation revolution. The discussion reveals automation’s close connection to another corresponding trend – observability.

Data Is the FuelThere’s been some exciting advances in the networking space over the last decade, and a lot of it has been propelled by automation and visibility. Automation and visibility both rely on data.

“Automation is only as good as the data we’re feeding it. We have to get much better at getting that data, which is why we’ve seen a huge rise in the number of companies that are providing visibility into our network. It turns out that the data has been there all along. We just didn’t know how to see it. Companies that we’ve talked to here at Networking Field Day, and many others are trying to pioneer ways to identify data that we want to see and do something with,” says Tom Hollingsworth, former network engineer.

IntertwinedIf you think about it, automation and visibility are two sides of a coin – one relies on quality data input to function, while the other outputs quality data. There is an opportunity for automation and visibility companies to collaborate and solve each other’s problems.

As Steve Puluka, Server and Network Administrator, points out, one way of looking at it is that automation and visibility are a two-step process. Automation churns out new things, whereas visibility provides the ability to monitor and ensure that it is working as planned.

“The real opportunity in this is that observability and monitoring companies have the ability to see when something happens, and therefore send a request to an automation system to correct that issue,” he said.

If this symbiotic association can be fully leveraged, automation can play an outsize role in the remediation of network equipment failure, and other potential causes of network outages.

Low Confidence in MachinesNetwork Engineer, John Herbert noted that a barrier that stands in the way of holistic incorporation of automation is that humans have inherently low confidence in it.

There’s no guarantee that an automated system will take all the right decisions in every given situation. Like all computer programs, its decision-making skills are limited to what it knows, and that is always less than a human counterpart.

Chris Grundemann speaking at the Networking Field Day event.For some, leaning on a system like that is like blindfolding themselves and waiting for a disaster to happen, which could otherwise be preemptively spotted and sorted in a manual operation.

Human BiasEngineers fear that when automation is fragile, the scale of what can go wrong far exceeds just a security risk. But interestingly, where professionals resist trusting a system that is built by some of the best people in the job, they’re quick to put their trust on entry-level workforces who have barely begun to learn the job.

This begs the question about the real reason why we are opposed to, and in some cases, simply unwilling to trust automation? Is it because as human beings, we are inherently afraid of changes because the outcomes are unknown to us? Is it our natural tendency to be risk averse?

Hiring more skills isn’t a one and done solution to the possible errors of automation. On the contrary, bringing in more people after a certain point only introduces noise and fragility into the system.

Referring to an early presentation, Mr. Hollingsworth reiterated, “In a given system, adding people will reduce the fragility of a system to a point, and once you’ve passed that point, no amount of human interaction will make the system any less fragile, and will, in fact, make it significantly more fragile.”

Lexie Cooper, Network Engineer, chimes in that even in industries like aerospace where the smallest mistakes have big consequences, often involving lives of people, automation is woven into the DNA of the network because automation does the work that humans can’t.

Lexie Cooper speaking at the delegate roundtable at the Networking Field Day eventOftentimes, the real reason for resisting automation is because we like to see a face in the firing line to point fingers at. After all, it is infinitely easier and within our comfort zone to put the blame on a human being than a mute machine.

“In a lot of the cases, we’ve tied our identity, maybe too closely, to the CLI and to the things we do day-to-day versus the actual intent of what we’re trying to do, and I think as an industry, we’re at that point where, if you can learn how to use an assembly line to build your network instead of building everything by hand all the time, you’re going to be in the driver seat for the next generation of networking,” says author and technologist, Chris Grundemann.

Enabling Automation with ObservabilityTo tie it back to the visibility piece, automation by itself is not whole, if it is not accompanied by good visibility. Automation and observability are joined at the hip, because to build trust in automation, professionals need observability of its inner workings.

Good automation does not seize control but enables it. By piecing together automation and observability, vendors can provide operations teams the ability to look inside a complex system and understand its internal state well enough to trust it to do what it’s meant to do.

Wrapping UpThe promise of automation far outweighs its perceived perils. This Roundtable discussion gives special point to that. We are living in an era where automation plays a star role in driving digital transformation across industries. With the network expanding at an unforeseen scale and velocity, IT professionals need all the help they can get to keep up. Automation makes it possible to eliminate the drudgery and quotidian tasks. With proper implementation, it can help build an independent system that relies less and less on humans, and can do more with less. If automation and visibility companies join forces, automation can become the view of progress that it’s meant to be all along.

For more, be sure to watch the Delegate Roundtable – Visibility and Automation Should Be Working Together – from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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Private 5G is coming to the enterprise near you. Deploying this hot new wireless and mobility technology is a great way to overcome challenges with Wi-Fi and allow IoT devices to be provisioned quickly in remote locations. But with new technologies come new complexity. Can Wi-Fi engineers figure out how to make these two solutions co-exist? And does the complexity of 5G radio technology mean we have to choose between one or the other? In this episode, Avril Salter, Troy Martin, and Keith Parsons discuss the complexity of Private 5G and whether or not it can be simplified for the enterprise.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsDr. Avril Salter

Troy Martin

Keith Parsons

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@AvrilSalterUSA

@TroyMart

@KeithRParsons

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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Trying to properly size a firewall has to be one of the most infuriating things a security operations person can do. Since you’re required to buy one that’s big enough to handle an ever-increasing number of flows in your enterprise you have to play the guessing game. Should I buy one that will fit the projected amount of data in three years? Are the numbers from the vendor reliable for minimum packet sizes only? Should I just throw a dart and double the numbers?

If you think that elastic software firewalls aren’t affect by these issues you probably haven’t deployed enough of them. Deploying a firewall intelligently does alleviate some of the sizing issues. However there are other considerations to think about. Whereas a physical hardware firewall will hit a limit in the number of connections and then fail, a software firewall will just keep chugging along. In fact, in the cloud it can scale up to take all the flows you can throw at it. Sounds awesome, right? Now think about what happens when you get the bill for a firewall that tripled in size over the last month. Worse yet, how can you be sure the flows traversing the firewall need to be doing so in the first place? Can you even separate the mess?

Proper Policing with ProsimoProsimo knows the pain of this particular challenge. In their latest cloud-native software release a couple of weeks ago they introduced a tool that looks to solve this particular issue quite elegantly. Adaptive Service Insertion is, on the surface, a very competent tool to deploy firewall resources in appropriate locations with a minimum of fuss.

Adaptive Service Insertion is completely spokeless, which means no need to deploy compute nodes to get the service up and running. You can define your policies to examine traffic based on app definitions, CIDR IP blocks, or even individual flows. Yes, Prosimo allows you to define single flows that transit through their firewall service. This, in and of itself, is a big deal. The ability to redirect critical flows through security services helps support the business rules that govern how you operate. If you are in need of PCI compliance for credit card data you can now send just that traffic through a Prosimo instance and ensure you’re protected. You can also force your local user traffic to exit out to the Internet without needing to transit back to a spoke location like the HQ.

The flexibility of the policy definitions also means you that can identify large flows and deal with them to find out why they’re consuming so many resources. The earlier example of the software firewall becoming a cost chokepoint is one that Prosimo has actually dealt with for a customer. Rather than having one big construct that has thousands of flows being piped through it with no way to figure out what’s consuming all the CPU cycles you can instead break out the flows into their own instances and gain control of the chaos. Once you’ve identified the top talkers you can implement controls to keep them from growing out of control and shocking your stakeholders when the bills come due.

Bringing It All TogetherYour security teams and networking teams are probably still fragmented despite our best efforts to help the work together in the new world of cloud-driven services. The traditional methods of securing data don’t scale well in the cloud and the new methods can scale out of control if you don’t have a way to keep them from getting that way. With solutions like the ones from Prosimo you don’t have to worry about creating a monster firewall that threatens to take over your security team. Instead you can intelligently deploy services where they are needed and analyze the data you get to find out how to tame the beasts.

For more information on Prosmio and their newest cloud-native solutions, make sure you check out their website.

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Edge environments were historically very specialized, but virtualization and cloud technology is enabling companies to deploy commodity platforms at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Raghu Vatte of ZEDEDA discussing this commoditization with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Although the transition is still getting started, standard compute platforms are rapidly being exploited at edge locations, from warehouses to retail to industrial. Even is some specialized hardware is still needed, a unified platform can increasingly absorb a majority of applications at the edge. Another factor contributing to commoditization is the standardization of application requirements, with most now virtualized or containerized with standards developing for I/O and shared hardware resources.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Alastair Cooke, independent analyst and consultant working with virtualization and data center technologies. Connect with Alastair on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read his articles on his website.
Raghu Vatte, VP of Product Management and Customer Success at ZEDEDA. Connect with Raghu on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

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Businesses are increasingly turning to automation as a way to effectively control and maintain hybrid infrastructures, and it’s clear why. Infrastructure automation provides IT teams the ability to do more with less, and makes their daily lives easier and less stressful.

Bringing easily consumable automation to the fingertips is HashiCorp, a company that has become a household name in the infrastructure automation space. Their signature product, Terraform – is a staple in organizations that are on their cloud adoption journey. At the recent Networking Field Day event in California, HashiCorp showcased how Terraform unlocks new ways to streamline and tune up infrastructure operations.

Getting AdjustedIt is no secret that hybridization has brought both exciting opportunities and unprecedented challenges. The move to cloud may long be over, but organizations face headwinds as they get to grips with the new and formerly unseen obstacles of the new ecosystem.

The shift from a static datacenter infrastructure to one that is a mixed pool of public and private cloud consumed from a variety of vendors has made APIs the standard way of interacting. This, in no small parts, has its roots in the new patterns and principles that hybrid infrastructures have introduced at the core layers of networking, security and provisioning.

The fundamental building blocks of operations have been shuffled and rearranged overnight. Where engineers had to go through lengthy processes of filing a ticket and wait to spin up and provision an infrastructure, they could do the same with infrastructure as code (IAC) by just calling an API that would set it up and provision/de-provision it much faster. Similarly, IP-based security was replaced with identity-based security.

The Standard MOOrganizations follow a standard blueprint in their adoption of the new cloud operating model. This blueprint constitutes three phases, the first of which is tactical cloud. This is where engineering teams rebuild their tech stack based on what they need to implement the changed principles around provisioning, networking and security. An otherwise logical step to continue on their path for innovation, it is where things fall apart.

“For the provisioning layer, you might have Terraform open-source, or cloud-native tools like Azure Resource Manager or CloudFormation or just a variety of things that are already out there in the market. What happens out of this is that you have multiple different workflows because everyone really chose what was best suited for their needs,” said Melar Chen, Manager of Product Marketing, during the presentation.

The problem of inconsistent workflows across teams is further exacerbated by the fact that team members are now in scattered addresses, disparate workloads are on the sprawl, and there is no central means of knowledge transfer (KT). Not knowing which infrastructure has been provisioned opens them up to vulnerabilities, said Ms. Chen.

In stages 2 and 3 companies, companies move to having a cloud program run by a central team whose job it is to create “a central service around provisioning, security, networking and connecting services with the ultimate goal of building applications.”

Terraform for Infrastructure AutomationCatering to over 3,600 customers globally, including 180 Fortune 500 companies, HashiCorp’s mission is to fulfill the need for standardized shared services across all stages of cloud adoption.

Terraform is designed to offer the full suite of provisioning and management capabilities that home-grown solutions seldom have. It allows for a unified workflow management, policy enforcement, risk management and compliance, and visibility across infrastructures.

It bridges the gap of unmet needs of platform teams – while also keeping a cloud system of records that provides information to help tune up management efficiencies.

Standardizing Infrastructure AutomationIn her presentation, Ms. Chen gave a walk-through of Terraform’s infrastructure provisioning capabilities. “The goal with infrastructure provisioning is to have an infrastructure as code platform that becomes a shared service to the rest of the organization so that teams are be able to easily provision cloud, private datacenters, and SaaS.”

Terraform offers just that. Engineers can leverage an IAC platform to provision and manage infrastructure through its lifecycle with Terraform. As a result, they can use the same workflows for networking for all private and public datacenters, and SaaS applications.

Terraform boasts of a deep and broad ecosystem that comprises 3000 providers and 20 run task partners. The Terraform registry is the central repository for all of their ecosystem.

“Terraform is able to do automation consistently because we have over 3000 different providers in our registry. So, it is really fair to say that Terraform can do infrastructure as code for any type of infrastructure you’re working with,” informed Ms. Chen.

As an infrastructure automation technology, Terraform offers many benefits to its users. It enables faster time-to-market by taking the heavy-lifting out of provisioning, and leaving teams with a self-service infrastructure that have all the security fixtures in place.

Terraform allows teams to collaborate effectively and reuse the building blocks in the modules featured in the registry, giving them a way to work around lengthy sign-offs and approvals.

Terraform unlocks cost optimization by helping companies manage overprovisioning. “They can use Terraform to implement guardrails, policy-as-code to prevent any overprovisioning, and also embed best practices into modules that developers can reuse,” Ms. Chen explained.

Provisioning from a central platform unlocks visibility into resource utilization giving teams the opportunity to monitor and optimize utilization.

Most importantly, using Terraform can help lower cyber risks. Scattered workflows fused into a shared and consistent one that works for all infrastructures and teams, reduces chance of misconfiguration, a known cause of vulnerability.

“We have modules that experts on the cloud team can create for those with less expertise to consume, without accidentally opening your organization up to risk,” said Ms. Chen.

Terraform provides drift detection that preemptively alerts teams about infrastructure changes based on what’s reflected in the state file.

Wrapping upIf mastering agile operations is the end goal, consistency and coherence must be maintained across infrastructures and teams. Terraform drives agility by leveling the differences between infrastructures with a shared provisioning system that stretches the horizons of infrastructure as code, and standardizes a smart and intelligent approach to infrastructure management and provisioning. Adding a driverless dimension to the provisioning and management tasks makes sure that engineers don’t need to get down and dirty with the technicalities every time, while also giving companies a core competency essential to thrive in a competitive digital paradigm.

For more information, check out HashiCorp’s in-depth presentations of Terraform from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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In the three years since reporting financial metrics Google’s cloud business has announced they have turned a profit. Their offerings under this umbrella include Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. These two products now account for 10 percent of parent company Alphabet’s total revenue. Buried in an SEC filing is news that Google will extend the estimated useful life of its servers and networking equipment to 6 years. While this is phrased as financial engineering, it also reflects a change in how Google, and other hyperscalers, will purchase and buy servers. What are the ramifications of this change? Does this mean the cloud business will remain a priority for Google going forward?

1:09 – CrowdStrike’s CloudStream aims to Simplify XDR Adoption

CrowdStrike has announced CrowdStream, powered by Cribl. This offering is meant to simplify how customers get data from many different sources into the CrowdStrike ecosystem to do detection and response. How important unique data aggregated into a single platform?

Read More: CrowdStrike Introduces CrowdStream to Accelerate and Simplify XDR Adoption

2:49 – Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster released by Canonical

Canonical has released Ubuntu 23.04, codenamed “Lunar Lobster”, which includes a new installer that enables enterprise deployment and customization at scale, as well as native user authentication with Azure Active Directory for Ubuntu Desktops. Ubuntu 23.04 also includes improved workflows for cross-platform development, more controls for apps and snaps, and enhancements to the Ubuntu gaming experience, among other features. Is this new release more about desktop or is there much for the server and cloud to get excited about?

Read More: Canonical releases Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster

7:19 – DHS to create a task force to determine how AI can be used to protect the country

The US Department of Homeland Security has announced the creation of a new task force to determine how the federal government can leverage artificial intelligence to protect the country. With the announcement, two examples were given on how AI could be used for this purpose. One is to screen cargo for goods made by forced labor and the other is to better find and identify fentanyl in shipments into the US. In a related story, last week, U.S. Central Command announced it hired former Google AI Cloud Director Ander Moore to be its first advisor on subjects such as AI, robotics, and cloud computing. Tim, was it just a matter of time that government agencies took an official stance on AI?

Read More: DHS task force will examine how to use A.I. to protect homeland security

9:52 – BMC Expands Mainframe Business with Model9

BMC has acquired Israeli mainframe VTL and data export startup Model9 and plans to combine their Cloud Data Management for Mainframe solutions with its own mainframe and hybrid cloud software and services. This is BMC’s sixth acquisition in three years, with the previous ones being RSM Partners, Compuware, Alderstone, ComAround and StreamWeaver. What does this tell us about the mainframe software and solutions space?

Read More: BMC buys virtual tape library biz Model9

13:58 – Cisco releases cloud-based XDR offering

At RSA 2023, Cisco announced its new, cloud-first, Extended Detection and Response (XDR) offering. The goal with this offering is to simplify security operations by prioritizing and automatically remediating security incidents. The solution is now in Beta, hitting General Availability in July of this year. Along with leveraging native telemetry within Cisco’s own ecosystem, Cisco XDR can integrate third party products in the spaces of Endpoint Detection and Response, Email Threat Defense, Next-Generation Firewall, and Security Information and Event Managment. Tim, what does it mean for Cisco to enter the XDR space and how achievable is automated incident response when it comes to security events?

Read More: Cisco Unveils New Solution to Rapidly Detect Advanced Cyber Threats and Automate Response

16:39 – Rubrik Working with ZScaler to Stop Data Exfiltration

Rubrik is teaming up with Zscaler to automate sensitive data file detection and classification, aiming to prevent data leaks outside an organization’s IT boundaries. Rubrik brings their Sensitive Data Monitoring & Management technology to discover and classify sensitive data, while Zscaler provides cloud security tools to detect known file exfiltration. What should customers make of this combination?

Read More: Rubrik, Zscaler double down on data protection

19:39 – Google Cloud Turns a Profit and Extends the Life of Servers

Read More: Google’s cloud business turns profitable for the first time on record

Read More: An update on certain reporting and disclosure topics in our Q1 2023 earnings

29:50 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

Mobility Field Day 9 – May 17-19, 2023

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The network brings the world in a computer. With everything at the tip of the finger, one of the challenges businesses face is edge to edge visibility.

The network is bursting at the seams with countless devices and solutions deployed on its fabric. With its perimeter constantly shifting and expanding, it is becoming increasingly important to maintain a clear sight of everything to keep the network and its assets working as they should.

At the recent Networking Field Day event, one of the companies that dug deep into observability was Kentik. A startup with a network observability pedigree, Kentik is determined to unlock true observability of the increasingly complex, hybrid network of today.

Justin Ryburn, Vice President, Global Solutions Engineering, gave a briefing of the Kentik Network Observability Platform explaining its capabilities and inner workings.

For Kentik, observability is not just another new buzzword that is having its moment. Kentik defines observability as the ability to “answer any question about any network”. According to them, two key things make for true observability – a centralized repository of network data, and data enrichment.

Challenges of Being in the KnowNetworks were a lot more intelligible when decades ago, companies used to have their own datacenters and colocations, and the edge of the network used to be a branch office. A small team of network engineers would build, configure, and maintain everything. With the exception of the Internet and some carrier circuits that a company may be leasing at the time, businesses had control over all of their network.

But things rapidly changed as cloud, and edge entered the picture. Visibility went from obstructed to obscure, and suddenly the networking team is buried under a landslide of minutiae and metrics.

The shifting dynamics and realities of hybrid network make it close to impossible for teams to watch over every digital asset and interaction. The whole network operation takes a hit because of this.

The Kentik Network Observability PlatformKentik Network Observability platform offers a way for network teams to see deep into the heart of the network, and have information at their fingertips. Built on the needs of organizations on hybrid multi-cloud, Kentik watches all networks core to edge – the cloud, WAN, edge, the Internet and containers.

“We may either be delivering applications through a CDN, or have users on the enterprise network that are consuming applications through a CDN. So connectivity to the internet and those CDNs is critical for good user experience,” said Mr. Ryburn.

“We’re not a point solution that just looks at the datacenter or the SD-WAN, or a particular public cloud provider. Our mission is to be able to provide a platform that can look across all the various different networks that network engineers in the modern enterprise are tasked with looking after,” he added.

The highlight of the solution is data collection at full fidelity. The platform’s ability to measure the internal state of the network lies in its ability to collect all types of telemetry.

For deep observability, Kentik uses flow and VPC, streaming telemetry, hosts, and SNMP, additionally synthetic tests for active monitoring.

With a lot of good information buried in flow, Kentik started its journey by focusing on flow data, but soon realized that when dealing with distributed systems, no one type of telemetry answers all questions. So, they designed the platform to collect data like logs and streaming telemetry to help teams get to the root cause of issues faster.

Most enterprises face challenges planning for seasonal spikes. Kentik performs active monitoring with synthetic tests, through which it puts synthetic traffic on the network via an agent to test out the performance of the network giving engineers a way to be ahead of the game.

Kentik unlocks complete observability of the network, the parts you own and the parts you don’t.The platform integrates with a lot of data sources – Datadog, Sumo Logic, Splunk, Amazon S3, Kafka, and Google Cloud to name a few. On the output side, it pushes notifications out through ServiceNow, and send the data off to other systems including Splunk, Amazon S3, InfluxData, and Prometheus.

Inside the Kentik telemetry pipeline, data from disparate sources are aggregated and normalized, enriched with context, and transformed into deep analytics before published for a single view.

A key capability is fast and flexible query with context. The analytics Kentik provides drawing on the large volumes of telemetry data it ingests, enables teams to query back answers quickly.

More Features on the WayThe Kentik Network Observability Platform takes visibility to the next level providing teams meaningful information that helps monitor and troubleshoot the network. But Kentik is always testing new ideas and moving the research forward.

During the presentation, Mr. Ryburn informed that Kentik is currently working on building a full-on metrics platform to amend its light SNMP support. This will give operators a chance to dabble in the metrics, perform sophisticated comparisons and detect problems faster. Another capability that its working toward is events for correlation.

A project already in the works is adding a cloud topology for GCP. “For a while we’ve had some cool visualization for AWS and Azure. They can show you your regions, zones, how your network is actually built and designed in the public cloud,” said Mr. Ryburn. Seeing that the customers love those topology views, Kentik is now working on building out such view for GCP.

Wrapping upWith the network expanding in size and complexity every day, companies can’t afford keep their fingers crossed and hope for the best. Before they find themselves in the crosshairs, they need to proactively invest in a solution like Kentik’s that redefines visibility, making it easier to explore data out of the box, and delivers faster, accurate and rapid insights for directed troubleshooting.

For more information, be sure to check out the Kentik deep-dive presentations from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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As companies move to secure their digital estates from ransomware attacks leveraging zero trust architectures and defense-in-depth strategies, one asset looms larger than most – data. But in the fight against ransomware, focusing solely on data recovery is a losing game. The question one should be asking is whether to use an identity-centric solution, or a data-centric one?

With RackTop BrickStor, we can confidently say both.

Indentity-Centric or Data-Centric Security?The move to cloud-native applications, distributed teams, and unmanaged user devices has created a world of deperimeterization where IT estates span networks, devices, applications, data, and users across multiple platforms. These platforms are often built on infrastructures that companies neither own nor completely control.

If, perchance, they do control the infrastructure, they don’t always control the access that employees, partners, and customers have to resources over the internet.

The facts of deperimeterization have led to widespread acceptance of the need for zero trust architectures, such as described in NIST SP 800-207. Zero trust is a concept that moves us from providing implicit trust based on network boundaries (a secure perimeter) to a least-privilege model focused on explicit authentication and authorization of both subject and resource. This need for discrete authentication and authorization brings an obvious focus on identity.

Identity-centric security is a popular response to the demands of a zero trust architecture. It includes not only the identity of human users, but also that of data, devices, networks, workloads, and the interactions between all of them. Identity-centric security typically expands the traditional “triple-A” of authentication, authorization, and accounting, to include access policies and auditing capabilities.

But what is it actually trying to protect? In many cases, the most valuable assets being secured are various types of data. This has led to the emergence of data-centric security.

According to Wikipedia, data-centric security is “an approach to security that emphasizes the dependability of the data itself rather than the security of networks, servers, or applications.” Users/accounts also belong to that list. And it typically adds encryption and digital rights management to the conversation around zero trust architectures.

Why Not Choose Both?What if companies could have both identity and data-centric security? Enter RackTop Systems, and their active security platform.

RackTop Systems is a leader in the emerging “cyberstorage” market. Founded in 2010, they have a team of U.S. Intelligence Community veterans and engineers that are the brains behind their signature product, BrickStor SP.

RackTop describes BrickStor as an “active security platform for unstructured data” and claims it to be the only cyberstorage solution that addresses all five functional areas of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, namely, identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover.

Cyberstorage is in many ways a direct response by the IT community to the seemingly overwhelming threat of ransomware and more recently, extortionware. Cyberstorage techniques also guard against the age-old “insider” threats of data exfiltration and destruction.

How does RackTop do cyberstorage? I recently joined a Tech Field Day Showcase to find out.

BrickStor CyberstorageBrickStor provides an excellent combination of data-centric and identity-centric security technologies to implement a zero trust architecture for defending unstructured data. It leverages encryption – FIPS AES-256 to be exact – and does not require any additional products to manage keys including policy-based key rotation and auditing.

A recently published technical validation paper from Enterprise Strategy Group says that “the RackTop software-defined data storage solution demonstrates robust proactive data security capabilities in an all-in-one Cyberstorage package that is easy to use.”

Even more exciting is the combination of UEBA (user and entity behavior analysis) and SOAR (security orchestration automation and response) capabilities that are purpose-built around the realities of securing data.

With its well-tuned, out-of-the-box policies, BrickStor can start protecting the most valuable data right from day 1. To see this in action, check out this live demo.

The Bottom LineIn order to secure organizations against the complex and evolving threats, a zero trust architecture that is both identity-centric and data-centric is critical. Luckily, RackTop Systems has done all the heavy-lifting by embedding these techniques and technologies into their BrickStor cyberstorage platform, bringing to customers a ready-to-use solution.

Watch the video from the RackTop Showcase on the Tech Field Day website for more information.

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For many companies, automation of business processes is business as usual. Impacted by cloud, enterprise networks have grown increasingly complex and chaotic. There’s an ever-growing number of devices, tasks, processes, and more vulnerabilities to defend against. Without automation, innovation would be stuck in low gear.

Companies are working at a frantic pace trying to push out automation to the fingertips of users. One such company is Itential. At the recent Networking Field Day event, Chris Wade, CTO and Co-Founder of Itential gave a presentation of the Itential Automation Platform.

Mr. Wade explained how the software can help companies get out of heavy-lifting, and reap the benefits of automation already available to them so that they are able to serve up self-service automation to their users.

Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to DrinkExperts predict that the rapid infusion of automation in off-the-shelf technologies will usher a barnburner era of self-service network automation. Repeatable tasks will be offloaded to automated systems, and users will have the control to consume automation independently at their end.

But despite widespread availability, many companies are still unable to take advantage of automation to tune up efficiencies of their tasks and processes. Those before automation may call this something of a happy problem, but it can potentially accrue huge technical debt in the long run.

To address that, there is a growing ecosystem of tools and technologies that broadly, or narrowly takes on the automation challenges of networking and development tasks.

“The ecosystem is consolidating. There’s been so much innovation in the last few years within the networking space, probably more so than in the ten previous years. We’re seeing both a variety of networking things, but also consolidation in the ways to automate it which we think today spells it out. It’s a great opportunity for us to take advantage of,” noted Mr. Wade.

The Automation Maturity PathA company’s natural progression to automation typically happens in three stages. Every company on the automation journey starts at ground zero where they rely on time-intensive, manual processes that are open to errors.

Once they start down the road, they typically begin automating repeatable tasks to save time and effort. This takes a concerted effort that entails extensive scripting and development. At this point, automation is strictly siloed, and scattershot.

“When you look at the network layer, a lot of times we talk about datacenter by itself or firewalls by itself, and a lot of the organizations managing network and network automation are really siloed off like this,” said Mr. Wade.

As they progress to process orchestration, these disintegrated pieces of automation are woven together to enable organization-wide automation of processes to save time.

“End users are deploying applications and connectivity, moving things across hybrid multi-cloud. So, a lot of the services cross these silos, and it’s really breaking how we think of task-centric automation,” he said.

This is where most companies are at in their automation journey, finishing with task-based automation and going more into process automation.

Next stop is self-serve networking where customers can do everything autonomously. The self-serve networking borrows from the cloud computing model and optimizes ease of consumption.

To make self-serve networking a reality, users need to have a full and complete understanding of the system. So Itential put in place all the granularity, visibility and controls required to take advantage of the automation already existing in solutions.

The Itential Automation PlatformItential’s is a SaaS platform that combines the capabilities of multiple point solutions on Itential’s portfolio. It integrates, automates and orchestrates hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure for NetOps and DevOps teams enabling automation for individual personas, teams and end users.

Itential integrates automation into NetOps and DevOps operations helping companies reach automation maturity through self-serve networking.The platform boasts of robust integration capabilities which allow users to integrate any service or capability, no coding required. On Itential, integration happens in two ways. The platform can automatically make connection by ingesting Swagger specifications from interfaces with APIs, and generating adapters. There is no need for a system integrator to do this manually. Teams can load services in the system, and automate them right away.

“Historically, you’d have to wait on your favorite vendor six months to build something. You might have to code something up yourself, but the ecosystem is such today that we can take advantage of it immediately,” reminded Wade.

For systems that don’t have an API, Itential has the Automation Gateway module for direct plug-in and integration.

Itential offers low-code orchestration end to end. The platform leverages two homegrown products for this – Automation Studio, a drag-and-drop builder which makes it easy for NetDevOps to collaborate around automation, and Configuration Manager that builds golden configs for CLI and API devices. Teams can test and validate automation and configs in lower environment making sure that everything is working as intended.

Itential enables self-service consumption with capabilities like automated report and analysis, single view of management, real-time notifications, and easy integration with self-service portals. These make sure that useful information is at the fingertips, and automations are executed at minimum effort.

Wrapping UpThe Itential platform ties up the loose ends providing companies a demonstrably easier way to incorporate and leverage automation. It takes the small things off of the hands of network engineers and developers, and helps them pay attention to the bigger dynamics, making a more nimble NetDevOps team. By enabling self-service networking, it provides end users the opportunity to save time and improve the overall quality of service.

For more information, check out Itential’s detailed demonstrations from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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Although the Utilizing Edge podcast dives deep into the topic of edge computing, it’s worth considering the topic from other perspectives. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast features Andy Banta, Jim Jones, and Gina Rosenthal discussing the reality of edge with Stephen Foskett, host of Utilizing Edge. After a quick consideration of the various devices that could be considered edge, from mobile phones to 5G base stations to software to Intel NUCs, we discuss the requirements and demands of edge computing. But there are many similarities with datacenter and cloud, including virtual machines and containers, Kubernetes and firewalls, hyper-converged infrastructure and SD-WAN.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsAndy Banta

Jim Jones

Gina Rosenthal

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@AndyBanta

@K00laidIT

@Digi_Sunshine

Twitter@SFoskett

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Although the technology is roughly similar to datacenter or cloud, the unique challenges of edge computing require new approaches to storage, networking, orchestration, deployment, and more. We were kicking off a new season of Utilizing Tech focused on edge computing, featuring Alastair Cooke and Brian Chambers as co-hosts along with Stephen Foskett. One of the key differences for edge computing is the strictly constrained resources there as well as the massive scale. What we now call edge has existed for decades but the proprietary hardware previously used has been largely replaced by commodity and internet-connected systems that inherit technologies like virtualization, containerization, and hyperconvergence. Businesses and consumers expect more interactivity and capability in retail, restaurants, and hospitality environments, and the IoT revolution is strongly affecting manufacturing, military, and industrial settings. But what is the edge really, and how do we deliver services there? That’s the question we hope to answer in this season of Utilizing Edge.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Alastair Cooke, independent analyst and consultant working with virtualization and data center technologies. Connect with Alastair on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read his articles on his website.
Brian Chambers, Technologist and Chief Architect at Chick-fil-A. Connect with Brian on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read his blog on Substack.

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IT teams have had a nice run doing things manually a long time. But the recent tech sprawl and a tight labor market raise skepticism about whether the manual approach is anymore the appropriate approach in IT.

Typically, companies rely on operators to run maintenance and upgrades on network and security hardware. An overwhelming majority of network engineers and cybersecurity professionals have confirmed that this approach is inefficient.

A network device goes through countless upgrades during its lifecycle, putting increased pressure on operators. Making matters worse, the manual way introduces delays, and elevated risks of misconfigurations, which are the root causes of vulnerabilities.

BackBox rethinks this approach with a smart solution. At the recent Networking Field Day event, theyshowcased the BackBox Automation Platform that offers a smart way to push updates to firewalls and network devices without the grunt work. Senior Product Manager, Perry Greenwood, and CTO, Josh Stephens gave several demos of the solution showing how BackBox makes it easy to perform task and upgrades with no-code automation.

Inside the BackBox Automation PlatformBackBox features tens of adjustable, device and context-aware scripts that can be modified and reused to run upgrades on a full fleet of devices. By making changes to the variable, the scripts can used to run commands on different devices.

“When it comes to programmability, we think about it in two terms. There is the programmability where you can extend scripts and then there’s the programmability where you want to integrate with outside services, sources or whatever homegrown system you have in your IT department,” said Mr. Greenwood.

BackBox replaces error-prone management with reliable script-less automationHe assures that BackBox does not require deep Python expertise to operate. Knowing CLI and a little knowledge of Linux is all it takes to use the platform.

As device maintenance windows are typically in the wee hours, BackBox allows users to schedule upgrades ahead of time so that the routines do not interrupt their sleep. Both one-time and future upgrades can be pre-scheduled from the platform, and the system will keep the upgrades going at the set hours.

BackBox can handle upgrades for both common and complex equipment. The platform can run pre-checks to ensure that all routing and traffic conditions are ideal, making sure that an upgrade goes through successfully. When an upgrade fails, BackBox can bring the device back up using a remediation script.

The BackBox platform features an intelligent notification system that can be customized to whatever makes sense for the operators. Notifications for successful updates can be made to arrive by email during regular office hours, whereas urgent alerts can be prioritized to be sent out in real time on collaboration channels.

Designed for multi-vendor networks, BackBox currently supports 180 vendors. The platform is deployable on prem, in the cloud and in a customer-managed model.

Complimentary Professional ServiceThe BackBox platform has 47 built-in OS upgrade automations that users can choose from. If a customer is not on the list, they can request the professional service team to add it at no extra cost to them.

“We provide network automation team as a service as part of our offering. We’re not expecting our customers to have their own automation teams of Python experts to write those. We do that in house,” said Mr. Stephens.

As part of their subscription, BackBox also offers complimentary product enhancement services allowing users to fine-tune the capabilities to fit their use cases. Anything below an extended enhancement is covered by BackBox.

Wrapping UpThe recent wave of automation indicates that we’ve reached an era where technologies can reliably replicate human processes. And a few times, even surpass humans at their game. The BackBox Automation Platform is one such example. It brings operators peace of mind by keeping devices up to date without them having to oversee and install upgrades. With no scripting involved, there is near to no adoption curve, and administrators do not need to feel their way about.

For more information, be sure to check out the BackBox demos from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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It’s time once again for the annual tradition of Aruba Atmosphere! We’re back at the event once more with a great group of delegates ready to learn all about the new technologies on display and the anticipation of what comes next.

Networking Field Day Experience Presentation ScheduleFor Aruba Atmosphere we are bring the full experience to the table. Our delegates will be attending the keynote sessions from Antonio Neri and David Hughes. They’ll be taking over the Aruba social media accounts to give you their perspective on all the exciting news. You’ll get up-to-the-minute info on what’s important in the networking, mobility, and security spaces.

After the Tuesday keynote we’re diving right in to the Networking Field Day sessions! We’re going to be hearing technical presentations from the data center networking team, wireless group, and even some security discussions as well! Make sure you check out the event page for a more detailed lineup of presenters so you know when to tune in. The presentations will run from 10:45am through 4:15pm Pacific time.

Follow The Experience LiveYou can watch the presentations live at TechFieldDay.com as well as the Networking Field Day Experience event page. If you miss the sessions you can always catch them later on our YouTube page. We’ll be watching the social media platforms for your questions using the conference hashtag #ArubaAtmosphere as well as our own #TFDx tag as well. We hope to see you online or at the show!

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Intel made a couple of big moves this week. The first was the surprise news that they are exiting the server market. No, they aren’t giving up on Xeons and they are going to get Sapphire Rapids out the door. Instead, they are selling off their server integration business. The recipient of this windfall is MiTAC, an edge-to-cloud solutions provider and ODM partner of DSG. Intel is giving MiTAC the rights to manufacture existing designs. In addition, they announced the end of their Blockscale ASIC line which was used primarily by Bitcoin miners. Intel said that they are continuing to focus on IDM 2.0 operations. Stephen, we’ve talked a lot about Intel but the transformation seems to be accelerating!

0:46 – Solo.io Gloos a New Fabric

Solo.io announced a new addition to their Gloo platform this week. Gloo Fabric builds on to the existing platform with features like a unified control plane, multi-cloud networking management, and centralized policy management. Solo.io says that these new features are designed to solve the challenges of Cloud Native 2.0, such as zero trust service mesh, modern API management, and microservice clusters. Stephen, how can people use Solo.io in their cloud deployments?

Read More: Introducing Solo.io Gloo Fabric

4:16 – Western Digital Hackers Have the Goods

We covered the Western Digital breach two weeks ago on the Rundown but of course the stakes just got higher. The hackers responsible have said they made off with 10 TB of data, including customer data. They’re willing to forget all about it provided WD pays them a ransom of a “minimum of 8 figures”. In case you think the hackers are just bluffing they were able to provide proof to TechCrunch via a file signed with an internal WD security certificate. Tom, does this new information change your perspective on the attack?

Read More: Hackers claim vast access to Western Digital systems

7:32 – Emerson Acquires NI

Emerson announced last week that they’re picking up National Instruments, now known as NI, to add to their test and measurement solutions.Emerson is paying $60 per share, which values the deal at $8.2 billion. Emerson has been looking to buy NI for a while now, having made several bids before landing on the magic number to make the shareholders happy. The ultimate goal of Emerson’s CEO Lal Karsanbhai is to use this acquisition to turn the combined company in to a pure-play automation group. Stephen, what does this mean for Emerson’s competitors and for NI customers?

Read More: Emerson to Advance Global Automation Leadership Through Acquisition of NI

10:54 – Prosimo Launches Cloud-Native Networking Suite

Prosimo announced a new suite of full stack cloud-native networking solutions today. Visual Transit Builder allows teams to drag-and-drop network connections to on-board services and applications to speed deployment. Cloud Tracer gives your troubleshooting teams a visual way of identifying issues quickly and understanding how those issues impact other areas of your cloud environment. Lastly, the Adaptive Service Insertion solution makes it easy to deploy security policies without human error. Tom, you had the chance to talk to Prosimo this week. What do you think about these new tools?

Read More: Prosimo Launches Industry’s Only Cloud-Native Networking Suite To Accelerate Multi-Cloud Adoption

15:04 – Amazon’s Edge Gateway Goes to OCP

Amazon Web Services has contributed their edge gateway base station specification to the Open Compute Project. The gateway utilizes SONiC and DENT from the Linux Foundation to bridge the gap between cloud and edge, including OCP’s Open Edge servers. Does this blur the lines between cloud and edge?

18:49 – Intel’s Transformation Continues

Read More: BREAKING Intel Exiting the Server Business Selling to MiTAC

Read More: Intel IFS and Arm Announce SoC Manufacturing Deal

Read More: Intel Discontinues Bitcoin-Mining Blockscale Chips, No Future Gens Announced

32:37 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

Mobility Field Day 9 – May 17-19, 2023

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Data protection technologies have come a long way over the past decade, making protection consistent across infrastructure. Technologies developed for data protection have effectively safeguarded business information not only in regular sectors, but also in government and regulatory industries.

Transforming some of the elite data protection technologies into a solution that has already over 105K users, AWS is modernizing data protection with the ability to protect exabytes of data across AWS resources.

This solution was in the spotlight in the AWS presentation at the recent Storage Field Day event in California. Head of Product, Ajay Dankar, and Head of Growth, Palak Desai gave a quick overview of the key capabilities and use cases of AWS Backup, and explained the drivers that led to designing it. Their presentation was followed by more in-depth sessions that offered a peek under the hood.

AWS defines AWS Backup as a fully-managed service that automates and centralizes data protection across tons of AWS resources. At the core, it is a solution designed to squarely meet the specific asks of users around data protection.

Balanced FeaturesToday, any business bigger than a lemonade stand needs data protection. But data protection is not just about protecting data integrity from malware and malicious manipulation. Across customers, data protection means different things. Among those, a few requirements rise up becoming the common expectations of users.

“The most important thing what we heard from our customers is that they are looking for a centralized backup or data protection solution across multiple AWS resources,” said Mr. Danker.

Drilling further into it, he explained that most users expect data protection to be first and foremost, automated. Over the past decade or so, data protection technologies have had some triumphs and tragedies, but continued innovation has helped spark new technologies, many of which have greatly benefited users.

Immutable backup is one of those disruptive technologies. Unsurprisingly, modern businesses – even the smallest outfits – are set on putting their data under lock and key, preferably in digital vaults where it is fully secure.

Immutable backups provide a way to do that. It locks data in its original state allowing it to be neither altered, nor deleted.

Another key user requirement that AWS found while researching is data resiliency and continuity. Irrespective of any change or disruption in digital technology, data needs to be available, and accessible whenever required. Users expect to have full control over how their data is used.

A requirement typical to businesses operating in the regulated industries is data governance. With the growing complexity and volume of regulations, achieving compliance in certain critical sectors is extremely challenging. It entails establishing and enforcing data management policies rigorously and in that, governance plays a major role.

AWS’ SolutionAWS tames the beast with three granular capabilities that define AWS Backup. First and foremost, it is centrally managed, and designed to make data protection at scale possible. Users can configure, manage and govern all backup operations across AWS resources, – instances, databases and volumes – accounts and regions from one place.

In tune with the increasing data needs, AWS Backup provides policy-driven protection that is fully scalable. “We give companies a centralized and policy-driven interface that can scale as they bring in more resources, or as they start backing up more and more data – the interface scales as the needs grow,” said Mr. Dankar.

AWS Backup provides automated, cloud-native backups across AWS regionsAs soon as administrators have backup plans ready to go with all the parameters defining their backup requirements such as backup frequency and retention policies, administrators can start tagging resources to them, and the service takes over managing the backups as intended.

Data resiliency is improved with AWS Backup, allowing users to copy secondary data across accounts and regions using AWS’ cloud administrator, AWS Organizations. Cross-account copies of backed up resources can be used to restore data quickly and effectively when required.

Among the things that AWS does around data governance and compliance, a key piece is audit and report. AWS Backup Audit Manager helps organizations audit compliance of their backup policies against set definitions. This is particularly helpful for regulatory industries as it not only helps keep a close eye on what active resources and practices are compliant and what are not, but it also generates an audit trail, publishing reports periodically or on demand, that are often required for legal purposes.

Best FeaturesDuring her part of the presentation at Storage Field Day event, Ms. Desai called attention to two features in particular. One of them is AWS Backup Vault Lock. AWS Backup stores backups in secure containers called backup vaults. Vault Lock is an optional feature that extends the control and security of these vaults.

Users can activate a lock on each vault enforcing immutability. In compliance mode, the lock is irremovable, which leaves the vault configuration unchangeable even after the expiration of the grace period. The vaults can only be modified in Governance mode by those who have appropriate permissions.

“AWS Backup provides the capability of vault locks which allows customers to lock their backups into a vault and define lifecycle management for it. This provides customers the ability to write once and read multiple times making the data immutable,” said Ms. Desai.

She also touched on the service’s centralized data governance feature with emphasis on reporting capabilities. The AWS Backup Audit Manager monitors, assesses and reports the health and state of backup compliance. By automatically tracking all backup activities, it ensures that all controls and compliance of policies are aligned.

Wrapping UpA company’s progression to full and complete data privacy can be messy. An initiative to implement broad data privacy across resources can typically fall into chaos or cause nonsense. A balanced solution like AWS Backup can help sidestep this cumbersome exercise. AWS Backup delivers automated data protection across resources both on AWS, and now on-premises, making protection consistent. By constantly keeping track of compliance at the back end, it can potentially prevent legal trespasses and reputation issues. Add-on features improve data resiliency and help perform faster recovery.

For more information on AWS Backup, check out AWS’ in-depth presentations on the solution from the recent Storage Field Day event.

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As connectivity of environments has evolved over the years, cyber threats have proliferated making proactive security fundamental to good cyber health. The secret to averting security crisis lies in organizations’ ability to anticipate potential situations and adopt preventive measures ahead of time.

Recently, I took part in a Tech Field Day Showcase with RackTop Systems where proactive security measures was a key theme. RackTop Systems is changing cyber protection with BrickStor SP, a cyberstorage solution that has the ability to defend data assets against ransomware and other malicious threats.

Zero Trust at the FoundationRackTop Systems takes a transformative approach to storage security. It leverages a zero-trust architecture that is built on the core principles of authenticate, authorize, and validate. The model works by eliminating implicit trust and replacing it with continuous validation before granting access to entities.

Designed with a data-centric zero-trust principle, BrickStor observes every interaction that’s happening in the environment, whether or not it involves suspicious users. So even if an authorized user attempts to make an unauthorized move, it flags the transaction as a security alert.

BrickStor SP provides active defense against security breach, data exfiltration and insider threats through real-time detection and diagnosis and quick response and recovery. The solution is light and agentless, and can be installed under 15 minutes. Ransomware mitigation starts almost immediately after it is deployed.

Key CapabilitiesBrickStor is a software data storage solution that stores, manages and protects data. Designed with advanced security and compliance features, it is a one of a kind storage solution that focuses on the most burning cyber issues like ransomware attacks and insider theft.

Key capabilities include real-time monitoring and detection, alerting against unusual and suspicious activities, and user and entity behavior analysis (UEBA). RackTop uses high-level encryption to protect data at rest and in flight. Inside the storage, data is encrypted at both physical and logical layers. Built-in policy-based key rotation and auditing eliminate the need to use secrets manager.

BrickStor SP has an intelligent UI that displays details of the breach, including where the issue began and at what stage it was contained and quarantined. RackTop’s demo highlighted these areas and illustrated policy-based data protection. This includes WAN-optimized replication at the cloud level, or with a physical NAS solution. Among the key features demonstrated were compliance-based reporting and active defense that enables tracking of suspicious behavior at different levels. Administrators can assign policies and watch who’s accessing data and at what time.

Automation & OrchestrationOne of the key features of BrickStor SP is its ability to leverage automation. As the threat landscape changes, not every organization will have the resource or bandwidth to fully dedicate a security and incident response team. RackTop’s solution with its simplistic deployment and automation capabilities is a life-saver for them.

The automation piece allows it to be scaled to any level within the organization. Storage performance is unaffected by the dual encryption. IT professionals can define policies and automate, letting the solution work on auto-pilot.

Real World UsesRackTop has been instrumental in mitigating ransomware and other cyber threats since the early years. With data provided in real-time, post-attack forensics enable users to dive into the processes and events correlating to the attack, making incident response at file-level quick and effortless.

Many different industries from state and local governments, public sector, to legal entities have leveraged BrickStor SP. It is deployed in healthcare facilities where it automates data protection. Flexible retention policies ensure that data is protected at all levels, and backed up and replicated in compliance with HIPPA and PCI measures.

ConclusionIt’s safe to say that RackTop sets a new standard of data protection with BrickStor SP. Its zero trust architecture ensures that data remains confidential at source, while capabilities like auditing and real-time monitoring of file access and high-level encryption guarantee the highest level of protection against data breach.

Watch the full RackTop Showcase on the Tech Field Day website or YouTube Channel. Read more about RackTop’s CyberStorage for Active Defense on their website.

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The term “lock in” gets thrown around a lot in IT. It’s the reason why we spend so much time engineering solutions that don’t make us dependent on technologies. But does it really matter in the long run? Is the treatment for lock in really better in the end? Does it matter if it’s in the enterprise or in the cloud? And are we finding ourselves locked in slowly or all at once? In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Jody Lemoine, Snehal Patel, and Steve Puluka join Tom Hollingsworth to discuss the pros and cons of lock in and how it might not be as bad as you’re imagining.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsJody Lemoine

Steve Puluka

Snehal Patel

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@GhostInTheNet

@SPuluka

@SnehalPatel1410

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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In the past three years, one in every five organizations encountered one high-profile outage at the least, stats show. Outage trends suggest that the gap between the start of the outage and full recovery has stretched in that time, and will continue to grow linearly.

Historically, businesses have relied on poor disaster recovery (DR) strategies that involve having a backup server in the office basement, or under someone’s desk. But in the past ten years, business continuity solutions have leapfrogged ushering organizations into a new era of DR protection.

Recent technological innovation in the DR and HA (high availability) sectors has brought to companies more options than ever before. Now, there are HA solutions to the rescue. Cloud too offers DR protection with its service availability SLAs.

But modern businesses deploy many mission-critical applications and databases that have very low tolerance for downtime. Cloud availability zones though offer decent protection against failures, do not cover network outages and natural disasters, which puts organizations one emergency away from unplanned financial losses.

High complexity and reduced control that are typical to public cloud further make DR testing a struggle for IT teams.

SIOS, a company working at the substrata of disaster recovery and high availability, recently launched a new version of their high-availability software, LifeKeeper for Linux. It features a set of replication capabilities aimed at maintaining high availability for SAP HANA databases.

So we sat down with SIOS to learn about the newly released HANA multitarget replication features packed in the LifeKeeper of Linux v9.7.

Downtimes Carry Hefty Price TagsOne of the biggest complaints of SAP HANA customers is around high availability protection. The growing number of manual tasks involved in DR testing and failover maintenance creates room for errors and omissions which translate to prolonged downtime and lost revenue.

When disaster strikes, the common expectation is that the IT team will come up with a magic remedy that gets things back up and running within a day or so. Unfortunately, the IT teams have no such trick up their sleeves that can restore an entire IT infrastructure without financial ramification mounting to thousands of dollars.

Cloud makes businesses less likely to lose critical business data in events of disaster. That maybe so, but things like network outages and natural disasters are well outside the scope of cloud availability SLAs. Furthermore, the shortcomings of HA clustering solutions make failover across multiple availability zones and cloud regions an ongoing struggle.

SIOS LifeKeeper for LinuxSIOS LifeKeeper for Linux is a high-availability software for databases on Linux. It is designed to provide applications high availability in Linux environments, whether it’s in public cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid cloud environment.

SIOS detects application availability issues and orchestrates automatic failover eliminating downtime.LifeKeeper for Linux enables automated orchestration of failover when applications need it the most, providing reliable and consistent uptime protection. Sitting in the background, it observes the stack for faults and failures. Plug-ins for different applications collect application-specific intelligence that keeps LifeKeeper informed about what the software need. Offering complex applications running in SAP HANA, Oracle and other systems availability round the clock, LifeKeeper remains one of SIOS’s flagship solutions.

The New ReleaseFormerly, LifeKeeper supported multitarget replication of up to three nodes. The new multitarget replication capabilities extend that to up to four nodes for SAP HANA. Other databases supported by LifeKeeper include SQL Server, MaxDB, and Oracle.

LifeKeeper minimizes downtime by running two or more redundant servers so that when operation fails on one, the standby server/servers take over. LifeKeeper supports synchronous and asynchronous replication, meaning databases can be replicated from a primary HANA node to a secondary node in the same cloud region synchronously, and from a primary to a tertiary node in a different location, asynchronously.

With the new version, customers can have up to four nodes. LifeKeeper leverages the HANA System Replication to provide automatic failover when required. The HANA Multitarget node replication feature enables organizations to run a multitarget availability environment for HANA databases, taking this failover process to the next level.

Customers can configure failover depending on the unique setup and requirements of the applications, to leverage an efficient switchover that takes near zero downtime maintenance. Automatic replication to DR site ensures that recovery from failures, disruptions and disasters happens at zero effort.

Users can add extra nodes to their DR locations without having to do complex scripting or manual works. The HANA application recovery kit (ARK) responsible for automation of cluster configuration makes ongoing management remarkably simple and convenient.

Next Phase of DevelopmentAlready LifeKeeper provides huge time and cost benefits by replacing error-prone manual DR testing and failover maintenance tasks with automation, eliminating expensive downtimes. The software installs within an hour, and works significantly faster than other clustering solutions. But SIOS has more features on the way.

In the next phase of development, SIOS is focusing on the usability and GUI, introducing more innovation and making sure that customers’ interaction with the product is seamless.

In ConclusionWhere critical applications are concerned, even the briefest downtimes can have catastrophic consequences. SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux powered with the HANA multitarget replication feature for up to 4 nodes enables organizations to avert costly IT disruptions and ensure business continuity with reliable DR protection across availability zones, cloud regions and geographical locations. By leveraging this solution, organizations can cutback downtime halts that puts limits on organizations’ ability to operate, with reliable and effective failover.

For more on SIOS LifeKeeper and its new replication capabilities, visit their website. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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Modern storage is a complex combination of both hardware and software. While software-only storage options do exist, if you’re after high-end performance, you’ll have to deal with the nuances of hardware sooner rather than later.

And this is especially true when dealing with modern flash storage. Assumptions from the HDD era no longer apply. What works well for spinning rust is often irrelevant, if not outright harmful, when applied to modern flash.

Software Runs on HardwareTalking directly to flash as it wants to be spoken to removes friction that only exists because of outdated abstractions. A SATA bridge between the outside world and the flash devices was useful when systems needed to speak SATA to the storage. But what if we don’t?

If we move to a higher level abstraction such as iSCSI, SMB or object protocols, why keep using an outdated bridge to nowhere? Translating from S3 to SATA only to re-translate to flash just slows things down. Why not skip the SATA bridge completely? That’s just what Pure Storage did with its DirectFlash approach. Instead of using commodity SSDs, Pure uses flash media directly.

To do this requires knowledge of what the flash hardware layer is doing, and what it is capable of. Changing the software in ignorance of the layer below the abstraction will only lead to pain. But with expert knowledge of how things really work at the hardware level, software can be made to dance. Consider the ways in which the early Apple II was designed to provide color at a time when color monitors were rare and expensive. And yet it required fewer chips to achieve!

These kinds of advances require working with both hardware and software together, rather than in isolation. Software runs on hardware, and understanding the target environment well can provide an edge to those looking for superior features or performance.

Yet as consumers of storage, we would usually prefer not to care too much about how things happen, so long as they do. We want to use abstractions, not talk directly to the flash ourselves.

The Right Amount of AbstractionThe challenge with abstraction is finding the right amount to use. Too little, and we have to wrestle with too many trivial or frustrating details from the underlying systems that were supposed to be abstracted away. Too much, and we’re unable to get our work done. Neither is appealing as a customer, and these issues often reveal themselves at the worst possible time. They’re exposed by edge cases, by things that aren’t part of the day-to-day.

Storage vendors like Pure encounter these edge cases early, often as they’re developing new product features and seeking feedback from customers. They get a variety of perspectives in order to figure out what the right amount of abstraction is in practice, not just in theory.

Yet the ‘right’ amount of abstraction is hard to prove objectively. Most of the time it’s a matter of judgement, taste, and wisdom earned from experience. While there may be some customers for whom manually tuning the compression algorithm or data layout might make sense, most are better served by letting Pure automate things.

By knowing the internals of how and when data is written to the flash hardware, Pure can adjust how the software functions on the fly. Data can be moved, or not moved, depending on the condition of the flash. Compression algorithms can be adjusted to suit the workload, automatically.

Freedom from FrictionHaving both hardware and software options available opens up more ways to address design challenges like this. Is a new compression algorithm best implemented in hardware, or in software? Should it be custom hardware, or a commodity part?

Or perhaps, as with the recently announced DirectCompress accelerator card for FlashArray//XL, a combination of software and hardware works best? DirectCompress uses a fairly standard component—an FPGA card—and combines it with Pure’s software expertise to improve inline compression performance. Other choices were available, like ASICs, GPUs, or staying with CPUs, but Pure’s experience and judgement guided the decision.

As customers, we can happily stay using abstractions and concentrate on the results. Does using DirectFlash improve performance? Does an FPGA help our workloads? We have performance and functionality goals to meet, so what ultimately matters is if our storage choices work.

Pure’s expertise with both software and hardware working together means it has more options to succeed, and so do we. Read more on FlashArray//XL on the Pure Storage website.

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One of the hottest discussions in IT today is data gravity. It is the characteristic of bigger datasets to attract other smaller datasets, services and applications towards them. With data and applications congregating in one place, data gravity causes huge management overheads. But, with data that has no value, it leads to an even bigger problem – data clutter.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITIn a personal blog, Preston de Guise discusses the problems of data gravity, and explains how holding on to valueless data can bring unfavorable outcomes for organizations.

I’ve been thinking about data hoarding for a while. You see, in the last days of December 2022, my father died. Dad was many things, but he was also a compulsive hoarder. There was nothing healthy about the way he hoarded things. In the year before he died, he managed to let go of his LP collection of more than 40,000 33s, 45s and 78s, but that was a rare victory for the family. He maintained a belief (that we had repeatedly, at times gently and at times bluntly tried to disabuse him of) that once he died, my brother and I would take 6-12 months away from our jobs to sort through everything he had accumulated and auction it all for ‘maximum’ value. Instead, after he died, my relatives mounted a Herculean effort and organised the removal of several tonnes of junk.

Read Guise’s blog – Data Hoarding is Probably Holding your Business Back – to know how data hoarding happens, ways data gravity can impact businesses, and how it can be avoided. For more stories like this, sign up to our weekly newsletter.

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On Monday, Kyligence announced the general availability of the Kyligence Zen metrics platform. Already a leading OLAP (online analytical processing) engine to its name, with the new product, Kyligence is expanding use cases to include all IT personas that work with data metrics.

We met with Kai Liu, Director of Field Engineering at Kyligence, to learn about the new product, how it fits in with the rest of the platform, and what makes it different from other metrics solutions.

A Mark of DistinctionKyligence is a data intelligence company that was founded in 2016 by the creators of Apache Kylin, an open-source project with over 1500 free, and 100 commercial users worldwide. Kyligence Zen is powered by this same analytics engine.

Mr. Liu emphasized that Kyligence Zen metrics platform is markedly different from the metrics layers or metric stores that we have seen so far.

Kyligence Zen Metrics Platform“We call it the metrics platform because we are not a single layer. We are a combination of their data processing, data modeling and metrics layer. That’s why we call it a metrics platform.”

Mr. Liu outlined the three core capabilities of Kyligence Zen – an SQL query engine, data modelling and the new metrics layer that pulls all data metrics into a unified catalog system. Kylin, the OLAP engine, fuels this solution with its ability to perform data pre-calculation.

“We also have the capability to define data models by joining the tables together allowing the users to define dimensions, metrics, calculations, and so on.”

A Deterrent to Fast Decision-MakingSo what made Kyligence add this new metrics layer? A common problem within businesses is the lack of consistent definitions of key metrics.

Between multiple business units and teams, there are numerous data stacks and analytics tools. Too many tools and data in scattered locations create silos, leading to misaligned definitions of metrics and eventually, a chaotic operations.

An All-in-One Metrics CatalogueWith a unified, all-in-one metrics catalogue, these divergent definitions can be aligned into shared and consistent ones across the organization that all IT personas can consume.

“The target is to abstract data modeling more for the business users so that they don’t have to understand all of the details of data modeling, like how the tables are joined together for example, leaving them to just focus on their business definition of those metrics,” says Mr. Liu.

The unified metrics catalog is designed to “create, maintain and manage all of their metrics together into a single layer,” for better quality data, and elimination of data silos. With it, Mr. Liu says, administrators can define, compute, share, organize and analyze metrics all in one place.

This may sound similar to what OLAP does, but he reminded that OLAP leverages multiple data tools and the data silo problem still persists with it.

The platform works with all types of metrics – “basic metrics directly from the data sources, derived metrics like metrics on metrics, several metrics put together, for example the year over year, or any other complicated calculations, to define new metrics.”

Leveraging the capabilities of the OLAP engine, it also offers smart caching with which precalculated data is cached for easy fetching.

A Magic LanguageWho do this benefit most? Data engineers and business users, says Mr. Liu. Kyligence Zen uses ZenML, a user-friendly YAML-based descriptive language that allows data engineers to maintain and define metrics, dimensions and underlying relational datasets like codes. It is how “data engineers team reduce their efforts maintaining their daily works.”

The system generates metrics based on users’ definitions without engineers needing to write any code. Business users can consume technical data easily as ZenML converts it into business metrics.

“Also with this, we can define very restricted workflows for the business users. They can submit their own changes in this config file, and for the IT team, they can do the review and approval and then promote it to the production environment. That’s how they can maintain thousands of metrics without operating in the UI or writing any code.”

An OLAP Engine under the Hood and Open APIsThe AI-augmented OLAP engine that sits underneath performs all of the metrics calculation providing time-saving automation. The engine automates the whole of the pipeline including data appropriation, data processing and data consuming so that performance does not have to be manually tuned. “The system will guarantee performance automatically,” says Liu.

Kyligence Zen has open APIs that allows users to connect consistent metrics to any third-party business intelligence or SaaS tools that business users prefer. Mr. Liu says, “We provide these open APIs because we maintain everything on a single layer. Consumers are not limited to only business intelligence tools, but also other applications that they can use through these open APIs.”

In ConclusionBy introducing a common data language across organization, Kyligence Zen helps IT personas like data engineers to develop and manage metrics at low effort, and business analysts to yield faster and higher-quality decisions. The metrics catalogue provides a single source of truth where key business metrics are consistent across all teams and tools. The muscle behind it, the OLAP engine, unlocks the full power of automation saving businesses time, effort and cost in their data analysis initiatives.

For more information on the Kyligence Zen intelligent metrics platform, head over to their website. For more stories like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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It’s been almost ten years since my last job change. I can still remember when I walked into the room to tell my boss that I was leaving my VAR engineer role to go to work for Tech Field Day. I was a bit nervous because I wasn’t sure how he would react. I knew him well and figured he’d be happy for me but I also worried that he’d decide that I needed to take my two weeks of notice and just leave on the spot. I’d seen that happen on a couple of occasions.

If you’ve only ever worked in an engineering role you probably think the idea of dismissing an employee as soon as they give notice is odd. Those two weeks are crucial for knowledge transfer and ensuring that things are read to transition to the next team. However, in a sales organization those two weeks are an opportunity for less scrupulous employees to make off with valuable assets. They aren’t going to take a laptop or a desk chair. They’re going to take things that are much more valuable, namely data. Customer lists, email archives, and even salary data are prime targets.

Have you ever wondered if that policy of sending employees home during their two weeks is effective? The employee has been working toward their departure for a while if they initiated it. Who is to say they don’t already have the data they want before they ever turn in their notice? How would you even know?

Doing DLP With IntelligenceOne of the companies that is working to provide more visibility into situations like this is Concentric AI. I’ve talked to them in the past and I recently sat down with Karthik Krishnan to get an update on their platform. Karthik reiterated to me that their goal is to make data security easy for customers. Given the speed with which organizations are facing bigger security threats that’s a welcome opportunity.

During our discussion I asked him about Data Loss Prevention (DLP) scenarios. The Concentric platform allows you to intelligently identify data that contains personally identifiable information (PII) and secure it when it’s somewhere it’s not supposed to be. That could be a contract on a shared drive, which is unstructured data, or an unsecured database that could be exposed to attackers, which is a more structured type of data storage. No matter where the PII is being stored it’s a risk.

The power of Concentric is that it’s not looking at simple hash values. If I were the sneaky type I’d do something creative to avoid detection if I were going to take important data. Such as adding a value of three to every social security number I harvest. Or adding extra characters into the email addresses of customers that are easy to remove when I look at them later but defeat the strict scanning of typical DLP systems.

Concentric can see those changes and alert you when they happen. They can also see PII hiding inside of other unstructured documents to help prevent clever exfiltration attempts. If someone creates IncomingFaxes.xlsx and it’s populated with email addresses and social security numbers you can get an alert. You can then drill down into the other activity that the user has had for the last 30 days to see if other files were created or moved around. You can easily track file activity during the off-boarding process to see if your employees were trying to transfer their knowledge into the company or extra more of it for their own uses.

The power behind Concentric is context. DLP that just does pattern matching doesn’t know that specific kinds of PII appearing in the wrong places creates the potential for exposure. A list of numerical currency values is expected in a contract. However, a list of them appearing in a spreadsheet attached to employee names that is readable to the whole company instead of just the accounting department could violate labor laws. Concentric allows you to define the context and keep it updates as new data is classified as PII. You don’t even need to rescan when you make the updates. Concentric already knows what’s going on and will alert you when those changes mean new data needs to be acknowledge and dealt with.

Bringing It All TogetherThe part of the off-boarding process that sticks out most to me is the trust issues it creates. Employees that have otherwise been trusted members of the organization are suddenly under scrutiny for choosing to leave. That aura of distrust could even push an otherwise trustworthy employee to do something rash as a response to the way they’re treated. With the help of solutions like Concentric you can provide the trust that is missing. Employers can see that their departing employees are above board with their actions. Should the employee be tempted to abuse that trust relationship your security team will know right away. That kind of visibility ensures everyone parts ways happy and safe.

For more information about Concentric and their posture management platform, make sure to check out their website.

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Have you ever thought about how a search function operates? On the surface it sounds pretty easy. You take a dataset and you look for things in it. I’m sure that Google and Microsoft will tell you that it’s a lot harder than that but we’ll keep it simple for now. How do you know what’s in the dataset? You have to look at it before you can search through it, right? That means ingesting the data before you can perform operations on it.

When the dataset is just the contents of your phone or your laptop that doesn’t sound like a difficult proposition. When the dataset is petabytes of information in the cloud or the entire Internet it’s an entirely different animal to tame. Setting aside the whole issue of algorithms and ranking for now you have to consider some even more basic challenges. How do you ingest a petabyte worth of data? How long would it take to transfer the data to your search platform? If this is happening in the cloud will you be paying to get that data to the destination just to return smaller results? Why should you have to pay to move something only to leave it there?

Searching SmarterIf you’re scratching your head and wondering why search feels backwards you’re not alone. Cribl is a company that has asked those same questions and figured out a better answer. I had the chance to sit down recently with Nick Heudecker and talk about the latest quarterly release, Cribl 4.1. Cribl search especially got some new enhancements in this version that got my attention.

Cribl’s flagship product is Stream. Stream is an observability pipeline that lets people see what’s going on in the data. You need to feed Stream in order to observe things and the product has been growing by leaps and bounds. But you also need to winnow down the data that you’re seeing and that’s why Cribl built Search late last year.

Search is a federated query engine that lets you look through datasets, with a specific focus on security. Nick told me that Cribl specifically focuses on customers that don’t want to run two different environments to separate observability and security.

Cribl Search launched last year and here’s a great video introduction to it that happened at Security Field Day:

In Search 4.1, Cribl is getting even smarter. There’s a new S3 destination that can be added to the pipeline. There’s also a new send operator that allows Search to send data to Stream. This is one of the pieces that I think has the potential for a massive impact on the way that observability platforms operate. Rather than ingesting a huge amount of data and then combing through it you flip the whole idea around. Cribl Search looks in the data where it lives and returns results you want. Those results are then fed into Cribl Stream for your operations teams to make decisions.

While I was talking to Nick about the impact this could have on the way we consume data, he had a quote that stuck with me:

We have no more empathy for our compute infrastructure. — Nick Heudecker

That’s a pretty accurate assessment of the way that most organizations treat their data lakes. Just keep feeding it and eventually something will come out that is important. However, with the traditional search model your attempts to search that data lake are going to look more like a dam bursting. You have to move all the data into the search platform which means paying the costs to get that data out of the cloud. If you haven’t checked recently you might be shocked to see what Amazon wants to charge you to get that data back into your organization.

By using Cribl Search instead you can ensure that only the most interesting parts of the data are sent back. You can make decisions based on what you want to see and not have to pay for the rest of the uninteresting parts. More importantly, you can then use Search to find other things and feed them back into Stream. You have the flexibility to keep looking without moving the data around over and over again. That leads to reduced costs and a reduced carbon footprint over time. You get your precious minutes back and you can work on saving the planet at the same time.

Bringing It All TogetherCribl has committed to a quarterly release schedule, which is something I really like. By having a cutoff for features to make it into the release they can go out when they’re done, not when a deadline needs to be met. Incremental improvements in new tools like Search can be rolled out to help augment mature products like Stream. The rapid build process also allows Cribl customers to request new data types for ingestion. That means the platform is always on the cutting edge for their customers. I’m excited to see where Search will be in the next six months.

For more information about Cribl and their newest release, make sure to check out https://Cribl.com. To see more of their presentation at Security Field Day you can go to the Cribl presentation page.

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China is reportedly blocking multiple mergers and is now investigating Micron for an unspecified cybersecurity concern. Delays include Intel’s acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, Maxlinear’s purchase of Silicon Motion, Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, and Microsoft’s bid for Activision Blizzard, as well as the long-delay in Cisco’s acquisition of Acacia and the called-off purchase of NXP by Qualcomm which we reported on previously. The latest move against Micron seems designed to antagonize rather than investigate any real cybersecurity flaws at the memory provider. What’s going on here? This and more on this week’s Rundown.

1:00 – Cisco Pulls Out of Russia

Cisco withdrew from Russia back in 2022 and has now destroyed $23 million in spare parts stored in the country, according to the Russian news organization TASS. Was Cisco specifically worried about Russian espionage or is something else happening here?

Read More: Cisco due to the termination of sales destroyed spare parts for equipment in the Russian Federation for 1.9 billion rubles.

2:38 – Sony Invests in Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi is receiving some new investment from a familiar name. Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation is pouring some money into everyone’s favorite single-board computer in an effort to spur adoption of their AITRIOS platform for edge AI sensors. Is this story about Sony or is it about the strength of Raspberry Pi at the edge?

Read More: Raspberry Pi Receives Strategic Investment from Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation

4:10 – Always Greener on the Google AI Side

Google released a paper last week showing that AI systems built on its custom TPU are greener than systems built on Nvidia’s last-generation A100. Given the importance of AI these days, both to hyperscalers and chipmakers, this must have felt like a shot across the bow to Nvidia. But is it really a surprise that a custom next-generation processor is more efficient than the last-generation general purpose GPU?

Read More: Google says its AI supercomputer is faster, greener than Nvidia A100 chip

6:28 – Jacob Ziv Dies at 91

Data compression pioneer Jacob Ziv passed away at the age of 91. With Abraham Lempel, he invented the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm that paved the way for GIF, PNG, and ZIP files. Was Ziv and Lempel algorithm instrumental in the technology we are using today, beyond GIFs and memes?

Read More: Remembering Data Compression Pioneer Jacob Ziv

8:03 – MinIO Fires Back at Weka

The conflict between MinIO and Weka intensified yesterday as the object storage developer fired more accusations at the storage platform vendor, claiming that they are still not properly licensing this code. Although we can’t comment on the merits of this case, it seems that the increasing use of open source software in the enterprise requires companies to be more careful about proper licensing and attribution.

Read More: Our Response to Weka’s Post and Clarifying Terminology

13:48 – China Plays Hardball with Western Companies

Read More: Announcement on Initiating a Cybersecurity Review of Micron’s Products Selling in China

Read More: China’s New Tech Weapon: Dragging Its Feet on Global Merger Approvals

21:44 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 31 – April 12-13, 2023

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

Mobility Field Day 9 – May 17-19, 2023

The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. Make sure you follow Gestalt IT on Twitter and use the #Rundown if you find a story you’d like read on the show. Follow us on LinkedIn as well to keep up to date on the IT coverage from across the enterprise. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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With cloud-native computing trending upwards, businesses are gravitating towards technologies that enable easy leveraging and fuss-free management of the base-layer functions of the cloud infrastructure. eBPF and Cilium are the two technologies that are changing the instrumentation of cloud-native systems.

To understand eBPF and Cilium better, we sat down with the makers – Isovalent, and learned the way these revolutionary technologies are changing the kernel of the cloud.

A Shift in RequirementsOne of the themes coming out of the IT industry today is the need to keep the number of applications and software down to a minimum, and retain only those that are core to the business. As organizations look for ways to get out of the unnecessary heavy-lifting, they are actively unburdening portions of their IT footprints to the cloud. This marks the beginning of a new era of cloud-native computing.

Cloud providers do their part to soften their landing on cloud with ready-to-use infrastructures and interesting choices of services at diverse price points. Over the years, they have also upleveled infrastructure abstractions to alleviate infrastructure-level complexity, but demand for self-service technologies that can change and tune the base layer functions to be simpler and more efficient from within continues to grow.

Supporting Workload DemandseBPF is a kernel technology designed to respond to this demand. With origins in the Linux kernel, eBPF or Extended Berkeley Packet Filter runs sandboxed programs that can work like natively compiled kernel codes or those in the kernel module, extending the capabilities of a computing kernel without needing to change its source code or load its modules.

Cilium is one of the projects through which eBPF is implemented. Cilium was created by Isovalent, and open-sourced in 2015. Thomas Graf, Co-Founder and CTO, was involved first-hand in the development of the project. Graf who had a long career at Red Hat as the Technical Lead, partnered with Dan Wendlandt, now CEO, and founded Isovalent on Swiss soil in 2017.

At a high-level, the Cilium project constitutes applications that are deployed to connect, secure and observe workloads efficiently.

“Cilium has been originally built for containers, to essentially bring in eBPF to the new era of container networking,. A lot of the Cilium founding members are eBPF kernel developers way back from 2014. The idea was to extend eBPF further to the point where we could then build Cilium with the goal to bring a new level of networking, initially container networking, and now broader than this,” said Mr. Graf.

Cilium provides a higher-level abstraction on top of the underlying eBPF, giving users the ability to set intent-based definitions to implement with eBPF, without having to write programs directly.

“At the core of everything that Cilium does is eBPF. It’s the JavaScript engine for the Linux kernel. Everything that Cilium does on the data path level is being built from scratch using eBPF. That’s essentially the differentiator.”

One of the key USPs of Cilium is that it is aligned for the advantages of Kubernetes orchestration. Injecting eBPF programs strategically in the Linux kernel, it creates a layer of connectivity on top. This layer enables network packets to circumvent parts of the host stack saving time and travel.

Without having to navigate the network twice, first in the pod namespace and then again in the host, packets can reach destinations faster, resulting in enormous performance gains.

Cilium is currently supported by all the three major cloud providers – AWS, Azure and Google – in their Kubernetes services, namely, AWS EKS Anywhere, Azure AKS and Google GKE.

Flavors of CiliumUnder the Cilium umbrella, there are several applications, namely Cilium CNI, Cilium Service Mesh, Hubble and Tetragon. In the briefing, Mr. Graf highlighted the first three solutions.

The Cilium CNI (container networking interface) plugin offers identity-driven implementation of Kubernetes network policies.

Cilium reverses the approach of using iptables filters for policy enforcement in K8s with eBPF maps. These are data stored in the kernel that eBPF programs use to route packets. This approach ensures faster lookups and tighter security.

Cilium ensures that communication between pods happens only where required. Compatible with all Kubernetes proxy models, it monitors the addition and removal of services and endpoints (similar to the way kube proxy does), but with the addition of updating eBPF maps timely on the nodes.

Hubble is Cilium’s container networking observability platform that provides details of network flows at Layers 3, 4 and 7. With eyes on cloud-native focused observability, it provides metrics, logs and traces linked with dependency maps that allow operators to see clearly how pods and services are interacting internally and externally.

“All of this observability is transparent just like a network solution would provide. There’s no application instrumentation going on; it’s all done transparently on the network.”

Cilium’s network connectivity, security and observability features converge into one on the Cilium Service Mesh. Aimed to minimize overheads and complexity, the Cilium Service Mesh is sidecarless, meaning users can avoid the extra cost and work of injecting each and every pod with sidecars.

Cilium reduces the learning curve of adopting service mesh by providing multiple abstractions at varying levels of complexity.

“The main difference that we bring to the table is that we’re the first service mesh to really pitch sidecar-free models instead of running sidecar containers for service mesh. We essentially brought in a combination of eBPF and Envoy proxy running on the node itself. Since then, Ambient Mesh from the Istio project has adopted this model as well.”

In ConclusionIn the last couple years, Cilium has seen widespread adoption with eBPF enabling more efficient networking and unlocking huge performance gains and scalability across the cloud-native stack. Isovalent’s open source and enterprise editions of Cilium meet the exclusive demands of cloud-native computing with a clearly defined angle towards Kubernetes.

For more on Cilium, head over to Isovalent’s website. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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This is post 103 of 103 in the series “Meet Field Day Delegate Series”

Meet Field Day Delegate – Chris Arceneaux
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Meet Field Day Delegate – Eric Stewart
Meet the Field Day Delegate – Greg Grimes We’d like to welcome one of our newest delegates to the Tech Field Day community: Greg Grimes! Greg is a Senior System Engineer focused on networking and security He will be attending Networking Field Day 31 as a delegate and took a few minutes to tell us a little about himself.

Check Greg out on Twitter @Thespis377 or on the Tech Field Day Website.

How did you get into Technology and IT?My dad brought home a Tandy TRS-80 CoCo in the late 80s. I fell in love while learning Basic at the age of 12. A few years later he brought home a 486 PC. I have never stopped learning about computer systems since then.

What do you do now? Tell us a little about your current role.I’m a Senior Systems Engineer with a VAR. I do pre-sales and post-sales engineering. I am mainly focused on networks, but also work on some security designs.

What are your biggest challenges?Currently my biggest challenge is learning the sales side of this industry. I have almost 20 years of experience sitting on the other side of the table, and less than 1 year on the sales side.

Where do you see IT going in the next 3-5 years?I see a lot of Cloud in the future, but less IaaS as cost causes more of the industry to move back to on-prem for non SaaS. I also hope to see more SD-Access in the enterprise to tackle some of the security challenges of moving those IaaS systems back on-prem.

What was your first computer? What was great about it? What is your go-to computer now?Tandy TRS-80. I loved it because I had to learn how to program it in Basic. My go-to now is a PC with a lot of RAM. I prefer Linux over any operating system.

How do you manage your work/life balance?It can be difficult in my current role. I do a lot of travel as a sales engineer. I’m still learning how to balance this job. I do have the pleasure of working out of my home. So, when I”m not traveling I am at home with my family more than I was at previous jobs.

If you weren’t working in IT, what would you be doing instead?Dive instructor maybe. It’s hard for me to think of not doing something in IT or with computers.

What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?I am an avid SCUBA Diver. I’m a certified Dive Master and used to help teach students how to dive.

What are you most excited about seeing at the event?I think I’m most excited to see what Backbox has to offer. I’ve been doing automation since the mid 2000s. Started with Perl way back then.

What is the coolest thing you’re working on right now?I’m currently designing a wireless network for the state parks in Mississippi. We are helping design outdoor wireless coverage for their RV parks as well as indoor lodge areas. It’s challenging and every park is different.

Who inspires you?One of my directors, Jeremy Sanders. I am always in awe of his insight and knowledge.

As a child, what did you want to do when you “grew up”?I wanted to be an officer in the Air Force and do something with computers. I eventually enlisted in the AF, but even though I scored exceptionally high on the ASVAB they put me in the Security Forces career field.

What super hero movie character would you like to be and why?Ironman or Batman. Mainly because they don’t have super powers and use their brains to save the day.

What is your favorite thing about what you do?I love meeting new people and getting to know them. I also really enjoy building new systems.

If you won the lottery and could retire, what would you do with your time? I’d probably get a PHD and teach somewhere. I really enjoyed teaching SCUBA. I also really enjoyed my Master’s courses at MSU when I would get to teach a class on a specific topic.

Thanks for sharing, Greg!
Be sure to see Greg as a delegate at Networking Field Day 31 April 12-13!

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Every piece of software has an API now. If you want to interact with the program you’re going to need to write a program of your own. Are you ready to learn? Should companies still be expected to have a CLI available for the non-programmers? And does the ease of accessing a published API create more problems than it solves? In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth, Jody Lemoine, and Steve Puluka discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having easy access to everything at your fingertips via the API.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsJody Lemoine

Steve Puluka

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@GhostInTheNet

@SPuluka

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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Moving to public cloud was like going with the flow for companies. But unmet expectations are now bringing them back to on-prem infrastructures.

As a last-ditch effort to check infrastructure cost, companies are shifting away from public cloud and setting up private infrastructures closer to home.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITStorage evangelist and long-time Field Day delegate, Chin-Fah Heoh drills into cloud repatriation in his recent article – “Reverting the Cloud First mindset”. The article delves into things that went wrong in cloud, and why industries are once again favoring on-premises and co-locations.

When cloud computing was all the rage, every business wanted to be on-board. Those who resisted felt the heat as the FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling set in, especially those who were doing this thing called “Digital Transformation“. The public cloud service providers took advantage of the cloud computing frenzy, calling for a “Cloud First” strategy. For a number of years, the marketing worked. The cloud first mentality became the tip of the tongue of many, encouraging droves to cloud adoption.

For the full story, read Heoh’s article – “Reverting the Cloud First mindset”. For more stories like this, sign up to our weekly newsletter.

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Adopting Kubernetes can be the smartest decision for an engineering company, but it comes with its fair share of complexities. And unless the teams are prepared for it, it can be a disruptor to otherwise smooth operations.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITEngineer in the Kubernetes space, and Field Day delegate, Michael Levan writes about the fences around adopting Kubernetes. In his article, he writes,

Kubernetes is going to be a major upgrade for you, how you deploy, and how you manage services. Kubernetes truly does make engineers’ lives easier. That said, Kubernetes and containerization as a whole can be incredibly complex for engineers to learn and organizations to adopt.

To know what hurdles companies should be ready to tackle when committing to Kubernetes, read the article “Barriers to Kubernetes”. For more stories like this, sign up to our weekly newsletter.

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This Storage Field Day event saw a mixed pool of presenters – big players and some fast-growing, high-octave companies from the traditional storage world. The technologies they brought into focus revealed the dominant market demands and evolving customer interests. So we asked the delegates what their key takeaways were, as far as industry trends are concerned, and what their thoughts were on the solutions.

Block Storage Is BackBlock storage has returned with the rise of stateful applications that demand high-performance storage. “We’re seeing block storage reviving as a common industry trend. A couple of vendors I know who are working on new product lines, specifically for distributed block storage, also solve use case for distributed SQL databases which are coming into market. A lot of startups are also working in that area,” said Rohan Puri, Storage System Developer.

Rohan Puri speaking at the delegate roundtable at the Storage Field Day eventDespite the wind blowing in favor of object storage lately, block level storage still retains its favorability with customers, as was made evident with solutions like StorPool Storage.

But as one delegate pointed out, its relevance was never really lost, because when it comes to the physical architecture, block is the core underlying implementation of how data is stored in any type of storage.

More of the SameIt rang clear at the presentations that some of the new solutions entering the market today bear reminiscence of those from years back. This is not a coincidence, but a confirmation that at the architecture layer, not much has changed with storage in the past decade.

Most of the innovation in recent years have been concentrated to the overlaying data services. “In a lot of the presentations we saw, the vendors were more focused on the value of the solutions that they do, because at the end of the day it is commoditized,” pointed out Max Mortillaro, datacenter consultant.

He added, “When I’m looking at storage solutions nowadays, I’m more trying to look at the adjacent capabilities that they offer because in the end, these are the capabilities that help organizations drive better value out of the solution, whether it’s technical specification, or ransomware protection and so on.”

Divergent ToneWhen marketing their products, companies fall into two camps. For one set of vendors, the value proposition is the storage-adjacent features that are built on top of storage. These extra features add value to the product. On the other hand are companies that are wholly focused on the core capabilities of storage itself, such as performance, scalability and availability.

“It dictates what you do as a customer, the choices that you make because when you manage to solve one or two problems, you want them to be solved in the best way possible. In other cases, you need to solve a ton of different problems and you want to solve them perhaps well enough or just well enough. The vendor which is selling those solutions that are able to cover everything across a larger scope is not doing it badly, but customers will have to do some tradeoffs,” reminded Mr. Mortillaro.

An Outstanding ProductThe solution that delegates were most impressed with was CyberSense by Index Engines. It’s a known fact that storage has many vulnerabilities. Part of the problem is that vendors do not always acknowledge how serious a problem cyberattack is.

Ray Lucchesi at the Storage Field Day eventIndex Engines is one of the few vendors to step forward and say the problem out loud, and design their solution around it. Their doing this may nudge some of the frontline companies to integrate detection and respond capabilities into their storage products for default protection.

“Storage vendors now have to really start embedding some of this intelligence and scanning capabilities, heuristics, like Index Engines, perhaps even licensing their technology for such an event as part of their offerings, like Dell is doing for their cyber resiliency services today,” Glenn Dekhayser, Storage and Security veteran, opined.

Big PictureA change is in order. Vendors must keep the innovation going to meet the emerging and evolving market demands. In Ray Lucchesi’s words, “There’s a transition going on today. Cloud is a major aspect of what’s forcing that transition, but the hardware technologies that are starting to come online are going to make significant changes to what storage does and how it looks.”

For more, be sure to listen to the conversation – Delegates React to Storage Field Day 25 – from the recent Storage Field Day event.

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We’re back once again with more great presentations at Networking Field Day 31! The enterprise networking industry is hot right now and more great presenters are ready to show off all the great things they’re working on and how it will impact your ability to provide connectivity for your users and customers.

Networking Field Day Presentation LineupThe event will be taking place April 12-13, 2023 in Silicon Valley. Wednesday kicks off with Kentik. They’re returning to Networking Field Day to talk all about data-driven observability and how it can solve application issues. They’re followed by Itential. They’ll be showing off their Itential Automation Platform for DevOps and NetOps teams and how it can integrate the entire development and deployment lifecycle for testing and validation.

Thursday starts with a new presenter, BackBox. They’re joining Networking Field Day for the first time to highlight the work they’re doing with automation to enhance network security and remediate issues in the enterprise. The final presenter for the event will be HashiCorp. They’re returning to give us an update on the platforms they’re integrating into modern workflows that help leverage DevOps ideas and make they work for networking teams.

Follow the Field Day Action LiveNetworking Field Day 31 will be taking place April 12-13. You can watch it live on our website at TechFieldDay.com as well as the Networking Field Day 31 event page. We will also be streaming the video live on our LinkedIn page. If you miss any of the exciting discussion you can always watch the replay on the Tech Field Day Youtube channel. If you want to discuss the event in real time through social media make sure you use the hashtag #NFD31. We’re excited to hear from the community!

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If you were to go back in time ten years, you’ll see an enterprise storage industry that looked vastly different than it does today. The big players in storage business still dominated the market, and the discrete purchase-and-deploy model was the only consumption model that mattered. Companies had their own private infrastructures cut out to meet their unique needs.

Big ChangesIn the last ten years, big changes have transpired. The evolution of storage to a large part owes to the emergence of cloud.

Cloud with its breakthrough pay-as-you-grow economics and world-class service levels has made the other kind of storage look antiquated. Since then, the traditional purchase model has come to feel outdated. The fancier, more economical everything-as-a-service model has taken over the hearts and minds of the buyers.

But as perfect as it sounds, the cloud has its disadvantages, and traditional storage is not to be superseded by it.

This was the premise delegates drilled into, at the recent Storage Field Day event when they gathered for the customary Delegates Roundtable conversation post-event. This time, the topic was the future of the storage industry. And like all discussions about the future, this too started in the past.

A New IdentityHost, Stephen Foskett kicked off the discourse by setting the context – “It’s an interesting time. Storage as an industry has changed. There are very few storage startups right now. Those that are there frankly don’t want to be known as storage. They want to be known as something else other than storage.”

For a while now, storage vendors have been distancing themselves from the one-dimensional identity of a storage company by adopting other areas of focus, such as data and analytics, security, etc. This change was spurred by a shrinking market share.

“We had a big tidal wave of companies that did cloud-first. Companies needed to get out of the datacenter business, and that was the big motivation. It wasn’t that they wanted to go to cloud, but their only option was public cloud,” reminded Glenn Dekhayser, Enterprise Storage Consultant.

Keeping SpeedAlthough companies moving away from the four walls of the datacenter has brought some challenges for legacy storage vendors, through them have come new opportunities.

When it comes to competing with big cloud players, companies follow one of the two strategies. One is to try to bring cloud-like simplicity, resilience, and fuss-free experiences to their products and services.

At the other end of the spectrum are companies that are carrying on the good work by furthering innovation, rolling out superior storage products that rival and upstage cloud storage.

Elastic StorageThe advent of elastic workloads changed data and the way it needs to be stored. Increased production of large-size media files turned companies towards the more affordable and capacious object storage.

With a mix of data and media files in their buckets, companies need storage to be elastic, one that can be sized up and down as and when required. Cloud provided a ready infrastructure for that.

To deliver better economics, public cloud vendors have busted the restrictive consumption model of the past, showing the world that storage can be consumed flexibly and on-demand.

There’s a chance for storage companies to maneuver in the same direction and bring that same consumption model into storage arrays, something Pure Storage pioneered with Evergreen. Pure Storage Evergreen frees customers from the obligation of doing expensive overhauls, and gives them full liberty to choose how they want to consume storage.

Better AlternativesA lot of legacy storage vendors have already seized the opportunity to devise workarounds which can help customers avert the limitations of public cloud storage like loss of control and lack of tailored features.

“I’m seeing a lot of shift with a number of storage vendors where they’re starting to adapt and work around some of the limitations of storage in the public cloud. Relational databases and these things can just destroy storage with IOPS demand, low latency requirements, and when you start hitting managed disks on any of the major cloud providers, a lot of times they just can’t keep up,” commented David Klee.

The latest high-performance storage products from traditional vendors are made to order for some of the most bleeding-edge, mission-critical workloads out there.

Cost-Per-TBAnother point to break into the market is cost-per-terabyte. Where economics is concerned, public cloud with its zero CAPEX and low OPEX design is winning by a wide margin. But cloud storage is not cheap, and if traditional storage vendors can undercut cloud providers, over time they can regain their market share.

Additionally, storage vendors have an advantage that cloud providers don’t. With traditional storage, customers know exactly where the data is.

With ransomware attacks sweeping through businesses, knowing the location of the data at all times has become a top priority for industries. It’s an important part of the recovery and restoration process, which having your own storage infrastructure makes it easy.

The SnagAlthough over the past few years, public cloud has provided big thrusts to innovation, it has also brought a lot of unpredictability.

“There’re services from which you need to choose, and it’s complex to navigate across that, because those vendors are addressing very broad use cases and very different personas within your organization. So, if you are the person who just needs to go and consume and swipe a card, it’s easy. But at some point in time, someone in the organization needs to be accountable for all of that, and understand who’s consuming what, what was the use case and so on, and it becomes almost impossible to untangle all of that,” said Max Mortillaro, Datacenter Consultant, and Analyst.

He pointed out that by contrast, on-prem infrastructures have a natural extensibility to the cloud which provides greater freedom and flexibility.

As for innovation, Mr. Mortillaro reminded that in public cloud, innovation is happening mostly in the periphery – in data protection, data management and such services. Very little innovation is actually happening at the core architecture layer.

The Winner Takes It AllSo who wins the battle between on-prem and cloud? As Rohan Puri, Graduate Research Assistant, pointed out, cloud and on-prem have co-existed through the last decade borrowing from and influencing each other, and in the end, improving storage for customers. But it remains to be seen what market share each holds going forward, with edge now a part of the picture. Cloud’s greatest strength is not storage, but lights out management. If traditional storage providers can catch up to that, on-prem storage will win its lost mojo back, and stand shoulder to shoulder with cloud.

Check out the full conversation – The Future of Enterprise Storage – Storage Field Day 25 Delegate Roundtable – recorded at the recent Storage Field Day event.

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If you’re ready to start building out IoT networks and you want access to the largest one around Amazon is ready for you. Amazon Sidewalk is now open for developers to start testing. Sidewalk is Amazon’s IoT-focused solution for edge devices that utilizes both Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and 900 MHz wireless networks to provide coverage. Sidewalk is generated from Amazon’s Ring cameras and Echo speakers and has 90% coverage across the US according to reports. Tom, what’s Amazon hoping to accomplish with this rollout? This and more on this week’s Rundown.

1:05 | Quantum Announces Myriad Storage

Quantum has thrown their hat into the software storage game. Their newest offering is Myriad, a flash-focused solution for file and object storage. The release includes a research paper that notes the need for software to be architected to address the increased performance provided by NVMe and RDMA. Myriad includes a 100G Ethernet fabric to interconnect the NVMe storage nodes with the system load balancers and control nodes. Stephen, what are your thoughts on Quantum Myriad?

Read More: Quantum enters storage software with Myriad

3:55 | Cisco Picks up Lightspin for Cloud Security

Cisco announced that they’re picking up Lightspin for around $200 million. The Israeli-based security company focuses on posture management for cloud and containers. Lightspin came out of stealth in 2020 and had raised around $25 million from investors. This is the second security acquisition from Cisco in as many weeks as they picked up Valtix just a month ago at the beginning of March. Tom, what do these cloud security moves mean to Cisco customers?

Read More: Cisco Announces its Intent to Acquire Cloud Security Software Company Lightspin

6:50 | VAST Data Partners with HPE for GreenLake

VAST Data is now part of the HPE GreenLake ecosystem. The company announced on Monday that it is providing the scaleable file storage technology for HPE’s on-demand storage service. Given that HPE has many other storage offerings, including a file offering based on Qumulo, why partner with VAST?

Read More: VAST Data Announces Strategic Partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Provide Software for HPE GreenLake for File Storage

10:16 | WD Breach Locks Out Users

Western Digital suffered from a big data breach over the weekend that is still causing issues for users. WD released information that attackers had accessed the WD network over a week ago and that the company was trying to ascertain the impact of the breach. Users of the MyCloud service can definitely tell the company about the impact because they’re currently unable to access any data stored on the personal cloud service, even if the hardware is located in their home. All services related to MyCloud are currently offline with no estimate on when they will be restored. Tom, what can WD do to resolve this issue?

Read More: Users fume after My Cloud network breach locks them out of their data

13:35 | SIOS Adds Multitarget Replication with LifeKeeper

SIOS released LifeKeeper 9.7 last week with an exciting new feature for SAP HANA customers. LifeKeeper now has multitarget replication that allows for more options to keep data consistent. These new features allow for more nodes to be added to the replication as well as being able to restart replication from failed nodes as well as failback and resuming replication. LifeKeeper monitors the health of the whole cluster to ensure that replication is automatic. Stephen, you talked to SIOS about these new features. What do you think stands out?

Read More: SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux v9.7 Adds SAP HANA Multitarget Feature for Most Comprehensive High Availability Protection from Local, Sitewide and Regional Disasters

16:51 | Amazon Opens Sidewalk to Developers

Read More: Amazon Invites Developers to Test Sidewalk and Build the Next Billion Connected Devices

25:31 | vFunction Launches Continuous Modernization Manager

Application modernization platform vFunction has a new trick up their sleeve. The new Continuous Modernization Manager allows companies to refactor their code with vFunction and keep it up to date on an ongoing basis. Given the ongoing fight against technical debt, this seems like a worthy addition!

Read More: vFunction Launches Continuous Modernization Manager and Expands Its Industry-Leading Application Modernization Platform

28:17 | The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 31 – April 12-13, 2023

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

Mobility Field Day 9 – May 17-19, 2023

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From spammy email links to rogue software gone wild, a company faces many cyber threats. Although not all threats are high-profile, companies must keep their guard up against the most vicious to the lesser-known variants out there, because as far as data and privacy are concerned, any bug or bot can cause serious damage.

At the recent Storage Field Day event, we had a company among us whose mission is to bring organizations the agency to look out for all kinds of perils in the digital wilderness, and not get caught out. Index Engines presented CyberSense, an AI-powered security solution that serves as organizations’ “last line of defense”.

Fighting Data CorruptionExperts categorize data corruption into three levels. The basic kinds are corruption by appending certain file extensions to metadata, or making large changes to file size, both of which are pretty easy to spot. The advanced sneakier kinds corrupt file structures and use valid extensions for disguise. The third and the deepest level of corruption is where a malicious program hides inside the content, dwelling in the environment for months on end. This is the kind that is raging around the cyber scene.

Studies show that at the moment, the levels of corruption are the worst they have ever been. It is made worse by low reliability of tools. Ensuring data integrity in a fast-paced hyperconnected time takes inspecting every single datapoint – IP, passwords, files, databases, what have you – round the clock.

Few tools cover that many grounds. Most solutions scope out core files and data, and roll out a disproportionate number of alerts with high false positives which amount to a weak oversight at best. In the scramble, thousands of dollars are lost, and the level of corruption remains steady at an eye-watering level.

CyberSense Looks at EverythingIndex Engines seeks to change this harrowing reality with a solution based on full-content analytics. It’s strength – data observation and analytics. CyberSense detects advanced variants that hide their tracks with highest accuracy, and provides a high level of confidence.

Jim McGann, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Index Engines explained, “We layer on top of different applications. We’re not backup, we’re not storage. We’re just software that sits on these environments and adds a layer of intelligence.”

CyberSense is different from other security tools by its sheer depth and width of coverage. The only product to inspect files, core infrastructure as well as databases for signs of infection, it combs through all blind spots, and tracks down the most sophisticated threats.

The Who, What, Where and When of What HappenedCyberSense relies on deep inspection of data to detect threats hiding inside them. But instead of relying on thresholds to guess malicious changes over time, it studies every replication of data by comparing snapshots hourly to weekly to understand the changes. It constantly validates metadata properties to confirm reliability.

Deep analytics is performed through full-content analytics. Stealth threats are detected with over 200 content-based analytics that examine contents of the data and skim out hidden abnormalities.

CyberSense has advanced machine learning models built into it that provide 99.5% confidence in detecting corruption. The algorithms are trained in all common and many rare variants of trojan and ransomware, and can process analytics rapidly to discover any tampering or modification done to the core infrastructure, backups, databases or user files.

CyberSense has the unique ability to minimize false positives and negatives down to one in every 50, 000 backups. Administrators are alerted only on confirmed suspicious behaviors and threats.

Mr. McGann informed that CyberSense has enabled clients to recover in a heartbeat without any data loss. The CyberSense post-attack dashboard displays the last clean version of files. The post-attack forensics report provides insights on the details of the attack, and information on the files that enable quick and effective restoration.

Wrapping UpWhen living in a fast-changing, perilous digital landscape, the usual rules of staying safe do not apply. Organizations need to be very wary of the threats out there, and have their guards up 24/7. With a tool like CyberSense, they can be absolutely certain of the threats dwelling inside their environments, and eliminate them early in the chain. By sniffing out cloaked payloads from deep within the data, it gives teams a chance to trust their tools. High accuracy ensures that common alerts that can be dismissed without a thought do not become a distraction for the important jobs.

To catch a demo, and for deep-dives on CyberSense, check out Index Engines’ other presentations from the recent Storage Field Day event.

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Storage systems and databases are becoming increasingly alike. In this episode of On-Premise IT Podcast recorded at the recent Storage Field Day event in California, delegates – Glenn Dekhayser, Jim Czuprynski and Denny Cherry, join host Stephen Foskett, to chew over this. In what ways are storage platforms and databases alike? Are they only different in the way they store data, or is the distinction purely based on the IT personas using them? Watch the panel explore the ins and outs of modern arrays and databases, and dissect into why, despite their likeness, the two exist side by side. Learn how databases and storage platforms treat data differently. Hear them list down the properties that separate the two.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsGlenn Dekhayser

Jim Czuprynski

Denny Cherry

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@GDekhayser

@JimTheWhyGuy

@MrDenny

Twitter@SFoskett

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In business-speak, investment translates to competitive advantage. If wielded right, it has the power to deliver value beyond material costs. And yet colossal IT spendings do not always yield positive outcomes. Because more than life-changing investments, organizations need the right stack of technologies, that besides making the investments pay off, become profit streams themselves.

At the recent Storage Field Day event in California, StorPool presented their core offering, StorPool Storage, a high-performance, scalable primary storage platform that sounds like a solution that provides high ROI.

During the presentation, Alexander Ivanov, Product Lead, highlighted the problems that enterprises typically encounter with storage systems, and explained how StorPool helps IT teams do storage right.

Defects of a Modern ModelA 2022 article published by Horizon Technology on datacenter hardware says, “The hyperscalers have long proven that commodity hardware is good enough to run industrial-grade workloads. The trick is in applying the right software layer to get the most out of the available hardware.”

When you zoom into the hardware bit, you get to see exactly where the problem begins. One of the key issues reported in the recent years by companies using traditional arrays is performance inconsistency. To avoid that, they have to keep buying more and more infrastructure leading to what is called an infrastructure sprawl.

This storage model has several flaws. It has a fixed overhead. Although the pay-per-use consumption model supposedly busts the flat-pay problem, it typically amounts to a fixed monthly pay. Vendors lure customers in with promises of deep discounts which is often offset with raised MSRPs, with cost of things like support services included in the pricing. This translates to very little profits for customers.

This is followed by a complex and expensive system lifecycle management that includes expensive licensing and time-consuming modernization of hardware.

If you are wondering why companies voluntarily go through this loop every few years, it’s because it’s the only way they know how to ensure measurable ROI. StorPool calls this the “storage game”.

For companies to guarantee fast application response times, they need a supporting high-performing block storage. If the block storage is not performing as it should, it starts a chain reaction impacting app response times and user productivity, increasing time-to-market which is directly linked to the revenue.

Reports have shown that slow app response times cause productivity to decline and costs to shoot up. The opposite happens when application response time soars. Users’ productivity goes up, applications are deployed faster, and revenue starts to grow.

During the Storage Field Day presentation, Mr. Ivanov listed down the key problems that contribute to performance degradation. They include inefficient capacity utilization, drive failures and rebuilds, sloppy software stacks, mismatching system interconnects, synchronous replication over long distances, and disruptive cleanup processes.

Workarounds, for example – application splitting and database sharding, using faster direct-attached storage (DAS) like SSDs and PMEM, faster interconnects and newer storage systems, typically have a snowball effect on the cost, which brings companies back to the original problem of the infrastructure sprawl.

StorPool StorageAbout 11 years ago, StorPool started on the mission to upend the storage game and make it right. The goal was to give customers a hyperscaler-like block storage on premises, the cost of which aligns with the value it provides. StorPool offers this with the pay-as-you-grow model but with their plan, the price varies as the usage varies.

StorPool does not attempt to entice customers with hollow deals that only blow up the cost. But, they make sure that users are served no unpleasant surprises during billing, and with them, the 24/7 support is truly included in the license, out-of-the-box.

StorPool tops this with an easy and non-disruptive lifecycle management which takes the pain out of the equation. Users can build their systems with datacenter-grade commodity hardware that are cheap and read-intensive. Performance and capacity can be scaled up and down by simply adding or removing drives and servers. As vendors roll out new generations, users can modernize and upgrade their arrays accordingly.

Mr. Ivanov highlighted two core strengths of StorPool Storage that have made the fuss-free lifecycle management possible – consistent performance under massive parallel I/O, and easy workload consolidation with minimum infrastructure.

Consistent performance is ensured with no single point-of-failure, uniformly low latency, linear scalability, and parallel services for thousands of workloads.

Referring to a client story, Mr. Ivanov showed that StorPool helps organizations maintain their service quality with five-nines availability, maintenance included. Low-friction lifecycle management ensures zero downtime or disruptions for when hardware and software changes are made. Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware supports all environments and enables cost optimization.

Wrapping UpThe cost and complexity of managing new technologies cyclically drain capital and ground operations. StorPool’s strategic maneuver from the usual approach contributes to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for clients. For those struggling to get storage right on a limited budget, it offers a way to avoid big storage expenses with a balanced and easy system that enables new applications and services and does not ask too much in return.

For a technical deep-dive on StorPool Storage, be sure to check out StorPool’s presentations from the recent Storage Field Day event.

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No matter how happy you are with the internet connection at your home, there are always ways to make it better. There’s no such thing as too much bandwidth, and even a small upgrade can make a big difference to experiences with working from home, streaming Netflix and playing online games.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITCybersecurity expert, Derek Seaman wrote a network upgrade tutorial in his blog Derek Seaman’s IT Blog, where he shares his own experience upgrading his home network, and offers a step-by-step approach for the readers. He writes,

Along with a few updates to my 2023 dream home office setup (see post here), I also felt it was the time to do a whole house network upgrade. This post covers my network “refresh” that is built to support multi-gig, 10Gbps, PoE and enterprise WiFi. Nothing was broken with my old network, but it was put together over several years and wasn’t built to support anything higher than 1Gbps networking. 2023 is the year of my network upgrade!

Read his article – “Home Network Upgrade (2023 Edition)” to learn what you can do to get faster Internet around the house. For more stories like this, sign up to our weekly newsletter and never miss an update.

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Wikipedia defines tribal knowledge as knowledge that only exists within a certain group, and that which is not known outside of it. In IT, tribal knowledge exists within all workgroups, and while it enriches the quality of work and collaboration internally, it poses certain risks in the software development process.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITBrian Chambers, Lead Enterprise Architect at Chick-fil-A, and an active Field Day delegate, reveals the risks of tribal knowledge and shares tips to abate them. In his article – “Chamber of Tech Secrets #1”, he writes,

Our Chick-fil-A EA Principles: Build vs Buy post triggered some great questions. One that surprised me was a question about tribal knowledge, and if it has a higher likelihood to emerge and cause problems in build situations. This matter because every organization wants to be able to 1) operate their important business systems 2) continue to build in the future. They do not want human points-of-failure to prohibit that.

Check out the rest of the story in the post – “Chamber of Tech Secrets #1”. For more stories like this, sign up to our newsletter and get them in your inbox every week.

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It was merely a few years ago that AI/ML first hit the tech scene for mainstream use. In the beginning, select companies dabbled in it, and those that did had to devise and roll their own implementation using whatever resources were available to them. But as AI/ML enjoyed broader adoption, the market around it started to grow.

Gartner predicts that in 2023, AI/ML will be among the top workloads to drive infrastructure decisions. At the heart of this is rising storage needs which remains a major stumbling block preventing AI/ML from becoming prevalent.

At the recent Storage Field Day event, IBM gave a presentation that outlined the storage challenges that are slowing adoption of AI. Dough McGuire, Global Director of Sales in Storage for AI, Big Data, introduced Storage Scale, IBM’s fastest growing segment in the data and AI storage portfolio, and explained with customer success stories, how it makes handling of massive unstructured data cost-effective and simple, and sets companies up for AI success.

Barriers to AI AdoptionThe state of data in 2023 is vastly different than it was before. In the past ten years, the amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed globally has tripled and quadrupled. This has both a good, and a bad side. On one hand, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at which data is growing has presented an opportunity for enterprises to tap into the wealth of information that is locked in it. But, hot on the heel of that has arrived the predicament of storing and processing all of that data.

80 to 90% of the data created and collected is unstructured, and companies employ point solutions to handle it. This has only deepened the divide in the infrastructure, creating innumerable islands of data and technologies. Access and management of these silos with the overflowing amount of data that is coming in, is the biggest struggle for 95% of the companies.

As AI/ML entered the scene, enterprises were given an elegant way to churn value out of their data. But the effort of deploying AI/ML workloads on enterprise infrastructures is met with the shortcomings of traditional storage systems that are not cut to handle their sky-high performance and scaling needs.

A Global Data FabricAn organization’s ability to draw maximum value out of its data and conquer the ascent of AI/ML rests on squarely meeting the data challenges. To avoid falling behind in the AI race, companies must use an architecture that first and foremost acts as a superhighway for large-scale workloads, but concurrently offers great support for general-purpose workloads which most enterprises have. This is everything that Storage Scale brings to offer.

IBM’s Storage Scale System is a software-defined object and file data storage system that is built to readily support the performance and scaling needs of AI/ML workloads. But Storage Scale is more than just a high-performance enterprise storage. It deploys a global data fabric for AI that fosters geo-distributed collaboration through elimination of data silos and management pains, and most importantly, enables easy access of data with a common data plane that spans the enterprise.

Serving High-Profile Use Cases with IBM Global Data PlatformMr. McGuire referred to an array of client success stories while explaining the key benefits of the Storage Scale offering. He informed that IBM’s Global Data Platform attracts large numbers of research companies and banking organizations that have a high bar for regulatory compliance and cyber resiliency.

The Global Data Platform serves those clients by enabling them to set up two production sites that can share data between themselves. With caching services running in between, the platform maintains a single source of truth for data, decimating silos and saving companies top dollars by not having to move petabytes of data to public cloud where storage is typically cost-prohibitive.

Through transparent sharing of data and workloads across public and private clouds and the edge, the Global Data Platform significantly shrinks cloud storage footprints. Caching services between sites ensure that there are no stale data copies.

For businesses wrestling with data in scattered addresses, the Global Data Platform offers a way for applications to reach and use them no matter where the storage is located, or what interface is being used. The platform allows speedy and consistent access of a single copy of data from any storage system, reducing the need to make and keep multiple copies in different locations.

The Global Data Plane provides a high availability environment where organizations can create high-performance tiers for AI/ML use cases and run concurrent workloads.

At the heart of the platform is cyber resilience that organizations, especially regulatory industries ask. With a breadth of security and ransomware capabilities based on the NIST framework built into it, the platform identifies, protects, detects, responds and recovers, giving data active protection from all kinds of threats.

Wrapping UpIBM’s Global Data Platform offers two key things – performance and access – that are paramount to adopting AI/ML and harnessing the value of data. It provides an agile, secure and available environment where data can move freely without the constraints of silos. The common data plane ensures swift and uninterrupted access to the same data from various interfaces and locations. Its high performance is vital to optimizing workloads, and making possible a wider adoption and maturity of AI.

For more information on IBM’s Storage Scale offering, check out IBM’s deep-dive presentations and demos on the solution from the recent Storage Field Day event.

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Imagine that a syndicate of cybercriminals breaks into an enterprise network and gains access to restricted business data. They go straight to manipulating the data, and in a moment, unsuspecting users around the world are using doctored information.

For such cases, snapshots are an ultimate game-changer. A copy of the point-in-time (PIT) data, snapshots prevent previously existing data to be modified or tampered with.

But don’t relax too soon. Snapshots have their limitations as well. For example, they do nothing to protect against data loss caused by a security infiltration, a disaster, or a simple hardware failure. When the storage fails, the snapshots disappear too.

Reimagining SnapshotsAmazon Web Services took this disadvantage and turned it around with the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) Snapshots. During their presentation at the recent Storage Field Day event, AWS presented Amazon EBS Snapshots, a data protection service that makes it possible to revert data loss.

Presenter, Kirill Davydychev, Solutions Architect, explained how EBS snapshots are different from snapshots in traditional storage environments.

“When you take a snapshot in EBS, all of the data in the background is copied to Amazon S3.”

AWS uses service-owned S3 buckets that customers do not have direct access to.

Users can take multi-volume snapshots that are synchronized and crash-consistent. This can be done with one instantaneous API call. Once created, snapshots are then copied to the S3 bucket.

The time to copy depends on the size of the batch. Once the process is complete, snapshots can be restored to another EBS volume.

Snapshot TypesAWS offers two tiers of EBS snapshots – Standard Snapshots and Snapshots Archive, for short and long-term retention. Standard Snapshots are stored incrementally which ensures that customers pay only for the changed blocks.

“You repeat as you take multiple snapshots of your particular volume. Only the changes are synchronized to S3, and they are stored there using what we call chunks. So those chunks can have a different block size to your actual volume block size,” said Mr. Davydychev.

Standard Snapshots are typically used for backup and recovery, application refresh, disaster recovery and ransomware protection use cases. They have a restore time of a few seconds.

The second variety, EBS Snapshots Archive, is best fitted for compliance use cases where customers need to store data for long terms for regulatory reasons. 75% more affordable, it does not offer real-time access to the data. It takes anywhere between 24 to 72 hours to restore the largest set of snapshots.

“When we archive a snapshot, we have to essentially fully hydrated it and store it as a single object in a lower S3 tier.”

Lifecycle ManagementEBS Snapshots integrate with Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM). It is an UI-based scheduler that enables lifecycle management with features like policy-based snapshot creation on hourly to yearly basis, flexible retention, copying and sharing and more.

Users can set up automatic backup scheduling and retention management for a chosen set of volumes. Policy-based deletion on the lifecycle manager allows expired snapshots to be removed automatically.

Deleted snapshots are sent to a Recycle Bin where they are retained for a set period of time before being permanently removed. Quick recovery allows all accidentally deleted files to be restored back to production with a single click or an API call before expiration.

Wrapping UpSnapshots are an excellent way to meet recovery-point objectives that are measured in minutes or hours. Amazon EBS Snapshots eliminate the risks of single point-of-failure. By copying snapshots to a secure and restricted S3 bucket, it offers a convenient way to backup EBS volumes, and enable disaster recovery at a lower cost.

To know more about Amazon EBS Snapshots, check out AWS’ presentations from the recent Storage Field Day event.

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Computing pioneer and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has died. His name is commonly used in reference to Moore’s Law, which stated that processors would be exponentially more complex, but he was much more than this. Moore was a visionary, who guided Intel through the DRAM market in the early years and then lead the transition of the company to lay the foundation for modern microcomputers. He quiet and polite, unlike Robert Noyce and Andy Grove, but everyone trusted Moore’s thoughtful and considered decisions. Moore learned from his mistakes, notably a foray into the digital watch market, and was able to lead while allowing others to have their own autonomy. In a way, Moore created Silicon Valley but was entirely unlike what it has become. We could surely use more leaders in the mold of Gordon Moore!

0:34 – Toshiba Takeover Talks

Toshiba has been in talks for months to find a buyer to help alleviate their current woes. Last week they accepted a buyout bid from a domestic firm, Japan Industrial Partners (JIP). The bid was for $15 billion, which is down about 22% from last year’s highest valuation of the company. Toshiba has been dealing with accounting scandals and other management issues. Previoulsy a board plan to split the company into three parts was rejected. Stephen, Toshiba has had some rough times. Does this deal reflect the value that’s still there?

Read More: Toshiba accepts $15bn buyout offer from Japanese consortium

3:10 – Biden Outlaws Feds Commercial Spyware

President Biden signed an executive order this week that forbids the US Governement from using commerical spyware. The move is seen as a way to prevent US agencies from using tools such as NSO’s Pegasus for intellgence gathering. Government personnel have been targeted by these attacks in the past few years and the US is trying to prevent them from spreading. The White House had already forbidden the export and transfer of Pegasus and a few other tools in 2021 but this move goes further in preventing the use of the tools completely by government agencies. Tom, will this be enough?

Read More: Biden’s executive order limits government’s use of commercial spyware

6:03 – MinIO and Weka Divided on Licensing Changes

Open source is getting yet another test this week as MinIO and Weka go to the court of public opinion to fight out a licensing issue. MinIO announced late last week that Weka was misusing their license to use MinIO’s open source software. MinIO had originally licensed their software under the Apache 2.0 license but switched to using the Affero GPL 3.0 (GNU AGPL v3) license in 2021. The AGPL restricts companies from incorporating free software in a commercial product. Weka responded to MinIO’s claims stating that they were not in violation of the original license agreement prior to 2021 and that they had forked the software before the license switch. MinIO has previously accused Nutanix of violations of their license back in 2022. Stephen, this seems pretty messy!

Read More: Weka Violates MinIO’s Open Source Licenses

Read More: WEKA Responds to Unfounded Allegations Made by MinIO Regarding Open Source Licensing

14:09 – OVHcloud Owes for Data Damages

Two years ago we reported on a fire at OVHcloud and how it affected their cloud hosting. This week a French court has ruled that the backup data that was destroyed in the fire is the responsiblity of OVHcloud and they’re going to have to pay the customers that lost it. In one case, OVHcloud tried to argue that the fire was force majure and they weren’t liable for the loss. The defendants were able to show that OVHcloud had restarted the failed server but had somehow caused it to purge the data. In the other case, Bati Courtage found out the data they had been told wasn’t stored in the same building as the production server was, in fact, stored there when the server and backups were destroyed in the fire. OVHcloud is appealing the rulings. Tom, could a provider successfully argue that these things are beyond their control?

Read More: OVHcloud must pay damages for lost backup data

18:42 – Arm Wants an Arm and a Leg for Chip Licenses

If you’ve been wondering what the fallout would be from Arm’s failed attempt to sell itself then your day has finally come. A report says that Softbank is looking to make the rumored IPO of Arm much more attractive through a change in the licensing for their chips. They want to raise prices as well as charge device manufacturers to have Arm-based chips in their phones and tablets. The licensing fees are reportedly based on the overall price of the product to be sold. Softbank is hoping this change will make Arm attractive enough to make money with that future IPO to recoup the massive losses they’ve had after the one-two punch of Arm and WeWork. Stephen, will manufacturers play ball with this new pricing model?

Read More: RISC-Y Business: Arm wants to charge dramatically more for chip licenses

24:52 – Gordon Moore Dies at 94

Computing pioneer and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has died. His name is commonly used in reference to Moore’s Law, which stated that processors would be exponentially more complex, but he was much more than this. Moore was a visionary, who guided Intel through the DRAM market in the early years and then lead the transition of the company to lay the foundation for modern microcomputers. He quiet and polite, unlike Robert Noyce and Andy Grove, but everyone trusted Moore’s thoughtful and considered decisions. Moore learned from his mistakes, notably a foray into the digital watch market, and was able to lead while allowing others to have thier own autonomy. In a way, Moore created Silicon Valley but was entirely unlike what it has become. We could surely use more leaders in the mold of Gordon Moore!

Read More: Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, prophet of the rise of the PC, dies at 94

Read More: Gordon Moore’s $15 Million Watch – The Story of Intel and Microma

Read More: Gordon Moore: He Stood Alone Among Tech Titans

37:35 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 31 – April 12-14, 2023

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

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I started creating server build automation during a change freeze, immediately after New Year’s 2000, the Y2K bug apocalypse date that didn’t quite eventuate. Ever since that start, I have much preferred automated build processes to relying on people following a list of manual steps. One of the reasons for that is the principles of IT infrastructure automation fit nicely with the DevOps culture that enables faster application development.

I create build automation designed to have a human watching over, mainly watching for errors. Building automated error handling and verification is complicated and time-consuming. Watching that build process is acceptable when building a small lab. It was also great when three or four engineers built a couple of dozen servers for doctors’ surgeries.

The problem is that human operations are costly to scale, particularly to many locations spread over a wide geographic area. This is what is defined as the far-edge location. These locations might be retail stores, or delivery trucks, often places where business staff do their day-to-day work, interacting with the customers and directly generating revenue.

Increasingly, technology is either making the staff at these sites more productive, or adding ways to generate more revenue from the customers that visit these sites. But this technology has a cost, and business owners need to control those costs to turn that revenue into profit.

Control Far-Edge CostsOne of the important ways to control IT costs for the far edge is to ensure that one never needs to send a skilled IT engineer to sites. Everything that goes to the sites should be able to be installed and connected by the onsite staff, whether they are the driver of the truck or a checkout supervisor at the store.

Once the hardware is physically installed, every other part of deployment and management must happen from a central console where the IT team can manage groups of sites and remotely resolve faults. Ideally, the platform used should automatically fix as many faults as possible, which brings us neatly to Scale Computing and its background in self-healing computing infrastructure.

Zero-Touch ProvisioningScale Computing has always designed SC//HyperCore HCI to look after itself as much as possible. SC//Platform extends to edge deployment and is the basis for Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) of SC//HyperCore clusters at a grand scale.

ZTP was the centrepiece of Scale Computing’s recent presentation at the Edge Field Day event in San Francisco. In the live-streamed presentation, four clusters were deployed from a central console to five Intel NUCs. The “onsite” deployment was connecting power and ethernet to the appliances. Everything after that was achieved using the SC//Fleet Manager console, which had been pre-populated with the hardware IDs of the physical nodes.

In actual deployment, these hardware IDs are harvested from the fulfillment system that delivers the appliances to the site. SC//Fleet Manager is easily pre-populated with the IDs before the devices are delivered to the site. Once the appliance is powered up, it phones home to SC//Fleet Manager over the Internet and appears in the customer’s view of the console.

Application PlatformsSC//Fleet Manager handled a lot of configuration and initial setup for users, deploying the latest version of SC//HyperCore to the nodes, and deploying a set of standard initial VMs. The initial VMs might be the standard edge site servers with locally installed applications, or home to cloud-managed applications using platforms such as Google Anthos or Azure ARC-enabled applications.

SC//Fleet Manager can drive updates of SC//HyperCore to the clusters, and Scale Computing has an Ansible collection for managing multiple clusters over time. The Ansible collection is Red Hat certified and available on Galaxy for easy installation.

Scale Computing Removes ProblemsScale Computing’s approach of removing the burden of routine tasks and fault remediation from customers is widely liked. ZTP is an excellent part of continuing the story where Scale Computing can deliver large numbers of cost-effective clusters, or single nodes, to deployment at the far edge.

The Intel NUCs, using specific models that incorporate feedback from Scale Computing, make a great compute node to deploy in far-edge locations. Scale Computing also has its data centre-specific models for less constrained environments.

Scale Computing showed its commitment to partners by having Avassa and Mako Networks present at the Edge Field Day event in their offices.

Be sure to watch the Scale Computing presentations from the recent Edge Field Day event, and keep up with what the other delegates think at TechFieldDay.com.

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The media industry is on an up-curve. Skyrocketing consumption of digital content has caused new opportunities to emerge, and companies with deep pockets are seizing them to deliver on-demand capabilities to consumers. But a lot of these opportunities are still untapped for traditional companies constrained by steep storage costs.

Recently, XenData rolled out an object storage archive solution that may be the answer that these companies need. The XenData E-Series archive appliance is optimized for media files and offers on-prem disk storage of up to 1.12 petabytes.

Out of Control CostsMedia workflows are inherently bulky because unlike other kinds of files, video files are fixed content. Any changes made to them during the editing process apply only to the final cut.

Resources like high-res videos fill up expensive storage space very fast. Media teams are perpetually debating putting these in backup. Due to their enormous sizes, they tend to weigh down backup systems making them sluggish.

One option that can keep storage costs in check for these companies is object storage. Archiving finished projects and data that is infrequently accessed in on-prem storage systems saves companies from depleting their budgets on expensive storage. Archiving data makes new room for the next projects while keeping storage requirements under control.

XenData E-Series Object Storage Archive ApplianceXenData’s E-Series Object Storage Archive appliance can safely store huge caches of data. It offers disk storage of 280 TB to up to 1.12 PB. The storage can be used both as an S3-compatible object storage, as well as a Windows file system.

Video files can be played directly from the appliance. The E-Series supports partial file restores. Pieces of bigger files can be restored flexibly that the media team can use to produce clips instead of restoring full-size files that occupy way more space.

Easy archival, retrieval and distribution are enabled with wide compatibility with Media Asset Management (MAM) systems like Aveco, EditShare, IPV, Dalet and more. With the E-Series, teams can create a centralized storage system for access and collaboration.

As a key feature, the E-Series provides three types of data protection – mirror to LTO data tape in an attached robotic library, mirror to object storage in a public cloud, and mirror to another E-Series appliance in another location.

The E-Series brings significant cost advantages with deep archival. With the available data protection options, objects are converted to lightweight, space-saving stub files. Files in deep archive can be easily restored by reading the stub files.

As noted earlier, the E-Series can be accessed as a Windows file system. In that mode, it leverages Microsoft’s security, whereas as an S3 object storage, it can be accessed through secure HTTPS.

The base configuration of E-Series comes with a usable capacity of 280 TB. That can be expanded to up to 1.12 PB by adding three additional nodes, each adding 280 TB of extra space to the system.

The E-Series Object Storage Archive Appliance is priced at $64,800 per node. As of today, it is available for purchase in the market.

In ConclusionThe media industry is gathering momentum. To tap into its fast-paced growth, creative organizations must ditch overpriced storage options for more cost-effective alternatives that can deliver much lower cost per TB. The new E-Series Object Storage Archive Appliance from XenData promises significant cost advantages for storing large-size media files. It’s an affordable long-term, scalable storage solution that can be set up locally on-premises, works with a variety of MAMs, ensures optimum utilization, and offers great data protection options. That’s enough reason to not fall into the delusion of expensive storage, and adopt a smarter, much more affordable alternative.

For more information on the XenData E-Series Object Storage Archive Appliance, head over to their website. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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The prevailing cybersecurity skills shortage has impacted security teams around the world and their ability to protect against today’s threats. As decision makers analyze the potential remedies to this issue, how should they proceed? Is automation the answer? Should you be investing in cybersecurity training programs to advance your employees’ skills and expertise? Should you look at bringing in third party experts to help you close the gap? Or is it a combination of all three?

In this episode, brought to you by Fortinet, Melissa Palmer, Chris Gundemann, and Karin Shopen of Fortinet dive into the state of the modern enterprise and cybersecurity skills, and the solutions that can help security teams combat the talent shortage in the short and long term.

Fortinet Panelist:Karin Shopen, Vice President of Cybersecurity Solutions and Services at Fortinet. You can connect with Karin on LinkedIn. Learn more about how Fortinet’s SOC-as-a-Service and Cybersecurity Assessments and Readiness Services can help combat the challenges of the skills gap and better protect against cyber threats. In addition, find out how the Fortinet Training Institute can help security professionals advance their skills and help organizations build the cyber workforce of tomorrow.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsMellisa Palmer

Chris Grundemann

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@vMiss33

@ChrisGrundemann

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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With the world moving everything to the cloud in today’s IT landscape it should come as no surprise that desktops are next on the list. Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is the newest iteration of offering virtual machines for users to access from anywhere to get work done. It may feel like the eventual arrival of the virtual desktop will never arrive for some but it’s not due to lack of innovation.

Cloud-based DaaS presents its own challenges. How can you provide a seamless experience when you could potentially be serving users from multiple providers? How can you manage everything when you’re constantly moving back and forth between management consoles for one set of platforms that does different things than the others? How can you secure all of your user traffic without using VPN technology that doesn’t scale and can be very expensive? How can you be sure that your users have the proper resources for their workflows?

Leostream DeliversThe answers to all of those DaaS questions could halt your deployment. You need to find a solution that addresses the issues while providing ease-of-use for your operations teams. I had the chance to sit down and talk to Karen Gondoly, CEO of Leostream about these challenges and how they can be solved. Leostream is an Emmy-award winning company that focuses on Remote Desktop Access solutions. They have been around for quite a while working with virtualization and virtual desktops in particular.

Karen told me that Leostream is focused on creating a platform that makes it seamless for users to access their virtual workstations while also making operations teams more efficient when it comes to deployments. They use their Leostream Gateway system to securely connect users to things no matter where they are without the need to configure traditional VPN services. That gives you the ability to deploy your virtual environments to places where users can expect great performance from wherever they happen to be. It also gives your administrators the ability to analyze user workflows and size the machines appropriate to keep your capacity costs reasonable.

The big announcement from Leostream is around Amazon Workspaces. Leostream will be integrating with Workspaces and bringing their platform enhancements to enterprises looking to make the move to DaaS. With Leostream you can integrate with IAM roles in AWS to avoid the need to send out access keys. You can use multiple protocols through the Leostream Gateway to meet the needs of your remote users instead of the two that Amazon supports currently.. And you can do it all from one easy-to-understand interface with Leostream that keeps your operations groups for swiveling their chairs back and forth needlessly to configure features.

Leostream has done a lot to enhance Remote Desktop Access in the enterprise over the years. With this new integration into Amazon Workspaces you can also get the same great experience in the cloud as well. You gain all the flexibility of using the cloud while also having a powerful interface to add features and remove complexity for users. It’s a powerful solution that has been used by a number of people in the oil and gas, aerospace, and entertainment industries.

Bringing It All TogetherAs workers continue to do their jobs from all over the place you need to offer them the ability to complete their workflows with the same level of flexibility. Moving to the cloud creates excitement as well as some anxiety. Finding a provider to enhance your capabilities and reduce friction with users is the way to ensure that your Remote Desktop Access plans aren’t scuttled before they even launch. If you’re looking to make the move to Amazon Workspaces or even start your own DaaS journey it’s worth your time to check out what Leostream has to offer.

For more information about Leostream and their solutions for Remote Desktop Access as well as their new integrations with Amazon Workspaces, make sure to check out their website at http://Leostream.com

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Making a technical decision is a difficult responsibility. Often there isn’t a clear best choice, and sometimes, the scope of impact of a decision is so vast that you want to weigh the pluses and minuses over and over, instead of just going with your gut.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITRebecca Fitzhugh, author, consulting architect, and a Field Day delegate lays out the steps of making sound technical decisions. In an article titled “Making a Technical Decision”, she writes –

Decision-making is the cognitive process of selecting a course of action among several possible alternative options. Technical decision-making is less about the tool to pick and more about the problem to solve. Once the problem space is well defined, then evaluating the possible solutions becomes a lot easier. Technical decision-making cannot be outsourced.

Read the rest of the story “Making a Technical Decision”, where she takes the readers through the dos and don’ts, and explains the best process. For more stories like this, sign up to our weekly newsletter.

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We’re wrapping up this season of Utilizing Tech by asking the key question: Why would a system architect choose to utilize CXL in their designs? This episode of Utilizing CXL features Stephen Foskett, Nathan Bennett, and Craig Rodgers discussing the practical prospects and benefits of CXL.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Nathan Bennett, Focusing on Cloud, Automation, AI/ML, and Emerging Technologies. Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @vNathanBennett.

For your weekly dose of Utilizing CXL, subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast app through Anchor FM and check out more Utilizing Tech podcast episodes on the dedicated website, https://utilizingtech.com/.

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Last week, I met with the Pure Storage’s FlashBlade product team to hear about their newest offering for unstructured data storage. Given Pure’s focus on high-performance, scale-out all-flash solutions, I assumed that I’d be hearing about a new edition of FlashBlade//S. But instead, we talked about their new software-plus-hardware product aimed at workloads with similar access performance needs: FlashBlade//E.

The Current Storage MarketTypically, oragnizations keep their cooler data sets stored on spinning disks or other non-flash options to save on costs. Although they tend to be slower, these technologies remain the cheaper alternative for large data sets that are very infrequently accessed.

Traditionally, data professionals think of data access needs as hot, warm, cold, and archive. The acquisition and operational costs decline from hot to archive.

However, until now, the most cost-effective option for cold and archive data is spinning disks that are available at affordable price points. There is hardly any organization left that uses tape backups, for these reasons.

Of course, nothing stops an organization from hosting all its data on high-performance infrastructures other than the fact that data growth continues to be a significant factor contributing to the total cost of ownership for storing more and more data. Additionally, most of these cooler datasets tend to grow faster than transactional data. That runs up the cost really really quickly.

FlashBlade//EPure’s new solution builds on the same software and hardware architecture as the FlashBlade//S for unstructured data. Pure is delivering this offering with nearly all the features of their premier product while cutting costs to the point where organizations can save money moving from non-flash options.

Same FeaturesPure Storage wishes to make FlashBlade even more accessible and convenient for their current and new customers. To that end, it has included everything that FlashBlade//S solutions have:

Scalability: Hardware uses the same extensible and upgradable Direct Flash Modules
Capacity: Up to tens of petabytes
Networking: Up to 16x100GbE, doubling max of FlashBlade//S
Energy: 2,300W (Compute plus Storage) or 1,600W (Storage only)
Software: Runs the same Purity/FB software
Size: Hardware dimensions are much smaller than disk storage
Data Security: Supports the same features such as SafeMode immutable snapshots as well as always-on encryption

The datasheet for FlashBlade//E has more technical specifications.

Lower Cost Lowering costs is the primary focus of this product. Pure says that the acquisition costs are similar to those of comparable disk solutions, and at a total cost of ownership of about $0.20 US per GB raw, it is 40% lower. Pure also points to costs savings over traditional storage because all-flash saves on energy use, at about one-fifth of that of disk systems.

Target WorkloadsPure uses the term repository workloads to describe the best fit for data access and usage for FlashBlade//E, and I think that helps explain the types of workloads they want to support. These include traditional unstructured data such as media, backups, snapshots, data lakes, documents, and records. These are large volume datasets that have a huge variety of performance and access needs.

Sample Use CasesConsider medical imaging as a use case. It would involve storing digital artifacts like these at a high resolution for a very long time. But in reality, they get accessed only a few times a year, depending on how long ago they were created.

The same goes for large data lakes, where data always flows in but never leaves the lake. Moreover, given that data lakes typically support data in its raw, non-aggregated form, they tend to be loaded with mostly uncurated data, and have no set structure to the same data from multiple sources. Add to that the fact that we often store raw, cleansed, and curated versions of these data. Data lakes grow faster than transaction systems such as data warehouses.

IoT streaming media is another great example of large volumes of data being stored in raw, cleansed, and analyzed versions. You might need to process all that data at the time of ingestion and archive it to storage for the longer term.

Target CustomersPure wants to entice their existing customer base to migrate all their spinning disk storage to FlashBlade//E, and that makes perfect sense. Expanding footprint in a datacenter is always easier if you already have products there. So if Pure’s estimates for cost and energy savings come anywhere near what they are predicting, it’s a win-win for both organizations.

However, Pure also sees a path for new customers with different requirements for high-performance all-flash storage. With the new price points and cost savings, these organizations with large unstructured data needs will see sense in considering FlashBlade//E as a solution for their repository workloads.

What Does the //E in the Name Stand for?As you may have guessed, the main focus of the E branding is Environmental. However, Pure also points to the lower cost feature as Economical, the simplicity provided as Effortless, and their Evergreen//Oneoptions as Everlasting.

With 10 to 20 times greater reliability and innovative designs, Pure claims that their products deliver 85% e-waste reductions over traditional disk storage. Given all this, I think this product deserves the //E branding.

Karen’s ObservationsPure has created a new entry point for organizations that have not yet transformed to an all-flash storage. With FlashBlade//E, they have opened a door for current customers to move to a more sustainable, energy-efficient set of storage solutions. I’ve previously written about Pure Storage’s commitment to building products that reduce energy usage and mitigate planned obsolescence. Their scale-out framework enables companies to extend the life of their storage infrastructure easier and with less downtime. To quote from my previous article, “This is the way I want all technology to go: upgrade instead of replace.”

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Over the past several months, the industry has observed the growing exuberance surrounding a new disruptive technology called CXL. Known for introducing pliability and composability to server architecture not witnessed before, it’s been stoking the public’s imagination with the potential for AI/ML.

This Tech Field Day event in March, we had had the honor of having Siamak Tavallaei from CXL Consortium join us for an exclusive presentation on the technology. CXL Advisor to the Board of Directors, Mr. Tavallaei gave an immersive talk on CXL that follows its journey from birth to the most recent specification, CXL 3.0.

The CXL ConsortiumMr. Tavallaei started the talk by introducing the audience to CXL Consortium, the body behind the technology. CXL Consortium was formed in 2019 by some of the industry’s heavyweights who are now its board members.

The 15 companies that brought the consortium to life and now runs it are Alibaba Group, AMD, Arm, Cisco, Dell, Google, HPE, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Rambus and Samsung. Currently, the Consortium is 240 members strong, and has 9 promotor companies and several contributor companies associated with it.

Mr. Tavallaei announced that Larry Carr, VP of Engineering at Rambus, has been elected the new President of the CXL Consortium.

The consortium operates through workgroups that include the technical and marketing wings, and the board of directors. When a certain use case is identified, members and contributors present their proposals that are considered and compared, and based on that, a solution is developed.

The Genesis StoryMr. Tavallaei shared the story of the origination of CXL Consortium with the audience. In the past, proprietary interconnects were used to expand resources within servers, but their limited compatibility got in the way of a wider adoption. From that, the idea of a universal interconnect was born.

Several big companies came together to build a set of vendor-agnostic specifications that can be universally used. From that initiative, CXL was born. In the March of 2019, CXL 1.0 was rolled out. As it garnered attention, other manufacturers joined the project, and continued the effort. A year later in 2020, CXL 2.0 was announced. At the 2022 Flash Memory Summit, the most recent CXL 3.0 was released.

New UpdatesAt the event, the other announcement was that OpenCAPI Consortium, a near-memory CPU interconnect group that designed an open interface architecture that connects any microprocessor to accelerators and I/O devices, signed the agreement to merge with CXL.

Early in 2022, another group, the Gen-Z Consortium that designed open-systems interconnect closed merger with CXL Consortium transferring their assets and specs with CXL.

The CXL ApproachMr. Tavallaei laid out the CXL approach which began with a simple, but compelling object – do no harm to any existing technology. The founders meant for CXL to power modern interconnects, not take away from them. So, they built it on top of the PCIe infrastructure.

CXL leverages three dynamically multiplexed protocols. One of the protocols, CXL.io, Mr. Tavallaei informed, is the same as what PCIe does.

“It is participating in bus on a device enumeration, configuration, DMA moving memory similar to what DMA engines do as part of PCIe,” he said.

CXL additionally brings two high-speed, low latency protocols, namely CXL.memory and CXL.cache. Each of the protocols addresses a certain use case. While CXL.mem and CXL.cache aims to move data fast (under 200 nanoseconds), CXL.io. moves bigger blocks of memory at a slower rate. Mixing and matching these protocols allows for a wide range of use cases.

CXL 3.0CXL 3.0 builds on the capabilities of CXL 2.0, with emphasis on scaling and resource utilization. Expanding the logical capabilities of CXL, it enables flexible memory sharing between CXL devices, and introduces new access modes.

Mr. Tavallaei highlighted the data rate in CXL 3.0. At 64 gigatransfers per second, it is double the rate of CXL 2.0.

The latest version has enhanced switching capabilities, including peer-to-peer direct memory access which allows devices to directly access each other’s memory and be informed of their states without going through a host.

It introduces support for multi-level switching. While CXL 2.0 allowed only a single switch, 3.0 allows several layers of switches to reside between a host and its devices, thus extending support for more complex network topologies.

Combined, the new memory and fabric capabilities are what is called the Global Fabric Attached Memory or GFAM. GFAM further disaggregates memory from the host such that a GFAM device is its own memory pool that both devices and hosts can access as required. It can have both volatile and non-volatile memory, such as DRAM and flash together for example.

CXL 3.0 has full backward compatibility with the earlier CXL 1.0+ and 2.0. Hosts and devices can be flexibly downgraded to what the rest of the hardware chain has. However, downgrading will cause loss of new features and speeds.

For more information on CXL and CXL 3.0, be sure to watch the full presentation from the Tech Field Day event. For a prescient discourse on CXL, check out the Delegate Roundtable – Considering the Impact of CXL, also recorded at the event.

Watch our episode of Utilizing CXL from season four of Utilizing Tech with Siamak Tavallaei on the Utilizing Tech website or on YouTube or listen on podcast services.

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Nvidia GTC is happening this week and there’s lots of new hardware coming out. From the H100 card optimized for large language models to screaming fast GPUs for laptops and workstations Nvidia has something for everyone. We’ve already referenced the announcements around Bluefield 3 but Nvidia has also announced a new supercompute cluster with DGX cloud that you can totally rent for $37,000 a month.

0:42 | SSE Revenues Growing per Dell’Oro

A new report from Dell’Oro group says that SSE revenues grew 38% in in 2022. The report mentioned the rise in remote work brought on by the pandemic as well as the shift of applications moving into the cloud for both office and remote workers. Firewall revenue continued to grow and exceeded $12 billion for the first time. Chris, is SSE going to be the new buzzword for secure connectivity? Or do traditional enterprise offerings still have a place?

Read More: Enterprises Can’t Get Enough SSE as Revenue Rockets 38 Percent in 2022, According to Dell’Oro Group

4:09 | Nutanix CIO Out Amid Operational Oddities

Nutanix CIO Wendy Pfeiffer has announced she is leaving. The news comes as Nutanix is wrapping up an internal probe around improper software use. The SEC notified the company that they were deficient in filing a new 10-Q as required by law, which is apparently being held up by this investigation. Per reports, the software being misused was only supposed to carry an evaluation license but was instead used for interoperability testing and proof-of-concept deployments. That extra incurred expense is the reason for the delayed 10-Q. Tom, what could happen here if things don’t get resolved?

Read More: Nutanix CIO Exits Amid Software Misuse Probe

8:42 | Nvidia Bring Bluefield 3 to Oracle Cloud

Oracle announced this week that they are deploying Nvidia Bluefield technology to their cloud to increase performance. Bluefield 3 is the latest generation of DPU that Nvida has developed from the Mellanox acquisition. Nvidia revealed the news during the GTC keynote where they pointed out the reduction in power costs for servers using Bluefield 3 as well as the increased performance of using DPUs or SmartNICs for workloads. This comes on the heels of news from industry analysts that the DPU and SmartNIC market is expected to grow by at least 30% this year. Chris, is this good news for Oracle Cloud customers?

Read More: Oracle predicts: BlueField-3 is coming

Read More: SmartNIC, DPU Revenue Forecast To Grow 30% In 2023

12:23 | They Don’t Make HDDs Like They Used To

If it feels like your hard disk drive doesn’t last as long as it used to, you’re not alone. According to a report from Secure Data Recovery, modern hard drives aren’t lasting nearly as long as the ones made just 8 years ago. The test covered all the failed drives they received in 2022. 80% of those drives came from Western Digital and Seagate and lasted, on average, 34 months before failure. The biggest issue according to Secure Data Recovery is the use of Shingled Magnetic Recording, or SMR. Tom, how can drives made in the last couple of years be less reliable?

Read More: HDD average life span misses 3-year mark in study of 2,007 defective drives

18:53 | Nvidia GTC Looms Large

Read More: The NVIDIA GTC Spring 2023 Keynote Live Blog (8:00am PT/15:00 UTC)

28:02 | The Weeks Ahead

Storage Field Day 25 – March 22-23, 2023

Networking Field Day 31 – April 12-14, 2023

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

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As organizations embrace edge computing, they seek the ability to deploy technology to deliver new capabilities to business operations, and open new avenues for revenue generation. So far, the focus has been on the delivery of infrastructure for static workload management. But a long-time goal of edge adoption has been to dynamically control workloads from afar, making application updates, deploying new services, and keeping edge points secure both feasible and cost and time-efficient.

Stepping UpScale Computing, a long-time leader in HCI infrastructure for a variety of edge environments, has had great success in deploying edge solutions.

Amassing thousands of customers during their fifteen-year history, their reputation for delivering solutions that work out-of-the-box has earned them over 100 points on CRN’s vendor product quality score, a historic high for the publication.

As the edge has matured and customer requirements have become more advanced, Scale Computing has upped its game with software development to ensure a full lifecycle of remote oversight of infrastructures. It’s in this work that the company rests its opportunity for continued market advancement as the momentum of edge proliferation grows.

Full Lifecycle ManagementThe foundation for this full life cycle management is Scale Computing’s Autonomous Infrastructure Management Engine (AIME), custom-built software that sets Scale Computing deployments apart.

AIME is built deeply into the hardware telemetry to oversee everything from BIOS and firmware health to hardware states, environmental measurements, network state and more. With always-on oversight, Scale Computing is aware of infrastructure issues well before its clients, and can timely trigger remediation.

When you consider the diverse landscape of edge environments and the relative skillset of edge-based employees, this capability is a gift to organizations, to deploy with confidence, and mitigate risks of truck rolls for hardware troubleshooting. AIME’s sophistication also ensures that data is properly mirrored, and any impact of loss is minimized.

Scale Computing has built on hardware control achieved in AIME with the newly released zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) in SC//Fleet Manager. ZTP allows Scale Computing to pre-load software on edge devices so that setup at the edge is simplified to plugging equipment to the location. This is when SC//Fleet Manager takes over and enables remote initialization of each cluster, deployment of initial configuration, and application of the cluster name.

The combination of SC//Fleet Manager and AIME also de-risks initialization errors such as a device plugged into a wrong location with seamless re-boot and re-provisioning of the cluster. For organizations wishing to deploy fleets of edge devices in environments with limited or no local technical support, the cost savings that ZTP offers expand the opportunity for edge device deployment.

With ZTP and AIME, Scale Computing has achieved initial deployment and cluster oversight of its edge solutions. But customers want more. They want the opportunity to update software across their edge fleet as efficiently as possible, and for this capability, Scale Computing has developed their SC//HyperCore Ansible Collection.

These Red Hat certified open source-based playbooks are provided to enable IT administrators to provision clusters, deploy applications, and update security and compliance with central, automated control.

This technology’s elegant approach extends the value of edge infrastructure by enabling organizations to deploy new services on existing hardware, and extending the value of edge deployments for business evolution. It’s also reflective of the broader direction of edge computing delivering more sophistication of workload opportunities to monetize data at the edge.

ConclusionOrganizations that seek an edge infrastructure provider with seasoned experience deploying fleets of equipment across edge environments should seriously consider Scale Computing’s offerings. Its software portfolio reflects a deep understanding of the unique capabilities IT organizations require for remote site deployment. Its engineering investment in hardware telemetry and software oversight ensures that central IT operations can effectively oversee remote deployments. Lastly, its investment in SC//HyperCore Ansible playbooks makes sure that organizations are not limited to appliance like edge devices. Scale Computing also lives up to its name in being able to support a broad scale of devices and types of configurations to suit a wide array of workload and environmental requirements.

To learn more about the company’s offerings, visit Scalecomputing.com and request a free demo, or check out the presentations from the recent Edge Field Day event at TechFieldDay.com.

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Compute Express Link, popularly known as CXL, is poised to change the way we do computing. The CXL interconnect is leading datacenters away from the classic server computing architecture, with one that supports pooling, expansion and sharing of memory, laying the groundwork for some of the world’s most cutting-edge workloads with true composability.

At the recent Tech Field Day event, MemVerge brought CXL to the audience. MemVerge is one of the frontline companies paving the way for implementation of CXL. During the event, Sr. Software Architect and Product Manager, Steve Scargall showcased two core CXL products – MemVerge MemoryViewer and Memory Machine, that MemVerge has brought to the market to enable software adoption of CXL.

An Unexpected ProblemOne of the great things about CXL is that applications do not require code changes to consume CXL memory. It behaves like standard memory, and can be used as is. Users can provision CXL two ways, user-managed where the user allocates memory independent of the DRAM, and Kernel-managed, where the Linux kernel manages the allocation.

Although neither has any bearing on the application, the heterogenous nature of the memory environment can affect its performance. In such an environment, NUMA nodes mapped to the applications can have widely different latency or bandwidth characteristics, based on the type of memory they are using, or the physical distance between hardware. The varying memory characteristics of the nodes can pose a problem for unmodified applications and VMs that are not equipped to handle this diversity.

MemoryViewerMemVerge’s innovation is around enabling applications to choose the best NUMA nodes based on the workloads. At the Tech Field Day event, Mr. Scargall showcased two solutions to demonstrate this.

The first is the MemVerge MemoryViewer, a Linux-based free software solution that provides comprehensive visibility of the physical memory resources, and their utilization.

“The intent of MemoryViewer is to show you as a user, what your applications are doing,” said Mr Scargall. “The key question for heterogeneous environments is how much of the memory is actually hot, and how much of that is cold, i.e., could we under memory pressure situations, move that to a lower tier without the application having to do that for you?”

MemoryViewer features System Topology that shows memory configurations in real-time, allowing system admins to check their correctness. Application Memory Heatmap displays memory behavior, usage patterns and insights, with the help of which administrators can tailor and optimize the configurations to better support the applications.

Memory MachineThe Memory Machine is a solution designed to address the growing need for in-memory computing. MemVerge calls it the “Big Memory Software”. At the core, the Memory Machine virtualizes DRAM and persistent memory, making them compatible to access for all existing applications. To the applications, it appears as DRAM, and can be consumed without any modifications.

The solution intelligently tiers hot data to the DRAM fast tier, and puts warm data in the persistent tier. This allows for better performance, and maximum utilization of both the memories.

“With thin provisioning of memory, you can overcommit and once you hit the threshold, we’ll just give you the memory that you really need. That’s a cost-efficiency saving for the infrastructure guys, or potentially for the cloud guys as well if they want to offer that,” said Mr. Scargall.

Memory Machine also supports blazing fast crash recovery. With ZeroIO memory snapshot technology, it provides the ability to clone terabytes of data from PMEM in just seconds, and requires no IO to storage.

Wrapping UpCXL is the key to attaining 100% composability in datacenters, and for that, MemVerge’s solutions are both well-timed, and vitally important. They offer a way for applications to access CXL memory unmodified. Intelligent memory management open ways to achieve rightsizing of compute and memory for workloads, while enjoying cost-benefits. With MemoryViewer and Memory Machine, MemVerge hands enterprises the means to explore their AI/ML ambitions.

To check out the demos, be sure to watch the MemVerge presentations from the recent Tech Field Day event.

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Ever since IBM introduced external storage in the mainframe age the concept of big storage keeps changing. This special episode of the On-Premise IT podcast includes Storage Field Day 25 delegates Ray Lucchesi, Andy Banta, and Rohan Puri considering the current state of enterprise storage, from the datacenter to the cloud. Although every device and computer has storage of one sort or another, the market still has a tremendous appetite for dedicated storage hardware, software, and services. Storage for different use cases can be wildly different as well, from IoT and edge to machine learning and analytics to databases to the cloud, and each of these have different solutions. But it’s all big storage, and big storage will continue to grow and diversify.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsAndy Banta

Ray Lucchesi

Rohan Puri

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@AndyBanta

@RayLucchesi

@Rohan_Puri

Twitter@SFoskett

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Nurturing an ever-expanding network in a way that it is up and up 99.999% of the time is a harder problem than it appears. Network teams working behind it know the harsher reality because they have to get around the pitfalls that lay in the way of the 5 nines uptime every day at work.

At the recent Tech Field Day event, Kentik presented Synthetic Testing, a capability they included not long ago to the Kentik Network Observability Platform. Kentik Synthetics helps network teams stay ahead of problems by simulating network behavior, and proactively evaluating variables and the health of the network.

An Incomplete PictureThe language around network monitoring has evolved at a faster pace than the technology itself. In the last couple years, vendors have swapped out the older and outdated “monitoring” with the more scientific sounding “observability”. And although “observability” has become the stamp of distinction for vendors, under the hood, the technology has remained the same, give or take.

Teams still base their decisions on flow records when that data, in and of itself, is not valuable without context. Looking at one piece of data and drawing conclusion out of it is not the savviest way to infer the health of a network as complex as those today. Without context, one can very easily make wrong, or even ridiculous deductions.

A Richer DataContextual data, on the other hand, is the cornerstone for making confident decisions. But there’s an even better way to bolster observability. With proactive monitoring, engineers can weigh the digital experience of the users before it is delivered.

Monitoring tools that do not function proactively doesn’t help avert outages, nor help improve the Quality of Experience (QoE). It’s an important lesson, CTOs have learned through frequent network disruptions, and that’s why there’s a keen and growing interest in proactive network monitoring.

Achieving Observability of Digital ExperiencesKentik does not need a lengthy introduction in the context of network monitoring. It’s high rating and heaps of reviews on popular platforms like Gartner for example, confirm its golden reputation.

For Kentik, observability is to be able to answer any question that network engineers might ask. So when it saw a growing void in the performance monitoring capabilities coming from certain hardware vendors, it embraced synthetic testing to stop that gap.

Mike Krygeris, Enterprise Solutions Architect, informed that proactive monitoring is not a common feature-set in network hardware. “A lot of routers and switches don’t want to take on that sort of workload in order to get performance data,” he explained.

The Kentik Network Observability Platform ingests data from data sources, adds context to it by enriching it with metadata from the network, and presents it to the teams. Delivered as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), the platform is vendor-agnostic, and can gather data from any source in the network.

The other function that Mr. Krygeris drew attention to is low-latency query. Kentik Network Observability Platform allows users to query data at a fast speed, so that information is always at the fingertips. It also provides automated insights for easy troubleshooting.

Kentik SyntheticsMr. Krygeris walked the audience through the capabilities of Kentik Synthetics. Kentik deploys agents all over the network, be it cloud, or on-prem, that watch the network from different vantage points in the environment. Users can schedule synthetic tests from the Kentik UI. Tests can be scheduled at a frequency of a few seconds to every minute or longer.

Kentik Synthetics Test Control Center provides several options for users. They include but not limited to Network Meshes and Grids for monitoring with agent-to-agent meshes, Network and Routing Tests for monitoring with one or a set of agents, and Web Tests for measuring the response time of Web servers.

Kentik covers a lot of grounds when it comes to performance monitoring. Mr. Krygeris named some of the testing that Kentik does, such as ping, traceroute and jitter tests, TCP and UDP, DNS testing, app testing and Internet health and BGP monitoring.

Kentik Autonomous Tests analyze flow records and correlated traffic data, triaging problems on auto-pilot. Through these tests, teams can keep up-to-speed with the network performance, and application response times, while closely watching the supporting infrastructures, with just a few clicks. High traffic and path awareness ensures swift Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and shorter Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).

Wrapping UpOrganizations are fast embracing new cloud environments and that is making the network topology a little more complex every day. Companies that continue to latch on to older techniques of monitoring, waiting for problems to surface are already too late. The modern networks require tools that can proactively probe into the components and interact with them just as a real user would, and spot the problems before they do, leaving no mystery for the teams. The Kentik Network Observability Platform with Kentik Synthetics is one such solution that measures digital experience from the point of view of the users, and provide teams the 360-degree visibility they require to achieve the 5 nines uptime.

To check out the demo, be sure to watch the above presentation till the end, or view other deep-dive presentations by Kentik from the recent Tech Field Day event.

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Perhaps no one can tell the story of Compute Express Link (CXL) better than Jim Pappas, who was involved in the development of nearly every related technology, from PCI to UCIe. This episode wraps up the season of Utilizing Tech with Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers discussing the evolution of CXL with Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives at Intel and Chairman of the CXL Consortium. No matter how good the technology is, it needs widespread industry support, backwards and forwards compatibility, and open cooperation, and that’s what made technologies like PCI, PCI Express, USB, and now CXL successful.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives, Intel and Chairman of the CXL Consortium. Connect with Jim on LinkedIn and learn more about the CXL Consortium on their site.

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Data from studies show that technical debt can stymie digital transformation. With a majority of organizations extending their digital footprints, especially transforming to multi-cloud and edge, this is just bad news.

At their first-time appearance in the recent Tech Field Day event, Men&Mice presented a solution that may help organizations pare down technical debt. Lauren Malhoit, Head of Growth and Product Marketing showcased Micetro, an award-winning DDI (DNS, DHCP and IPAM) management and orchestration solution that seeks to turn the complex task of multi-cloud DDI network management into a simple, stress-free and streamlined experience.

A Twofold ProblemTwo problems have been identified at the root of technical debt. Organizations are increasingly consuming services from networks outside their own. This is true for any business that has a network. On one hand, it has expanded their footprints to remote clouds, and on the other, it has increased their burden of digital asset management, especially for services like DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management (IPAM), collectively called DDI. Both have a snowballing effect on technical debt.

The second problem is the rip and replace approach to IT modernization. As their current technology stacks age, organizations embark on the process of ripping out older tools and embracing the newer ones. Repeated over and over, the process has made sure that organizations stay on the cutting edge of technology. But on a flip side, the accumulating costs have led to spiraling technical debts that inevitably slow down their digital progress.

The personas most impacted by this are the IT teams. To their frustration, they need to upskill, retool and reculture cyclically, every few years to keep up with the change, all on a tight budget.

Ms. Malhoit noted, “We get stuck in this rip and replace mentality, and the analysis paralysis of moving forward. Our IT teams have no time to get trained on new services. They’re constantly at a loss, working from behind.”

Men&MiceMen&Mice makes migration to new clouds sustainable. By making IPAM and DNS administration simpler, it cuts down the need to have more skillset to manage newer technologies. Founded in Reykjavík, Iceland, Men&Mice has a customer-first mindset which reflects in its simple company vision – to make the complex management of DNS, DHCP and IPAM simple and easy.

To that end, they make use of a popular IT principle – abstraction. Micetro is a software-defined overlay that enables unified DDI management and orchestration of a wide variety of networks, of sizes ranging from those of Fortune 500 companies to small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Men&Mice are experts in network management. Ms. Malhoit said, “With our overlay design, our product teams, developers and support people really have to understand the underlying services that you might connect with in order to run the best DIY environment for your use cases. So that requires a lot of knowledge, and expertise to help our customers set things up for best practices, and to really make things run in a performant way.”

MicetroMs. Malhoit highlighted two things that set Micetro apart from other solutions. “Men&Mice is not the first to figure out abstraction, or to talk about overlay architectures, but we are bringing it to the DDI environment,” said Ms. Malhoit.

“Micetro is a non-authoritative and non-disruptive DDI (DNS, DHCP and IPAM) solution,” she said.

As a product, Micetro does not interfere with neither the services, nor the network structure. Users can unplug Micerto if they want to, without disrupting either. Despite this flexibility, Mice&Men enjoys 95% client retention.

Ms. Malhoit gave a sneak-peek of the overlay architecture in the presentation. The solution includes Micetro Central which is a unified UI that provides a single source of truth (SoT). Configurable for high availability, it is what Men&Mice calls the “brains of the operation.”

“It gives you one UI or one API, depending on what you’re trying to do, to create and maintain processes and workflows. This is no matter where your workloads reside, whether they’re in the cloud, or on premises, or you’re using some sort of managed DNS service, it’s one place to go.”

Users have the same workflows everywhere, whether its AWS, Azure or on-prem, as workflows go through Micetro “making the underlying services quite fungible.”

As soon as Micerto connects to the services, the DDI environment pops up in the UI providing visibility across teams. It eliminates the need to have specialized skill to navigate and manage multiple services.

Micetro has a backend database where data from connected services are accumulated and organized.

Built for modern architectures, Micerto provides users a break from the infamous lock-in that proprietary systems often put users in. “We don’t rely on resource-hungry appliances to achieve scale, or the ability to be in the cloud, on-premises, or multi-site. We will give you appliances if you want to use them, but we do not require them in any way. This helps our customers avoid the financial burden of unnecessary resource and administrative costs, that come with the more closed systems that we see a lot in our space,” said Ms. Malhoit.

Wrapping UpTechnical debt may sometimes be hard to pin down or measure, but it is a reality for all organizations. More than game-changing investments, and a rip-and-replace drill every few years, teams need the right set of tools that not only make investments pay off, but become a barrier to escalating costs by outlasting other solutions. Micerto is one such product that not only has the power to bring down tech-debt costs, but also eliminate the constraints imposed by legacy solutions organizations have so long relied upon.

To catch a live demo of Micerto, be sure to check the other presentations by Men&Mice from the recent Tech Field Day event.

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Often, engineers are sold a shiny new technology that’s positioned as the answer to “everything.” And just like that, the technology that had been serving us well for years is suddenly stigmatized as legacy technology and there’s the urge to rip it out and replace it. The reality though, is that we generally don’t have the luxury of rearchitecting an organization’s entire infrastructure, nor should we.

The better approach is looking into how these new technology innovations can help make the current architecture better and address specific use cases more effectively. SD-WAN and the emergence of SASE is one such example of technology innovation that allows organizations to apply secure access no matter where their users, workloads, devices, or applications are located.

Single-Vendor SASEWhile some probably remember when SASE stood for “Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope,” and was used to get something from a celebrity or some back-of-the-box offer, today it stands for Secure Access Service Edge. Now wait, this is old stuff from 2019, right? While the term has been around for a while, the technology really matured as the remote work population reached all-time highs throughout the pandemic.

With the majority of organizations supporting hybrid workforces, CIOs are tasked with the challenge of securing users as they move from their home to the office, during travel, and everywhere in-between. If it wasn’t dead before, the perimeter for securing a business is officially gone now. Zero trust is the only way forward, and SASE is a major part of that future state. SASE is not a silver bullet, no technology is, but it plays a very important role in securing a distributed workforce and should be used to augment your next-generation firewalls and other on-premises technologies to help provide consistent security and user experiences regardless of where employees are located.

This is where Fortinet’s approach with Single-Vendor SASE comes in. Customers want FortiOS to be the unifying presence, from firewall to the cloud and beyond. Whether it is on-premises or in the cloud, FortiOS is the glue. Likewise, one client, FortiClient, will help secure endpoints whether they are connected to the cloud, or a traditional on-premises firewall.

Unified policies, whether it’s “legacy” technology, or the latest iteration of SASE, provides business with a way to seamlessly integrate the new technology while maximizing their existing IT investment.

Another reason for extending existing security architectures instead of replacing them is that, not all use cases lend themselves to SASE. For example, many organizations still demand on-prem security for use cases like internal segmentation, compliance and regulatory requirements – especially those in the financial and federal/government verticals. And, of course, there are customers are cloud-friendly or predominantly remote workforce would take the route of cloud-delivered solution. What is turning out to be more important is the flexibility for customers to enable security where it is needed on their journey to a SASE framework and, while these organizations are adopting cloud-delivered security for a hybrid workforce, they are also making sure to enable internal segmentation for on-prem locations to prevent the lateral movement of threats.

In this scenario, the single-client approach from Fortinet shines as it reduces the individual policies, configurations, and software that need to be deployed to the end user devices, thus simplifying deployment, as well as user experience. They use the same software for both on-premises and SASE. So, to them, it’s the same thing and it’s simple. No need to have complicated instructions of when to use one solution over the other. Colleagues outside of IT deserve connectivity and security with the least amount of friction possible.

ConclusionWhile it may not always be possible to use the same vendors for all security needs, there is a compelling case to consider it. Keeping a uniform security posture regardless of where users are helps make sure that security intent is properly implemented. Misconfigurations and oversights are often at the root of security infiltrations. Anything that helps IT teams provide a great user experience while maintaining a uniform security posture is a win-win for the business.

To learn more about what Fortinet is doing with their Single-Vendor SASE architecture, be sure to check out their page.

GuestNarav Shah, Vice President of Products – SD-WAN, SASE, Zero Trust at Fortinet

ModeratorBen Story

LinkedInConnect with Narav on LinkedIn and learn more about Fortinet and their security on their website.

Twitter@Ntwrk80

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Our next Storage Field Day event is here, coming to you live on LinkedIn and the Tech Field Day website March 22 and 23, 2023 or watch the recordings shortly after each presentation. Here’s a quick overview of what to look forward to.

Enterprise Storage continues to advance even as cloud computing, ransomware, security, and data management have shifted the focus of the industry. We’re going to spend a few days looking at storage with some of the top thought leaders from leading companies in the industry. The event is broadcast live on TechFieldDay.com starting at 9 AM Pacific Time on Wednesday and 8 AM Pacific on Thursday with presentations throughout the day.

Storage Field Day begins with a Delegate Roundtable live at 9 AM. The discussion will be centered around the many ways storage has changed and the emerging trends being seen in the industry today. Index Engines will present CyberSense at 10:30 AM. CyberSense scans backup data in snapshots to validate the integrity and identify malicious changes indicative of a cyber attack. When an attack occurs, CyberSense provides forensic reporting to diagnose and recover to resume normal business operations. IBM Storage is the next presenter at 1:30 PM. They’ll give us an overview of the new IBM Storage landscape as well as deep dives into IBM Storage Scale and IMB Storage Fusion. We will wrap up Wednesday with a presentation from Amazon Web Services at 4 PM. We’ll dive into AWS Block Storage, backup, and data protection services which have emerged as a leading platform for enterprise data in the cloud.

Thursday morning kicks off with StorPool at 8 AM. StoragePool will be presenting their parallel multi-node shared nothing primary data storage architecture built for highly automated environments dynamically provisioned with self service UI’s where thousands of users can simultaneously manage their workloads. The event will wrap up with a retrospective Roundtable Discussion giving delegates time to consider what they’ve heard and predict the impact of these new technologies.

All of our sessions are broadcast live on LinkedIn and the Tech Field Day website. They are also recorded and posted to the Tech Field Day YouTube channel shortly after the event. We welcome participation on Twitter and Mastodon using #SFD25. Thank you for joining us for Storage Field Day March 22-23 on our social media channels.

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The key to business success in this decade is in the ability to organically absorb new technologies and render positive user experiences. This was the message that rang through all the presentations at the recent Edge Field Day event.

In February, at our first-ever Edge Field Day event in California, we invited companies and delegates to gather under one roof and talk edge computing. The attending companies – Scale Computing, ZEDEDA, Opengear, Avassa, Mako Networks – presented a plethora of solutions targeted at the edge market.

Before the final wrap up, delegates, Ben Young, Alastair Cooke, Brian Chambers, Carl Fugate, and Josh Warcop joined Stephen Foskett in a roundtable discussion for a quick recap. Reflecting on the dominant themes and technologies from the presentations, they shared their impressions on edge computing, and spitballed new ideas for the future iterations of Edge Field Day.

Zero TouchHost, Mr. Foskett, hit the ground running with the question of what in their opinion the overarching themes of the event were. Security was top of the mind, Mr. Young recalled. And like any discussion concerning the edge, this too started with Zero Touch Provisioning.

Zero Touch Provisioning is the way to set up thousands of devices within minutes, securely and automatically. Mr. Chambers elucidated, “The reason behind it is probably just a recognition that if you’re going to deal with the edge, you’re going to deal with so many copies, and footprints of whatever you have, whether it’s network or compute.”

More importantly, the edge involves people, and that makes rooms for security issues, whether it’s through human error, negligence, or malicious intent.

Too often, companies tend to fall back on manual methods as their default approach instead of adopting new processes. At the edge, this approach poses several problems, and barrier to enforcing security is one of them.

Mr. Chambers noted, “We had a theme that being able to automate and have a really good control plane for the entire network of devices is just essential.”

A Shift in MindsetAutomation has revolutionized the way organizations think security. Now CTOs are coming to recognize the outsize role it can play in edge transformation. The edge is expanding at a speed not witnessed before, and only automation can give organizations the means to catch up to it.

It was made clear in the presentations that for organizations to be able to keep up with edge’s scale and speed, automation is a necessary tool. Without it, companies are fighting a losing battle.

To enforce security at the edge, automation can help organizations eliminate manual burdens, and the vulnerabilities associated with it.

Alastair Cooke points out that the first step of upscaling is to adopt new approaches and new mechanisms. And shifting from the traditional mindset, in this case, to an automation-first mindset is vital.

“Your tools and your approach, your whole mindset has to change to cope with that difference in scale and that was a really significant element that draws through all of these,” said Mr. Cooke.

UpcyclingAutomation at the edge is different from the kind of automation organizations are used to. According to Cooke, at that scale, automation needs to be more policy-driven than procedural.

With a majority of the business world taken with the cloud operating model, businesses are keen on taking what they have learned in the cloud and reusing it at the edge. But it takes more than just hauling toolchains that are used in cloud out to the edge, or building an edge version of them.

Carl Fugate highlights, “This concept of just taking the solutions that I’ve already had in the datacenter don’t necessarily translate very well to the edge. In a lot of cases, there were very similar technologies and I think, especially in the automation space, at least conceptually, those things absolutely have to follow and be in support of the edge transformation. They’re not one for one.”

He added, “What I did with Kubernetes on-prem doesn’t necessarily look or feel the same once I push it out to the edge.”

Does this mean that moving to the edge entails building a toolchain from the ground up? Not necessarily, but there needs to be solutions that can remove the barriers to using the same technologies from cloud to the edge.

“Treating the cloud as a north star, and trying to apply as much of the cloud paradigm in terms of how we think about things and operate as possible is an interesting aspiration. But obviously there’s a massive set of constraints that you don’t deal with in the cloud, that are unique to the edge. I think that it’s just interesting to continue to dive in, and explore deeper and see what sort of solutions can make some of those constraints feel like they’re not there as much as possible, knowing that there’s going to be some that are just inescapable.” said Mr. Chambers.

New MeaningsThis brought the discussion to the core meaning of “edge”. There are multiple interpretations of the edge that influence organizations’ choice of technologies. The panel highlighted that edge takes on a new meaning with every vendor and every use case, and that was one of the things that echoed through the presentations.

As Mr. Warcop pointed out, “There are a lot of different definitions of edge, and different buyers and personas.”

He noted that a lot of the solutions that the companies presented were aimed at compressing the functions of legacy business units and deliver them at a remote site.

Wrapping UpWhatever the meaning of the edge may be to a certain vendor, it is clear from the discourse that it requires a different breed of technologies that can either be developed from existing concepts, or built from scratch, something that a lot of the presenting companies are already doing, or has in their agenda.

Hear the delegates drill deeper into the premise and come up with ways in which vendors can build and enhance existing solutions to unlock the full potential of edge computing in this Gestalt IT Delegate Roundtable from the Edge Field Day event.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you heard about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank last weekend. But what does this mean for enterprise IT? The FDIC is covering all depositors, even beyond the traditional $250,000 limit, but are they able to access their money? And what ripple effects will this failure have on venture capital, startups, the enterprise IT ecosystem, and most importantly tech workers?

0:37 | CelerData Launches StarRocks Version 3

StarRocks is an open source analytics platform which CelerData recently donated to the Linux Foundation. Version 3 brings so-called data lakehouse analytics, making data more visible and usable than traditional data lakes. How does this compare to alternatives like Databricks or Iceberg?

Read More: CelerData Brings New Level of High-Performance Analytics to the Data Lakehouse

3:19 | Rubrik Attackers Exploited File Transfer System

Rubrik released details this week about their exposure to the ongoing Fortra GoAnywhere zero day. Rubrik’s CISO, Michael Mestrovich, posted about attackers using the vulnterability to get into non-production area of Rubrik’s environment, includin internal sales info such as partner company names and some purchase order data. No personally identifiable information was breached per the third party auditors. More importantly, Rubrik said in a secondary statment that no data held on behalf of customers was violated in the breach. The breach is another in a list of heists pulled off by the Russian-linked Clop gang. Tom, should Rubrik customers be worried?

Read More: Security giant Rubrik says hackers used Fortra zero-day to steal internal data

6:50 | Microsoft Reveals Nvidia Powers Big AI Bets

We know you’re probably tired of hearing about ChatGPT at this point but an interesting story popped up this week ahead of Nvidia GTC. In a blog post, linked in the show notes, Microsoft revealed that the hardware that has been used to train the OpenAI models powering everyone’s favorite distraction are, in fact, A100 GPUs running over Infiniband. The A100, which we’ve covered several times on the show, is the flagship card that Nvidia has been touting as the way to build AI fast. With GTC coming next week and this news breaking now, can we expect to see updates on the AI GPU front Stephen?

Read More: How Microsoft’s bet on Azure unlocked an AI revolution

10:33 | Qualcomm Tries to Dodge Fine for Dodgy Behavior

Longtime subject of the show Qualcomm is once again trying to convince the EU they shouldn’t pay a fine for breaking the rules. The EU forced the chipmaker to pay around $258 million for anti-competitive behavior back in 2019. Qualcomm is fighting against the ruling by claiming the commission that levied the fine is on a crusade against them and that the technology they’re accused of manipulating isn’t even that big of a market segment anyway. Qualcomm is no stranger to having their wrist slapped for things like this, as they have been found to have made payments to Apple in the past to keep their modems exclusively in the iPhone in the past. Tom, why would Qualcomm want to avoid paying this fine aside from the obvious?

Read More: Qualcomm tries to kick holes in logic behind €242M fine

14:19 | Analyzing What SVB’s Failure Means for Enterprises

Read More: The End of Silicon Valley (Bank)

29:22 | The Weeks Ahead

Storage Field Day 25 – March 22-23, 2023

Networking Field Day 31 – April 12-14, 2023

Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere 2023 – April 25-26

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Rapid digital acceleration sets the tone for modern businesses in the advent of edge. IT teams tasked with overseeing infrastructures at the edge are under tremendous pressure to keep up with the non-stop innovation. The path of least resistance in the status quo is to find an equilibrium between rolling out smart applications, rapid time-to-market and always-on availability.

At the recent Edge Field Day event in California, Carl Moberg, CTO and Co-Founder of Avassa showcased the Avassa Platform, an application management solution that makes operating at the edge as simple as public cloud. The Avassa Platform empowers teams to create a positive customer experience through rapid deployment, consistent monitoring and seamless management of distributed on-site edge applications.

Performing Under PressureIT teams tasked with building edge infrastructures face many a challenge. They need to move fast, constantly evaluating the infrastructure against the long list of expectations foisted on them by cross-functioning teams.

For starters, it needs to have the gold standard 5 nines uptime. It must align with the organizational security posture, and not make it vulnerable. At the same time, it should offer a no-fuss, self-service style of operation like public cloud that everybody by now has grown so used to.

Mr. Moberg in his presentation, introduced two user personas that the Avassa Platform effectively targets – platform engineers and application developers. Despite complementing each other, the two teams have dissimilar goals and interests, which begs a unifying solution.

MisadventureBorn in Sweden, Avassa is a software-only company with a background in distributed systems automation and orchestration. Avassa has been following the breadcrumbs for some time, doing its own research, talking to IT teams about their experiences with operating at the edge.

Mr. Moberg shares his understanding – “The assumption is that the edge is owned by whomever is using it.” “So, think of retailers, industrial shop floors, quick-serve restaurants that you love. Think about things you own, on-site, or on-prem edge environments,” he urged.

The companies in Avassa’s survey were organizations that were using a mix of public and private cloud at the time. When asked to extend their capabilities to on-site edges, mayhem ensued as they found out that their current stash of tools was redundant in the new infrastructure.

“Particularly, the application teams had gone through a very long and arduous journey to the cloud. They had reorganized, recultured, and retooled themselves, and they were pretty proud of the agility they had for the public cloud,” Mr. Moberg noted.

Re-shifting workloads to the edge was a whole new ordeal. After hearing from the horse’s mouth, Avassa realized that there’s “a horrible tooling void for applications running on their on-site edge. There’s almost no reuse of their CI/CD-centric environment, and the platform teams’ tool set.”

The Avassa PlatformAvassa’s is an application management and orchestration platform for on-site edge. Moberg explained that the architecture consists of two core pieces of software – the Avassa Control Tower, and the Edge Enforcer.

The Avassa Control Tower is a software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that serves as the central management platform for distributed edge applications and resources. The Control Tower presents both edge cloud management and application lifecycle capabilities.

“It provides the features you need in terms of managing a fleet of infrastructure. So it has to do with sites, applications that you deploy, monitor and observe, and of course event streaming and all kinds of support stuff,” he said.

It can be used to observe the health and behavior of applications, sites and hosts, and deploy and upgrade distributed applications. The Control Tower also has a central repository of secrets that it manages and allows for selective distribution to applications. The Control Tower can also be installed on-premises.

The second piece, which is the Avassa Edge Enforcer is a software agent that is installed across hosts running in on-site edge infrastructures.

“This Edge Enforcer calls home to the Control Tower and tells it the environment that it sees and now you can start deploying applications while monitoring the IT infrastructure from the Control Tower,” said Mr. Moberg.

The key capabilities of the Edge Enforcer are local cluster management and application scheduling. It performs scheduling and placement of applications, in addition to providing zero-touch host registration and edge-native services for secrets management and event streaming.

“It manages local clusters. At the heart of it is, of course, a pretty sophisticated application scheduling mechanism, but it also has things like event streaming, secrets management and other things that must be produced at the edge because we want to be resilient for upstream outages,” said Mr. Moberg.

Wrapping UpMoving to the cloud was an exacting routine of modernization of architectures, tools and processes. Now as organizations take the next step towards the edge frontier, they need more vendors like Avassa that are committed to making the journey a breeze. The Avassa Platform offers the much-needed break from the back-breaking regime of deployment, configuration and lifecycle management. It essentially lends to businesses at the edge the same cloud operating model that will make living on the edge so much easier.

To watch the Avassa Platform in action, be sure to check out Avassa’s presentations from the recent Edge Field Day event.

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Edge computing continues to grow as demands for low-latency, disconnect-friendly, privacy-conscious applications swell. But even though edge computing accommodates new and creative architectures, it does not come without its costs.

Edge environments face numerous constraints that are foreign to the cloud computing world: brittle network connections, poor bandwidth, unreliable power, constrained physical spaces, and limited hardware resources to name a few.

This problem domain is not foreign to me as we navigated similar architectural challenges while provisioning and clustering 2,500+ K3s clusters on bare metal Intel NUCs across all Chick-fil-A restaurants in North America.

The Challenges of ProvisioningOne of the many challenges with edge computing that is easily forgotten is the absence of on-site technical support, especially in remote locations (think oil fields), or retail environments.

Enter zero-touch provisioning (ZTP), which enables devices to be automatically provisioned with the necessary configuration for their environment without any human interaction.

CNCF defined this key principle for edge-native solutions in a recently published Edge Native Report as: “Edge native requires a mix of remote and centralized management and zero touch provisioning of hardware and software. Staffing at the edge may be untrained, untrusted, minimal or even non-existent”.

Organizations considering large-scale edge deployments will likely find ZTP essential to their success, since manually provisioning hundreds, thousands, or tens-of-thousands of devices is too slow, cost prohibitive, and mistake-ridden to do with a human team.

Achieving zero touch provisioning requires solving several challenges. Devices must be imaged and assigned to customers, shipped to the correct locations, and tracked throughout provisioning. Device trust must be established.

Provisioning failure states must be considered, accounted for and managed, including scenarios such as loss of power or the network during provisioning. Most importantly, “bricking” (the process of turning a functional computer into a non-functional brick) devices—and especially fleets of devices—must be avoided at all costs.

Zero Touch Provisioning with Scale Computing At the Edge Field Day event, Scale Computing announced the launch of their Zero Touch Provisioning capability which provides a solution to this. A customer can select a device from the available fleet, that includes everything from lower-capacity devices like Intel i7 NUCs with 64GB RAM, to powerful machines with GPUs, providing a lot of flexibility on compute power and physical form factor.

Scale Computing images and ships these devices to the site, where they simply need to be plugged into power and ethernet. From there, Fleet Manager and the zero-touch provisioning take over.

Scale Computing’s architecture revolves around a proprietary state machine that is built into their HyperCore product, which is present on the initial image shipped to the site. This state machine tracks a node’s progress through its initialization process. This approach handles failure states well, and prevents in-field “brickability”.

Here is how it works. When a device is connected, it checks in with SC//Fleet Manager, which delivers a configuration file that tells the device what to do. Devices are pre-assigned to a particular customer before shipment to establish a basis for trust, and enable the devices to be discovered for configuration within the Fleet Manager portal.

Scale Computing doesn’t know what the customer wishes to do with the node at this time; they simply provision it and ensure that it initializes successfully. Provisioning is quick, taking around 10 minutes.

Once a device is initially provisioned and clustered, Scale Computing provides an Ansible-based capability to configure whatever is desired on the cluster of nodes, such as Google Anthos, Azure Arc, Avassa, or Kubernetes.

Cattle, Not PetsIn cloud computing, DevOps teams are encouraged to treat their compute resources as “cattle, not pets”. “Don’t bother with naming your servers or getting to know them, because they could be gone any moment,” they say.

While the edge development paradigm is quite different than the cloud, this principle still works. This is especially true for deployments with low-cost hardware, such as the Intel NUC (which was exceedingly popular at the Edge Field Day, and is available from Scale Computing).

With the right architecture in place, it is possible to treat edge nodes as cattle instead of pets, too. As Craig Theriac of Scale Computing stated, we could think of these edge devices as “disposable units of compute”. Should a problem arise, we simply “shoot the cow” and drop-ship a replacement knowing that the workloads/service remain available on the remaining nodes even while waiting for the replacement to be added.

Assuming ZTP is a capability, this makes a lot of sense in many edge deployments as shipping a replacement device is inexpensive and reduces operational troubleshooting toil and the need to deploy a human technician. Failed nodes can be shipped back, validated, and either, be re-entered into the fleet or disposed of.

Having a mature process for “wiping” a deployed node back to its original arrival state and re-creating it is another pragmatic way to avoid costly human troubleshooting. Manually supporting issues becomes problematic at the edge scale, and requires a cattle mindset, but it is only supportable with automation.

ConclusionEdge is a frontier, and at times a wild one. Remote locations, low-trust environments, unreliable networks, and data privacy laws are real challenges, but businesses and consumers demand these frontiers be conquered to create the high-quality experiences they desire. Zero Touch Provisioning and a “Disposable Units of Compute” philosophy are two approaches that can power the acceleration of successful, scalable and manageable edge deployments. Scale Computing’s Zero Touch Provisioning and Sc//HyperCore solution appear to be great building blocks that organizations can place at the foundation of this new chapter.

Be sure to check out Scale Computing’s presentations from the recent Edge Field Day event to know more.

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Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of organizations will have adopted Zero Trust as their opening security move. As companies calibrate and recalibrate their security strategies in a bid to thrive in a hostile digital environment, embracing principles like Zero Trust has become increasingly pivotal to managing cyber risk.

Experts say that a change in mindset in the way companies treat these risks is afoot across organizations. But they need to avoid falling into old and unhealthy habits, and instead let their thinking evolve. On that point, experts believe that a good start for organizations looking to embed Zero Trust and similar principles is to look at security not as an isolated thing, but a piece of the bigger pie.

No matter the model they have in mind, organizations cannot afford to implement security in all corners of the business without the use of supporting technologies. Among those, automation plays a star role.

Security through AutomationSecurity and automation in the age of edge computing are not two separate, but one discussion. It’s something CTOs have emphasized over and over. At the recent Edge Field Day event in San Francisco, this topic was at the forefront, as companies presented their automation-powered edge solutions to an audience with varied backgrounds in IT, aka the real users.

Backstage, we hosted a roundtable discussion with two of the attending delegates, Carl Fugate and Josh Warcop, and presenters, Raghu Vatte, VP of Product Management at ZEDEDA, and Ramtin Rampour, Technical Marketing Engineer at Opengear to dive into the subject of automation’s growing role in edge security.

Host and publisher of Gestalt IT, Stephen Foskett got the discussion going by asking Mr. Rampour what his take is on this, as an insider.

Mr Rampour replied, “I think (security and automation) definitely go hand in hand, especially with the scale at the edge, and how many nodes and units are deployed. You want something that you can securely deploy, but you can make something very very secure, but not as automated. So, you have to find the fine balance of quickly deployable solutions that are also done in a secure fashion.”

Mr. Rampour cited the example of warehouses where there is usually a fleet of devices, and the security of those devices is paramount. Replicating security flawlessly for each of the devices is where the real power of automation is.

Through a Different LensSecurity is often perceived as physical and logical, but even with an integrated approach, enterprises end up short if it is not enforced evenly at all levels.

Mr. Vatte said, “Security is about putting on the layers of hardware, operations, and applications, and people who handle it. Security is only as strong as the weakest link in the system, and when you are dealing with distributed assets, and people who are going to be interacting with the solution, you need to be able to enforce security.”

Automation is likely to shape how we think and implement security at various levels. The road to sound and sturdy security begins and ends in automation, not the manual methods of people doing it.

“It’s great to be able to define these layers, but if you are not able to enforce security, then things crumble. And the way to enforce security is making sure that you automate it right from the beginning, all the way to the end. That’s not just making sure that you install it and set it up properly, but also monitor it and make sure that if there is a problem, you know how to fix it,” Mr. Vatte added.

ZEDEDA’s Edge Management and Orchestration solution leverages automation to deliver total visibility, and remote management of hardware and applications across edge locations.

Old Ways and NewMr. Warcop raised the question whether automation is a way to finally get away from the legacy way of operating in security.

Automation, in effect, Mr. Vatte explained, is less about doing things differently, and more about doing things right. Its purpose in the context of security is consistent and streamlined execution of all intents.

But, by no means, is it designed to replace the people who manually enforced security up until automation entered the scene, but to empower them and execute the repeat tasks on their behalf where possible, thus offloading some of the burden, Mr. Vatte explained.

At the root, edge security is a derivative of datacenter security. Carl Fugate joined the dots by pointing out that security for decentralized resources is akin to what it was at the datacenters which is the birthplace of Zero Trust. Now as the assets have moved out of the protective confines of the datacenter and fanned out across numerous physical locations, the enforcement of it has changed.

Whereas enforcing physical security in datacenters is uncomplicated, assets in edge locations are typically much harder to safeguard. Automation provides a much simpler way to enforce that physical security.

A Back ChannelAt some point, the discussion pivoted toward network security, which is equally important to attaining holistic security. But when the primary network goes down, and operators lose connection with field equipment, the risks shoot up. For those times, an out-of-band network is organizations’ best bet.

“Having a resilient platform, a solution that gives you the visibility even when your primary path is cut is an important factor in making sure that your environment, even at the distributed edge, even in New Zealand or on top of a windmill, is secured properly,” said Mr. Rampour.

Opengear offers a Smart Out-of-Band Platform that provides secure access to physical devices for emergencies as well as every day. Separate from the in-band network, the solution provides a secure path of communication for deployment and lifecycle management of all devices installed in edge locations.

The Good and the BadSecurity too can be a two-edged sword if you don’t have complete control over it. A device that is fully locked down to prevent any tampering, is not a very intelligent solution if it does not offer itself up for manipulation to the users.

Mr. Vatte explained that security is complete only and only when it can be dynamically locked down and manipulated, depending on who’s trying to access and with what intent.

According to the panel, the edge requires systems to be secure by default, and to achieve that, security has to be top of the mind right from designing. Automation will make implementation of this at scale, but there should always be room for control so that the polices can be defined and redefined along the way.

The perfect security would be something that draws on the lessons of the past, includes the best practices the industry has come up with, and relies on models that provide a rock-solid starting point to a strong security posture. Thanks to automation, now there is a way to guarantee security for decentralized resources, even in the most disadvantageous locations. When that can be brought over to the edge, the edge will have the security it needs, and organizations will have a shot at living at the edge without worries.

Wrapping UpThe takeaway here as Mr. Warcop noted, is that companies can no longer afford to have security as an afterthought. With nonstop attack campaigns targeting businesses far and wide at the edge, the edge locations need extra fortification for which a solid foundation like Zero Trust can be vital. And thanks to automation, now there is a way to guarantee security for decentralized resources, even in the most disadvantageous locations. So, using automation to enforce that security across the board is simply good business sense.

Watch the Gestalt IT Roundtable Discussion with Opengear and ZEDEDA to learn more about this. Also check out the presentations by Opengear and ZEDEDA at the recent Edge Field Day event to know how they’re implementing automation in their solutions.

Today’s Roundtable Panel:PanelistsCarl Fugate

Josh Warcop

Twitter@CarlFugate

@Warcop

ZEDEDA PanelistRaghu Vatte, VP, Product Management and Customer Success at ZEDEDA. Connect with Raghu on LinkedIn, learn more about ZEDEDA on their website, and watch their presentations from Edge Field Day 1.

Opengear PanelistRamtin Rampour, Technical Marketing Engineer at Opengear. Connect with Ramtin on LinkedIn, learn more about Opengear on their website, and watch their presentations from Edge Field Day 1.

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@SFoskett

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IP address management in the era of IoT and BYOD is a total torment, especially for growing organizations. In this episode of On-Premise IT Podcast, recorded at Tech Field Day event in California, delegates Aaron Conaway, Jeffrey Powers and Michael Davis take the lid off the pain points of managing DNS and DHCP in large networks. Learn about the current methods of network administrators, and know why they are inefficient at best, and messy at worst. Hear the experts give their verdict on what could be the most elegant solution for administrators.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsAaron Conaway

Jeffrey Powers

Michael Davis

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Social MediaMastodon: @AConaway

Twitter: @Geekazine

Mastodon: @CarpeInferi

Twitter@SFoskett

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Infrastructure modernization has caused the biggest changes for small and mid-level organizations. They are faced with a prolific amount of data, and a tremendous load of administrative chores that their in-house teams are ill-equipped to handle.

At the recent Edge Field Day event in California, Scale Computing presented SC//HyperCore, a self-healing platform that provides IT teams a break from tedious, time-consuming processes. The HyperCore identifies and troubleshoots errors in real-time, reducing long manual processes down to minutes. Its goal is to optimize the workforce without overburdening them.

Scott Loughmiller, Chief Product Office and Co-Founder at Scale Computing gave a sneak-peek of the Autonomous Infrastructure Management Engine (AIME), the technology that is the brain and brawn of the SC//HyperCore platform.

AIME has been a part of Scale Computing’s portfolio a long time, powering its technologies from behind the scene.

A company that prides itself on delivering simplified solutions to customers, Scale Computing has remained number one on the CRN scoreboard for 34 years in a row. The company boasts a rating of 102.4 in the Product Quality and Reliability category which is the highest ever. Scale Computing credits their Autonomous Infrastructure Management Engine for this.

AIMEWhat is it? Mr. Loughmiller provides a plain-speak gist of AIME: “A sort of hand-built model of the environment the cluster is running in.”

The AIME is to the environment what a digital twin is to a network. It models the realities of the environment, and extrapolating from the data provides automatic monitoring and maintenance of the hardware and the software.

Mr. Loughmiller informed that AIME deeply integrates with the hardware no matter the configuration, pulling information such as hardware error, CPU temperature, and software glitches that tell the state of the cluster, and using them to build a model of the same.

Mr. Loughmiller highlighted the AIOps functionality built into AIME. “It incorporates all this cross-domain information – networking, hardware, environmental stuff. We’re pulling all of this information in, and building a model of the state of the system that allows us to predict and prevent issues, identify root cause and then automate remediation.”

Unlike most hardware-agnostic vendors, Scale Computing manages all the hardware, from upgrading to maintenance. The company owes its award-winning support service to AIME that provides the support teams all the information they need to offer swift resolutions.

Inside the Workings of an Autonomous EngineHere’s how it works. AIME relies on great-quality data only to produce intelligence. Mr. Loughmiller described the functions in three steps. It starts with collectors, or small packets of code that go out into the environment and collate information from various components in the system. This includes the temperature of the CPU, state of hard drives, disk space, system load, VM status and such metrics.

The data is then double-checked with something called Checked Values. The function of Checked Values is to check the data for validity, freshness, scope and such parameters. Based on the readings, it decides if the data is valid and reliable.

Mr. Loughmiller likened it to an instrument panel on an aircraft that besides pitching information, also provides warning flags indicating failures, when there is an error in the data. In this case, Checked Values tells users when the data is expired, unreliable or erroneous.

At the third stage – Conditions – real intelligence is delivered about undesirable conditions detected in the system. The data here is represented in Boolean value- Set for a problem, and Clear for no problem.

“The great thing about that is, now with the SC//Fleet Manager, that’ll bubble all the way up to the top. You see those conditions, and correct them,” said Mr. Loughmiller.

It also shows historic data, query-able via simple command lines. Checked Values are available cluster-wide and shared across multiple subsystems.

An Expert SystemWith these inputs, AIME builds a virtual model in the state machine. Data here is refreshed at near-real-time for high accuracy.

“Data is constantly coming in from the collectors, and anytime new data comes in, that bubbles up, and the state machine will make adjustments based on that,” said Mr. Loughmiller.

And that is how teams can go from the current state to the desired state. “The result is an expert system,” he says.

Scale Computing trusts only high-quality data to build the model, as it enhances the reliability of the intelligence.

Mr. Loughmiller informed, “What we’ve been able to do over the last decade is build a structure that actually models reality, and accurately chooses the right path to fix whatever problem is available. We’ve been tweaking and tuning and adding to the state machine for a decade.”

If you are interested to know more about the solutions Scale Computing introduced at the Edge Field Day event, check out the demo presentations at the Tech Field Day website.

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CXL is poised to revolutionize the datacenter. It is real and it is happening now! Micron is in the unique position to deliver CXL solutions in multiple categories to obtain the desired outcomes that CXL enables. The resources and wide memory and storage portfolio Micron has to offer reflects their industry experience and vision; together it creates a synergy for the CXL solutions being brought to market. If you will explore the problems CXL attempts to solve, the likelihood of the solution being a Micron-enabled option will seem logical.

What is CXL?Compute Express Link (CXL) is an industry-supported cache-coherent interconnect. CXL allows for the enablement of a disaggregated and composable datacenter. This modern interconnect will extend the server resources beyond the confines of a single form factor. CXL is based on PCI physical and electrical interface, but unlike past interconnects, it will address the composability and performance characteristics required for the category of compute resources being extended.

Cache-coherent, multi-point sharing and expansion are addressed with CXL. CXL is different from legacy expansion because at its core is cache-coherency for all the expanded resources. Limitations of a single form factor are no longer a concern, instead high-speed interconnections are enabling resources to be made available sans the limitations of form factor like power, heat, space.

The enablement of CXL will drive innovative compute design adoptions, not at the motherboard level, but it will open the motherboard to include rack design elements. An adjacent rack with all the available resources of more power and more heating and cooling options will be part of the new composable server footprint. Compute with CXL will be more than agile; it will enable pliability and you will not be hindered by a system CPU designed 10 years ago. CXL provides a clear and open standard that the entire industry is supporting to unlock innovation.

How can CXL Help? CXL will shift memory as it is now, in terms on how it is consumed. It will enable the next revolution in datacenter computing and Micron is poised to be a part of this. Micron is a US-based memory developer, manufacturer, and supplier with fabrication plants in the US.

Micron has announced expansion plans worth $15 Billion in Boise, ID and $100 Billion in Clay, NY. Micron is not sitting still. But what problem are they trying to solve? Compute is becoming denser as a two-socket system. It is not defined by the number of sockets but the number of cores available to each socket. That compute density inherently poses the problem of how much denser RAM must be and how much faster is needs to be. DDR5 attempts to address capacity and bandwidth, with more memory channels. The current trends show CPU development is outpacing DRAM, but the cost of stacking DRAM drives the TCO cost to be a very expensive option. Enter CXL.

CXL + Micron = What A Combo! The combination of CXL and Micron technologies are unlocking the much-needed expansion without the inherent penalty of performance loss. Current options of memory stacking make the linear cost-per-bit impossible. Current system memory (RAM) is 40 to 50% of the material cost of a server and the need for memory intensive workloads is not going away. Use cases like AI/ML demand more performance and that includes RAM.

CXL allows for memory to be a pooled resource on the PCI bus via CXL. A lower TCO versus costly TSV (Through Silicon Vias)— traditional wire bond that will ensure 40 to 100 Mega transfers per second. CXL while a little bit slower than DDR5 is still cache coherent. Cache coherence defines the behavior of reads and writes to a single address location and this is very important for the integrity of computation across multiple CPU and shared resources. Leveraging the PCI bus, CXL provides for resources to be available further away from the CPU and memory bus without performance penalty.

Other areas of computing alternatives can also be addressed head-on with CXL. For example, the system motherboard and channel bus limitations. The traditional Two DIMMS Per Channel (TDPC) ratio is channeled by incorporating more memory than was possible before. System complexity and balanced memory systems vs CPU is addressed. GPUs can be leveraged more effectively across multiple systems. These current challenges are addressed with the advent of CXL as a rapidly maturing option.

ConclusionMicron’s fabrication of memory (DRAM) and other CXL attached memory products will contribute to the next generation of computing. At the OCP Summit, Micron presented its position in the CXL revolution and value proposition to solve the challenges of modern datacenter computing.

At the OCP Summit Industry Interest in CXL was very strong. Hyperscalers and more.

The call to action is in front of us today: Be Prepared. CXL is alive, real and shipping. Future designs will leverage the benefits provided by CXL. The echoing message of TCO being lower will have to be vetted, as alternatives are constantly being challenged by supply change and physical limitations of current technology options. I look forward to innovative and future designs that incorporate CXL, and to seeing how existing technologies will incorporate CXL. Consider HCI and SSD supercharged with CXL. What will a single HCI compute be composed of? How will it easily be recomposed with CXL? What hasn’t been discussed, is how the hypervisor giant, VMware, will leverage the CXL advantage? The race of software development to catchup to hardware development and vice versa continues. Either way Micron will be there to drive the desired outcomes. Will you be ready?

If you want to learn more about what Micron is doing, Check out their Tech Field Day presentations. Micron Technology’s Ryan Baxter also guested on our Utilizing CXL Podcast, part of our Utilizing Tech series. Watch his episode to hear more on Micron’s CXL efforts. If you want to learn more about what Micron is doing, you can also check out their Tech Field Day presentations.

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Moving memory and other resources off the system bus to CXL is exciting, but how do we ensure that these systems will be reliable, available, and serviceable? This episode of Utilizing Tech features Mark Orthodoxou, VP of Strategic Marketing for Datacenter Products at Rambus discussing with Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers the technology and standards required for mass adoption of CXL-attached memory. Rambus brings decades of experience and a breadth of technology to the deployment of memory in high-performance and highly-available systems. As a CXL Consortium member, Rambus is bringing this experience to CXL, enabling the technology across the ecosystem. Memory expansion with CXL is being deployed today, and memory pooling over CXL fabrics is coming, but it is disaggregation and rack-scale architecture that will ultimately be the result of the adoption of CXL.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Mark Orthodoxou, VP of Strategic Marketing – Datacenter Products at Rambus. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn or see more on what Rambus is doing on their website.

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Introduction On October 20th, 2022, Micron took part in the Open Computing Project’s CXL Forum. The forum was a marquee part of the OCP’s Global Summit that entailed an entire day of research, describing plans for CXL, and showing off both current and future CXL technologies. Micron’s session, which was nothing short of excellent, discussed CXL’s market outlook in terms of just a few of the technology’s use cases.

CXL’s Capabilities, Past and PresentCompute Express Link (or “CXL”) is a developing standard for linking together devices via PCIe that previously only communicated inside of a server. The kinds of devices that can be linked depend on the version of CXL under discussion. For example, in 2019, CXL 1.1 introduced the ability to communicate directly from the CPU in one rack-mounted server to a memory expander located either in the server, or on another rack-mounted node entirely. CXL 2.0, introduced in 2020, added support for single-level CXL switch so that systems could connect to multiple CXL-compatible devices via a fabric instead of requiring 1:1 connectivity. For 2022, the CXL 3.0 release describes connections that can use PCIe 6.0, multi-level switching, and a double total bandwidth, among many other features.

CXL’s end goal is to completely redefine the data center to allow for greater flexibility in design. The standard is backed by every major manufacturer you can think of: from hardware and CPU manufacturers such as Intel, Micron, and NVIDIA, to software and platform providers such as IBM, Google, and Meta.

In 2021 it was announced that Micron had stopped developing 3D XPoint memory in favor of focusing on the CXL future. This looks to have been the right decision, as the presentation that Micron gave showed that the potential of CXL will greatly surpass what had been hoped for from the 3D XPoint project.

Micron’s presentation highlighted the fact that CPU designs have been placing an emphasis on higher core counts, and that chip and motherboard designs mean that standard memory deployments have not been able to keep up from a bandwidth perspective- especially for resource-intensive applications. What applications need is faster access to more memory, and CXL can provide that. This is accomplished because the PCIe bus handles the channels between the processor and memory. CXL is not limited by the number of DIMMs per channel limits of the motherboard – limits that will be more restrictive in the future, owing to new DDR designs.

Using CXL to Solve Memory Management Problems TodayCXL Memory Pooling is a feature that is designed specifically for this problem. If you have a host that needs more memory, you can assign that memory from another host in a dedicated fashion. This CXL bus connectivity will allow ultra-high memory allocations per host that far exceed the main system memory limits.

See the diagram below that shows how CXL 2.0 enables Memory Pooling:

It is true that the memory on CXL will be slower than DIMMs on motherboard, but not as much as you would think (Micron states that CXL-based servers show latency from CPU to CXL memory that is “equivalent to a single NUMA hop”). Micron also highlighted that the workload capacity and bandwidth can be ‘dialed in’ as system performance is observed and fine-tuned over time to take advantage of the different memory ‘tiers.’ There are a number of very memory-hungry applications out there, such as AI/ML, NLP, and in memory databases that will significantly benefit from this additional system memory capacity and bandwidth even if it isn’t 100%-line speed compared to on-board DIMMs.

ConclusionThere is a lot to like about CXL, and Micron showed the performance advantages with both the existing hardware and CXL’s future. Additionally, there is a TCO benefit to only upgrading the memory allocation via a CXL-compatible device compared to buying a whole new server. In the post-CXL 3.0 future, this kind of flexibility will extend from just memory to basically any system component you can think of – CPUs, GPUs, storage, and more.

While the standard has been around for a while (remember, CXL 1.0 was announced in 2019), it is only in the last year or so that we have seen real life examples of the technology in action. Micron’s presentation showed the practical benefits CXL will bring to datacenters. If you would like to keep up with what Micron is doing on this front, check out their server tech landing page.

Micron Technology’s Ryan Baxter also guested on our Utilizing CXL Podcast, part of our Utilizing Tech series. Watch his episode to hear more on Micron’s CXL efforts.

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Brainchip is back again with the latest generation of their Akida AI engine. This second-generation offering provides performance increases while simultaneously offering more energy efficiency. That includes a new low-power mode that can be run on edge computing devices for specific workloads. Akida v2 is focused on providing enhancements for time series data processing and vision processing. This and more on this week’s Rundown.

0:27 | Pure Storage Announces FlashBlade//E

Pure Storage is moving to add more bits to your data center with FlashBlade//E. The lastest entry in the flagship line is based around the FlashBlade//S architecture that was released last year but more focused on capacity. The E model starts at 4 pedabytes of storage and is designed to help with global sustainability initiatives that Pure Storage is championing. Tom, you had a chance to talk to Pure a couple of weeks ago. What do you think about this new model?

Read More: Pure Storage Announces FlashBlade//E

3:30 | HPE Acquires Axis Security For SASE and SSE

HPE is making more moves in the networking space. They announced the acquisition of Axis Security, a firm focused on SASE and SSE offerings. Axis offers software solutions to help increase productivity for users whether they be remote or on-prem in the enterprise. Aruba CSO Jon Green said in an interview that Aruba is very focused on augmenting their zero trust network architecture offerings as well as providing comperable solutions to industry leaders such as ZScaler. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but the acquisition is expected to close quickly. Chris, what’s your take on this big news?

Read More: Hewlett Packard Enterprise fortifies network security with acquisition of Security Service Edge provider Axis Security

7:28 | Akamai Acquires Ondat

Content Delivery titan Akamai is looking to augment their storage capabilites this week. They announced their intent to acquire Ondat. Ondat offers cloud-based storage that has a Kubernetes-based platform for stateful applications. Ondat provides persistent storage to a non-persistent world of microservices. The company is expected to be integrated into Akamai Connected Cloud, which is poised to compete in the cloud hosting market with other players focused on bespoke soltuions. Tom, why would Akamai want to roll their own storage?

Read More: Akamai Technologies To Acquire Cloud Storage Technology Company Ondat

11:21 | HPE Acquires Athonet to deliver private cellular

The HPE acquisition team has sure been busy these past few weeks. They announced the acquition of Athonet, an Italy based private cellular technology provider. No surprise as private cellular continues to grow, expecting to increase to 1.6 billion by 2026.

Read More: MWC 2023: HPE boosts enterprise wireless offer with Athonet acquisition

14:43 | Brainchip Readies Generation 2 Akida AI

Read More: Akida, 2nd Generation: From Perception to Cognition

18:46 | The Weeks Ahead

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

Storage Field Day 25 – March 22 through March 23, 2023

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It is clearer than ever now that businesses are moving computing from cloud to the edge. As companies have gone from having small footprint at the edge to tens of thousands of deployed edge applications, this has become the next logical step to ensure a snappy user experience. The value that edge computing brings for applications in the forms of low latency and persistent availability are key to driving up customer engagement.

In February, we hosted our first-ever Edge Field Day event in California where companies in the edge space, and delegates from around the world gathered to talk about edge computing, and explore ways to harness its infinite potential.

Post-event, we assembled some of our presenters and delegates for a Gestalt IT roundtable discussion about deploying applications at scale at the edge. Delegates, Ben Young and Alastair Cooke, was joined by presenters Simon Gamble, President and Co-Founder at Mako Networks and Carl Moberg, CTO and Co-Founder of Avassa Systems to talk about this.

Host Stephen Foskett kicked off the discussion by commenting on the current scale of edge applications. He urged the panel to shed light on how big things really are at the edge, and why what’s happening at the edge cannot be done in the cloud.

Network, the Lifeblood of a Distributed WorldMr. Gamble of Mako Networks, a company that provides a PCI-certified networking solution for distributed enterprises replied, “It’s tough because where the applications are going isn’t in the cloud. So, we’re trying to deploy to lots and lots of small locations. How many? We’re talking tens of thousands for some customers, hundreds for others, but a large number nonetheless.”

Mako Networks provides these enterprises the fundamental piece required to deploy applications at any site – the network.

“Keeping everything ubiquitous and setup appropriately, still leaving some flexibility for movement and control for all parties involved is important. But, without a good, solid network foundation, deploying applications to the edge is impossible. So, we create the foundation for applications to be deployed at scale across a large number of locations,” said Mr. Gamble.

The network is where it all begins. The growing reliance on external services has opened countless streams of communication between applications in distributed environments that is dependent on the availability and performance of the underlying network. But, we don’t often think about the network until it drops, and everything comes to a halt. Mr. Gamble gave an example.

“A petrol station needs access to all sorts of applications, as an example that people don’t think about. Everything, from payments, loyalty, mobile payments, point of sale system support, gift card, resolution and processing. Those are all applications. And you’ve devices at a store, at a gas station, that have to talk to those application providers somewhere else.”

With all these dependencies happening at scale, the edge is a network as complex and multi-layered as any.

What to Expect at the Physical EdgeMr. Moberg of Avassa noted, “It is said that more is different as a general rule, and I think that is super-applicable to the edge. It is not the same thing as deploying tens of thousands of an access point or a networking thing. There’s an emerging different pattern when you look at that kind of scale, and it really hits across the board. Like what is an actual healthy network, if you run across tens of thousands of locations? There’s always going to be tens of locations that are offline for planned or unplanned reasons.”

Mr. Cooke agrees that in “that large a population, there’s always going to be some failure, and it kind of relates to some of the DevOps thinking around having an error budget. We expect to have one and a half percent of our sites offline at a given time, because that’s just how the world works, no matter how good our macro equipment is. The links behind it, maybe are letting us down. So, there’s some parallels to what we see here and the DevOps world”.

Running Applications Closer to End UsersSo, when a subset of the locations is misbehaving, is it an anomaly that needs attention, or is it part of a planned downtime?

This segued the discussion to the second piece which is automation.

The Avassa Edge Platform pushes the cloud operating model to the edge. For businesses running a bunch of locations, those locations matter. Avassa enables enterprises to consistently deploy edge applications at scale with end-to-end automation. But that’s only a small part of what it does. Avassa also provides full lifecycle management of those applications starting from upgrading to monitoring.

But the availability of applications hinges not just on the network or the lifecycle management. A big part of it is the design itself. Edge-native applications need to have built-in resiliency to sustain a few short minutes of network outage.

As Mr. Young explained, when designing applications for the fault scenarios that will likely occur even with edge compute processing data locally and streaming the process results into the cloud in real-time, “building in the resiliency within the application so that when the network goes down 10-15 minutes or an hour, there’s enough persistent storage there to hold that process data,” is critical, so that “when the links come back up, it starts transmitting again” instead of it dropping dead when the Internet is lost.

Observability – An Instrument or Impediment?However, a good design can only do so much. Enterprises need monitoring solutions to stay on top of things to avoid unplanned service disruptions and meet Service Level Objectives (SLOs). But observability without direction in a distributed environment can lead engineers on a wild goose chase.

Deep observability into all components of the network is important, but that observability is inadequate to execute prompt debugging if a built-in querying mechanism is not there to extrapolate from the data and supply answers to specific questions correctly, and in real-time, and help teams triage the components that are misbehaving. It should not fall on engineers to sift through a thicket of alerts to get to the problem before actually resolving it. This is why a central control plane is a must-have.

Mr. Gamble rightly said, “That sort of control plane allows humans to deal with the exceptions rather than dealing with everything which allows you to scale.”

Avassa’s Control Tower serves as this ubiquitous mangement plane from where users can both manage their edge estates, as well as perform app lifecycle management tasks like deploy, monitor, upgrade and more.

The panel concurred that providers need to rethink the way application behavior is monitored, now that edge is here. The focus should primarily be to fix the problem without human intervention, as a natural progression from observability, and automation plays an outsize role in that.

In terms of observability, the focus should be around datapoints that can facilitate troubleshooting rather than just information about everything. The ability to configure alerts can help avoid a tiring alert storm as it would weed out the unimportant ones, and guide the eyes to the important ones.

Mr. Young added that topping actionable smart alerts with “the smarts to auto-resolve if it’s no longer a problem, or deprioritize it” is key.

To that end, Avassa gives users the ability to observe the health of all applications across sites, and flexibility to drill down to the problematic parts when required.

The Edge Is the Change We NeedIn a highly distributed world where thousands of applications are deployed in scattered locations, edge computing is the best way to keep them on the up and up. As Mr. Cooke said, doing all these in the cloud defeats the whole purpose of real-time applications. Being able to process data at the edge saves time, and produces blazing fast results, not to mention, makes things a lot less expensive. “That immediacy and locality is absolutely critical to what makes edge different.”

And in the words of Mr. Foskett, to shift to the edge, and to draw benefit from it, organizations do not necessarily have to turn to radically new technologies, “but use technologies in a different way.” With a solid network as the foundation, and automation leading the way, the edge provides the possibility for a whole new generation of applications and users to co-exist.

Be sure to listen to the whole conversation for more insights on edge computing and deploying applications at the edge, or check out the company presentations by Mako Networks and Avassa from the recent Edge Field Day event to know what they are doing around edge computing.

Today’s Roundtable Panel:PanelistsAlastair Cooke

Ben Young

Twitter@DemitasseNZ

@BenYoungNZ

Mako Networks PanelistSimon Gamble, President of Mako Networks. Connect with Simon on LinkedIn and watch videos from Mako Networks’ presentation at Edge Field Day 1.

Avassa PanelistCarl Moberg, CTO and Cofounder, Avassa. Connect with Carl on LinkedIn and watch the videos from Avassa’s presentation at Edge Field Day 1.

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@SFoskett

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We often don’t realize how nuanced cybersecurity terminologies are. Pick any word from the security word soup, and it has a meaning that is sacrosanct, and unique to it alone.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITNetworking professional and Field Day delegate, Tim Bertino backs this up. In a short illuminating article curiously titled “Security+ Journey – Lions, Tigers, and Bears”, Bertino chooses four most-used terms in cyber security – vulnerabilities, threats, risks and exploits that are often interchangeably used in the press, and explains their different meanings. He writes,

Yeah I know, I went for the catchy title to try to draw you into reading this. However, when looking at the topic of vulnerabilities, threats, and risks in my list, the title above is what came to mind. Thinking through it though, that title seems to work. Vulnerabilities, threats, and risks are all scary things we have to consider and account for. Now, depending on where you live, lions, tigers, and bears may not be as applicable in your daily life as vulnerabilities, threats, and risks, but I think you get the idea.

To know how some of the supposedly synonymous cybersecurity terms are different from each other in meaning, read Bertino’s article – “Security+ Journey – Lions, Tigers, and Bears”. To stay in the know, sign up to our weekly newsletter that delivers stories like this right to your inbox.

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Three years ago, this month, the first COVID cases in the country were diagnosed. Just weeks after, the lockdown started, and we all got a new social rule book to play by. While Zoom saved corporate businesses from dying an unnatural death, the retail industry that had until that point thrived on physical presence, suffered a huge blow. That effect cascaded into the economy in the forms of job losses and delinquency in debt repayment.

Now, once again, hopeful phrases like “post-COVID”, “in-person events” and “in-store shopping” have started to peek out from the crevices of our vocabulary, and the world is turning a page on what would be remembered as a dark and harrowing chapter in human history.

So how is retail looking coming out the other end? eCommerce heroically propped the weight of a lumbering retail industry through the pandemic years. But the dust is settling, and customers are slowly going back to in-person shopping. Retail has endured, and in 2023, it is entering a new phase of renewed flourish.

In February, at the recent Edge Field Day event in California, Mako Networks presented a solution curated for distributed enterprises. Simon Gamble, Co-Founder and President, showcased The Mako System, a technology that is doing its part delivering “secure networking to distributed enterprises operating at the edge”, while helping a scrambling retail industry back on its feet.

A Network for Distributed EnterprisesDistributed enterprises run hundreds, often thousands of small to medium size locations across regions. Their networks typically have an exploding number of edge devices hooked to them.

These networks support sundry applications – digital signage, self-service terminals, guest Wi-Fi, and various Internet-dependent processes like credit card and payment processing in real time. These make having a ubiquitous network that is reliable, resilient, and secure, imperative on the premises.

“If you’re sending credit card data, personally identifiable customer information (PII), information about stock levels, into the cloud, or if you’re a gas station and you’re sending underground fuel tank levels, it needs to be treated really carefully and securely. To get information from the edge into a cloud or another network, that data needs to be transferred in a secure and encrypted manner,” said Mr. Gamble.

For this reason, “any company that has credit card data flowing in their network needs to be in compliance with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI DSS).” Without it, a company is liable to pay compensation to its customers for any data theft, not to mention sustain huge damage of reputation.

“Another thing that a lot of people don’t think about is that these distributed enterprises are using technology everywhere in their business, and yet, typically they have no one on-site who knows anything about it,” noted Mr. Gamble.

So while a functional network that can be the carrier for confidential client information is the baseline, enterprises running edge locations also require a team of smart hands always on reserve for networking issues.

Serving the Retail SpaceMako Networks is known for manufacturing networking and security devices and products, specifically for distributed enterprises. With retail as its target industry, Mako Networks’ host of solutions leverage its biggest point of difference, a PCI DSS certification. According to Mako, it is the only PCI DSS certified company in this space.

“As far as I’m aware, we’re the only network vendor in the world that has a PCI DSS certification against the actual technology itself,” said Mr. Gamble.

Where Mako Networks is compliant right out of the box, other vendors go by “PCI compliant” which is nowhere near as rigorous, and only means that they are just complying with the PCI guidelines.

Mako Networks is currently headquartered in the US and has presence all over the world including the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Their client portfolio includes some very big names in the petrol space, such as British Petroleum, CITGO, Circle K and Sunoco, in addition to many food and dining companies and parking garages.

As a networking company, Mako Networks’ mission is to provide a strong foundation network for retail business to deploy the technologies they use every day.

Many retail locations fanned out across the world are outside the reach of traditional private networks that are deployed by phone carriers and are limited by geography. So, Make Networks relies on the Internet.

“A lot of the brands and enterprises that use our platform have locations all over the world. The network that is all over the world is the Internet. So ,our platform is designed to run over that,” said Mr. Gamble.

The Mako SystemThe Mako System is everything that distributed enterprises require, and often don’t have at hand. It is a PCI-certified, scalable solution that is carrier-independent, and don’t require customers to stay locked in with one type of carrier. Customers are free to choose any broadband or cellular service provider available in their individual locations. It also requires zero on-site IT management.

The Mako System consists of a hosted cloud-based Central Management System (CMS), and a selection of managed networking devices, managed switches and VPN concentrators. Built specifically to serve multi-site businesses operating a large number of these small sites, Mr. Gamble informed that the combination of hardware it uses is specifically targeted at this market, and is entirely cloud-managed.

Mr. Gamble gave a short description of how the Mako System is deployed. Internally called “service delivery mechanisms”, the devices enable the delivery of the service into the office location or site where it’s deployed. The device with an OS is set up with the store’s primary broadband.

“We can deliver managed broadband with our service, or we act in what is called a BYOB or bring your own broadband mechanism where we plug into whatever the customer has got,” said Mr. Gamble.

The devices also have a built-in cellular connection which is normally used as a failover connection for times when the broadband is down. Additionally, there’s Wi-Fi built into them to extend the reach of edge at points-of-sale (POSs).

This device is controlled by the central management system which provides real-time visibility into the devices and features to manipulate it. Typically, retailers plug in this device to one of Mako Networks’ managed switches for network segmentation.

Since a site needs to connect to all sorts of online applications like credit card payment hosts, loyalty processing hosts and mobile payment hosts, The Mako System enables secure connection to those hosts.

SecurityOne of the key differences that Mr. Gamble highlighted between Mako Networks’ devices and other vendors’ is physical security. The devices have no local management capability on them, and therefore cannot be logged into and reconfigured by malicious entities. The absence of a reset button further diminishes the risks of tampering.

Centrally managed, the devices can only be controlled and viewed from the central management system, by only IT personas inside the company who have access to it.

“Our platform is designed to be used by everybody, so that a company’s IT group can see their entire estate. Typically franchise groups have technical sophistication and they want to have visibility and control of their estates. But, the brand may not want them to control certain aspects of their sites. For example, the brand might want to dictate how the POS networks are set up, but leave other aspects of the customers network for the dealer group to be able to manage,” said Mr. Gamble.

The Mako System, with the CMS and all the hardware is offered as a service. So, instead of paying a steep upfront fee, customers can pay a lower monthly fee across the tenure of the service.

For more information, check out Mako Networks’ other presentations from the recent Edge Field Day event.

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There’s a lot of bad news coming out of the IT industry, especially large service providers and suppliers, but overall things aren’t as bad as it sounds. This episode of On-Premise IT features Andy Banta, Nico Stein, and Geoff Burke, who will be attending Tech Field Day this week, discussing the state of the industry with Stephen Foskett. Many tech companies, especially hyperscalers and online services, over-hired, and over-purchased, during the pandemic and have handled the resulting pull-back and layoffs particularly poorly. But supply chain constraints are normalizing and companies outside Silicon Valley are purchasing and hiring again, and this can help offset these losses. Leading-edge startups and new technologies continue to see investment and uptake, and these are the companies that will lead the industry out of this tech recession.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsAndy Banta

Geoff Burke

Nico Stein

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@AndyBanta

@CloudRestore

@NicoStein

Twitter@SFoskett

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It has always been a dream of technologists to be able to move computing out of datacenters and take it closer to the users. Edge computing has brought that dream to reality. But edge is a new technology, and like all new technologies, it has some imperfections.

ZEDEDA, a fast-growing software company in the edge space, took the lid off the barriers of edge computing during a presentation at the recent Edge Field Day event in California. ZEDEDA showed the audience how to effectively deal with them. VP of Product Management and Customer Success, Raghu Vatte showcased the ZEDEDA Edge Management and Orchestration Solution, a product designed to beat the biggest edge computing challenges, and unlock its true potential.

A Sea ChangeMany see edge as the answer to all the problems that cloud dug up. But the edge is also a sea change, and often enterprises fail to grasp it before late.

“Most of the time, it’s too late, because you have already invested, you have chosen your vendors, you have chosen your technology, and there’s so much inertia about going back to the drawing board and starting over again. That is the biggest problem right now in terms of what edge poses, and how edge is not same as cloud.”

For all its differences, edge can be a lot like cloud, if you do the right thing, said Mr. Vatte.

Challenges at the edge can be put into three buckets – visibility, security and control, all of which emerges from the same root – the distributed nature of edge. The edge is everywhere, in a posh part of a vibrant city or in the middle of nowhere. Problem occurs when something breaks down in a remote edge location where the chances of finding on-site technicians is next to nil.

Mr. Vatte explained the management pain points from the perspective of engineers who are at the frontline combatting these challenges. Their first responsibility is to keep the hardware, and applications in them available. This is obstructed by a number of factors, of which the diversity of hardware they have to deal with is one.

Because the edge is scattered everywhere, maintaining holistic security, both physical and logical, is also problematic than it is in the cloud.

“You have to look at the layer of security right from silicon, all the way to the apps. But security is not just about the applications, or the hardware out there – security is about everything that is the full workflow, right from the people you hire to the people who operate,” explained Mr. Vatte.

A Competitive EdgeZEDEDA sees opportunity in these challenges. Born in 2016, ZEDEDA identified the preconditions of leveraging edge computing earlier than its peers. In order to operate seamlessly at the edge, organizations require a solution that does not demand truck rolls, or additional app development. The expectation customers carry from cloud to the edge is cloud-like simplicity, and automation of operations at scale.

ZEDEDA knows that enforcing security, visibility and control at the edge completes the vision of edge, and that’s the real challenge that needs to be dealt with.

“There is no one solution that can take care of all this, and that was the thing I was sold on when I joined ZEDEDA,” remembered Mr. Vatte.

ZEDEDA’s mission from the very beginning was to solve these problems at the edge. Having seen these problems coming long before enterprises experienced them, they had begun the work years ahead so that a product is ready by the time the problems are felt.

Along the way, ZEDEDA challenged itself to build a solution that caters widely to the different personas working across industries.

Organizations operating in core industries have a robust workforce that is made up of people of diverse skillsets. Mr. Vatte pointed out, “It’s not enough to create a solution that works. It is equally important that the solution can be handled by workforces of diverse nature.”

ZEDEDA Edge Management and Orchestration SolutionThe ZEDEDA Edge Management and Orchestration technology is a cloud-based solution designed to deliver cloud-like agility at the edge. The solution provides full-stack observability and remote management of all edge hardware and applications.

ZEDEDA Edge Management and Orchestration comprises EVE-OS, a vendor-agnostic operating system from which users can launch, orchestrate and control the security of cloud-native and legacy applications on edge compute nodes.

Mr. Vatte explained that ZEDEDA engineered the platform to be first, intent-driven, and second, fit for multi-roles, so that when creating a deployment, all concerned teams can apply their intent no matter how different. Those translate to fleet-level, site-level and node-level properties that are then implemented to the field hardware.

“The way we architected it right from the beginning is that it has to be intent driven because there are multiple players in this equation. It’s not just about one person sitting there.”

There are no limits to the number of hardware or applications that can be managed via the platform. Users can onboard any number of hardware and manage them remotely. Zero Touch provisioning enables quick and hassle-free deployment of the compute nodes.

This is topped with a Zero Trust security model that counters the risks of perimeter-less environments. The platform offers anomaly detection in the software stack, preserves device integrity with hardware root of trust, protects data with at rest and in-flight data encryption, and minimizes breaches with Role-based Access Controls.

ZEDEDA provides full visibility of all hardware and applications through reports and real-time status updates, alerts and analytics.

For a technical deep-dive, be sure to check out ZEDEDA’s other presentations from their first-time appearance at this recent Edge Field Day event.

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CXL grew out of a long history of Intel platform technology and promises to revolutionize this platform. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Allyson Klein of TechArena, who shares her vision for the future of disaggregated servers with Craig Rodgers and Stephen Foskett. The foundation for CXL was laid with coherent interconnects and fabrics in previous decades, and the concept of tiered memory draws heavily on the history of Intel and Micron 3D XPoint and Optane Persistent Memory. As was the case for virtualization, CXL has an initial value proposition and a revolutionary future. CXL opens up virtually unlimited memory, pools of processors and offload engines, and unprecedented flexibility. Ultimately CXL will allow us to deliver compute resources that are truly balanced and matched to the needs of each workload. We also discussed UCIe, which promises to enable mix and match chiplets within future processors in a way that is compatible with CXL.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Allyson Klein, founder of the Tech Arena. You can connect with Allyson on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter and check out her work through the Tech Arena.

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Getting to Know the MG51 and MG51E Cellular GatewaysI was fortunate enough to be a delegate at the Tech Field Day Extra event at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 in February. These particular events take place right in the middle of Cisco Live so it’s a full-on week of tech and a real busman’s holiday as we’d say in the UK. I got to see some exciting innovation from Cisco and meet some of their most experienced and passionate engineers during the extra event. This was my second time as a delegate, the event was incredibly well run by Tom and the team and we had a great line up of speakers and delegates.

Out of everything I saw during the event what really resonated with me was the Meraki pitch on the unveiling of their new 5G MG51 & MG51E Cellular Gateways (the E version simply means you can connect external Antennas). Here’s where it sits with the rest of the MG family:

To watch the presentation I attended and listen to delegates asking Meraki questions directly just click here Watch on YouTube.

This video is part of the appearance, “Cisco Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA – Day 1“. It was recorded as part of Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 at 13:00-17:30 on February 7, 2023.To find out more about the sessions held during the event visit Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023

Disclosure. I was invited to attend the Field Day Extra by Gestalt IT, my travel costs were provided but I was not paid to attend or under any obligation to provide feedback on any sessions or technologies discussed. This post has not been reviewed by Gestalt IT or Cisco / Meraki.

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It is dawning on providers that out-of-band management has more uses than we give it credit for. Out-of-band (OOB) networks are lifesavers during network outages. They provide an alternative pathway of communication with the infrastructure, one that is physically separate from the production network, and unaffected by its performance, or lack thereof.

At our first-ever Edge Field Day event in California, Opengear outlined the growing importance of smart out-of-band solutions in the era of edge computing. Technical Marketing Engineer, Ramtin Rampour showcased Opengear’s Smart Out-of-Band solution that not only provides remote access through infrastructure faults and service disruptions, but also provides value through the network lifecycle, from deployment through remediation.

A Broader ScopeOut-of-band management has been a staple in enterprises for bringing up devices remotely when a network failure cuts them off, and ensuring business continuity. But as edge computing grows bigger and enterprises have IT infrastructures at the edge, out-of-band management finds a much larger role.

“Traditionally out-of-bands have been affiliated with remediation. It’s there to solve a problem when something happens. But as technology progresses and we see all these use cases at the edge, we realize that we can actually help with the deployment, and long-term managing of all of your equipment over time,” said Mr. Rampour

Out-of-band networks are resilient, always available, secure access to the infrastructure. That is great to have when specialized on-site technicians otherwise called smart-hands are not close by. But the use of such a solution goes far beyond just access and repair.

The Opengear Smart Out-of-Band PlatformOpengear’s Smart Out-of-Band solution is a combination of hardware and software. It comprises Lighthouse which is Opengear’s management software. It’s a centralized, secure access portal that provides access to physical devices using console servers in edge locations. Everyday tasks of deployment, management and access happen from this console. The Lighthouse control center is independent from the primary network.

The hardware comprises a selection of small, medium and large appliances of port density ranging from 4 to 8 ports designed specifically for edge and branch sites, to larger rack mount servers with 16 to 96 serial ports.

Deploy, Monitor, ResolveThe Opengear Smart Out-of-Band solution serves through all the stages of deployment, management and remediation of the edge environment. Mr. Rampour explained that it enables Day 1 when the network is brought up, by making device configuration a breeze with Zero Touch provisioning.

“We can Zero Touch provision our own devices as well as provide Zero Touch functionality for your downstream devices, whether they’re switches, routers or whatever you need.”

Configurations can be done even before the broadband’s been installed. With failover to cellular enabled in the Smart OOB devices, users don’t need to waste time getting things up and running when there’s no network.

“We’re essentially the network when there is no network. What we mean by that is, because we have the cellular functionality, if your broadband connection is not in yet, you’re able to actually utilize our cellular connectivity to bring up the rest of your network, whether it’s a manual effort of connecting in and configuring your devices, or whether it’s an automated effort to essentially have our centralized access portal push down configurations over cellular and bring the rest of your network up,” said Mr. Rampour.

Opengear Smart Out-of-Band also helps with management of edge environments. With an independent connectivity established with the devices, users can manage and monitor their infrastructure continuously which over time results in a much stable environment.

The last part, remediation is what OOB solutions are known for. Opengear Smart Out-of-Band expedites access to all physical and virtual devices during network disruptions and outages. A quick access and prompt repair minimizes the impacts of failure, and keeps the network up round the clock.

Wrapping UpThe Opengear Smart OOB solution shows that customers can do a lot more with OOB than just connecting with the infrastructure during emergencies. For those times, it provides the resiliency required to promptly restore field equipment remotely, and ensure continuity of services. But by leveraging it for day-to-day operations, users can potentially reduce operational overheads, while optimizing resiliency in edge infrastructures.

If you are interested to know more about Opengear’s Smart OOB technology, be sure to watch the above presentation till the end, or check out their other presentations from the recent Edge Field Day event.

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Tech Field Day is heading back to Silicon Valley on Wednesday and Thursday, March 8th and 9th! Tune in starting at 8:00 AM Pacific time for presentations from exciting Tech Field Day companies Kentik, MemVerge, and Men&Mice, as well as a special presentation on the CXL Consortium.

We’re kicking things off at 8 AM on Wednesday morning with Men&Mice. They are demonstrating Micetro, which makes it simple and easy to manage DNS, DHCP, and IPAM. As a modern overlay solution, Micetro provides full-picture visibility and control over workloads on-premises and in the public cloud, without requiring expensive resource-hungry appliances. Next is a delegate roundtable discussion, capturing their thoughts on the transformative potential of technologies like CXL. We’ll continue with MemVerge at 12:30 PM. They’re bringing new capabilities to manage and exploit system memory, especially now that CXL-based memory expansion is coming to market. Learn the latest about their Memory Machine, from the datacenter to the cloud.

Wednesday closes with a special presentation by Siamak Tavallaei, CXL advisor of the CXL Consortium Board, at 3:30. He will give an update on the state of this transformative technology, which we’ve been covering on our Utilizing Tech podcast series.

On Thursday we will hear from Kentik at 9 AM. Their presenters will give practical examples of using Kentik to solve common application problems. We’ll explore how practitioners serving distributed teams or customer workloads can tighten up policies, impact costs, and unblock their colleagues with cloud infrastructure observability that starts with the network. We’ll finish Tech Field Day on Thursday with another delegate roundtable discussion. Learn the takeaways from the delegates on the Tech Field Day presentations as well as insight into the future of the IT industry.

Check out the Tech Field Day website for more details on Tech Field Day 27 and information on our other upcoming events. You can watch the event live on LinkedIn or join the conversation on Twitter using the #TFD27. All of the videos from the event will be posted soon after the presentations on the Tech Field Day website and YouTube channel. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for the latest updates. See you next week!

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Unless you’re Dr. Emmett Brown or a Time Lord you know that time travel is just a fantasy for our favorite books and TV shows. We know that we can’t go back and change the past and we can’t see the future no matter how much we might like. However, the idea of being able to control the past, present, and future isn’t as far fetched as you might think.

One of the companies that is giving us a peek into the possibilities is Spyderbat. An earlier contender for Most Awesome Company Name, Spyderbat is focused on providing security for cloud-native software. Their platform has distinct components that allow you to see things as they were, as they are, and how they should be. I had a chance to sit down with Seth Goldhammer, VP of Marketing, to talk about what Spyderbat is doing and how it relates to the world of runtime security.

The PastThe first part of the platform is Flashback. Flashback is a recorder that captures information from the workloads and stores it for future reference. Using eBPF, Spyderbat is able to grab all the traces from the containers and store them for analysis. Perhaps you want to be able to figure out why your app was offline on a Tuesday at 9:17am. Flashback can give you the exact details of what was going on at that point in time.

Troubleshooting root cause isn’t something that happens in the heat of the moment. Triage is more concerned with getting things online right now and worrying about the other issues later. With Flashback you can capture the state of the runtime now and figure out how to fix the issue and then go back later and analyze what caused it. Was it a badd configuration that was pushed to production? Or could it be a nefarious actor looking to gain a foothold? With Flashback you’ll know for sure.

The community version of Spyderbat allows you to store up to 30 days of traces from up to five devices. The flagship offering has storage for up to 90 days of traces. If you need more the enterprise solution has an unlimited amount of storage.

The PresentCapturing data from your infrastructure is nice but how do you prevent the kinds of problems that take down your environment? It’s not always a malicious problem. Sometimes your newest developer doesn’t understand why things are done the way they’re done and tries to be helpful by removing a bunch of unimportant lines of code before pushing those changes to production on a Friday.

Keeping your software running right now means having guardrails to prevent unintended changes from taking things down. Spyderbat’s solution for today is Guardian. Guardian takes a look at what your current environment looks like and compares the changes that are being made to it for errors. Perhaps the code is correct from a syntax perspective but violates some other constraint, such as publishing API keys. Guardian can be configured to look for these violations and send an alert or require authorization before they can be pushed into production.

Guardian can also be set up to execute changes during configured windows. No more pushing changes in the workday to get this out the door. Now you can ensure that authorized updates only happen on a schedule to prevent the kind of chaos that a sleepy developer can cause after a weekend of too little rest. And if there is an updated process that needs to be changed it’s easy to go in and change the guardrails because the configuration files for Guardian’s polices are built using YAML.

The FutureWhile we might know how to troubleshoot our existing issues and keep our developers from doing things they aren’t supposed to do you can’t always know what’s coming. Maybe there’s a new exploit that has just been found that gives attackers a way to get into your system. It could be a set of stolen credentials that allows for privilege escalation on a system. No matter what could happen you need to be prepared to respond to it quickly so the dwell time is minimized.

Spyderbat has a solution for the future too. Interceptor is designed to look at runtime attack patterns and keep them from executing. Leveraging the MITRE attack framework, Interceptor can ensure that unauthorized access doesn’t become an event that gets you on the news. You can stop traces from executing as they happen to prevent lateral movement and ensure systems stay safe. This can happen in real-time instead of munging mountains of log files in the hopes of isolating something that might look out of place. No machine learning algorithm is going to help you if the attackers are already in the building. Interceptor gets them before they get through the door.

Bringing It All TogetherThe power of a solution like Spyderbat is that you have to handle all three parts of time travel. You have to know what happened, what’s going on, and what could happen before you know it. Thanks to solutions like Flashback, Guardian, and Interceptor you can get a handle on the whole process from beginning to end. If you want to give Spyderbat a try you can download their free community edition for no charge and try it out. There’s even a great learning tool included to help you understand how they catch problems and identify attacks as they’re happening. If you’re ready to be a container time lord or master the arts of run-time travel make sure you check out Spyderbat.

For more information on Spyderbat and their platform and to try out their community edition, make sure to check out Spyderbat’s website.

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SNIA is announcing a new way for memory to be utilized in devices. The Smart Data Accelerator Interface or SDXI, is designed to help optimize memory-to-memory data movers. If this sounds like next-gen Direct Memory Access to you then you’d be right! The goal is to help SNIA members build more integrations with CXL as well as building on the disaggregated computing research that has been going on. This and more on the Rundown.

0:40 | IBM Storage to Drop Spectrum Branding

IBM is rebranding their storage offerings to be more direct. Instead of the previous Spectrum prefix the line will now be known as IBM Storage. Big Blue had been using Spectrum since 2015. The lineup has started to include more of Red Hat’s storage offerings since last year and some of those offerings, such as Ceph, were never branded with the Spectrum moniker. IBM says this is part of a realignment to address their client needs. Stephen, is this just a fresh coat of paint? Or does the integration of Red Hat signal a sea change in IBM Storage?

Read More: Spectrum no more: IBM drops brand name for storage products

3:36 | HPE Acquires Athonet for Private 5G

HPE announced last week that they’re jumping into the private 5G market with a splash. They acquired Athonet, a company that has been providing hardware for core mobile networks as well as private options for enterprises. Athonet has been in business for over 15 years and has 450 customers. The private 5G market is projected to be a billion dollar industry in just a few short years. HPE had previously been partnered with private cellular pioneer Celona and HPE announced that customers that had purchased Celona hardware through HPE Aruba would continue to be supported. Tom, why did HPE go with Athonet?

Read More: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Doubles Down on Private 5G, Extends Leadership in Wireless Connectivity with Acquisition of Athonet

7:38 | Scale Computing Introduces Zero Touch Provisioning at Edge Field Day

The very first Edge Field Day was last week and Scale Computing had a big announcement to go with it. They debuted their new Zero Touch Provisioning capability for Scale Fleet Manager. This enables IT departments to set up edge compute devices with a minimum of effort on the part of the installer. The devices can be pre-configured to phone home when cabled to the infrastructure, where Fleet Manager allows operations teams to provision the devices and get them running without being on-site. This is a massive improvement in the way that edge nodes have typically been deployed. Stephen, you got a close look at this technology. What do you think?

Read More: SC//Fleet Manager with Zero-Touch Provisioning

Watch: Scale Computing at Edge Field Day 1

10:38 | Hackers Breached T-Mobile 100 Times in 2022

Brian Krebs broke a big story yesterday when he disclosed that SIM-swapping hacker groups had successfully penetrated T-Mobile’s internal network over 100 times in 2022. The data from three Telegram channels frequented by criminals was analyzed to determine when T-Mobile employees had successfully been phished and had their internal tool access compromised to enable this form of activity. The data suggests that attackers were very active in the summer of 2022 with access beginning to trail off by the end of the year. Tom, this is a pretty big deal for T-Mobile, isn’t it?

Read More: Hackers Claim They Breached T-Mobile More Than 100 Times in 2022

15:02 | SNIA Gets Smart with New Smart Accelerator Interface

Read More: SNIA’s New Smart Data Accelerator Interface Specification

18:32 | US Levels the CHIPS Act Funding Field

We’ve covered a lot of the news that’s come out of the US Chips act and the first monies are finally starting to be handed out to firms. Of course, that’s not to say the first round of things hasn’t had its own special drama. The government has stated that the Chips Act isn’t a handout for struggling firms and is instead focused on national security. To that end, chipmakers that agree to recieve the money must also agree not to expand capacity in China for at least the next decade. The wording of the statement doesn’t specifcally cal out China but the read of it by the industry is pretty clear. Intel also caused a bit of a kerfuffle by stating that the US should prioritize US-based companies for Chips funding such as themselves over Taiwanese companies like TSMC. The White House clapped back by saying the funds would be allocated to companies as they saw fit. Stephen, now that we’re seeing this come to fruition are we going to see more arguments over the semantics?

Read More: US Takes Security-First Focus in Doling Out $39 Billion Chip Aid

Read More: Biden’s Semiconductor Plan Flexes the Power of the Federal Government

Read More: Chipmakers receiving US federal funds can’t expand in China for 10 years

31:20 | The Weeks Ahead

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

Storage Field Day 25 – March 22 through March 23, 2023

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In the past two years, news of cyber-attacks on Monday mornings have been routine for enterprises. Hackers have increasingly gained access into protected digital environments during lightly staffed hours, compromised assets and made away with huge payouts. Nearly all big businesses by now have reported one, if not multiple incidents of ransomware attack on their networks.

However, the lesser-known story is that this wave of cybercrime does not stop with the known names. Reports have shown that an alarming number of small businesses have also been hit by ransomware attacks in recent times. These are companies that were believed to be unlikely targets of cyber-attacks.

As the rest of the cybersecurity industry is absorbed in devising ways to immunize the biggest networks from novel threats, one company is helping small businesses recover their paralyzed systems from vicious ransomware attacks. Founded in 2011, Infrascale is a data protection company built to serve small and medium businesses. The Infrascale Cloud Backup (ICB) solution provides high levels of ransomware protection and enables data recovery, all at a very affordable cost.

A Spot of VulnerabilityThe surge in ransomware attacks on small and medium-sized businesses reveals the troubling truth about poor cyber hygiene of these organizations. Experts say that a majority of small business owners are not concerned about ransomware attacks. These are low hanging fruits for cybercriminals. They rely on very basic backup solutions to store their data, and security tools that offer little to no advanced protection.

That has left doors open for hackers who are now aggressively targeting backups to seize control. They sneak in through endpoints and head straight for the backups where 80% of the data is.

Backups where data is stored in an immutable state are the hardest to crack. Unfortunately, most low-end backup systems are devoid of this capability, and have wide attack surfaces that are very easy to breach with today’s sophisticated attack techniques, allowing hackers to alter and remove files, or infect them at will.

Fighting the Good FightInfrascale’s goal is to bring to this minority, cyber awareness and vigilance. Their mission statement is to eliminate downtime and data loss.

“Everything that Infrascale does starts with our customers and their data,” said Infrascale during a Cloud Field Day appearance back in 2021.

As small businesses face big threats, Infrascale strives to provide timely threat intelligence, and the confidence to operate unafraid in the present-day digital landscape. Their Cloud Backup solution curated specifically for businesses this size, includes a breadth of capabilities geared at making backup push-button simple, and ransomware-safe.

Built with ease-of-use top of mind, their solution not only makes performing backups easy for organizations that do not have a lot of technical expertise at their disposal, but also offers effortless and quick backup restores.

Infrascale Cloud BackupICB is a cloud-based solution that is sold as a storage-based subscription. It offers unlimited versioning, and can be used to backup and restore any number of endpoint devices ranging from desktops and laptops to mobile devices.

ICB brings to small businesses the gold standard immutability that renders data unchangeable. Infrascale encrypts data and stores it in the cloud in a protected state making it impossible for bad actors to delete, change or infect it. In case of a ransomware attack, organizations can quickly replace the compromised data with the untouched version in the cloud, thus averting paying a ransom.

ICB comes integrated with anomaly detection capabilities. Users can configure anomaly warnings and get proactively alerted about large and suspicious file modifications. This allows them to isolate an infection early in the chain, before it takes over the entire system and locks them out, and recover the compromised data.

Additionally, ICB offers features like multi-factor authentication (MFA) for access, single sign-on authentication for secure sign-ins, and remote wipe for erasure of data remotely on a device.

The Infrascale Dashboard offers a single-pane-of-glass management of the backup. All data protection needs can be defined and managed granularly from this console. Additionally, users can avail Infrascale’s award-winning customer support for any issues encountered while using the solution.

Wrapping UpIn the wildfire of ransomware infections that has gripped small business entities, companies need a silver bullet like the Infrascale Cloud Backup solution that can patch backup vulnerabilities, and keep data safe without requiring high-end technologies. ICB adds multiple layers of defense to the security posture, and guarantees fast and easy recovery of files so that businesses are not forced to pay ransom to cybercriminals.

For more information on ICB, check out Infrascale’s website. Also check out their presentations from this past Cloud Field Day event for a deep-dive of the Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery (IBDR) solution. For more stories like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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There’s no debate whether an organization, in today’s digital economy, should migrate to cloud. Cloud offers the most enhanced opportunities for innovation in decades. Things like high availability, scalability, accelerated deployment and low housekeeping make some of the biggest reasons to shift to cloud. But enterprises face some shared challenges when it comes to moving data to cloud. It’s an inherently inefficient process, that when organizations jump into without thinking, or planning, leads to wasted time and effort, not to mention a struggle that lasts the entire journey.

Frequent Field Day presenter, Komprise offers a way to overcome the barriers of data migration to cloud. A company whose domain expertise is management and mobility of unstructured data, Komprise recently released a solution – Komprise Hypertransfer for Elastic Data Migration – that fast-tracks data migration to cloud, making the process a lot less messy, and way more efficient. Komprise tops this off with enhanced migration security.

Running into ObstaclesData migration, especially when it comes to cold data, is a slow and rigorous process. It begins with pulling petabytes of data from scattered addresses.

When moving to a destination in the cloud, the data has to go through several routing protocols and countless handshakes, all of which levy a heavy toll on the transfer speed. Additionally, each of the billions of small files that constitute the datasets add overheads that further impact the roundtrip times.

The other half of the problem is the network itself. More WAN traffic equals high latency. This on top of a limited bandwidth makes bottlenecks inevitable. That explains why transferring large volumes of data over the network is time-intensive, and typically disruptive.

Smart Migration with KompriseKomprise enables smart data migration with a structured approach that begins with analytics. To get enterprises started, Komprise provides deep analytics of the data and the environment. Information such as type, size and age of data, cost and usage, and possible bottlenecks help enterprises prepare ahead of the migration, and choose the best migration path. This approach has huge cost advantages.

From the time data goes in, to the time it comes out the other side, users can centrally locate, monitor and manage all migrations. Komprise provides status updates for hundreds of datasets on the go through reports displayed on the dashboard.

Komprise Elastic Data Migration with HypertransferWith Komprise’s Elastic Data Migration, users can get shorter migration times for all file and object data. Komprise claims that Hypertransfer delivers a 25 times faster SMB data transfer compared to other alternatives. This is based on results achieved from testing Komprise Hypertransfer for transferring small files to the cloud.

Komprise leverages parallelism to fully utilize available resources at multiple levels such as, threads, directories, shares, etc. Each migration task in Komprise Elastic Data Migration, is split into smaller subtasks, and executed individually in Komprise Observers which are virtual appliances present in the Komprise Intelligent Data Management platform. This parallelism is applied automatically for all transfers.

Komprise Elastic Data Migration delivers consistent performance over high-latency networks by minimizing network usage.

The cherry on top is, Komprise’s accelerated data migration comes with enhanced security. Hypertransfer for Elastic Data Migration transmits data through private virtual channels that run across the WAN network, from source to destination. This method dramatically improves ransomware protection, and speeds of transfer. Data integrity is preserved through access control and routine file-level integrity checks.

Komprise Elastic Data Migration is sold as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. It is available as a point product, as well as a feature in the bigger Komprise Intelligent Data Management platform.

Wrapping UpWhen you think about it, the part where you put data in and wait for it to come out in the cloud, is really the last mile. What comes before and that which determines the outcome is planning and preparation, and enterprises need to have a good, workable plan right from the onset. Komprise provides datapoints for a strategic plan, and performs the execution. By providing comprehensive analytics prior to the process, it lays the groundwork for a successful and cost-effective migration. With the new Hypertransfer for Elastic Data Migration speeding up the process, and layering it with an extra blanket of security, moving high volumes of unstructured data, especially for data-heavy industries like genomics, life sciences, media and entertainment, can now be quick and painless.

For more information, visit Komprise’s website. Also check out Komprise’s presentations on smart data migration from this last year’s Cloud Field Day event. For more stories like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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In the race to make our users safer, have we reduced our visibility? Encrypting traffic with TLS everywhere means that our users can use online banking and protect their privacy without worry of theft or eavesdropping. However those same protections also obfuscate malicious traffic and keep our security personnel from finding attackers. Should we implement newer methods of analyzing encrypted traffic? Is it reliable? Or are we just guessing? In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth, Jasper Bongertz, and Dominik Pickhardt discussed whether or not encrypted traffic monitoring is really worth it.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsJasper Bongert

Dominik Pickhardt

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@PacketJay

@NetworkAutobahn

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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One of the key trends to have dominated the industries through the turbulent years of the pandemic, and still continue to do so, is distributed working. Remote work, by eradicating the constraints of physical distance, has unlocked a kind of flexibility never experienced before. But more and most, it has reshaped the contours of network, changing networking forever.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITIn his article titled “NEW DRIVERS FOR WFH”, former college professor, and Field Day delegate, Peter Welcher discusses the current impacts of distributed working, and predicts its possible future effects on networking. He writes,

COVID started some shifts, U.S. or other politics may also start to be a factor, and climate change may also play a role. What will those shifts mean for networking?

To find the answer, read “NEW DRIVERS FOR WFH”, currently published on NetCraftsmen.com. For more tidbits like this, sign up to our free weekly newsletter.

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Memory expansion is the first application for CXL, and memory pooling is coming next, but this technology will eventually support storage, Ethernet, and more. This episode of Utilizing CXL brings Ronen Hyatt, CEO of UnifabriX, to discuss memory and more over CXL with Nathan Bennett and Stephen Foskett. UnifabriX demonstrated high-performance compute benchmarks using their Smart Memory Node at Super Computing 22 and claims to be the first to show a CXL 3.0 fabric. But the company is also promising NVMe storage and Ethernet connectivity over the CXL fabric. This enables each server to have the right type and capacity of connectivity, from basic Ethernet to DPU, with dynamic reconfiguration. The fabric can also contain an NVMe storage target that combines DRAM and flash and can be dynamically allocated.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Nathan Bennett, Focusing on Cloud, Automation, AI/ML, and Emerging Technologies. Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @vNathanBennett.
Ronen Hyatt, Founder and CEO of UnifabriX. Connect with Ronen on LinkedIn or find out more about Unifabrix on their website.

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Organizations, since the pandemic, have been in over their head setting up workforces to operate remotely. Now two years later, as remote work is reaching an equilibrium with in-office setup, and is a de-facto model in most companies, an avalanche of tech issues associated with productivity tools has started to slow down employee productivity.

Field Day presenter, Apica Systems’ announcement of the Apica Microsoft 365 Monitoring Suite came just in time to address this situation.

The Inevitable Headaches of Working RemoteThough enterprises have wasted no time in stepping up to mitigate the emerging tech situations with remote workers, the writing was on the wall all along. Work-from-home veterans have been there, done it. For years, they have struggled with issues like application performance problems, app outages and connectivity disruptions.

The corporate infrastructure was never designed to support a distributed workforce, and with the cornucopia of complex technologies taking over the workdays of professionals, it’s just a disaster waiting to happen.

Without an IT department to rescue, employees are on their own. This has not only created uncomfortable work situations on a daily basis, for many, it has caused their productivity to decline through no fault of their own.

A Technical PerspectiveApplication performance monitoring (APM) provides an elegant solution to this. APM tools have been on the up and up the past few years as software have become part of our daily lives. These tools have provided companies a reliable way to understand the experience of interaction between users and technologies. They provide a technical perspective to an application’s performance and an opportunity to abate problems proactively. Thanks to them, remote employees are able to get out of frustrating work setups and enjoy consistent low-friction experiences.

For those who are unfamiliar, APM tools are software solutions designed to monitor and manage application performance and availability round the clock. They keep users informed about errors, speed dips, uptime, and such phenomena through a set of metrics. The goal of a good APM tool is to resolve customer-experience challenges by maintaining strong observability through a deep set of metrics, and keep problems predictable.

Apica Microsoft 365 Monitoring Suite at a GlanceApica Systems is a name that often comes up in the context of APM. Widely known in the IT community for their signature Apica Platform which now goes by the name Apica Ascent, Apica Systems is dedicated to reducing friction for users. The platform diagnoses application performance problems, correlates them for easy root cause finding, and augments the knowledge of teams with deep observability for reduced Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).

In a recent update, the company introduced several new capabilities to the platform, including Scripted Checks and Grafana integration making it even easier for consumers to monitor critical applications in the new Web 3.0 phase.

This week, Apica Systems announced the launch of the new Apica Microsoft 365 Monitoring Suite. The new solution is capable of monitoring the availability and quality of tools and services in the Microsoft 365 Suite. Built into the Apica Ascent platform, the solution runs SLA and API checks, and provides intelligence and insights in the form of performance reports. The applications it monitors include Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange.

The Apica Microsoft 365 Monitoring Suite can be deployed in branch offices, where it can identify emerging issues and analyze them for root causes. All performance anomalies are proactively detected, flagged and displayed on the dashboard.

Developed in-house, the solution aims to replace point solutions which companies often have to rely on to get visibility of all the components in the stack. With the Apica Microsoft 365 Monitoring Suite, users can be in the know about all critical issues in any of the tools in the suite. This ensures easy troubleshooting and promises optimal performance for the users.

The Apica Microsoft 365 Monitoring Suite is currently available for use. It comes in three packages – Basic, Standard and Enterprise. The first two cover one location only, whereas the Enterprise version can be deployed in two or more locations and can cover up to 6 services in the Microsoft 365 Suite.

To request pricing, head over to Apica’s website. Also, check out Apica’s presentations on their active monitoring platform from their appearance at this past Tech Field Day event. For more interesting updates like this one, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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Today’s enterprises have a complexity problem. On one hand, technologies have become increasingly complex. And on the other hand, companies are struggling to hire skilled professionals in what is the tightest labor market in decades. This gap has turned networks into minefields of failures. Notwithstanding, organizations are expected to deliver consistent, low-friction experiences to users.

We recently had the opportunity of meeting with a company that works at this intersection of shifting patterns and sprawling complexity in IT. Their mission – to tame runaway complexity in network management, and enable enterprises to be at the cutting edge of technology without the toil.

Former network engineer and Tech Field Day Events Lead, Tom Hollingsworth, met with Josh Stephens, CTO, at BackBox to talk about the toll that quotidian network administrative tasks take on engineers’ productivity, and learn how Backbox promises better outcomes with user-friendly, reliable automation.

Automation of AutomationNetwork automation was introduced as the way to navigate through the frightening wilderness of complexities, but leveraging automation is a whole other test, the first rules of which are hours of coding, and making do with dumb out-of-box functions.

“If you look at the network automation market, you’d find that there are some easy to use but feature-poor products at the network config management level of the market, and some really comprehensive but hard-to-use products at the high end,” Mr. Stephens pointed out.

Leveraging either type means appointing members of the team who are skilled in writing scripts to implement and extend the product. For high-end solutions, there needs to be a dedicated automation team that can manage the platform and implement automation at scale.

But with intelligent, ready-to-use automation, there is a way to go around hiring extra skills, and take the pressure off of existing engineers to upskill and absorb new responsibilities that may or may not be in their expertise.

“What we have to do is educate buyers on the fact that, we’re not taking their jobs away. We’re actually empowering them to do much more work,” added Mr. Stephens.

BackBox Sits in the MiddleBackBox labels itself as a network security infrastructure automation company. Born in Israel in 2009, BackBox was an MSP before moving to Dallas, Texas, where it is headquartered since 2021. During the interview, Stephens who has a strong background in network automation and management, laid out what BackBox does in layman’s term – “We automate tasks necessary to maintain, manage and secure modern IT networks.”

Their product, the BackBox Network Automation Platform, he explained is designed to automate configuration changes, and management tasks associated with infrastructure devices.

As of today, BackBox serves over 500 enterprise customers, a third of which are large Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs) looking to automate managed networks at scale. That translates to managing over 100,000 networks a day.

Mr. Stephens highlighted that out of the box, BackBox supports 180 vendors and thousand device types. It is how they automate multi-vendor networks end to end.

On being asked if such broad support for devices comes through API integration, Mr. Stephens replied that APIs are the preferred way, but BackBox can handpick the most intelligent protocols for access which also include SNMP, SSH, Telnet and more.

“The product does have the ability to fall back and try other methods, but in general when we add support for a device, part of that support is not only the protocol or access method, but within that access method, the details of how you get different information that you might need,” explained Mr. Stephens.

The BackBox Network Automation PlatformSr Product Manager, Perry Greenwood, who also joined the conversation showed a quick demo of the product explaining its key capabilities.

Backbox packs some powerful automation features which allow it to serve use cases from multi-vendor network management to task automation, network backup and recovery, and last but not the least, security and compliance.

In everyday things, BackBox automates patches and upgrades reducing the routine workload and time spent on them. Teams can run network health checks with BackBox IntelliChecks that monitor system health and provide deeper app-level intelligence.

One of their most distinguishing features which is a part of the platform’s latest version is one-click disaster recovery. BackBox lets users schedule automated backups of every device in the network. It builds a central backup of all config files that can be pulled for quick recovery any time, without scripts or coding.

Stephens explained that recovery on BackBox is failsafe because of the 5-step verification method it uses to verify the files.

“Part of what makes the product ultra-reliable is, not only does it have the ability to do very comprehensive backups, but there is a set of check procedures done on every backup, to make sure that the files are valid and could be used to restore. There are recursive workflows that you could use to retry a backup if it failed later, and learn why it failed. Our backups are intended to be restored with one click.”

Once verified, configurations can be restored with a click of a mouse.

The platform has a set of pre-built tasks with which it can change configuration settings, make upgrades, implement fixes simultaneously to multiple devices with just one click.

Backbox comes with a centralized dashboard where users can view live status information and time-lapse of device health, push changes into devices, check compliance history and much more.

BackBox can be deployed on-premises, and in the public cloud in a customer-managed model. There’s also a new hybrid SaaS model which is managed by Backbox.

In ConclusionAs a network infrastructure automation platform, BackBox ticks a lot of the boxes that enterprises look for in an automation solution. Aside from the host of capabilities it has, things that stood out to me, and have the most appeal to the customers are ease-of-use and simplicity. Requiring no coding skills whatsoever, BackBox is a user-friendly solution built for teams to be able perform routine tasks in much shorter time, and implement end-to-end automation, reliably and at scale.

For more information, head over to BackBox’s website. For more articles like this one, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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The US Supreme Court took up a case this week that could have some far-reaching impacts on the future of content on the Internet. The case, Gonzalez vs. Google, covers whether or not Google is liable for content that was uploaded to YouTube that later led to deaths in a terrorist attack. The case has garnered a significant amount of media attention as it applies to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This rule is the one that allows you to post a comment on a video or blog post and not have the hosting company be held liable for the content. Section 230 has been the target of groups that say that Internet sites are both somehow silencing commenters and that they should be held responsible for the content of their non-paid contributors. Max, what do you think the impacts of this case could be on global Internet usage and content creation? This and more on the Rundown. Thanks Max Mortillaro for filling in.

0:36 | SpectraLogic Adding On-Prem Archiving

SpectraLogic has added a new on-premises archive solution for their line of backup products. StorCycle is the name for their file and object storage solution that is designed to scan cloud storage for older data and move it to either cloud archives on on-site backup solutions like near-line or tape. This is really a combination of the hardware and software that SpectraLogic is famous for providing for customers to manage the amount of data they must keep secured and safe in the event of a disaster. According to CEO Nathan Thompson StorCycle will continue to have new features added in the coming months to help offer more on-prem archival options. Max, are customers really looking to keep their backup data somewhere other than the cloud?

Read More: SpectraLogic targets on-prem archive market

4:41 | Avaya Asks to Avoid Adding to Arrears Again

Avaya is once again filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The announcment came as Avaya has secured around $780 million in financing to take the company private as the pile of debt is expected to shrink from $3.4 billion down to something more manageable. The communications company has focused primarily on unified communications solutions since their previous restructuring, which saw their assets being picked up by a number of networking companies in the industry. The move means that Avaya will soon be delisted on the stock exchange which means shareholders are going to take a bath, including major partner RingCentral, which will lose their entire investment but continue the partnership. Tom, are you shocked by this news?

Read More: Avaya files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

9:02 | GoDaddy Source Code Nabbed In Multiyear Invasion

GoDaddy is facing some hard questions this week after it revealed that attackers not only breached their servers but have been there for years. GoDaddy found the intrusion back in December after a redirection attack and later disclosed to the SEC that they believe the attackers had been in the system for the past three years, going back to March 2020. The previous intrusions leaked customer passwords, email addresses, and most credentials. This could explain how attackers were able to access GoDaddy customer cPanel installations. GoDaddy says they’re working with investigators to find out who was involved. Max, does this increase the heat on GoDaddy?

Read More: GoDaddy: Hackers stole source code, installed malware in multi-year breach

12:52 | Airbus Eyeing Evidian?

Airbus is reportedly interested in purchasing a 30% stake in Evidian, the half of Atos that contains their big data and security assets. Atos has stated they will split the company in half after a failed acquistion in 2022 led to the CEO resigning. Evidian has seen lots of interest from investors and partners but Airbus reportedly wants to solve any lingering data soverignty issues by purchasing a stake in the company. Atos isn’t quite ready to let Airbus buy the whole thing however, with 30% representing the most that they’re willing to part with at this time. Atos would prefer to offer stock publicly later this year should plans work out with Airbus and other investors. Tom, what’s Airbus looking to accomplish here?

Read More: Airbus in talks to buy 30% chunk of Atos’s breakaway cybersecurity biz

16:46 | US Supreme Court Takes on Section 230

The US Supreme Court took up a case this week that could have some far-reaching impacts on the future of content on the Internet. The case, Gonzalez vs. Google, covers whether or not Google is liable for content that was uploaded to YouTube that later led to deaths in a terrorist attack. The case has garnered a significant amount of media attention as it applies to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This rule is the one that allows you to post a comment on a video or blog post and not have the hosting compnay be held liable for the content. Section 230 has been the target of groups that say that Internet sites are both somehow siliencing commentors and that they should be held responsible for the content of their non-paid contributors. Max, what do you think the impacts of this case could be on global Internet usage and content creation?

Read More: Supreme Court justices in Google case express hesitation about upending Section 230

32:19 | The Weeks Ahead

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

Storage Field Day 25 – March 22 through March 23, 2023

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What makes buildings smart? Is it automation-enabled indoors? Is it robust connectivity for an infinite number of IoT devices? Or is it low energy demands, and higher cost-savings? For many, smart buildings tick a lot of boxes, because they are literally driving the revolution of smart technology. But besides being vibrant fields of technological innovation, smart buildings are also green, which makes sustainability a distinct possibility for the planet.

When the pandemic forced a lot of businesses’ attention back to workplaces, it became evident that offices need more efficient electrical and mechanical systems, and collaborative workspaces. Most notably, the growing adoption of IoT fueled the drive for green spaces. Spurred by trends like sustainability and convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT), the smart building technology was born.

At the recent Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023, we learned about some technologies that are the forces behind several smart buildings around the world. Muhammad Imam, Sr. Director of Product Management, Enterprise Switching at Cisco set the stage by talking about the trends that have taken over in the recent years, and Cisco’s areas of focus. Andrew Lu, Product Management Lead, Smart Buildings & Sustainability, gave a walk-through of the technologies on Cisco’s portfolio that enable smart buildings in real world.

A Shift in ToneIn the past, the focus in smart building technology has been primarily around energy footprint and environmental impacts. But now it’s dawning on companies driving this transformation that it is a partial approach. Contrarily, if they start to centralize data from separate devices into a single intelligent system, buildings start to become even smarter.

“We have a lot of opportunities in how we can optimize energy in our workspaces, our digital buildings, and network is really the catalyst to drive this transformation,” noted Mr. Imam.

The tenets of smart building are few – visibility through more data and insights, more energy-efficient technologies, and better indoor environment quality. Good news is that everything from indoor health to power efficiency to visibility can be improved with the use of right technologies. But the challenge with achieving these is the constant expansion of network which has reached a critical mass of devices, and the existing automation that impedes adoption of smart building technologies.

“The ecosystem is expanding, and we are seeing a lot more endpoints getting connected to the network, be it a light, blinds, or HVAC systems,” said Mr. Imam.

Cisco’s Pillars for Smart BuildingsCisco believes that there is a way that all of these can be translated into intelligent energy savings. Imam says that sustainability for customers can be assured in three areas. In the past few years, the industry has standardized 90W Power Over Ethernet (PoE) which is a big leap from the former 15W PoE. This has enabled a lot of endpoints to be connected to the network, and unlocked substantial power and cost gains. PoE accomplishes the IT/OT convergence, he said.

Second is safe DC power source which inherently provides reduced conversion loss.

Lastly, granular visibility of the environment, in terms of things like occupancy, occupant density, and energy consumption around the building, is key to making smart decisions about utilization.

Cisco Smart Building Technology with Catalyst 9000 SeriesCisco has put together a spectrum of technologies under the Smart Building banner that dramatically reduce energy footprints in offices, hospitals, universities, and such places. Since long, Cisco has been working with a growing ecosystem of partners which includes names like Schneider Electric, IBM, and Honeywell, building sensors that can measure temperature, humidity, airflow, and such things indoors. In the next step, they are stacking them with newer technologies to address a broader set of use cases.

“It’s important to realize that smart building is not a very simple solution. It’s a full stack of technologies that enables a wide selection of use cases,” said Mr.Lu in his opening comments.

At the center of Cisco’s stack is the Catalyst 9000 family that leverages PoE for supplying power and data to the endpoints. Cisco’s Catalyst 9000 Series has the highest 90W port density in the industry which allows cost to be distributed over all endpoints, delivering breakthrough economics.

Cisco Spaces, a cloud platform provides the aforementioned visibility across the network, enabling organizations to power up and power down endpoints flexibly for optimum utilization. Data comes in through the Cisco firehose API that streams large volumes at once.

This is topped with a host of building management systems designed in collaboration with industry partners that provide smart control of devices, and a wide selection of sensors that fit buildings of all sizes and age.

“The important part is that at the center of this, we have a converged network enabled by Catalyst 9000.”

Cisco shared data from one of their flagship Catalyst 9000 enabled smart offices in New York to show how energy efficiency can be optimized by leveraging granular visibility and control delivered by Cisco Spaces. Formerly DNA Spaces, Cisco Spaces offers granular occupancy and environmental data that can be leveraged to improve user experience, and bring down the power consumption of the entire IT infrastructure through waste minimization. Cisco Spaces is compatible with all of Cisco hardware from Catalyst to Meraki and more.

“The second pillar of our benefit of 90w PoE portfolio is safe DC power source. Safety is really important and that’s also what actually adds to a lot of the cost of deployment.”

Mr. Lu noted that PoE can deliver up to 10% savings in CAPEX compared to AC infrastructures. Leveraging DC power source for its efficiency with renewable resources like solar and wind that are typically on DC infrastructures, Cisco’s 90W PoE portfolio promises substantially better cost economics and greater sustainability.

Wrapping UpCisco’s Smart Building technology is vital to achieving net zero in workplaces. It paves the path towards reduced greenhouse emissions in buildings with greater and granular control over energy consumption. By deploying a full stack of technologies programmed to run on auto-pilot, Cisco ensures less human management and control, and greater automation in buildings, new or old. This, however, does not change the experience of our interaction with physical spaces.

For more information on Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series, be sure to check out the video above and other presentations from the recent Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 event.

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Juniper recently presented a Showcase session that talked about and demonstrated two of the Paragon Automation Suite’s tools. It was quite impressive! This blog covers some highlights from the Showcase, and provides some additional coverage of one aspect of the demonstration.

But before diving into the technical side of things, let’s talk about the overall setting around Paragon Automation.

BackgroundParagon Automation is Juniper Networks’ suite of tools for automation and management of WAN transport networks (L2 and L3 EVPN, E-Line, E-LAN, and IETF models). Think MPLS and segment routing and RSVP-TE.

Paragon Automation is multi-vendor based on standards and interoperability testing. It has four main components in total that cover end to end transport network management from planning to deployment, assurance and control.

Paragon Planner
Paragon Pathfinder
Paragon Insights
Paragon Active Assurance

Showcasing The PowerParagon Pathfinder and Paragon Active Assurance were the focus of the Showcase. The presentation explained the features and capabilities, and included some nice demos.

Juniper Networks refers to the market for Paragon as the “autonomous transport network”, i.e. MPLS/SR, WAN providers, etc. In this session, Juniper emphasized on the automation and remediation capabilities of the suite in particular.

A key aspect of Paragon Automation is full observability: not only telemetry but the ability to use automated active data-plane synthetic test traffic to measure WAN network performance and SLA compliance.

Juniper has added some AI, making Paragon an automated control and remediation tool. It can automate latency-based routing, autonomous capacity optimization/congestion avoidance (re-routing traffic offloaded links while maintaining latency and other SLAs), and provide closed loop remediation (re-routing traffic away from a node or link that is unhealthy) while maintaining path diversity.

About the DemosThe demos consisted of introducing a test fault, and observing Paragon re-route the traffic to resolve the problem.

As a teaser, here’s a brief description of what you’ll see – network topology with links and stats, in the first demo case, and the latency on each segment. After a fault was introduced, the presenter showed how the path in question was re-routed by the software to avoid the problem. The discovery of nodes, links, and paths is all automated.

Here’s what the demo network diagram looked like.

The purple arc and green arc indicate to separate LSPs for the customer flows of interest.
Some other views available in the tool like link stats were also shown. In the scenario we looked at here, Paragon Pathfinder created a maintenance event on the link in question, re-routing all traffic away from said link when the fault happened while maintaining the SLA integrity of running services (in this case supported by LSPs). A prioritized approach is automated as far as selecting the first paths to re-route.

Key: Synthetic Testing!Synthetic UX (user experience) testing has been a hot topic lately, and one of the tech areas I’m keeping a close eye on.

Some aspects of Paragon’s testing capabilities are highlighted below.

For any UX testing, the key elements are the agents and tests that are available with Paragon Active Assurance. As a quick overview and reference, the following supplements what was discussed in the Showcase.

Test AgentsThe Paragon Active Assurance test agent is now natively present in Juniper ACX series routers.

The agents are also available in software-only and cloud-ready forms: VM on hypervisor, container application, software on x86 hardware, network device, on standard PC, or booted from a USB, also as securely hosted SaaS in AWS.

Test agents automatically discover and register with the control center, and appear in an inventory after being launched or connected to the network.

There is a REST API and YANG model for external control and monitoring of Paragon traffic-generating test agents.

Generally, users would deploy a mesh of test agents and tests to monitor the links and end to end services. Agents and tests might subsequently be added to add data where temporarily needed.

ControlParagon Active Assurance is operated from a cloud-ready multi-tenant Control Center with web GUI.

Types of Tests Available“Test Agent capabilities include service activation (Y.1564, MEF 48), network performance (UDP, TCP, Y.1731, TWAMP, path trace), Internet performance (HTTP, DNS), rich media (IPTV,OTT video, Netflix, VoIP telephony, and SIP), as well as support for controlling Wi-Fi interfaces, and performing remote packet inspection.” JUNIPER PARAGON ACTIVE ASSURANCE DATASHEET

The following graphic explains:

See the datasheet for much greater detail on the tests available. (Link below.)

There is also a GUI for building test sequences and specifying SLA compliance thresholds. These can be templates with parameters filled in at runtime.

What’s missing in the above list is RUM-tool like capabilities, for measuring components of an app or web page. But that makes perfect sense as it’s not something a WAN provider is likely to be doing.

ConclusionThe demos showed how easily various operational tasks might be accomplished using Pathfinder, while hinting at the automatic response the system could provide to various error conditions. They also gave a good sampling of the breadth of potential automated responses that could be enabled via the Active Assurance passive and active testing of links, paths.

That being said, looking at a couple of the demo screens and the documentation, there’s some complexity present, but it’s commensurate with the deep capabilities of the tools. At a glance, the user interface appeared to provide efficient access to those deeper capabilities.

If you’re in the WAN/MPLS/Segment Routing Transport business, make sure to check out the Showcase video, and look more deeply into the Paragon Automation Suite.

Additional links for further informationA useful repository of resources including a short explainer video, product datasheets, a complementary Appledore vendor profile and the latest EANTC interoperability test report can be found on the Juniper website. It’s a great way to learn more about how Juniper designed its Paragon Automation suite and its vendor-agnostic controller support.

You can also find the full recordings of the Showcase sessions, along with relevant case studies of Orange Poland and GARR, and summary-level demo videos, by clicking below:

The Autonomous Network: Key Success Factors
The Autonomous Network: Live Demonstration

To learn more about the topic of autonomous transport networking, any why it’s fast becoming a key differentiator by enabling superior customer experience, you’ll find free analyst reports from ACG Research and STL Partners, a CxO webinar with thought leaders from BT, Verizon and Juniper, and blog posts from Juniper executives: The benefits of end to end network automation

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Even though most of the technologies and infrastructure elements are the same, the nature of edge comping is entirely different. This episode of On-Premise IT features Edge Field Day delegates Enrico Signoretti, Allyson Klein, and Alastair Cooke discussing these differences with Stephen Foskett. Many edge environments look a lot like the datacenter, with servers, switches, storage, virtualization, and more. Other environments resemble clouds, with Kubernetes, hyper-converged, and containerization. All of these technologies are being deployed in a different way, and they are transformed by being adapted to use at remote locations.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsAllyson Klein

Alastair Cooke

Enrico Signoretti

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@TechAllyson

@DemitasseNZ

@ESignoretti

Twitter@SFoskett

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Industrial IoT hardware solutions are built differently than their enterprise-grade counterparts. They are rugged, and can stand up to the extreme weather conditions of outdoor environments. They are purpose-built for industry use-cases, and have industrial protocol support and integrations. By contrast, enterprise-grade solutions are designed with security, simplicity and ease-of-use top of mind.

This distinction is consistent across all of Cisco’s IoT portfolio. Just like their hardware, Cisco does not mix their software. The company established this when it presented the Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard at last week’s Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 event in Amsterdam. Technical Marketing Engineer, Emmanuel Tychon, showcased Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard’s newest capabilities and pointed out why its unique from other dashboards.

Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard“IoT Ops dashboard is the most strategic product currently in the IoT business unit. All or almost all of our services are going to be available in the IoT Operations Dashboard” – said Mr. Tychon in his opening comments.

IoT Operations Dashboard is cloud-only. Mr. Tychon explained that Cisco decided to make it so because of the general public eagerness to move to cloud. Cisco still retains on-prem versions of some of its solutions, but is generally moving with the trend.

The Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard is a management platform designed for easy connection, management and maintenance of devices in industrial networks. Often confused with another network management dashboard on Cisco’s portfolio, Cisco DNA Center, the Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard is anything but a copy.

Mr. Tychon explained that the Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard is created for users of all profile, especially those that don’t possess a high-level of technical expertise. For them, the dashboard offers a way to perform tasks like device onboarding, configuration, monitoring, and so on, without getting into the technical minutiae.

Onboarding devices to IoT Operations Dashboard is greatly simple. Where DNA Center requires direct access to all devices, the IoT Operations Dashboard follows a more stringent approach.

At the time of booting, a new device that has no configuration connects to Cisco PnP Connect over the internet and shares its serial number. The PnP application then redirects the gateway to the Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard where it receives a base config. The device is authenticated with a SUDI certificate integrated in Cisco ACT2 chips that come onboarded in all devices.

The IoT Dashboard then sends back a cloud certificate which the gateway uses to verify the cloud platform. Upon authentication, a secure management FlexVPN tunnel is established between the dashboard and the device. All communication within this management tunnel is encrypted.

With the IoT Operations Dashboard, users don’t need to worry about the IP addresses of devices, which makes it a lot simpler for users, considering that IP addresses are constantly changing in IoT.

“When you’re managing remote and mobile assets, you don’t even know what the IP address is going to be. You could have a dynamic IP address that’s changing as the gateway moves, gets connected and disconnected changing operators. You can’t get access to that gateway directly,” Mr. Tychon pointed out.

What’s New

Recently, Cisco added a host of new security features to the IoT Operations Dashboard bringing the entire Cisco IoT portfolio together. The first one is Secure Equipment Access Plus, or SEA Plus.

SEA Plus enables organizations to open a highly secure channel between a computer and a system in a remote and mobile environment. Using it, companies can grant secure policy-based accesses to both employees and external workers. Remote access is enabled in two ways – browser-based and client-based. It currently supports five access methods, namely SSH, RDP, VNC, https and Telnet.

SEA provides a very simple experience to the users. All it takes for a remote user to gain access is to log into the IoT Operations Dashboard using their login credentials. Once inside, they can select a computer from the ones they have access to, and pick from a selection of remote sessions.

“There is no IP connectivity whatsoever between the remote access computer and the computer we are accessing remotely. There is no way you can transfer files, malware or anything that would harm the computer,” said

Access can further be secured with Multi-Factor Authentication or Single Sign-On. Users that require SEA Plus connectivity must have the SEA Plus App on their local computer.

Another new service that Mr. Tychon highlighted in the presentation is the new Cisco Cyber Vision Service. Cyber Vision is an industrial security solution that extends IT security to industrial networks. Cyber Vision performs traffic analysis and provides real-time visibility into OT assets and processes in the network. The deep visibility it builds helps teams know the network topology down to the component level, and understand the threat actors they’re exposed to.

In addition to providing full visibility into asset vulnerability, Cyber Vision Service also performs threat analysis and ranks them in order of severity, giving teams a composite risk score for each vulnerability.

Wrapping UpThe Cisco cloud based IoT Operations Dashboard is a comprehensive solution purpose-built to serve everyone on the totem pole. It’s a useful tool to have for organizations looking for ways to consolidate and optimize management and monitoring of IoT assets in industrial networks. Cisco’s attention to security elevates it from the league of standard dashboards to a solution that meets the lofty needs of modern IoT environments. It’s a single hub designed for industrial networks in which operational simplicity meets enhanced security.

For more information on the new features that Cisco added to the IoT Operations Dashboard, watch the above video till the end, or check out other Cisco presentations from the recent Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 event.

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The biggest disruptor in AI currently is an experimental chatbot that we know as ChatGPT. Based on generative AI, ChatGPT can perform a surprisingly long list of things that range from answering questions to coming up with ideas to explaining concepts in plain speak. But opinions around it is mixed, and in fact quite conflicting. And the biggest of them is the lingering question – is the purpose of AI to enable or replace humans?

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITTim M. Crawford, a top CIO and a Field Day delegate, answers this question. In the article titled – “Is generative AI disruptive or enabling?”, Crawford shares his views on this. He writes,

In just the past 48 hours, both Google and Microsoft have made major announcements about their generative AI endeavors. Yesterday, Google announced a new conversational AI service called Bard which is based on LaMDA. Today, Microsoft announced they are reinventing search with new AI-powered Bing and Edge browsers.

Read the rest of the article – “Is generative AI disruptive or enabling?” to learn his perspective as a CIO on generative AI. For more such interesting stories, sign up to our weekly newsletter for free.

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Tiered memory will have different performance, so operating systems will need to incorporate techniques to adapt to pages with different characteristics. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Hasan Al Maruf, part of a team that developed transparent page placement for Linux. He began his work enabling transparent page placement for InfiniBand-connected peers before applying the concept to NUMA nodes and now CXL memory.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Hasan Al Maruf, Researcher at the University of Michigan. Connect with Hasan on LinkedIn and check out his research at UM.

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Across the Internet, there are thousands of network outages each year. Many of these are caused by delayed mitigation of issues. No matter the size of the business, or the duration of downtime, outages are hugely expensive. According to Gartner, the average cost is roughly $5,600 per minute. That amounts to a loss of $300,000 per hour for businesses, and a detriment to the customers’ digital experience.

About 12 years back, Cisco started to dabble in AI/ML with the mission to enhance its technologies. Having tried their hand at it for several things, last year Cisco applied it to networking to abate unplanned downtime with proactive troubleshooting.

At the Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 event hosted in Amsterdam, Cisco presented Predictive Networks, a Cisco solution that proactively identifies potential anomalies and issues in the network with the help of AI/ML. JP Vasseur, VP of Engineering, ML and Data Science, showed off the solution with a live demo.

Divergent AttitudesFor the past 30 years or so, operators have run networks reactively, where issues are resolved after they show up. But the modern audience has an especially low tolerance for uneven digital experience, and delays in remediation, no matter how minuscule, is synonymous with poor digital experience. Although, as Mr. Vasseur pointed out, reaction time in recent years has reduced to a matter of nanoseconds, yet we are distant from offering users a consistent network experience around the clock. AI/ML unlocks that possibility by taking remediation to the point of predictive.

But when it comes to AI/ML, Mr. Vasseur noted that people are highly polarized. There are believers who think AI/ML to be the only way to build intelligent systems, and heretics who remain unconvinced that AI/ML is realistic, and has real world use cases. Their skepticism is often inflamed by ludicrous theories bopping around the Internet like AI/ML is a ploy of big tech companies to replace humanity with robots, and is a straight up threat to the society.

The Truth is Somewhere in the MiddleCisco believes that the truth is in the middle. Having an early start than many of its peers, Cisco has been able to test out multiple AI/ML approaches during its decade-long journey. Through a series of trial and error, in the process of which it rolled out several AI-based technologies, the company has acquired the expertise to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and determine if AI/ML is the right technology for a certain solution.

For some solutions, it is the right pick, for others, not so much, said Mr. Vasseur. So, at Cisco, they are very pragmatic with their application of AI/ML.

Reliable PredictionsIn the early phases, Cisco selectively applied AI/ML to build IoT, cloud and security solutions. In the next phase, it is focused on implementing the technology in networking.

Three years back, Cisco started working on a project, the goal of which was to predict network issues. It faced some early resistance because of the general skepticism around the practicality of predicting the behavior of something as vast and dynamic as the Internet. Nevertheless, the teams pushed ahead.

The project had three clearly defined goals – predictive diagnostics, deep telemetry and 100% accuracy.

Teams at Cisco spent a year analyzing paths across the Internet and service provider networks in search of signals that could be used to predict issues ahead of their occurrence. Once they were able to triangulate those, they honed in on the gap that exists between precision and recall, and closed it.

“We all know that there’s a lack of trust sometimes, people are on the fence. So, we thought if we are making predictions, we want to make sure that we don’t have any false positive,” said Vasseur.

Through training and retraining of ML models, the technology was made to learn patterns and identify them from historical data to make accurate predictions about the network behavior.

But proactive networking is not a one-and-done approach. Nor is it the answer to every potential issue. That’s why Cisco advises piggybacking it with the traditional reactive mechanism to leverage its full capabilities.

“The goal was by no means to replace the reactive mechanism. It’s to say for some issues, can I predict them before they happen. If not, then I can fall back on reactive mechanism. So, this is really complementary,” said Vasseur.

Cisco narrowed down the scope to achieve perfection. Instead of building a machine learning algorithm that can predict all issues, but with relatively low accuracy, it designed a system that can concentrate on a small percentage of errors with a high level of accuracy.

Cisco Predictive NetworksWith the mandate to make right recommendations all the time, Cisco built Predictive Networks. It’s a SaaS-based solution that requires neither hardware, nor software. It has a simple architecture constituting a predictive engine in the cloud that gathers telemetry from different data sources that it is connected to, and outputs recommendations.

“You will have a tab that says Predictive Networks. When you click on it, you see all the recommendations. In the second step, you will be able to apply the recommendations that sound good to you, and it will close the loop automatically. It does that for all sites at the same time, looking at the holistic view,” explained Vasseur.

With the help of multiple ML models, Predictive Networks makes sense of the data it ingests. The algorithm looks at all possible paths to the applications, and calculates the probability for a congestion or an SLA violation, for every single path. Based on what it sees, it makes traffic rerouting recommendations to alternate paths.

The models also consume information about application behavior from Layer7 every 10 minutes and categorize them into Good, Degraded and Bad, and use it to make the final predictions.

Predictive Networks’ common data model and algorithm are independent of the telemetry sources. That makes scaling easy. Users can decide how far and wide they want it to look in the network, and change the sources of telemetry without retraining the models.

Cisco is in the process of building an outsize data lake for Predictive Networks that can be fed with its in-house platforms like Viptela, Meraki and ThousandEyes.

Wrapping upPredictive networking technologies are highly effective in detecting and analyzing issues before they happen. Cisco’s Predictive Networks is one of the early specimens of that technology that have a fascinating number of use cases. It is a hero product in its power to identify future issues with zero false positives. Users get structured reports of all recommendations of appropriate actions that makes for easy consumption. Last but not the least, the kind of predictive observability it offers translates to improved digital experience, and enables averting potential risks and losses.

Be sure to check out all of Cisco’s presentations from the Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023 to learn about everything Cisco is currently doing in networking.

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Wikipedia defines technical debt as “the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.” That sounds like something we do all the time, and each time we do it, we accrue a little debt.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITIn software development, the measure of this cost is directly proportional to how long an organization goes without paying down the debt. The consequence of a really complex technical debt can be steep, but sometimes, the rework is necessary, even helpful for developers.

In an article titled “Debt”, Ed Summers talks about technical debt in a different light. He shows how it can mean very different things for different entities. He writes,

While it certainly is the case that technical debt accrues over time for the reasons that Eghbal goes on to describe, this definition implies that maintenance, and the paying down of technical debt, is something that comes after the software is conceived or released, and not there from the beginning and part of an ongoing practice.

Read the full story to understand how technical debt is a necessary part of learning, and can in fact, provide value. For more such interesting stories, sign up for our free newsletter.

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Sustainability is one of the most pressing themes of our times in IT. Every organization that is a part of this wave is pushing for it by fulfilling their obligations. At Cisco Live EMEA 2023, corporate sustainability resonated in Cisco and its partners’ commitment toward going net zero, transitioning to renewable energy, and in the overall business model. Discussion around climate change and circular economy took centerstage as executives spoke about ESG risks and opportunities, and highlighted Cisco’s goals and initiatives around environmental sustainability.

At the event, former network engineer, and Tech Field Day events lead, Tom Hollingsworth sat down with Eric Blonda, Global Alliance Executive at Cisco, and Remko Deenik, Director Systems Engineering at Pure Storage, backstage to talk about these trends, and learn about their companies’ sustainability strategies.

Turning the Page on an Era of Reckless CapitalismUntil a few decades, sustainability was not a even priority on companies’ tech spend list. Organizations operated with a downright capitalist mentality, with heavy focus on profitability. It was normal to turn a blind eye to problems like emissions and e-waste that were often dismissed as unimportant.

Fast-forward a few years, climate change sweeps through the globe, opening our eyes to the alarming reality that in order to preserve the future of the planet, industries need to reduce the impacts on environment. The first step towards that would be to embed ESG in operations, and modify business models around it.

As awareness grew, customers came at it with a growing intensity. Their purchasing habits changed overnight, making it clear that if their sustainability criteria are not met by a certain vendor, they will spend their money on a vendor that does.

“It’s the top customer concern, and we’re working in every part of our company, every part of our product line, to make sure that sustainability is a priority,” informed Cisco’s Eric Blonda.

Seeing as digital transformation is the best chance to survive in the business, companies in the last few years have started taking small steps towards sustainable practices to create more positive impacts. Today corporate sustainability initiatives are put under heavy scrutiny by authorities and customers alike.

Sustainability Pay-OffsCompanies and consumers have both come to recognize the merits of sustainability in the modern economy. Reducing energy footprint and waste inherently saves money. So, delaying the transition to a sustainable IT is not in the interest of either businesses, or their consumers.

The cost savings generated from sustainability initiatives has driven a lot of companies in the recent years, and inspired their customers to transition to sustainable practices.

Sustainability with Cisco and Pure StorageCisco and Pure Storage are jointly accelerating this transition to a circular economy. Pure Storage has sustainability embedded into their operations since many years.

“The way we’ve designed our system has been very sustainable from the start. But, the last decade, people weren’t all that interested. It’s now really picking up interest, primarily because of the energy consumption part,” said Remko Deenik.

Mr Hollingsworth pointed out, “It’s been a problem in the past in enterprise IT where we get locked into these systems where if you want to increase capacity, you have to get rid of the system you’ve been using, and you have to buy a new one because the new one is 10% faster and 20% quieter. But I could still be using the one that I was using.”

Pure Storage’s Evergreen model offers customers a break from the legacy consumption model. On it, customers can upgrade the components, and still continue to leverage the framework without overhauling it until it reaches expiration. This vastly reduces the amount of e-waste produced at datacenters, not to mention generate substantial cost savings for the operators.

“We’re upgrading all hardware components within the duration of the system. We do that disruptively, but by just upgrading the components that we need to upgrade, we minimize waste and usage of components, in addition to, of course from a sustainability perspective, shipping optimized packaging, optimized power consumption and all of that,” informed Mr. Deenik.

Green Datacenters with FlashStackRecently, Pure Storage and Cisco have launched FlashStack as-a-Service, a converged infrastructure solution that constitutes Pure FlashArray and Cisco UCS X-Series chassis, UCS Fabric interconnects and Cisco Nexus switches.

“It aligns very well, from a technical perspective, to the way we architect our system, and how Cisco’s architecting their system, using stateless design, being able to replace components at will without having to replace the entire system,” said Mr. Deenik.

Mr. Hollingsworth agreed that such flexibility would be needle-moving in the way enterprises stage their upgrade cycles, and will be able to “use the least amount of components possible to produce good performance for their users, but also good performance for our planet.”

“If you look at all the recent product announcements, you’ll see that there has always been a lot of focus on reducing complexity, and reducing the number of cables for example, reducing power, and all of that. It is part of our commitment,” said Mr. Deenik.

FlashStack uses Pure’s Evergreen for discreet scaling and Cisco’s network equipment for reduced complexity. The Pure Storage Evergreen consumption model is fully pay-per-use and lends great flexibility to consumers. Fully managed, it requires no planning at the customers’ end, and users can pay only for what they use. So customers neither overbuy capacity, nor sustain losses from underutilization

“At the start of the contract, a lot of the customers invest for the next five years. They buy a lot of empty capacity that just sits there running in the datacenter, using power for no good reason. We’re able, with this subscription model, to just right-size the solution as well as provide spare capacity so that they’re free to go wherever they want to go. We only put the equipment in place,” explained Mr. Deenik.

Additionally, the model affords flexible downsizing for times when businesses need to scale back their infrastructure when moving to public cloud. Pure Storage removes the free equipment and repurpose them to fit other customers’ environments.

Wrapping UpAchieving sustainability in an industry as robust and impactful as IT requires companies to first, believe that a clean, sustainable future is achievable, and unite in their efforts to power that future. Cisco and Pure Storage are paving the way toward environmental sustainability with their initiatives and innovations. With FlashStack, not only do the customers have a way to control cost, but also break out of legacy infrastructures to be in tune with the circular economy for better e-waste management and emission control.

To learn more about FlashStack as-a-Service, visit flashstack.com. For events from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA 2023, check out the Tech Field Day website.

Panelists for Today’s Interview:Remko Deenik, Technical Director Europe at Pure Storage. Connect with Remko on LinkedIn.

Eric Blonda, Global Alliance Executive at Cisco. Connect with Eric on LinkedIn.

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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We’re excited to announce the very first Edge Field Day event is headed to Silicon Valley February 22-23, 2023. We hope you can tune in live on LinkedIn or the Tech Field Day website to check out the great lineup of companies presenting at the event. Here is a quick overview of what to look forward to.

It has always included applications running at the edge, but infrastructure and platforms designed for use outside the datacenter are rapidly rising in importance. From Kubernetes to orchestration to networking and storage, we’re seeing a whole new category of products for the edge. That’s the focus of Edge Field Day and we’re thrilled to bring you this new topic. Here’s a quick look at our schedule.

Edge Field Day begins with Avassa at 8 AM US/Pacific Time. Avassa provides an application-centric platform for container management at the edge. In their session, we’ll follow a platform engineer and an application developer on their quest to orchestrate and monitor containerized application on edge infrastructure. Next is Scale Computing, our host for the day, presenting at 10 AM. Scale Computing is a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyper-converged solutions. Their presentation introduces zero-touch provisioning, a new feature of SC Fleet Manager that enhances quick and easy remote cluster staging. Our last presentation on Wednesday will be from first time presenter Mako Networks at 1:30 PM. The Mako System is a PCI certified, cloud managed, carrier-independent networking solution that makes it easy to connect and manage thousands of global sites in a high performance network that is secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective.

On Thursday we’ll hear from ZEDEDA, another new Field Day presenter, at 8 AM. ZEDEDA makes edge computing effortless, open, and secure with an orchestration solution that simplifies the security and management of edge applications and infrastructure. Wrapping up the event is Opengear at 11:30 AM. A leader in remote management, Opengear provides out-of-band management and NetOps automation that makes devices at the edge as accessible as those in the datacenter.

All of our sessions are broadcast live on the Tech Field Day website and on our LinkedIn Page. The videos of each presentation will also be available on our YouTube channel soon after the event in case you missed any of them live. We also welcome interaction and participation on Twitter and Mastodon as well as questions for our delegates, just tweet at TechFieldDay and use the hashtag #EFD1. Learn more about this event and others as well as find information about our independent technical influencers over on the Tech Field Day website and sign up for our newsletter to find out more information and upcoming events.

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In the world of networking, there are a few widely accepted truths – managing and optimizing MPLS and Segment Routing can be problematic, outages occur at the least convenient times, and jitter, latency, bandwidth, and throughput are not terribly well understood. And yet, the potential for improving customer experience, delivering SLA guarantees, and cost efficiencies is there if you have the right capabilities.

Traffic engineering (TE) at service provider scale is a dark art, not because it entails a difficult set of tasks, but because it can be quite complex. In fact, “traffic engineering” as a term itself is vague and may have different interpretations depending on who is asked. RFC2702 describes the goal of TE as:

A major goal of Internet Traffic Engineering is to facilitate efficient and reliable network operations while simultaneously optimizing network resource utilization and traffic performance.

FoundationsTake, for example, the complexity of building a label switched path (LSP) across a geographically diverse set of devices spanning a region, a country, an ocean, or all of the above. Factor in, if you will, the requirement of a specific amount of bandwidth for that LSP.

Historically there are a few ways to accomplish this task, RSVP-TE being the venerable standby, and Segment Routing (SR-MPLS) the heir apparent. Both are high performing protocols with an impressive suite of capabilities and an equally impressive set of configurations required to fully realize their absolutely massive potential.

Configuring, and more so, maintaining these protocols can be a daunting task, and daunting tasks tend to breed innovation. Network automation has been the bellwether for massive change in how networks are built and managed, and Juniper Networks’ Paragon Pathfinder fills a unique and much needed void in automating, and thereby taming, that dark art of traffic engineering.

AlternativesAs one can surmise, there exists a variety of ways to manipulate paths in a large, complex network. Migrating traffic manually, creating time-based automation workflows using technologies such as Ansible or raw python and running them in CRON, or building a home-grown system to change the end-to-end route that a given LSP may take.

However, it should not be overlooked that leveraging the raw power of something called a path computation element, or as it is commonly known, a PCE can enable significant advantage that yields both lower operational expenditure and the potential for cost savings across potentially high cost backbone or data center interconnect circuits. By leveraging the streaming data from network nodes, real-time knowledge of the network topology, and significant compute resources, a PCE such as Paragon Pathfinder is able to create, monitor, change, optimize, and re-signal many LSPs over the topology of a large network ecosystem.

The end-to-end coverage of the PCE functionality in Juniper’s Paragon Pathfinder provides real-time, correlated awareness of network topology and conditions, allowing for the pre-computation of backup paths and actioning on path changes. It should not be understated how operationally powerful and critical path re-route is in a large, overlay based provider or data center interconnect network. It can mean the difference between millions of dollars lost, SLAs violated, unhappy customers, and productive packets seamlessly moving across another path.

Imagine now that a customer may have an application that is highly sensitive to latency and therefore, has a latency requirement. This hypothetical client has a hypothetical contract outlining the low latency requirement range. Using a PCE such as the Paragon Pathfinder, it can be as trivial as providing two end points and any other pertinent requirements, and setting the path parameters to optimize on latency, and letting the software generate the path.

Depending on the requirements, a backup path can be precalculated and readied in the case of a link failure, a fiber cut, natural disaster, or other unforeseen service interruption. And failover operates at near link-state speed, meaning any SLAs are met. This ease-of-use is available within the suite of standard protocols within SR-MPLS and RSVP-TE. So if a network is still migrating to SR-MPLS, or continues with RSVP-TE, they are able to, and if they may be a multi-vendor shop, the protocol standards should allow for a uniform operational experience.

Think now, of a capability that allows the migration of traffic over lesser loaded links. With a PCE such as Paragon Pathfinder, this becomes a realistic opportunity. By leveraging discreet engineered paths for certain traffic, it becomes possible to migrate traffic to paths that are outside of the normal routing best path scenario. More plainly, it becomes possible to easily create LSPs over longer paths in order to leverage less expensive or more lightly loaded backbone paths, thus allowing for better utilization of existing resources and saving on procurement or provisioning of new backbone paths.

ConclusionSo yes, large scale traffic engineering has a bit of the air of dark artistry, but there are ways to master and wield the power and control that it brings with relative ease. Over time, operational overhead decreases, and the potential for improved capacity utilization can increase. By utilizing a PCE any network using segment routing or RSVP-TE can centrally control and granularly control complex traffic and path engineering while at the same time avoiding the complexities of per device state tracking, and error prone manual configurations.

Additional Links for Further InformationRead up on an industry leadership perspective on this topic, with blogs, webinars and complementary analyst reports from the likes of BT, Verizon, ACG Research, STL Partners, and Juniper executives.

Juniper’s approach to end to end network automation in their Tech Field Day Showcase where you can find explainer videos, the full Showcase recording covering Juniper’s vision and perspective on key success factors, and a webinar with Orange Poland which illustrates how service providers are using Juniper’s Paragon Automation to address real-world challenges with targeted, pre-integrated use cases.

Learn exactly how this is made possible with Juniper’s Paragon Automation suite – which contains Paragon Automation.

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Blocks & Files recently published an interview with author and technical evangelist, W Curtis Preston, aka “Mr. Backup”. In the interview, Preston shares a wealth of information about backup from his experience of 30 years in the storage industry.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITThe author of Backup & Recovery, and long-time Field Day delegate said,

The biggest advancement in the last three decades – no question – is deduplication. VTLs were a bandaid. PBBAs are being replaced by SaaS. Very few people are using LTO in their backup systems. Yes, many are moving their backups to the cloud. But virtually all advancements in backups in the last two decades have dedupe to thank for them, because dedupe makes the physics and cost of backing up to disk and the cloud possible.

Read the interview – “Mr Backup spills the beans on 30 years in the storage industry” to know about the biggest advances in backup in the past years, the reason why tape is still a great option, backup in times of ransomware, and much more from an industry veteran. For more stories like this, sign up to our mailing list today.

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The financial industry is in a constant state of flux between moving to the cloud, and maintaining compliance with the unique requirements of on-premises datacenters. The growing need for availability and scalability, and the rising energy costs to run onsite datacenters are not helping with the back-and-forth journey.

Bare Metal as-a-Service (BMaaS), powered by Pure Storage, is offering a solution to this. By combining the economic efficiency of a consumption-based OPEX model with bare metal servers, it addresses the specific requirements of the financial industry.

Constraints of the Financial Industry in a Fast-Moving EnvironmentThe financial industry is facing a strange dilemma. Stuck between the ever-increasing demand for innovative data and availability, and the need to maneuver between private and public clouds. Organizations are struck with a new realization. As they embarked on the journey to cloud, it became quickly evident that a simple lift and shift of applications wouldn’t cut it.

An application that is not cloud-aware, or cloud-native, might not perform as expected, or not work at all. It is quite common for public cloud providers to have shared environments. Running an application in such an environment, with several tenants in a shared infrastructure, might affect performance as a tenant increases its compute requirements, or a run-away process starts to consume more CPU cycles that the provider is unaware of.

Lastly, as finance is a heavily regulated industry, the protection of sensitive data is of utmost importance. Being unable to be certain of where the data resides is a huge challenge for organizations that are already struggling with a tonnage of internal and government-issued audits and regulations.

Moving the Physical Infrastructure to a Hosted EnvironmentPure’s BMaaS is a new offering that brings a different approach to solving these challenges. It is looking to combine the benefits of cloud-based infrastructure with the autonomy of on-premises datacenters. It provides customers with full control of the hardware stack and single tenancy. And it allows institutions to configure bare metal servers to their specifications, without sharing their resources with other customers.

BMaaS is the product of a partnership between Pure Storage and Equinix which utilizes Equinix’s datacenters around the world for computing, and Pure’s data storage. All aspects of a local datacenter, from hardware to software support to lifecycle management, are under one contract and handled by one vendor.

Scalability, Data Governance, and Energy EfficiencyBMaaS allows organizations to move their datacenters and operate them in a hosted environment, built to the required specifications. Utilizing Equinix’s vast infrastructure allows firms to move their data closer to the edge, where compute and storage are needed. The same infrastructure enables data governance, as it is possible to define the region of the datacenter and comply with regulations, such as GDRP.

One of the biggest differences, when compared to public cloud offerings, is the single tenancy aspect of the service. Aside from performance issues that could be caused by other tenants, there is also an added security aspect. Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities surfaced years ago, and the industry is still dealing with the threat of infected systems being able to break through a hypervisor and infect other VMs running on the same host.

Another scenario is vulnerability testing on a shared system. While a tenant performs vulnerability and penetration testing against their own systems, it can have consequences for other tenants operating on the same host.

BMaaS aims to provide the flexibility to adjust to changing demands. If there is an increase in compute and storage demands, BMaaS enables the organization to spin up more resources faster than it would be possible with an on-premises data center. And while traditional data centers will occur costs regardless of utilization, BMaaS follows the cloud model as a pay-as-you-go service. Organizations only have to pay for resources being consumed.

Last but not least, an important aspect is energy footprint. As energy costs keep rising, running datacenters becomes more expensive. In recent years, one benchmark for servers that has become more relevant is performance-per-watt. Modern CPUs and higher-density servers allow for reduced power consumption. By having a hosted bare metal server, the cost for new hardware that can deliver such benchmarks shifts from the organization to the provider.

ConclusionThe financial industry has unique needs that other sectors might not be facing. With things like regulations, technical debt, and an ever-increasing demand for scalability and availability, a one size fits all approach is the least suitable solution. BMaaS presents a viable solution for organizations that want cloud like deployment and consumption benefits, but are unwilling to sacrifice performance and privacy on a shared system. It aims at combining the best of both worlds, from full control of an on-premises datacenter to the ease of availability of cloud computing.

BMaaS is available now. Learn more about it by looking at setting up a demo.

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Looks like it’s time to update your iPhones, Macs, and iPads again. Apple has released security fixes for all affected devices and they’ve acknowledged that it maybe have been actively exploited. Jon, is this a huge concern and should we be updating our devices immediately? Why is this happening more and more? This and more on the Rundown.

0:36 | AWS Modular Data Center for U.S. Department of Defense

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) relies on modern military applications that are data-heavy and depend on low latency to enable critical communications and coordination in the field. Accessing, processing, and sharing data at the tactical edge has become increasingly essential. Jon, Is the AWS Cloud becoming more and more mobile?

Read More: AWS announces AWS Modular Data Center for U.S. Department of Defense Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability

3:19 | EDB Adds Encryption for PostgreSQL

If you’re looking to move off of Oracle’s database offerings and you’re worried that you won’t have encryption then this new story should be of interest to you. EDB announced this week that they have relased transparent data encryption for PostgreSQL. This block-level encryption offering allows databases to be encrypted before they’re written to disk to ensure the data is secure at all times. Integration with public cloud key management systems ensures only authorized users and applications can see the database files. Tom, what’s the ultimate goal for offering encryption for Postgres?

Read More: EnterpriseDB Raises the Bar for Postgres Security and Compliance with Transparent Data Encryption

7:21 | Breaking Up with Internet Explorer on Valentines Day

The end is, or shall I say the EDGE is here for the venerable I.E. 11. The source of an antitrust lawsuit in the 90s and once popular web browser has seen it’s last update or support. The future of the web according to Redmond lies in the Chromium-based Edge. Microsoft breaks up with I.E. on Valentines Day. Jon, without I.E. how are we going to browse the so called “Web”?

Read More: RIP Internet Explorer: Microsoft Kills Off Legacy Browser

10:30 | SuSE Launches ATIP for Modernizing Comms Networks

SuSE announced this week that they’re adding support for building future-proof telecom infrastructure built around open frameworks like Open RAN. The Adaptive Telco Infrastructure Platform, or AITP, leverages technology from Rancher Labs to create a modular platform that can adapt to the changing needs of telecom providers. This modular system is built specifically to address provider needs with Kubernetes pods built serve those requirements. ATIP can be rolled out quickly and managed from a central location to ensure that everything is up-to-date and operational. Tom, is this solution going to ease some of the adoption issues we’ve seen with smaller providers?

Read More: Future-Proof Telecom Modernization with SUSE ATIP

15:04 | MinIO and Veeam Team Up for Backup

Backup giant and frequent Field Day presenter Veeam is touting the ability of their new version 12 software to back up to a variety of targets. One of those that has the industry excited is MinIO’s object store. Instead of backing up your data to Amazon S3 you can now point things to go to an on-premesis MinIO solution as a direct target. Initial numbers for performance look great with an observed 12 GB/s throughput. Jon, what’s the value of having an on-prem object store as your backup target for a platform like Veeam?

Read More: MinIO Veeam Backup and Replication v12 Beta 2 Throughput Benchmark

18:53 | Apple Says Zero Day Vulnerability for iPhones and Macs May have been Exploited

Looks like it’s time to update your iPhones, Macs, and iPads again. Apple has released security fixes for allaffected devices and they’ve acknowledged that it maybe have been actively exploited. Jon, is this a huge concern and should we be updating our devices immediately? Why is this happening more and more?

Read More: Apple Says Zero Day Vulnerability For iPhones And Macs May Have Been Exploited

28:00 | The Weeks Ahead

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

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Most of us can’t imagine computers before SSDs. SSDs, without a doubt, stand for the best of innovation in storage in the recent years. In one fell swoop, they changed the storage game everywhere, from consumer electronics to datacenters. But as innovation marches on, the top-tier workloads are once again in need of more capacity and processing power. As we approach the limit of computing power, the demanding nature of new workloads is telling us one thing- we need a better SSD.

Recently, Gestalt IT’s publisher Stephen Foskett met with JB Baker, VP of Marketing at ScaleFlux to learn about their offerings that seem to perfectly fit the definition of a better SSD.

More of the SameThe past few years, vendors have been working at a frantic pace, bringing to the market new lines of SSDs from budget SATA to blazing fast NVMe. For the most part, these products live up to the hype. But they don’t particularly stand out from one another in any significant way that matters to the workloads.

“If they’re on PCIe Gen 4, they all have this same range of performance. It’s a similar curve for everybody in terms of how they perform across various workloads,” noted Mr. Baker. “A 1 Drive Write Per Day (DWPD) class product that has one group of performance curves, and a 3 Drive Write Per Day will have a slightly higher set of performance curves,” he added.

Vendors make their case on performance numbers and prices, but with very narrow margins, they are really more of the same. In the end, they’re unable to fully meet the skyrocketing requirements of high-performance workloads like AI/ML and data analytics. As far as enterprises are concerned, their workloads are still starved of performance-optimized storage.

ScaleFlux and Computational StorageScaleFlux’s SSDs are however a class of their own. ScaleFlux took an ordinary NVMe SSD, and elevated it with computational storage.

For years, compute and storage have been put in separate bins. Now architects have reason to believe that moving data between storage and CPU wastes power which can be otherwise used to process data. Computational storage is an architecture that provides computational storage capabilities within the storage.

By bringing compute to where the data is, computational storage enables faster data-processing by taking load off of CPU. Reduced data movement and workload offloading also lead to lower power consumption.

Image Provided by ScaleFluxWith innovation focused around computational storage, ScaleFlux has come up with two lines of drives – CSD 2000 and the more recent CSD 3000 that deliver significantly better performance and surprisingly more capacity.

“What we have done is integrate a computational storage engine into an ordinary NVMe SSD functionality. That’s how we get to being a better SSD,” informed Mr. Baker.

High performance workloads can greatly benefit from ScaleFlux’s SSDs for the obvious reason that they introduce computation capabilities in storage itself, thus reducing latency. But the benefits don’t end there. ScaleFlux intelligent SSDs have onboard compression and decompression engines that perform transparent in-line compression for optimized capacity. Data is compressed as it’s written and uncompressed when reading. This allows users to store data up to 4 times the physical capacity of the drives.

“We do compression right in the drive. So as long as the data isn’t encrypted before it gets to the drive, we get to see a benefit in terms of the performance, endurance, and latency,” said Mr. Baker.

ScaleFlux integrates everything into a single chip for significant, power, space and cost savings. In addition to that, ScaleFlux SSDs also retain the standard capabilities of enterprise-class SSDs.

“We provide power loss protection, and end to end data protection on all of the buses.”

ScaleFlux is simple to deploy and works with any NVMe compatible server. ScaleFlux drives come in U.2 form factor.

Wrapping UpScaleFlux drives undercut a lot of the products in the market in terms of performance, capacity and economics. They’re fast and highly capable, and offer good value for money when compared to other drives. But their real superpower is high capacity, increased endurance, and most importantly, superior application performance at an overall low cost per GB, which means users can take advantage of them for a lot of burdensome workloads.

To get a demo, head over to ScaleFlux’s website. For more such stories, keep reading here at Gestalt IT.

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MPLS based networks have long supplied network engineers with a great set of protocols to allow convenient end to end service communication, while only having to configure the end nodes themselves, regardless of how many devices lie between them. In addition to configuration convenience, protocols help network engineers manage bandwidth expectations, allowing setting over-subscription levels for links, and requesting bandwidth reservations per service.

MPLS also has tools for redundancy built-in that allow automated calculation of paths and failover for node or link outages. For datacenters, WAN networks, and campus and service provider deployments, this convenience for ongoing service creation and modification is widely availed.

The automation trend also came early to MPLS network deploys for several reasons:

Increasingly regular new service deployments
More frequent topology changes via adding and removing nodes
General network footprint expansion

As a result, automation offers a compelling value proposition for managing these networks optimally, and reducing the dependency on manual configurations.

Juniper MPLS Automation SolutionsFrom experience, we know that home grown scripting solutions along with vendor-specific or vendor-agnostic tools exhibit a number of issues. Integrating tools, adapting to new use cases, maintaining and scaling system infrastructure are common issues faced with this approach. Conversely, for MPLS-based networks, the Paragon Pathfinder automation tool from Juniper Networks makes use of the PCEP standard to provide a vendor-agnostic tool for LSP management. Paragon Automation can optimize the planning of, and automate the creation of, LSPs on network devices, as well as expand the ability to control bandwidth and performance across the network devices.

The PCEP standard provides the mechanism for the controller like Paragon Pathfinder to dynamically create LSPs between network nodes. No configuration file change needs to occur on devices at all in this mode. Paragon Pathfinder calculates the needed LSP and communicates this to the necessary devices creating the LSP on the fly.

Controlling the LSP tunnels that transport the data point-to-point on an MPLS network, the Paragon Automation suite adds active and passive monitoring of network performance and link bandwidth utilization (not just the reservation top threshold) to dynamically assign (and re-assign) network paths.

Using the device monitoring statistics, Paragon Pathfinder knows both the maximum possible traffic from an LSP that can be supported by the underlying resources at a given time, and the actually utilized bandwidth per link across the network. As multiple LSP share links and links have an oversubscription rate, there are times when congestion can occur. For priority services the controller can detect the congestion and reroute the appropriate LSP to alternative paths in the network. Paragon Pathfinder has a holistic view of the network that can perform these calculations in a way not possible by RSVP device-based protocols.

Paragon Pathfinder process

For performance, Paragon Automation watches the latency per tunnel via monitoring. Similar to the bandwidth reroute, priority LSPs can be changed to alternative paths to route around latency issues. These capabilities are not available in standard MPLS device-based protocols at all at this time.

These capabilities are perfect for either green field deployments for new networks, or used on new services deployed in an existing MPLS network. This PCEP-based dynamic LSP creation and management works with both segment routing and standard RSVP TE based networks. But even existing brown field MPLS networks with already deployed LSPs can leverage the new bandwidth and performance features.

The PCEP standard includes a delegation option that can be added to already configured and running LSPs on existing MPLS networks. A single configuration line is added to the deployed and work LSP without any performance impact. Once in place the Paragon Pathfinder controller can monitor and change the path of the LSP. This delegation feature allows operators of existing networks to add the bandwidth and performance monitoring and rerouting to all the existing deployed services. Even the existing service deployment software, scripts or other operations can remain in place deploying new services as usual. Paragon can use Netconf or SSH from the service to deploy the delegation configuration to network devices without any operational changes needed by existing systems or scripts.

Paragon Pathfinder provides a robust PCEP controller allowing for the deploy, monitoring and dynamic control of the LSP transporting bandwidth on the MPLS network. This is also part of a suite of tools with broader capabilities in monitoring end-user service levels, providing network simulation, and network service automation platforms.

ConclusionManaging a dynamic MPLS network presents operators with multiple challenges. Making changes and adding services while also monitoring traffic levels and performance require more than just device and protocol level knowledge in the network. Centralized controllers like Paragon Pathfinder provide that system wide view and control to react as changes are required. The additional suite of products can extend the capabilities to maintenance planning simulation, service level performance monitoring and change automation platforms as well. To learn more, review the Autonomous Networks Solution description on Juniper Networks website.

Additional links for further informationJuniper has a useful web page where you can quickly access summary demo recordings of use cases for its Paragon Automation suite, including Automated Congestion Avoidance; Latency based Routing; Path Diversity. You can also find the full Showcase live demonstration that I attended recently, and links to recent case studies for Paragon Automation, including at GARR and Orange Poland. You can find all this, along with commentary from industry leaders like BT and Verizon, and complementary analyst reports from ACG Research, STL Partners, and Appledore, at the below links:

The benefits of end to end network automation
Juniper’s approach to end to end network automation
A deep-dive into end to end network automation use cases and case studies
Juniper Paragon Pathfinder: explainer video, analyst reports and key features

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When I was working on my expert networking certifications many years ago, I loved the idea of private VLANs. Something simple that allowed me to isolate hosts and prevent traffic leakage. Putting devices in a DMZ in a private VLAN was a great way to ensure that even if one of them happened to be compromised it wouldn’t allow those attackers to move laterally to another device in the DMZ.

Private VLANs may have fallen out of style in the past few years but the idea of host isolation hasn’t. In fact, host isolation is at the heart of technologies like Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA). ZTNA is the new buzzword that solves all your security needs no matter what they might be. Unless those needs require you to have devices in remote locations. Or those devices don’t have user accounts. Or those devices aren’t powerful enough to run the entire security suite that was developed for a modern compute machine with an abundance of resources.

While we live in a world full of modern technology and more computer power than we could ever hope to use there are still areas of our lives that are ruled by low-cost CPUs. Something as simple as an ATM has a multitude of challenges when it comes to how they’re used. They may look like a computer, but they don’t act like one most of the time. They have a very specific function that requires a lot of security. You don’t want the transmission of deposit information or withdrawals to be intercepted and scraped or modified. But how can you secure a remote system in a network you don’t control and ensure the data is secure along the entire path?

VMware SD-WAN ClientI was recently a part of a Tech Field Day Showcase featuring VMware. They spoke at length about their new SD-WAN Client and how it can help you solve many of the challenges you face in a world that has become increasingly distributed. The old days of the enterprise bastion are long gone thanks to a workforce that is doing their job at home or in a coffee shop. We no longer have a castle but instead we have knights roaming the countryside. We must ensure they are armored to keep them safe.

In the video (link to published video here), Aamer Akhter talks about the VMware SD-WAN client and how it is built to function in a new distributed world. It’s more than just a piece of software for an endpoint. It’s a system of relays and connectors that allow the SD-WAN connection to use the fastest network connections to get the data to the right location. It’s a client that only initiates secure communications when needed to preserve device resources. It’s also an architecture that allows for multipath resilience and performance. Instead of hoping that you’re using the best path to the cloud or to your private data center the VMware SD-WAN Client continually assures that you are.

Going back to our ATM example, VMware SD-WAN is a perfect fit for the needs of these devices. They don’t need to send large files all the time and have no need for constant communications. Everything is transaction based and, aside from a few pictures of deposits or camera footage, are usually text-based in nature. Many ATMs run an operating system based on Windows, which would allow a client developed for that OS to work seamlessly.

VMware has taken it one step further though. Instead of using a specialized client that works only on ATMs they have built in the kinds of configurations needed for a headless client to operate on any devices. Using security tokens and device profiles you can install the VMware SD-WAN Client on the ATM and have it log in automatically without any user intervention. That means that the device will be protected even if it reboots. That should prevent wily attackers from knocking the machine offline to interrupt communications to compromise it.

Creating a client that has these kinds of capabilities is a boon to the distributed device security crowd. No longer do you have to worry about securing these devices with custom hardware or expensive solutions that require on-site technicians to configure. Instead, you just send the new ATM to the location with a tech that plugs in a hardware token and everything comes up like it should. Imagine this kind of technology working on any number of headless devices. From LED billboards to slot machines to hallway clocks the possibilities are endless. All can be secured thanks to the development efforts of VMware and their SD-WAN Client technology.

Bring It All TogetherI miss Private VLANs. Sure, they didn’t scale very well, and they were more problematic to troubleshoot. They wouldn’t work in a cloud-first environment. However, knowing I could isolate traffic was an ace in the hole when I needed it. Today’s world calls for better technology that offers similar capabilities but extends out from the local network. VMware has a real winner with their SD-WAN Client and the platform around it. Don’t limit yourself to thinking about SD-WAN as just hardware. Rethink how you want your network to operate and stay secure.

To watch VMware’s Showcase video, head to the Tech Field Day Website go to https://sase.vmware.com/sase to learn more about the offering.

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Uniqueness is the enemy of consistency. We spend our time building custom environments and then find our efforts to automate them fail. In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, John Kilpatrick, Jody Lemoine, and Vince Schuele highlight all the reasons why we’ve spent our careers tailoring the needs of the infrastructure to the workload. They also discuss why it’s important to understand how things need to be accomplished and how automation and orchestration systems need to be tuned to work with our design philosophies. Learn why you shouldn’t build snowflakes but also how to avoid being buried under a blizzard of design decisions.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsJohn Kilpatrick

Jody Lemoine

Vince Schuele

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@HypergeekWiFi

@GhostInTheNet

@Schuele22

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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Bringing CXL to market requires a wide variety of components, and Marvell is a key supplier to datacenter and cloud. This episode of Utilizing CXL features Shalesh Thusoo of Marvell, who discusses the many solutions they are creating to bring CXL to market. Current products are directly connecting memory to CPUs via CXL but soon we will see products enabling the sharing of memory between hosts to enable new applications.

From Marvell: This podcast contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future events or achievements. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contemplated in this podcast. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Listeners are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and no person assumes any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Shalesh Thusoo, Vice President CXL Product Development, Marvell. Connect with Shalesh on LinkedIn. You can also learn more about Marvell’s CXL plans on their CXL Tech Talk, their podcast about Transforming Cloud Data Centers with CXL, and see videos on their YouTube channel.

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Things are once again shifting in the cloud industry. A change is underway, and it has a name – Cloud Native 2.0. Some years back, analysts prophesied that enterprises that are cloud-native, will eventually double down on digital transformation, and keep the modernization going. What is happening today is sort of a fulfillment of that prophesy. And we don’t need a crystal ball to tell us that. The obvious maturity of Kubernetes, the transformation of applications to microservices, and the growing pains of application networking, are proof enough.

At the recent Cloud Field Day event, Solo.io hit this topic. Christian Posta, Cloud Field CTO explained the application networking challenges facing enterprises at this second stage of cloud evolution. In the following session, he showed off Solo.io’s newly released Gloo Platform that alleviates those challenges, and help companies transition to this new era of service meshes and microservice applications, to leverage its opportunities.

The Trends of Cloud Native 2.0`Cloud Native 2.0 has opened a floodgate of innovation. Microservices architecture has grabbed mainstream attention, and is seeing rapid adoption. There is a higher demand for scalability as a result of that, as enterprises need to add more clusters to manage the sprawl.

Having mastered Kubernetes over the past years, organizations are moving on to service meshes to harness new capabilities. Seeing how often the functions of a service mesh overlap those of API gateways, most users are in favor of having these capabilities combined into a modular architecture.

These trends are a reminder that enterprises need to rethink application networking with a new, Cloud Native 2.0 mindset.

What is Application Networking?To level set, Mr. Posta gave a quick high-level description of application networking at the beginning of his presentation at Cloud Field Day. In plain-speak, application networking is the process of making applications available to each other, and to the users. In a network, applications are constantly connecting with data, devices, and with each other through APIs. As they communicate, their assets get exposed to the network in part or in whole. These assets are then discovered and used by other consumers in the networks.

Problem occurs when this needs to happen seamlessly in a distributed and dynamic environment. In the world that Cloud Native 2.0 has brought upon us, nothing is easy. Things are constantly changing in the network, and applications are spread out across multiple availability zones and clouds, which makes it even harder for services to discover each other and communicate.

“When you deploy an application, you might scale it up or scale it down, or it might become unhealthy. There’re no guarantees on exactly how the distributed nature of these services will behave over the network, and what the infrastructure is going to do,” noted Mr. Posta.

Likewise, observability and security too remain a challenge when deploying applications in a cloud platform. When overlooked, these problems make room for unpredictable failures and security breaches.

Getting a Closer Look at the Solo.io Gloo PlatformSolo.io addresses the complexities, inconsistencies, and overheads that organizations run into when deploying microservices applications onto a cloud platform like Kubernetes.

“At Solo, we think about solving these problems, at the gateway layer, or the edge of a boundary, inside a particular boundary in the so-called East- West direction or service to service direction, and then tying this down deeper into the lower layers of the networking stack.”

Solo.io takes a multi-layer approach to solving the challenges of Cloud Native 2.0. The Gloo Platform, released in the fall of 2022 after 18 months of engineering and collaboration work, brings together service mesh and API management in an integrated solution. The platform constitutes Gloo Network, a Container Network Interface (CNI) for Kubernetes, Gloo Mesh, a service mesh, and up top, Gloo Gateway, an API gateway. These come under the API management of the central Gloo Portal.

The platform’s suite of tools offers simplified operations, automated deployment, zero-trust security and deep observability into Layers 3 to 7.

The Gloo Gateway that is “the only API gateway that’s built directly on top of the service mesh” is built with cloud-friendly technologies. It ties natively to Gloo Mesh allowing users to have consistent policies across networking and security for all traffic.

The second layer, Glue Mesh is an enterprise service mesh that allows teams to transparently add properties like centralized observability, zero-trust security and multi-tenancy without modifying the app code.

The last layer which forms the foundational piece is the Gloo Network. Gloo Network provides connectivity, defense and observability for containerized applications using a Cilium-based CNI.

To get more information on Solo.io’s Gloo Platform, be sure to check out their deep-dive presentations from the recent Cloud Field Day event.

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In the networked world of today, we are all consumers of some network service, and as customers, we love to be served, and most of all, heard by our providers. But seldom do we think about our service providers, which begs the questions: who serves the servers? Or which service do they consume?

Particularly in networking, especially after the paradigm shift the pandemic started, service providers work around the clock to meet the growing expectations of their customers on the services they offer.

The Paragon Automation SuiteIt has been amazing that the Tech Field Day folks are focusing on the service provider space, to talk about the challenges they have and how, many companies are serving the servers!

Some time ago, at a session with the Tech Field Day, Juniper Networks showcased their service provider focused automation offering— the Paragon Automation Suite. Though working for a service provider is definitely not a walk in the park, their offering is quite powerful, and can get even better.

Each one of the components in the Paragon Automation Suite delivers a particularly vital service that can be used by the other elements in the suite. In other words, each one of the elements uses data as the language of love within the suite, and generates an output that the other elements can ingest to deliver a service. It’s a marvelous ecosystem made of an army of foot soldiers working (and sometimes fixing/breaking) inside the computer tower case.

A convenient summary can be found in the image below:

Here are the functions that the Paragon Suite can automate:

Monitor the network
Create and deploy services
Modify existing infrastructure
Log everything
Save network snapshots
Ingest and process network data
Graph services and infrastructure
Study trends

Everything focuses on the network information. For service providers whose revenue is related to availability, satisfied customers, services, reputation and flexibility, it is a marvelous resource.

The ProblemsManaging a service provider grade network is a sizable amount of work that involves lots of technology, shrouded in the complexity that typically entails the delivery of a myriad of services to a plethora of customers.

Service providers run in similar ways as huge corporations. They have siloed teams and disjointed departments, doing more with less, performing a series of manual tasks, moving slowly, prioritizing stability and availability over anything else, and very often, preferring better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

Rarely if ever, greenfield or single-vendor, and in many cases, definitely not state-of-the-art and novelty.

In other words:

Inherently complex
Siloed
Manual
Massive
Risk-averse
Conservative
Non-standard

How do you manage, operate and improve a network infrastructure of such scale and complexity? You need capable and abundant engineering resources, patience, and clever solutions. And that’s where Paragon Automation comes in!

The ProposalIn a novel package, the Paragon Automation Suite offers a series of features to address some of the biggest pain points service providers are looking to solve.

Service Modeling and Deployment

The network can be mapped and provisioned through several methods and protocols like OpenConfig and gNMI streaming telemetry, gRPC, SNMP, NETCONF/YANG, CLI, Syslog, NetFlow, and any other data sources, under the Bring Your Own (BYO) banner.

Being able to handle the word-soup of protocols above means the network devices and services from the past or the present can be added, mapped, deployed, graphed, and monitored.

Having a standardized set of models through the network allows providers to have a service-centric visibility. Knowing which services cross which devices, for how long, the sources and destinations, by abstracting the network complexity under them is helpful to say the least.

Active MeasurementOnce the service has been deployed, it is important to measure, monitor, and evaluate the trends over time. Everybody loves bars and colors drawn and to tell a story in unison, and the way to do that is through measurement.

However, without correct measuring points and mechanisms, an accurate picture cannot be drawn. If the intention is to measure what the service looks like, it is ideal to send probes from a data plane perspective. This can be done with synthetic information generated by agents in the devices and sent through the network, mimicking user traffic all the way up from Layer1 to Layer7, and looking at the services through their own eyes.

Network ObservabilityBy combining the service-centric view, topology information, network telemetry and active data plane measurements, you can get comprehensive and detailed observability throughout the stack.

Is the link congested? Do we need to move LSPs away from that device? Will it congest others if we do?

Answers to question like these can be found based on telemetry and active assurance.

SDN Solution with Multivendor SupportBy showcasing path computing capabilities, LSPs can be created, altered, rerouted, and with them, services altogether. Taking into consideration factors like shared link risk groups, affinity/coloring, priority, LSP symmetry, ERO, SLAs and path diversity, among others, services can be monitored as part of the assurance, analyzed, and their paths computed, and optimized.

That’s the entire lifecycle for the services through deployment, monitoring, and reprovisioning, if needed – all through closed loop automation, and setting the foundation for a more intelligent and self-driving network.

And the best part is, the protocols are standardized and devices can come from any vendor regardless of their already provisioned services and technologies.

Closing thoughtsThe Paragon Automation Suite offers plenty of benefits and features that could help service providers to provision, monitor, manage and optimize services. It addresses several of the common pain points providers suffer nowadays such as, manual tasks, service deployment, monitoring, activation, testing and optimization, network observability, trend analysis and multi-vendor real estate.

Paragon Automation is a rather original combination of functions and features that allows not only to supervise, but also actively influence and optimize the network on a vendor-neutral basis.

Additional links for further information:There’s a wealth of information available if you want more details. You can find everything from short explainer videos, to use case demo recordings, thought leadership webinars with executives from BT and Verizon, case study videos from Orange Poland and GARR, product datasheets, complementary analyst reports, interoperability test reports and more. Just click on the links below to get started:

The benefits of end to end network automation
Juniper’s approach to end to end network automation
A deep-dive into end to end network automation use cases and case studies
Juniper Paragon Pathfinder: explainer video, analyst reports and key features

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In 2018, Goldman Sachs, a leading investment banking firm ran into rough weather when an internal struggle erupted around change assurance. The company was looking at a long list of problems that had spiraled out of constant network changes typical to banking. Having an outsize network, these dynamics had become too much to handle internally. Although Goldman Sachs was leveraging some in-house automation at the time, they soon realized that in order to stop these problems from engendering a network outage, the automation stack needs to be refreshed with something new, and better. That was the first time, they used a digital twin.

At the recent Cloud Field Day event in California, Forward Networks presented their network digital twin technology, that pulled Goldman Sachs out of the deadlock and brought them into an era of improved network reliability and security.

Mirror ImageIt has long been a dream of industries to be able to see something before it is brought into being. To visualize something before it becomes a reality is one thing, but to be able to get an accurate picture beforehand was beyond most of our imaginations, until technological advancement spurted out digital twins.

A digital twin is a virtual model of a real-world object. Digital twin networks allow operators to test real-world environments, to understand ahead of time how the network will behave in the given scenario. They are incredibly beneficial for achieving better network performance through predictive maintenance. But that is only a small fraction of what can be achieved with this technology. Its potential goes far beyond maintenance.

Digital twin became a fascination for millions as the world recognized its power to bridge the distances between digital and physical worlds. With it, network operators are able to enhance network designs, improve visibility, and assess and manage change which it did in case of Goldman Sachs. By harnessing network data, it can answer several categories of questions on any topic sent its way.

Forward Networks’ Digital Twin TechnologyCo-Founder of Forward Networks, Peyman Kazemian himself showed off the solution to the panel of technology veterans attending the Cloud Field Day event, explaining some of the use cases, and offering a glimpse under the hood.

Forward Networks launched its digital twin technology in 2017 with the mission to recreate the magic of Google Maps, but for IT. Google Maps, what many don’t know, is a digital twin of the global transportation system. Mr. Kazemian commented that it’s this technology that gave Google Maps “a use case so compelling that there’s no going back.” Powered with three kinds of data – static, live and peripheral, it provides travelers real-time views and updates about traffic, routes and places.

Forward Networks started its journey in the same vein. With a simple mission: to make networks more reliable, agile and secure, it has built its digital twin technology with “broad and deep data combined with analytics”. Static data makes the base, which is then enriched with layers of real-time data.

“We started by pulling in data config in a state from all traditional networking devices like switches and routers and firewalls and load balancers. Then we expanded it to SD-WAN and more software-defined elements like NSX and ACI,” said Mr. Kazemian.

Seeing that organizations are leaning towards a hybrid setup to have their workloads spread out between on-premises and cloud, Forward Networks followed suit and expanded to cloud. In cloud, it began collecting data from all the three major clouds – AWS, Azure and GCP.

“What I mean by pulling data is grabbing information about all the cloud components and constructs that affect how traffic is being delivered to those end hosts, whether it’s subnets and security groups, or transit gateway and VPN gateway, or VPC endpoints and anything that affects delivering of traffic.”

To make it more resourceful, they pumped in more information, focusing on peripheral data like performance metrics and security vulnerabilities. This is done to the point where it can provide network and cloud operators the ability to look at the traffic path and see right away where the congestion is, or what in the network has a critical vulnerability that needs to be fixed quickly.

The information is mapped and correlated, to “provide context to other types of information that are not specifically cloud or on-premises.”

Forward Networks digital twin is deployed at scale in large enterprise networks with over 50, 000 on-prem devices. It supports over 30 vendors and 40 OSs, and a variety of networking protocols. As of today, it is in all the three major clouds.

The Two HalvesMr. Kazemian said that the uniqueness of Forwad Networks’ digital twin technology lies in the way it exposes the data and analytics to the users. To elaborate, he broke down the anatomy into two key pieces- a Network Query Engine (NQE) and “broad and deep analytics”.

The Network Query Engine is a vendor-agnostic query engine that provides “access to raw data that is parsed and normalized.” The engine abstracts and normalizes network information like config, links, device state, routing policies and cloud elements, collected from different environments, and present them through an open-config structure. IT teams can query this information like a database. Regardless of the cloud, the data is browsable to all IT teams.

Mr. Kazemian said, “What we spent a lot of time building is computing the path of all possible traffic through the hybrid environment.” He continued, “If you think about the network, there are several ingress points – at the edge, usually in the datacenters, or in the cloud. They can pump traffic into this black box that we call the digital IT infrastructure. For all those ingress points, we compute all possible ways that traffic can be pumped there, and we precompute that. We index that and make that searchable to users.”

Queries can be made on all endpoint data and network paths with sub-second response times. Forward Networks tops the data with deep analytics, so that teams can have access to complete, accurate and up-to-date models of the infrastructure.

“In order for us to make sure that these models sort of match the reality, we have over 120,000 tests where we configure different cloud elements or on-premise devices into a specific configuration bombarded with packets, to make sure we are generating a perfect model.”

Wrapping UpWith AI and machine learning on the rise, it is not hard to explain the massive traction digital twin has gained across industries. It is changing the game in networking by enabling operators to tune up network performance, and prognostically avoid costly outages. Forward Networks’ digital twin technology further advances these capabilities. It can replicate infrastructures with mathematical precision, with data collected from far and wide, and bring it to the fingertips of teams who need them. Using that information, operators can make accurate predictions and prevent issues, thus closing the gap between user expectations and reality.

To learn about Forward Networks’ digital twin technology in greater detail, be sure to check out their presentations from the recent Cloud Field Day event.

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Cisco is looking to embrace the growing field of IoT with some new announcements around rugged switches and access points as well as a new dashboard designed to address the needs of operations teams. The new Cisco IoT dashboard allows existing IT teams to manage Cisco IoT offerings, such as the IE3100 Rugged Series Switch and the IW9165 Series Access Point. The goal is to provide more integration between these teams to help create synergy as well as provide enhanced security monitoring through the new Cyber Vision IoT security platform.

Cisco has also announced several new initiatives aimed at providing sustainability in enterprise IT. Leveraging platforms such as Webex to reduce the carbon footprint of in-person meetings is just the start. Partner companies like Pure Storage are working to reduce power consumption in devices as well as providing upgrade paths to reduce the amount of e-waste for end-of-life hardware. The goal is helping IT departments adopt sustainable methods and integrate those into their workflows for the future while also streamlining operations and reducing CapEx and OpEx budgets.

1:05 | ChatGPT getting a lot of usage and headlines

ChatGPT is a trained AI model that we can interact with in a conversational way. It really has seemed to take the consumer world by storm. Google has now announced a competing offering called Bard. What are the long term goals and implications of products like these?

Read More: Microsoft is holding a press event tomorrow, with ChatGPT expected to feature heavily

Read More: Google unveils Bard, its ChatGPT rival

4:30 | Amazon planning to migrate some Oregon data centers to Natural Gas

AWS is reportedly concerned about not being able to get enough power to handle its Oregon data centers and is looking to natural gas fuel cells. Are alternate power sources an outlier or will they become more common for other hyper-scalers? Could these hyper-scalers end up inadvertently driving some alternate power and fuel source discussions.

Read More: Power Grid Worries Force Amazon To Run Oregon Datacenters Using Fuel Cells

6:13 | Dell Introduces a Rugged VX-Rail for the edge

Dell continues its push to the edge with the new rugged VD-4000 line of VX-Rail servers. These compact rack and standalone servers pack a VMware and vSAN solution for the and scale all the way down to two nodes. What’s your take on this new edge solution?

Read More: Dell takes VxRail hyperconverged systems to the rugged edge

9:28 | No Crypto Super Bowl ads have been purchased.

Crypto ads were big in the “big game” last year. Yet we’re hearing that there will be none at all during the big game this year. What has changed?

Read More: No Cryptocurrency Super Bowl Ads Have Been Purchased This Year

11:14 | NetApp Introduces a QLC Line

NetApp introduced the all-flash C-Series this week, adding a new line in their ONTAP offerings. It uses QLC flash and is positioned as a less-expensive and greener alternative. Is it the real deal?

Read More: NetApp Announces A Whole New Line

Read More: NetApp adds quad-level cell arrays to AFF range

14:42 | Where do all of the Silicon Valley workers go after layoffs?

There are continued announcements of large tech companies laying off varying percentages of staff. First off, is there a good way to know how many of these are tech professionals, and where do those tech professionals go? Do they jump to other large tech firms or do they continue to embrace remote work and take their talents to smaller companies and industries, perhaps on the enterprise side?

17:26 | HYCU Backs Up All the Things with Protégé R-Cloud

Enterprise data protection firm Hycu just introduced a new cloud backup offering featuring an extensible marketplace that could support just about any SaaS in the cloud. The Protégé R-Cloud comes out of the gate with an API and developer kit as well as support for some popular SaaS data sources. What do you think of this comprehensive offering?

Read More: HYCU tackles the SaaS data protection challenge with the announcement of R-Cloud

21:08 | Cisco Leans Into 5G, IoT, and Sustainability at Cisco Live EMEA

Read More: Harmonizing Networking and Security to Make SASE Easy

Read More: New innovations to simplify IT for industrial networks

Read More: Cisco expands Cisco Intersight to EMEA for sovereignty and high performance

Read More: New Cisco Catalyst 9200CX Compact With HVDC, Cisco UPOE And mGig

Read More: Cisco Connects and Protects with New Cloud Tools Across Networking, Security and Operations to Provide Greater Visibility and Control Over Networks

Read More: Cisco Doubles Down on Frictionless Security to Protect Hybrid Work and Multi-Cloud Environments

Read More: New Cisco Innovation Helps Organizations Meet Sustainability Targets

35:48 | The Weeks Ahead

Cisco Live EMEA – February 7 – February 8, 2023

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

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It is often the narrative in IT that in order to get premium solutions, one needs to pay top dollars. This is especially true in case of cybersecurity. Any change in security spending begets a corresponding change in the security outcomes, and consequently, on the overall posture. But there is a silver lining behind this rather unpopular reality which often gets lost in the noise. A strong security posture isn’t so much about the solution as it is about the strategy. Even in application security, which captures over $6 billion in spending, there is a way to establish consistent security at a very reasonable cost.

At the recent Cloud Field Day event in California, Fortinet presented three solutions that build on this argument. Cloud Security Architect, Srija Reddy Allam, and Global SAP Security Engineer, Julian Petersohn, staged multiple real-world scenarios to demonstrate to the audience how Fortinet’s solutions build an impenetrable front, providing pervasive protection to applications throughout the lifecycle.

Expectations and ObligationsWhen it comes to app security, there are some baseline expectations to meet. First, the solution should be easily consumable, and it should not encroach upon the time or bandwidth of the teams.

Second, and this is a top priority with a majority of the organizations, is that a security solution should be able to manage risks at a minimum cost. And last but not the least, affordable operations that would steer an organization away from costly pitfalls.

Securing the Application Development ProcessFortinet pledges to satisfy all of the above, and more. Fortinet’s policy is consistent end-to-end application security which they believe is the secret to drive up cyber resiliency and pare down spending.

Fortinet’s solutions get to the root, and arrest the threat vectors, limiting the possibilities of an attack. Fortinet’s catalogue features a wealth of solutions that brings enhanced visibility and early mitigation of vulnerabilities. Shrinking down the attack surface, not just in production, but right from pre-production, they say, ensures maximum security.

“Application security in general, falls under two primary focus areas- shift left, pre-production and shift right, the production area. The opportunity in pre-production is in how far we can reduce risk and shrink the attack surface. We can reduce risk and improve our security baseline at the least cost there,” explained Petersohn.

“After the application gets into production, this is the point at which it faces the highest risk. Here, the security must adapt to the user inputs behavior, identify malicious versus benign anomalies, and that, without affecting anything of the usual benign behavior, or making it even more complex to go out there,” he noted.

Fortinet Security FabricAs an industry leader of many years, Fortinet knows better than most how to combat cyberthreats. For Fortinet, the path to complete protection is through a 360-degree approach. Its solutions, when working together, ensure a defense readiness that organizations need to operate in the perilous digital world of today.

For that they offer a holistic solution that is called the Fortinet Security Fabric. Fortinet Security Fabric is a unified solution designed with heterogenous integrated solutions and services. True to its name, the solution deploys as a fabric, protecting environments against the most vicious kinds of attacks, be it in cloud, on-prem, edge, remote or campus.

When weighed against point security solutions, the Fortinet Security Fabric has several significant advantages. Rather than relying on standalone products, Fortinet packs the best of its security solutions into a platform. Being powered by a multitude of integrated tools, services and capabilities, each one of which is designed to deliver a certain kind of protection, this fabric provides the broadest defense.

In the guts of Fortinet Security Fabric is FortiGuard Threat Intelligence, the crown jewel of Fortinet’s security portfolio. It’s where their deep awareness of the real-world threats comes from. Threat Intelligence picks up telemetry via millions of Fortinet sensors deployed worldwide. A constant stream of intelligence from FortiGuard Threat Intelligence feeds into the solutions keeping them up-to-date about the latest threats and trends. Combined into a single solution, these services reduce management complexity and cost overheads.

Fortinet’s is an open ecosystem. Petersohn informed, “We have over 500 solutions in our fabric, which can exchange information with over 350 vendors.”

In short, the Fortinet Security Fabric is a slam-dunk for any organization looking for security to be integrated in way that it does not get in the way of application delivery.

Application Security with the Trifecta of FortiGate CNF, FortiWeb and FortiDevSecDuring the demo, the team brought three products into focus to showcase the strength of protection provided by Fortinet.

FortiGate CNFFirst in line was the FortiGate Cloud-Native Firewall Service. FortiGate Cloud-Native Firewall (CNF) is a fully managed, firewall-as-a-service solution that is designed to relieve security operation workloads and simplify cloud network security. FortiGate CNF comes with advanced features like bad IP and DNS filtering, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), geo IP policies, and application layer visibility.

All security and authentication features can be put to set-and-forget mode which means that the service to do its job without manual intervention. It allows the security teams to offload the works of configuration, provision and maintenance of the firewall software which automatically brings down the TCO, and leaves them to focus on policy management.

FortiWeb CloudNext up is FortiWeb, a web application firewall whose chief function is to block attacks aimed at exploiting web applications and APIs. Also a SaaS offering, FortiWeb has a host of great features including easy on-boarding, vulnerability scanning, bot detection, and ML-based detection and blocking. ML-based analytics reduces false positives, and enables it to look beyond the conventional security models.

Srija Allam informed, “FortiWeb Cloud can be subscribed from any of the major clouds like AWS, Azure, GCP and OCI. All you have to do is subscribe to the AWS marketplace. From there, it’s like creating a social media profile. Just create a support account on support.fortinet.com, and you can log into FortiWeb Cloud.”

FortiDevSecThe third and the final product that ties it all together is FortiDevSec, another SaaS-based offering from Fortinet. FortiDevSec comes packed with vulnerability detection and management capabilities, but most importantly it has the DevSecOps DNA that allows developers and DevOps to use it alike, without requiring any specialized security expertise.

FortiDevSec is primarily a testing solution that automates application testing in the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) lifecycle. With just a few lines of codes, engineers can integrate it natively into their CI/CD process. This is particularly useful in agile methodologies where everything happens concurrently and in iterations, and there is not much room for continuous testing.

FortiDevSec scans things like source codes, open-source, third-party libraries, secrets, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for hidden vulnerabilities. It serves up the findings on a consolidated dashboard that offers visibility into all the security risks existing in a web application.

Wrapping UpThe end-to-end security imperative is especially paramount in application security. But cost should not be the Achille’s heel of comprehensive security. The solutions show that Fortinet knows how to embed security in the DNA of app development, and most importantly, to do it without blowing up the TCO. Besides doing the obvious job of helping organizations combat the latest strains threats, the solutions examine vulnerabilities, and weed them out to make applications safer throughout their lifecycle. With this trifecta, Fortinet proves once again that security is truly in its wheelhouse.

If you are interested in the technical details of the solutions, be sure to check out Fortinet’s presentation above from the recent Cloud Field Day event.

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It should come as no surprise that cloud infrastructure and operations are the status quo for today’s enterprises. With remote work a must for many employees, the flexibility the cloud provides is rivaled only by the potential complexities it adds to IT administration. Breakthroughs like Infrastructure as Code have helped improve cloud sysadmins’ abilities to more effectively manage their cloud instances, but often is limited by its scope of reach. That is, until now.

Meet evn0Env0 is paving the way to simplifying Infrastructure as Code at scale. Operating out of Israel and the US, the company is helmed and co-founded by Omry Hay, who recently sat down with Gestalt IT’s Stephen Foskett to discuss the env0 platform.

As Hay describes it, env0 provides IT admins a single tool to manage all of their IaC deployments across tools like Terraform, Pulumi, Kubernetes, and others. He likens it to what GitHub did for Git but for infrastructure, allowing teams to manage their code deployments coincidentally across all of their frameworks—and clouds—at play.

In practice, env0 is used for managing RBAC, auditing, self service, etc. in cloud infrastructure effectively through a single platform. Optimized for infrastructure deployments (although not app development), env0 customers use the tool to manage security policies at scale across their clouds as well.

Digging DeeperAmidst the discussion, Hay broke into a demo to showcase env0 in action. Env0 works across clouds, with customers using it to simultaneously manage AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM, Oracle, and even vCenter or Dreamware instances. Built around Terraform, env0 is cloud agnostic, making it ideal for large and small enterprises alike.

For ease of use, env0 contains a number of pre-built templates which can be used to point directly to repos like AWS S3 buckets to easily manage code deployments at an organizational level. Users of env0 can create their own templates as well by simply defining their frameworks, their clouds, and then assigning the proper repos and variables.

Beyond these templates, env0 users may also specify which environments their changes will be made to, whether it be dev, live production, or elsewhere. Going further, admins in the platform can even define roles within env0 itself, ensuring that certain employees must undergo an approval flow before pushing code changes live as necessary. Other features include Slack notifications for new code pushes, project-specific policies like number of users or TTL, and more.

Using env0 for Enterprise-Scale IaCIn addition to the normal use features, env0 also provides infrastructure environment usage information, such as run cost, number of resources in use, deployment logs, and other key insights into operations. Since they are SaaS-based (or potentially hybrid using downloaded agents), all of these capabilities come out of the box, as it were. Env0 even handles the deployment provided you enter the correct repo and your preferred framework.

When it comes to managing massive cloud deployments, env0 simplifies the process tremendously. In a day and age where Infrastructure as Code can be an admin’s best friend, env0 makes it even easier to manage those IaC deployments at scale.

To learn more about env0’s offering, visit their website. Want to learn more about other companies and products changing the face of enterprise IT? Read more at GestaltIT.com.

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When discussing network security, the approach most recommended has several iterations. “Layered Security”, “Defense in Depth”, “Zero Trust” to name a few. What these all have in common, is the idea that it is not good enough to put a firewall at the edge and call it a day. Instead, a multi-layered approach has a better chance to protect critical infrastructure, and provide staged, multifaceted security.

The New Edge Poses a ProblemWith cloud adoption becoming prevalent, the infrastructure that is being protected lives not only in a corporate datacenter, but also with cloud providers. Users and devices are far more mobile, and are expected to access resources wherever they are, at any time. The “edge” of the network is no longer a single location – it is everywhere and anywhere a user or device exists.

Traditional VPN clients initially offered a workable solution for this, by ensuring endpoints were connected back to the on-premises datacenter for access. This often means hairpinning traffic through that edge firewall, and back out for access to the internet or cloud services. This isn’t an ideal design.

The transformation of where users and endpoints work, and what they require access to, means what was traditionally defined as “the edge” has moved to every one of those users and devices, and redefined network security and protection. This has now evolved into Secure Access Service Edge, or SASE.

A Layered ArchitectureSASE remains a layered architecture. It includes SD-WAN, Firewall, Secure Web Gateway, Zero-Trust Network Access, and Cloud Access Security Broker, all working together to secure and protect endpoints and critical infrastructure, including cloud services, and traditional datacenters.

VMware discussed their SASE architecture at a recent showcase discussion with Tech Field Day. Here they offered two main options for consumption of SASE – single vendor “converged”, or two vendors “integrated”, splitting the key components of SASE into WAN Edge, the SD-WAN component, and Secure Service Edge (SSE) which is comprised of the multiple layers of technology mentioned earlier (SWG, FW, ZTNA, etc.). This provides options for organizations, those who may wish to consolidate their SASE architecture under a single vendor for simplicity, ease of management, and perhaps reduced cost, versus others who may want to handpick each of their SASE layers into a best-of-breed security onion.

What’s NewThe big news from VMware is the SD-WAN component for whichever design chosen, will now include the new VMware SD-WAN client. A VMware SD-WAN appliance makes sense for the branch or satellite office, and even the home office in cases where there may be semi-permanent, multi-device environments that need secure access.

However, for the solo user or endpoint at home, while traveling, or even working from the local coffee shop, the traditional VPN or remote access was typically needed.

This new lightweight VMware SD-WAN client is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, and is managed via the same “single plane of glass” that all other VMware SD-WAN endpoints are managed – VMware SD-WAN Orchestrator.

VMware now offers 3 options to provide consistent, and reliable remote access for any user on any device. The traditional VMware SD-WAN Edge, the VMware Secure Access Client as part of Workspace One, and this new VMware SD-WAN Client, which combines the best of both products to include path optimization and provides access to on-premises datacenters, cloud services, and secured internet. Eventually this client and the VMware Secure Access Client will be one single product.

This new client offers the same zero-touch provisioning found in the rest of the VMware SD-WAN portfolio, including firewall and NAT traversal using the SD-WAN Client Relay. This offers fully encrypted outbound connectivity to join the SD-WAN fabric, allowing the endpoint to seamlessly communicate with the rest of the enterprise infrastructure.

ConclusionWhether an organization chooses the single vendor option, with a stacked/integrated offering that is end-to-end VMware or handpicks each individual product from a wide variety of vendors to build a best of breed security stack, each of these provide flexibility and options in how an enterprise may leverage their existing partnership with VMware. This, combined with an unprecedented number of third-party vendor integrations, gives VMware the competitive advantage to be at the head of an organizational SASE infrastructure.

To watch VMware’s Showcase video, head to the Tech Field Day Website go to https://sase.vmware.com/sase to learn more about the offering.

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The last couple of months have been a nightmare for fliers. Two major outages forced authorities to ground numerous flights leading to long delays and impromptu cancellations. If you had somewhere to fly out to over the holiday season, you’re probably livid like the rest of the passengers stranded in the airport, paying for a fault that was not theirs. So, what caused the outages, and couldn’t they have been avoided?

The disruption was digital, which means someone out there could have done something to prevent the whole fiasco from happening, should they have been proactive. Field Day delegate, Chris Hayner offers a breakdown of what happened in his article – “Murphy’s Endgame : It’ll Definitely Go Wrong If We Never Even Try To Fix It”. In the article, Hayner writes,

So there were some interesting oopsies in the kind-of-important-not-to-have-oopsies airline industry at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. I’m going to highlight two of them that you probably heard about: The Southwest meltdown that caused something like 65% of flights to be canceled over the holidays, and the failure of the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (or NOTAM) system. That one caused a 2-ish-hour “pause on all domestic departures.” These were both bad, for different reasons. But as we will see they share some unfortunate commonalities- not only with each other, but with a great many other organizations and businesses around the globe.

Read the rest of the story to get a full picture of what broke and caused the outages. For more such interesting stories, be on our mailing list.

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XDR is the latest exciting solution that will fix all of your security woes. It will break down siloes in your organization and reduce response time to intrusions. But is it a tool that only the security team can use? Or is it something that requires buy-in from the whole organization? In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth, Zoë Rose, and Dominik Pickhardt discuss XDR and how it can be leveraged by the entire organization to help secure your assets and users.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsZoë Rose

Dominik Pickhardt

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@RoseSecOps

@NetworkAutobahn

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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Modern industries are powered by some of the most powerful and complex networks ever built. But these advances have made network management an absolute nightmare. Anuta Networks recently launched a new capability – Active Service Assurance (ASA) – for their signature network automation and monitoring platform, Anuta ATOM.

At the recent Networking Field Day event, Technical Marketing Engineer, Sahil Katira demoed this new feature. With ATOM Active Service Assurance, enterprises can greatly reduce monitoring overheads and mean time to repair (MTTR), potentially saving hours, and speeding services to market.

Network Monitoring OverheadsWith networks growing at a pace not witnessed before, enterprises are compelled to drain their resources to keep them up and running 24/7. Even so, their expectations of payoff are often thwarted. Manual styles of management and monitoring get in the way.

Management of these environments entails an endless number of tasks ranging from onboarding to monitoring and maintenance. With the number of domains, devices and clouds at an all-time high, most manual approaches are moderately effective at best, and horribly resource-intensive and error-prone at worst. Factor in the pains of real-time monitoring and it’s a hamster wheel. Experts say that disruptions caused by inefficient management styles and monitoring tools cost companies hundreds of hours of delay in service delivery annually.

Enhancing QoE with Anuta ATOMIt’d be a lot simpler if enterprises didn’t have to rely on engineers to manually scout the network for problems, or do the onboarding and provisioning. Anuta Networks’ agenda with ATOM is to enable IT teams to get through the find-and-fix journey without being hit with one problem after another. This is achievable only when a bulk of the management and monitoring work is handled proactively and at speed, preferably without human intervention. That is Anuta Networks’ mission with ATOM.

Anuta Networks added a prequel session on ATOM to the Networking Field Day presentation of Active Service Assurance to give the audience a quick overview of capabilities of the original platform. Kiran Sirupa, VP of Marketing gave a quick rundown of its functions.

“Anuta ATOM helps with complete network automation, all the way from onboarding the devices to maintaining the lifecycle of the devices, upgrading the software, provisioning, and finally monitoring the health of the services and taking any remediation steps,” said Sirupa.

Anuta ATOM is a software solution that comes with an interactive user-interface where operators can create new workflow designs or implement out-of-box ones, to automate tasks. ATOM offloads a majority of the routine work, and in the process removes the additional hurdles organizations face regularly.

“It supports multi-domain, multi-vendor and multi-tenant networks,” informed Sirupa.

Like many network automation solutions, ATOM leverages closed-loop automation to deliver its capabilities. A closed-loop automation framework enables software-centric networking, requiring little to no manual intervention, and ensures high levels of customer satisfaction.

“We focus exclusively on closed-loop network automation for multi-vendor, multi-domain networks. Our target customers are service providers and large enterprises,” said Sirupa.

Anuta ATOM has three deployment models -on-prem, public and private cloud, and SaaS.

ATOM Active Service AssuranceOver the years, Anuta Networks has made several new announcements during their appearance at the Networking Field Day events. ATOM ASA was the announcement this year. The USP of this function is swift identification of anomalies through automated testing, and remediation.

ASA appears mid-way in the ATOM automation pipeline, following the stages of device onboarding and service orchestration. Using a wide variety of tests and metrics, ASA helps ensure that service level agreements (SLAs) are fully met from day one.

“ASA not only works from day one of service deployment, but can also continuously track the service for any threshold breach for the entire service lifecycle,” said Sahil Katira during the demo.

Active Service Assurance in ATOM uses test agents for automated testing. These agents can be deployed and configured as containers, bare metal servers, VMs and so on. Using these agents to generate synthetic traffic, ASA detects performance issues in the network.

“ASA can execute one or more test suites at the time of service provisioning,” said Katira.

Tests are conducted in three steps – creation, execution, and report and remediation. Operators can choose from a library of pre-built tests or create their own on ATOM’s workflow builder. At the execution stage, the test or test suite is deployed. All test reports are published on the ATOM dashboard.

“The reporting infrastructure is customizable, and the test results can be grouped into KPIs. These tests are measured against defined SLAs, and any threshold breach can be logged as an alert on ATOM.”

In the remediation stage, ATOM’s closed-loop remediation kicks in. Operators can automate a wide variety of remediation actions using the workflows.

Part of ASA’s function is ongoing validation, for which it collects data on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as latency, jitters and packet loss, from the network. ASA can also be used to identify abnormal service conditions to make sure that service SLAS are met and maintained at all times.

Wrapping UpAmid mounting network complexities, ATOM Active Service Assurance is the solution that organizations need to get a handle on service anomalies, and keep performance problems in check. ASA works to ensure that there are fewer failures. Overall, it greatly improves mean time to repair, enhancing quality of experience and speed of service delivery.

For more on Active Assurance Service, be sure to check out the demo and other presentations by Anuta Networks from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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As we delve into edge computing, one topic that has come up repeatedly is the applicability of Kubernetes as an orchestration platform. Originally created for large-scale cloud environments, Kubernetes has become popular from the datacenter to the edge. But is it really a good fit? This will certainly become a topic of discussion at Edge Field Day!

Does Kubernetes make sense in small devices running outside the datacenter?Kubernetes and EdgeKubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system that has become popular in cloud and enterprise for managing and scaling containerized applications. Although intended for use in the cloud, Kubernetes can also be used to manage and deploy containers in other environments, including at the edge.

As previously discussed, edge computing refers to the processing and storage of data in a dispersed manner, closer to consumers and sensors. Edge compute can be beneficial for applications that require low latency or have data transmission or processing challenges. By deploying Kubernetes at the edge, organizations are attempting to move containerized applications closer to the source of the data while getting the management and orchestration benefits of the cloud.

Using Kubernetes at the edge has some of the same benefits as in the cloud or datacenter: The ability easily to deploy, scale, and manage containerized applications using a centralized centralized “control plane.” The scalability of Kubernetes is particularly appealing in edge environments due to the number of devices and the amount of data collected there. The “cattle” approach is also appealing, since most edge devices are deployed anonymously in un-supervised environments and often need to be remotely wiped and reconfigured.

Organizations deploying Kubernetes at the edge are typically seeking to integrate with Kubernetes environments in the cloud or datacenter. A wide range of applications can be deployed as Kubernetes-controlled containers, and this has become the standard in modern IT. This includes a wide range of edge-specific applications, such as edge gateways, IoT solutions, and edge analytics platforms.

Kubernetes can also be helpful in terms of security. Security is one of the key concerns when it comes to edge deployments, and Kubernetes can provide security features like role-based access control, network segmentation, and encryption. When used properly, these can help organizations secure their containerized applications at the edge.

Shortcomings of Kubernetes at the EdgeKubernetes brings a lot of benefits for managing containerized applications, but it does have some limitations when it comes to edge environments.

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of Kubernetes at the edge is its complexity. Kubernetes is complex to set up and manage properly and must be carefully tailored for automated operation in edge environments where human interaction is at a premium. Most edge Kubernetes implementations are designed to be fully “lights out, hands off” but this poses a great engineering challenge. I’ve recently discussed this with Edgegap and recommend reading Brian Chambers Medium post for more. But this is a huge concern.

Another issue for Kubernetes at the edge is network latency and outages. Kubernetes relies on a centralized control plane, and network latency or instability can interfere with proper operation. Considering that edge is all about low-latency processing, such as retail or IoT applications, this is a real worry. But many companies (including Edge Field Day presenter Mako Networks) are developing redundant networking capability to help make sure these applications stay connected.

Limited resources can pose another challenge for Kubernetes in edge environments. Most edge servers have limited system resources (memory, storage, and CPU power) and even “light” Kubernetes can be taxing. I deployed Rancher on a fleet of Atom NUCs in my lab and k3s was taking up more CPU, RAM, and storage than my test applications. So Kubernetes may not be the best choice for very light systems. Luckily hardware advances all the time and we’re already seeing a proliferation of RAM and CPU in devices like the Intel NUC.

My NUC lab is slightly unconventional in appearance…Lastly, Kubernetes (and general-purpose Linux) support for arm architectures and other specialized hardware isn’t quite where we’d like it. This can be a problem for edge deployments that use specialized hardware, especially locked-down special-purpose appliances like routers or storage systems. This is also improving rapidly, however, and many of these devices are bringing better APIs and native Kubernetes support.

It is worth noting that Kubernetes is being adapted to work in edge environments, with solutions like edge clusters, Rancher, and k3s (a lightweight k8s distribution for edge computing). These are designed to overcome some of the limitations of Kubernetes at the edge and make it more compact, easier to deploy, and easier to manage.

Stephen’s StanceKubernetes is a powerful container orchestration system that can be used to manage and deploy containerized applications at the edge. By using Kubernetes at the edge, organizations can easily scale and manage their applications, integrate with other technologies, and secure their applications. But complexity, network latency, limited resources, and support for edge devices are all concerns. As edge computing continues to grow in popularity and support for Kubernetes expands, I expect that it will become a key tool for managing and deploying containerized applications at the edge. Watch for Edge Field Day on February 22 and 23, 2023 as we dive into all these questions!

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The world we live in is highly connected. Around us, there is a prolific number of devices and equipment hooked to the network, constantly interacting with each other. This new wave is sure to hasten the pace of technological evolution, but not before it has created a surge of challenges for operators.

At the recent Networking Field Day event, Juniper Networks showcased a solution that tones down operational complexities of wired switching, making Day 0 to Day 2 tasks cloud-like simple for campus fabrics. Abhi Shamsundar, Product Management, AIDE, presented Juniper Mist Wired Assurance, an AI-powered service that borrows from Juniper Networks’ wireless portfolio to deliver improved device and user experience.

Inescapable ComplexityThe campus network is rapidly expanding. In its current state, it has too many operational kinks. With a growing number of switches and routers in the picture, cyclical tasks like onboarding, configuration, integration and monitoring of devices have become a nightmare. Engineers find themselves chasing their tails when looking for the source of a problem, resulting in interminable delays in remediation.

This inside chaos reflects poorly on the overall network performance, not to mention, drives operators crazy. A demand is growing for services that would render low-friction experiences, and make campus fabric management simpler.

Bringing AI-Powered Automation to SwitchingAdministrators can overcome a lot of the user-experience quality and visibility issues if they adopt a cloud-like management model.

Case in point, Juniper Mist Wired Assurance. Wired Assurance addresses the problem two ways. It simplifies wired switching by replacing Day 0 tasks, like onboarding and provisioning with plug-and-play capabilities. It enables auto-provisioning via global configuration templates allowing users to configure switches and site attributes consistently and effortlessly.

“Our focus currently, from a Mist standpoint, encompasses every piece of network equipment, all the way from wireless, wired and WAN, to ultimately give you answers on what the experience is like,” said Shamsundar.

Juniper Networks switches stream in rich telemetry data that gives operators deep visibility into the states of the switches in real-time, reducing root cause analysis and time to repair.

“We have telemetry coming in from Wi-Fi, from wired as well as the WAN portfolio. Our focus is to get the most out of this telemetry and make sense of it,” said Shamsundar.

Wired Assurance combines the power of automation with Mist AI to extract actionable insights out of the telemetry data, and expedite troubleshooting with self-driving actions.

Juniper Mist Wired AssuranceJuniper Mist Wired Assurance is a cloud-based service that is paired with the underlying EVPN-VXLAN architecture. Together, they make the Juniper AI Driven Campus Fabric. The goal of Wired Assurance is to make provisioning, deployment and operations at scale seamless and swift like Juniper Networks’ Mist access points (APs), and at the same time provide a granular view of the fabric on the whole.

Automation of switching operations happens in three stages – Day 0, Day 1 and Day 2. Using single-click activation via Zero-Touch Provisioning, wired switches can be onboarded in groups. Within minutes of onboarding, network administrators are able to view switch metrics and service levels on the dashboard.

“Every single switch that goes out is shipped with a claim code. You can either onboard all of your devices that are part of a particular purchase order in one shot, or you could do it via a mobile app as you go on installing, racking them and stacking them. The goal for us is to make the deployment as console cable free as possible,” explained Shamsundar.

Wired Assurance also brings a host of AI-driven automation capabilities to Day 2 operations, chief among which is Juniper Marvis, a virtual network assistant that draws its power from Mist AI to provide real-time answers in natural language.

Shamsundar said, “Our whole focus when we brought the construct of Service Level Expectations (SLEs) from the wireless world, was to answer the question of how your network is doing from a client experience perspective, and not just the network devices being up or down.”

The dashboard offers detailed analytics on all the metrics starting with switch health to throughput, congestion, interface anomalies and more. This is particularly useful for swift root cause analysis (RTA) and repair.

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance takes observability a step further with Marvis Actions. Marvis Actions provides a client-to-cloud view that Juniper Networks calls administrators’ “morning cup of coffee”. While Marvis brings real-time visibility into network issues on the SLE dashboard, Marvis Actions bubbles up the high-impact problems and makes proactive troubleshooting recommendations.

All the information is automatically filtered out and presented based on category and relevancy, so that administrators do not have to navigate through all of the alerts to get to the important ones. While they can still view the entire health of the organization in one shot, they can also hone in on the top worst sites by just activating a filter. For a more fine-tuned view, they can select the specific metrics they want to look at, to get an even cleaner view.

Wrapping UpFrom the demo given in the presentation, it is obvious that AI-based automation is the brain and the muscle of Juniper Mist Wired Assurance. Wired Assurance fully utilizes it to reduce operational overheads, and really enable cloud-like management of campus fabrics. By alleviating the burden of time-intensive, manual tasks with streamlined, automatic functions, it plays a critical role in killing downtime, improving user experience and making campus fabric management push-button simple.

Be sure to check out Juniper Networks’ other presentations from the recent Networking Field Day event for latest updates on the Juniper AI Driven Campus Fabric.

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The CXL Consortium is an open industry standard group responsible for technical specifications and standards. This episode of Utilizing CXL brings Siamak Tavallaei, CXL president, to discuss the emergence of Compute Express Link. The goal of CXL is to disaggregate servers, moving memory away from the CPU and enabling users to compose servers more flexibly. We have already disaggregated storage from compute, and breaking the fixed memory interconnect will have a similar effect. But we also need the system to be manageable, with software to configure and orchestrate resources. The CXL Consortium is facilitating the development of all this in association with nearly every company in the IT industry.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Nathan Bennett, Focusing on Cloud, Automation, AI/ML, and Emerging Technologies. Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @vNathanBennett.
Siamak Tavallaei, President of the CXL Consortium and member of the Open Compute Project. Connect with Siamak on LinkedIn and find out more about OCP and the CXL Consortium.

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The last time Cisco Live happened in Europe was back in 2020. The journey back to having the event has met with challenges for sure. Cisco is excited to be in Amsterdam in 2023 for the first edition of Cisco Live EMEA and we’re just as thrilled to be there with them for Tech Field Day Extra!

Tech Field Day Extra Presentation ScheduleOur two-day event kicks off Tuesday afternoon with the first set of presentations from Cisco. We’re going to be hearing all about how they are integrating AI into their products as well as a peek at some of the newest Cisco Meraki innovations around policy and mobility. After that we’re going to jump right into enterprise networking and hear about some exciting new technologies for infrastructure as well as a special peek at some cool new Nexus offerings that will blow your mind.

Wednesday is another full afternoon of Cisco announcements. We’re starting off right at noon with some firewall discussion before the IoT group shows us the latest and greatest in rugged devices for industrial applications. We’ll wrap up the day with a dive into SASE and SD-WAN to learn how this technology is transforming our remote workers to make the more productive in the modern world.

Follow Along On Your ScheduleThe event takes place February 7-8, 2023. The presentations will be streamed live each afternoon in CET on TechFieldDay.com, the event website as well as the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page. For those that want to catch the recordings afterwards on-demand you can find them posted on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel. Don’t forget to follow Tech Field Day on your favorite social media platform to participate in the discussions using the hashtag #TFDx. We look forward to seeing you online for Tech Field Day Extra!

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There’s a common consensus over what make a great technology in IT. It consists of things like consistent performance, low-friction operation, cost-effectiveness, and quick ROI. At the recent networking Field Day event, Cisco presented one such solution. The Cisco Crosswork Network Controller (CNC) lets enterprises exchange operational complexity and cost for Quality of Experience (QoE) and cost advantage.

Room for ErrorThe dynamics of modern networks is complex. Things are changing all the time, making it harder to find and resolve problems systematically. Over time, organizations wind up with arsenals of tools to make sure they have eyes on everything, but instead, end up with islands of visibility with no unifying feature.

Management of the environments is painfully complex as well. It entails endless chores, some of which have themselves emerged as sources of risk. Tasks like provisioning, configuration, deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting are exacting. They take prolonged periods of time, and have very small margin for error. Even the smallest of human errors can become the number one cause of a catastrophic outage.

Human errors aside, there is an insane number of things that can go wrong in the network just on their own. For example, bandwidth swings can lead to network congestions, negatively affecting QoE.

“On the infrastructure, we have many different services that are running. Some of them are more latency sensitive, some are bandwidth intensive. Of course, we do expect fluctuations in the traffic, but that fluctuation could always cause congestions,” said Deepak Bhargava, Senior Product Line Manager at Cisco.

Enterprises resort to over-provisioning to cope with congestions, but it’s not the answer they need, he said. Over-provisioning inflates the cost, and that extra capacity isn’t always utilized.

In a time when achieving time-to-value is more critical than ever in IT, these are major stumbling blocks.

Cisco Crosswork Network AutomationCNC is a part of the bigger Cisco Crosswork Automation portfolio that constitutes “a breadth of capabilities that helps address functions across a typical operational lifecycle, right from planning and design.”

The idea behind Cisco Crosswork Network Automation is to simplify service lifecycle functions to push-button actions. It leverages closed-loop automation, the strength of which is continuous monitoring and assessment.

Bhargava laid out the three cornerstones of Crosswork Network Automation that form the foundation of all of Cisco’s offerings in that portfolio. They are – visibility, insights and action.

“Visibility is really about understanding the state of the network, how the services are performing. Are they at a risk of failing to meet the SLAs? How are the devices performing? Are there any topology changes, any alarms?” said Bhargava.

Crosswork Network Automation seeks to provide answers to all these questions with data collected from the network over, and offer a comprehensive org-wide view of things.

But visibility by itself is a stressor, if it’s not accompanied by insights. One of the key functions of Crosswork Network Automation is to reduce that data to crisp, accurate and actionable insights. CNC transforms network data into knowledge. Using automation to extrapolate from the data, it predicts issues and identifies patterns where possible, making the segue into action quick and organic.

Crosswork Network Automation can automate certain processes preemptively, preventing warning signs from manifesting into real issues that could impact network performance and availability.

Capabilities of Cisco Crosswork Network Controller at a GlanceThe Cisco Crosswork Network Controller is built for modern networks. It draws its power from two sources – automation and intent-based networking. Leveraging these, CNC undercuts operational and cost overheads, unlocking maximum ROI.

Bhargava explained, “Crosswork Network Controller is an SDN (Software-Defined Network) controller for the IP transport network. It’s really a turnkey automation solution that helps to manage a breadth of service lifecycle functions, right from provisioning, visualization, monitoring, optimization to troubleshooting.”

The goal is to achieve faster deployment and effective remediation at a fraction of the typical cost of operation. CNC realizes these goals by condensing time-intensive provisioning tasks with intent-based provisioning.

“It can be done in an intent-based, automated fashion, where you can express the intent in a service model, and it gets orchestrated across multiple domains.”

Integrated monitoring of service health, and quick mitigation of network congestion ensure optimum QoE for customers. CNC employs a series of optimization techniques to tactically optimize bandwidth during congestions.

“It can quickly react to network fluctuations through its real time monitoring and optimization capabilities, so that you can always be on top of things,” said Bhargava.

The Cisco Crosswork Network Controller streamlines and automates maintenance and troubleshooting tasks, ensuring quick and effective remediation without human intervention.

Furthermore, CNC closes the gaps between data silos with unified visibility. Through a single dashboard that offers a detailed, unified and real-time view of the network topology and services, and integrated maintenance workflows, it improves operational agility.

Wrapping UpCisco Crosswork Network Controller brings with it a host of capabilities that alleviates the pressure of routine maintenance tasks. It shows modern enterprises how operational overheads can be tackled and outages can be limited, while ensuring operational agility with strategic use of automation. With it, a higher QoE can be assured through elimination of manual approaches to provisioning and monitoring. The value it provides is on-brand with Cisco.

Watch Krishnan Thirukonda make the Cisco Crosswork Network Controller visual with a demo in the above session. For more interesting presentations by Cisco, be sure to check out the recordings from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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Pat Gelsinger isn’t done cutting just yet. This week brought news of two big changes for Intel. The first was news that Intel will no longer be developing networking switches. You may recall that Intel picked up startup Barefoot Networks back in 2019 and was integrating the Tofino ASIC in a number of products. Intel’s offerings had been facing stiff competition from Nvidia, Broadcom, and others and the move comes as Intel is trying to restructure after a massive loss in Q4 of 2022. Intel has said that the IPUs are going to be a focus area now. Also announced was the end of the Pathfinder for RISC-V program. The announcement came as a surprise to those in the program, only having been disclosed by a notice on the project’s webpage. Intel had been extending an olive branch to the RISC-V community to try and encourage development on the platform that Intel could leverage in their own offerings, such as allowing the code to run on FPGAs. The program was started back in August of 2022 and was supported by most of the large RISC-V companies. Stephen, how do these latest cuts stack up against the moves that Intel has been making? This and more on the Rundown.

0:46 | Dell Orchestrates Acquisition of Cloudify

Dell has picked up an exciting new company to add to their growing cloud services offering. Cloudify is an Israeli startup that focuses on cloud orchestration and automation. The company, which reportedly competed with Dell’s own Enstratius solution, was quietly purchased by Dell for around $100 million. The acquistion was so hush hush, in fact, that Dell didn’t even publicly acknowledge it until SEC paperwork pertaining to stock grants was found by reporters. Stephen, does this mean Dell is solidly working to increase their offerings for customers looking for hybrid cloud solutions?

Read More: Dell has acquired cloud orchestration startup Cloudify, sources tell us for up to $100M

3:14 | Sysdig Rocks Ransomware with Falco

Sysdig is a big name in the container security space and part of the reason why is the way they’ve embraced open source tools. One of those is Falco, a container build and runtime monitor. This open source offering can feed Sysdig with information like IP addresses used by containers, connections, and other types of information. That data can be analyzed by Sysdig to find things that shouldn’t be happening in your container farm. Tom, how important is it to find these problems quickly?

Read More: Sysdig’s open-source Falco draws on AIOps, data security to fight ransomware

6:02 | WD Doubles Up on Drive Actuators

Western Digital has a fun new drive on the market. The DC HS760 data center drive is a traditional rotating disk that has some pretty impressive throughput numbers. It’s traditional in all but one sense. The HS760 is a dual actuator drive, meaning it contains two read/write heads. The drive is actually seen by the host OS as two different drives that are addressable. This allows the system to have up to 582Mbps of I/O throughput. The new drive is aimed at workloads which have a mixture of reads and writes as opposed to a heavy tilt toward one end of the scale. Stephen, what is the advantage of having dual actuators in a traditional drive?

Read More: Western Digital quietly producing dual-actuator disk drives

10:45 | Huawei Loses Out on Chip Exports For Real This Time

If it seems like the US has been banning Huawei from getting access to chips and tech from US sources you’re not crazy. Ever since 2019 the US has been trying to lock the Chinese networking giant out of the market. With every modification of the original order comes an evasion such as buying from new unaffected suppliers or limping along with limited export licenses from Qualcomm and Intel. Qualcomm even created speccial versions of their SoCs to comply with the 5G export ban in place. The US has decided enough is enough and are signaling they will outright ban export licenses for Huawei in the coming months. Tech comanies are already grumbling about the potential loss of such a huge customer. The ban would affect new licenses being granted and begin to wind down the existing licenses. Tom, is the US playing hardball here? Or is this the last act in a long play?

Read More: No more export licenses: US plans to fully cut off Huawei from chip suppliers

15:14 | Intel Punts Pathfinder and Nixes Networking Business

Read More: Intel Sunsets Network Switch Biz, Kills RISC-V Pathfinder Program (Updated)

Read More: Intel is halting development of the networking chip it got from Barefoot Networks

26:58 | The Weeks Ahead

Cisco Live EMEA – February 7 – February 8, 2023

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

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As data becomes pervasive across all industries, a sharp rise in storage consumption is being seen, and especially, a divergence from traditional storage towards cloud-native options. A market study showed that the cloud-native storage market will reach $71.87 billion by 2030. But for now, the market is steadily steering towards app-centricity.

We recently sat down with Richard Olver, CEO of Ondat, to talk about the potential drivers and restraints, and learn about how Ondat is leading the market with a competitive, container-native storage solution.

Founded in 2015, Ondat was formerly known as StorageOS. In 2021, the company had a fresh start when it rebranded to Ondat securing a massive Series B funding. In January of 2022, Ondat launched its first SaaS management platform that allows easy deployment and management of stateful Kubernetes applications.

The Rise of App-Centric CultureOlver addressed the market requirements of data storage, shining light on why traditional storage fails to meet the demands. The two key attributes that give cloud-native storage an edge over traditional counterparts, are cost and speed. Cloud native storage platforms offer agility, consistent high-performance, and infrastructure compatibility, as opposed to the closed, cost-heavy and sticky alternative of on-prem storage.

The demands are continuously evolving, pushing providers to amp up their solutions with new features to remain competitive. There is a strong drive towards principles like app-centric, vendor-agnostic, Kubernetes nativity, container nativity and cloud-native style operation.

Container-Native Storage for KubernetesOndat’s container-native Kubernetes storage solution checks all the boxes. Ondat’s goal with its platform is to build a developer-focused storage solution that puts their needs first. Ondat’s platform enables all levels of users, from a single developer to distributed teams in corporations.

“A lot of the cloud native developers mention Ondat as an example of the kind of storage they’re looking for, or the kind of storage they’re using. It’s really great to see the message taking hold with non-storage, non-enterprise people, that it’s really reaching the developers,” said Gestalt IT’s publisher, Stephen Foskett.

Developers like storage that is built into containers and can run as containers. Ondat’s container-native solution is tightly integrated with Kubernetes, and gives developers the option of self-service. They can provision and manage their own storage, as opposed to depending on the storage team to do it.

Ondat has a hybrid route to market that “focuses on the ecosystem, for driving brand awareness” and to provide “a combined solution” to the customers. Attracted by its pliant architecture and simple integration, companies like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kasten, Red Hat and HashiCorp have become part of its partner ecosystem.

Olver said, “Everything we do is syndicated through partners. We also have a heavy focus on our community edition, which is a freemium go to market, where we’re trying to offload the qualification, especially for technical buyers who don’t want to talk to salespeople to self-qualify.”

Ondat’s freemium edition is accessible through their primary, self-service channel. It gives users access to unlimited clusters and nodes. Customers also have the option to upgrade to paid editions, that offer high levels of support and have a consumption-based model. Ondat is available in all marketplaces.

The Big DifferentiatorsAs a platform, Ondat brings to customers capabilities that modern container-native applications require, such as integration with Kubernetes, self-service storage provisioning, and horizontal scaling, in addition to providing availability, composability, and security for stateful workloads. With Ondat’s container-native storage, databases run on Kubernetes with a software-defined storage and data services.

Remembering his own struggles with traditional storage systems, Customer Success Architect, Chris Milsted said, “The biggest problem was that storage was owned by the storage team.” Ondat takes that solution and turns it into “a developer-led” or “developer-involved” solution that can be easily deployed into a Kubernetes cluster like everything else, and that Ondat cluster can be run by the application team as well as the storage team.

“We’re definitely seeing (app-centric storage) in the emerging requirements where network-based storage isn’t working in the cloud. A good example is with AWS and EKS, where customers will default to EBS, but EBS doesn’t have the failover that they need. So they go to EFS, and EFS doesn’t perform because it’s a network-connected, file-based storage solution. Then they might try ONTAP from NetApp, which is a better version of EFS, but it doesn’t solve the developer problems of having to maintain storage.”

Compared to that, Ondat makes a preferred choice, because it offers storage that is local, on-host, rather than network-attached.

“Customers running microservices want the data to be as close to the application as possible. Most importantly, they want the description and definition of storage to be as code. If the storage is sitting outside of the application tier, it’s unaware of what’s going on.”

When compared to other vendors, Ondat’s architecture has some unique points of difference. As noted earlier, it is a software-only solution that can be deployed as a container. It has a shared-nothing architecture which essentially ensures fault-tolerance and less downtime. Integrated control plane allows for centralized management of state, health, placement and failover. With no hardware dependencies, it can be horizontally scaled, and no Linux kernel drivers limit ensures that it has the broadest compatibility.

As an example of how things are relatively simpler with Ondat, Olver explained, “If you need to encrypt an application on a node, the storage sign encryption is dumb to that information. Whereas we are doing the encryption just by implementing a label in the declarative code procedures of a platform engineer. So, they just write it in the code, and it’s done, and it’s enforceable. You can’t do that with server-side storage.”

In ConclusionThe sheer volume and diversity of modern applications says that apps are the engine of the digital era. Their dynamic nature requires storage systems to be flexible, container-native, and most importantly app-centric. An intelligent, app-focused storage solution like Ondat’s reduces cost nightmares and application downtimes, but more importantly, it brings to the customers an app-centric resilience that was a rare commodity in the storage systems of the last decade.

For more on the Ondat’s container-native storage, head over to their website, or check out the recently released reports on Container Native Storage Performance in the AWS Public Cloud and performance advantage over Portworx. Also check out Ondat’s presentations on Kube-native storage from Cloud Field Day. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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The advances in artificial intelligence and smart devices have set the stage for edge computing to boom across sectors. In this Gestalt IT Roundtable Discussion, Stephen Foskett, and guests Koroush Saraf, Gina Rosenthal, Scott Loughmiller and Roy Chua dissect edge computing to reveal the lesser-known minutiae, and help wrap our heads around this emerging computing paradigm that everybody is gushing over. Learn what is edge computing, and what are its key forces of growth. Know why it is important to the modern-day internet. Hear the panel narrow down the merits of edge computing, and explain their relevance in overcoming some of the biggest computing challenges of our time.

Panelists for Today’s Roundtable:Gina Rosenthal, Founder of Digital Sunshine Solutions. You can connect with Gina on LinkedIn or find out more on her website.

Koroush Saraf, VP Product at ZPE Systems. You can connect with Koroush on LinkedIn or find more information on the ZPE Systems website.

Scott Loughmiller, Chief Product Officer at Scale Computing. You can connect with Scott on LinkedIn or find out more about Scale Computing on their website.

Roy Chua, Founder and Principal at AvidThink. You can connect with Roy on LinkedIn or find out more about AvidThink on their website.

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@SFoskett

Find out more information about our first ever Edge Field Day by heading over to the Tech Field Day website.

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Secure Access Service Edge, better known as SASE brings together networking and security capabilities to better support the technology and business requirements of companies grappling with digital transformation. SASE isn’t a product per se, but an assembly of existing products like SD-WAN, remote access solutions, and security services.

The real value of SASE lies in what it delivers to an organization. SASE provides a more flexible way to secure access to both cloud and on-prem applications, and enables fine-grained security policies that can incorporate user IDs, device state, and device location.

The Two Halves of SASEAccording to Gartner, the two main components of a SASE architecture are SD-WAN and a Secure Service Edge (SSE).

SD-WAN provides core networking capabilities, dynamic path selection, and the ability to enforce business and security policies based on applications rather than ports or protocols.

SSE provides security services, which are typically hosted in Points of Presence (PoPs) in various regions around the world. The PoPs may be owned by the SSE provider, or hosted in public clouds or colocation facilities. This hosted aspect is critical to the SSE’s inherent value, that is, customers don’t have to worry about managing the infrastructure, maintaining application stacks, or updating security capabilities or signatures. They simply consume the security features as a service.

The geographic diversity of SSEs is equally important. It means that traffic doesn’t have to be backhauled to a company’s headquarters for security inspection before sending it to its actual destination. Instead, traffic can be directed to the PoP that’s closest to the user, or to the destination application directly. This design reduces the chances of introducing delay and latency, which is critical for the performance of real-time apps like voice and video.

Typical SSE security services include:

Firewall as a Service (FWaaS)
Secure Web Gateway (SWG)
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

Other security services in an SSE may include Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Data Leak/Loss Prevention (DLP) and threat intelligence.

The architectural differences come in how the SD-WAN and SSE components come together. In a converged architecture, the SD-WAN and SSE components come from a single vendor. In an integrated architecture, a customer chooses separate SD-WAN and SSE providers. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Companies need to understand both to be able to pick the architecture that best suits their requirements.

The Convergence OptionIn a converged architecture, the customer selects a single vendor to provide the SD-WAN and SSE components. The benefits of this option are straightforward.

First, the solution should be cleanly integrated because it’s coming from a single vendor. The integration must be tested beyond slideware before signing a contract. There should be fewer GUIs to interact with – dashboards and reporting should be unified – and ideally, the converged system should make performance monitoring and troubleshooting more straightforward. For example, if a user complains about poor performance, customers won’t have to play games with separate SD-WAN and SSE providers pointing fingers at each other.

On the downside, organizations using a converged SASE architecture are limited within the security services from one vendor. These services may not be best of breed.

Additionally, these services may not align with the existing preferences, expertise, and/or processes of your network and security teams. If an organization has invested considerable time and money on a security platform that’s not included in a converged SASE, the teams may balk at being forced to change.

The Integrated OptionIn an integrated SASE architecture, an organization has to integrate an SD-WAN solution from one vendor with an SSE offering from another. For example, they could use their existing VMware SD-WAN, and then steer traffic to Zscaler PoPs for security inspection.

This option may appeal to organizations who want more choices for security services in the SSE component. This option may also align well with organizations prefering strict separation of duties: the network team can operate the SD-WAN network while the security team handles a separate SSE component.

This architecture also gives organizations more selection criteria to work with. For instance, two SSE providers might support the same security services, but one has more PoPs in relevant geographies or a more robust network backbone.

On the downside, an integrated architecture is more operationally complex. Administrators may need to stitch together various APIs to get the solutions working. There is be more than one management and reporting console.

The solution may also require more complex routing to steer traffic to separate providers. As a result, ops teams have a harder time monitoring performance and identifying the root cause of problems.

Think Architecture, Not ProductWhile making a choice, it is important to remember that it is an architectural choice, rather than a plain licensing of product. The architecture one chooses should align with the business outcomes, because it will have a direct impact on network and security operations, application performance, and troubleshooting. Vendors, such as VMware, support both converged and integrated SASE. At all times, customers must read through the fine prints to be certain that the provider/providers offer all requisite capabilities.

To watch VMware’s Showcase video, head to the Tech Field Day Website go to https://sase.vmware.com/sase to learn more about the offering.

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Although the move from capital to operational expenses is important, many organizations expect more than financial engineering from their storage as a service. This episode, sponsored by Pure Storage, is a discussion of the various ways storage can be delivered and consumed as a service. Taruna Gandhi of Pure Storage discusses this premise with Chris Grundemann, Max Mortillaro, and Stephen Foskett. First we tackle the question of capital versus operational expenses and alignment of business and IT. Next we consider whether companies need ownership of storage or just access to appropriate capacity. Finally we discuss the creation of a true managed service and the transition to the cloud.

On-Premises for Today’s Spotlight Podcast:PanelistsMax Mortillaro

Chris Grundemann

Twitter@MaxMortillaro

@ChrisGrundemann

Pure Storage PanelistTaruna Gandhi, Product Marketing Executive | Cloud Management and Infrastructure, Pure Storage. You can connect with Taruna on LinkedIn. Learn more about Pure Storage’s Storage as a Service here.

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@SFoskett

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It is hard to make things simpler in technology, especially when everything is tangled in a gigantic web of connectedness. But if made possible, there’s usually good money, or great value in it.

This past Networking Field Day event, Arista Networks made their first Field Day appearance of 2023. At the event, the team showcased Arista CloudVision, a telemetry portal designed to simplify management by delivering network-wide visibility. CloudVision, Arista says, offers a way for companies to manage and monitor networks effortlessly. Let’s dig into that.

A Little ContextEver since the network started to expand its perimeter, and grow tumescent with countless users, devices, systems and applications, operators have been caught in the hellfire of management complexities. This slow burn crisis affects work in every front – root cause analysis (RTA), troubleshooting, operations, compliance management – at times, tailspinning into network-wide outages.

Part of the reason failures in networks happen at a high frequency is because teams tasked with managing the infrastructure are not furnished with up-to-date tools and methodologies. The tried and tested methods of yesterday prove old and hackneyed for the modern cloud-like networks, and as a result, they do not payoff.

IT teams need more solutions that offer low-friction, consistent experiences, and timely approaches like cloud principles, DevOps model, software-first approach, and do-it-yourself automation, to bring up the operational efficiency at scale.

Observability with CloudVisionArista Networks has a clear-cut agenda in that regard. Ryan Madsen, Director, Software Engineering, while presenting the architecture of CloudVision at the Networking Field Day event was direct about it. He said that Arista’s goal with CloudVision is to “make networks simple to manage and monitor.”

“For monitoring, there’re two key attributes that we want to provide to people. One – really great real-time visibility, let people understand what’s happening in the network right away, and second – really great historical visibility.”

It may be an ambitious goal, but Arista is on to something.

CloudVision realizes Arista’s vision with two key elements – telemetry and automation. It offers incredibly nuanced visibility of the network components, device by device. The dashboard offers a per-device view, showing device state like BGP details and peer information, system information, switching in all details.

In the presentation, Madsen demonstrated CloudVision’s real-time capabilities. By clearing BGP sessions on a device, he showed how quickly CloudVision can refresh all information, offering instant visibility by streaming information at a “nanosecond timestamped granularity with an end in latency of an order of 100 milliseconds.” Any change in the device state is updated and displayed in real-time.

CloudVision provides historic device-state data through a timeline at the bottom of the dashboard. This timeline features trends in metrics and queries over time. By dragging the cursor back and forth, users can view the state of a device at a precise time on a particular day, or compare two devices and monitor events.

“This historical visibility is really useful for understanding how your network has been performing,” said Madsen.

When CloudVision was first launched, it was an on-prem solution. Arista has since launched a cloud version of it using the same resilient and robust architecture that enables it to work across all network types, datacenters, branch and campus, and ingest all different data types.

The ArchitectureArchitecturally, it has a simple construct. Data goes in from the devices into the CloudVision platform and comes out via APIs.

Under the hood, this is what it looks like. The devices have a database on board, SysDB, that holds all state. A streaming agent pushes it out of the box and into the CloudVision platform. The platform receives a timeseries of all state elements, which it stores, processes and analyzes via the CloudVision Analytics Engine, and dispatches out the insights to a user interface or client applications.

Madsen elaborated – “This (streaming agent) can be a standalone agent. Some of our largest cloud customers use this agent to ingest the data and analyze it themselves. This is also what powers CloudVision to get really fine-grained data, so everything’s timestamped at the point that it changes on the box, and then streamed out.”

The core component of Arista’s CloudVision is a robust data pipeline that connects directly to the user interface. This is layered on top with a set of applications. CloudVision performs analytic functions like calculating events, aggregating, and normalizing data and so on. A set of provisioning compliance apps makes sure that everything is running on right configuration, and that all software are up-to-date. CloudVision streams this data out through a variety of APIs.

“All this is happening really quickly, from the storage to it being processed, to being stored again, to being shown to the user – all that feels instantaneous from the end user’s perspective,” informed Madsen.

To learn more about CloudVision, and watch a deep-dive on the latest Arista Network Data Lake (NetDL), be sure to check out the Arista presentations from the recent Networking Field Day event.

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Although the emergence of CXL in server CPUs is big news, the inclusion of this technology in ARM processor IP is just as important. In this episode of Utilizing CXL, Eddie Ramirez of ARM joins Craig Rodgers and Stephen Foskett to discuss CXL in the ARM-powered ecosystem. ARM develops processor IP that is used in CPUs as well as supporting processors throughout the datacenter. We begin with a discussion of CXL 1.1, which brings memory expansion to ARM CPUs. But ARM is also delivering CXL 2.0 which would allow memory pooling to increase the utilization of memory, and thus overall system efficiency. The next step is true heterogeneous compute, with accelerators like GPU and DPU sharing memory with CPUs in a flexible fabric that can leverage CXL.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Eddie Ramirez, VP of Marketing at Arm. You can connect with Eddie on LinkedIn. Find out more about Arm on their website.

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As I recently wrote, edge computing is a technology that allows for processing and storage of data closer to its source. This can be beneficial for applications that require low latency, such as real-time video, retail, or industrial IoT or control, but there are some limits to what works at the edge. All of these will be part of the discussion during Edge Field Day next month.

Cost, Power, Security, and ScalabilityOne of the main things holding back deployment of edge computing is the novelty and cost of deploying and maintaining edge devices. Although individual devices are often inexpensive, the cost of deploying them at scale, covering many remote locations, can quickly add up. The cost of ongoing maintenance and updates must also be considered, along with the challenge of accessing them. And edge computing is still a novelty, requiring investment in training and architecture.

Edge computing devices also tend to be limited in terms of processing power and storage capacity. Although their capability is rapidly increasing, they may not be able to handle large amounts of data or perform complex computations in a reasonable envelope of cost and power. Still, they are likely good enough for basic tasks like image analysis, data filtering, and industrial control. And advances in GPU and xPU technology mean that the next wave of devices will be much more capable.

Another concern about edge computing revolves around security. Since edge devices are located outside the walls of the datacenter they are exposed to many environmental and human risks. Theft, sabotage, and infiltration are a real concern for devices in retail or industrial settings. They are also connected to networks that have different security profiles or might not be secure at all. Encryption, authentication, and tamper sensors are critical.

Additionally, edge computing poses a scalability risk. As the number of devices and the amount of data they generate increases, so does the difficulty of management and analysis. Data must be filtered locally to avoid flooding storage and compute capacity, network links, and centralized services. We have heard stories of 5G-connected edge devices using up their monthly allocation of data in just a day or two when not properly configured.

Stephen’s StanceAlthough edge computing has the potential to improve the performance and efficiency of distributed applications, it also has many limitations. The cost of deployment and maintenance, limited processing power and storage capacity, concerns about security, and the question of scalability all come into play. These are the topics we will be considering as we dive into edge computing at Edge Field Day in February!

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The Internet is one big place for everyone, right? Wrong! The Internet is more divided than you know. It belongs to the big corporations that have been using their influence to monopolize and privatize it right before our eyes. And these monopolies have made the democratic Internet that we knew a thing of the past. But none of it is news because we all have known it on some level.

In the article titled “Internet for the People”, software developer and researcher, Ed Summers refers to the titular book by Ben Tarnoff to point out the political economy that is at play within the modern-day internet. He writes,

We must strike while the iron is hot to break apart monopolies up and down the infrastructural stack (both providers and platforms) wherever and whenever we can. This needs to happen both from the outside and from within these monopolies.

Follow his thoughts and give the article “Internet for the People” a read. For more such interesting stories, sign up for our weekly newsletter for free.

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For most organizations and their workforces, hybrid work is business as usual. Every IT company by now has fallen in line with this new routine. But organizations’ journey to becoming 100% secure, cloud-based entities is nowhere near the finishing line. Remote work may have become a default overnight, but to this day, a majority of organizations struggle to adjust to this new reality because of the security risks it has unleashed.

Fortinet presented FortiSASE at last week’s Networking Field Day event in California. Rami Rammaha, Director of Products and Solutions, SD-WAN, gave an introduction of Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN, and FortiSASE, and Alex Samonte made it visual with a demo in the following session. Fortinet SASE is a unified solution that converges SD-WAN connectivity with cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) to protect against evolving cyberthreats and provide secure access to remote workers.

It’s Time to Rethink Our Security StanceWith remote work becoming commonplace, attacks have become inevitable. Enterprise technology leaders are making it a priority to proactively secure the network using a combination of strategies, amid growing cyber incidents. Secure Access Secure Edge (SASE), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), mesh security, are some of the top approaches organizations are adopting to reduce vulnerabilities and bolster their security postures.

But the big question that’s in everybody’s mind is, does deploying all these technologies make them bulletproof? In the era of remote work, the borders that typically separate an organization and its people from the rest of the ecosystem have blurred. So just fencing the network is no longer adequate to prevent a breach. Identity-based security plays a big role in the hybrid era, but the component that comes before that, which enables implementation of security models like zero-trust, is SD-WAN.

Fortinet Secure SD-WANAs noted above, SD-WAN is the foundation upon which models like ZTNA and SASE sit. At the presentation, Rammaha talked briefly about the SD-WAN journey, from being a point solution designed to support user experience, to the platform it has proliferated into. Today, it is the convergence point of networking and security, that minimizes latency and jitters on one hand, and supports secure access for remote workers on the other. But we’ll see SD-WAN play a much bigger part in remote access security in the future.

“Today it (SD-WAN) is transforming and securing the network. Moving forward, we’re looking at SD-WAN being a critical component to SASE architecture, and enforcing ZTNA policy,” said Rammaha.

Rammaha pointed out that Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is backed up by four key components – SD-WAN that is the industry’s only ASIC-powered SD-WAN to use in-house ASICs, a built-in next-gen firewall (NGFW), advanced routing and a ZTNA application gateway. Powered by the common FortiOS, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has a single fabric management center – the FortiManager – that enables centralized management of configs, policies and changes, and zero-touch provisioning.

Universal ZTNAZTNA is the go-to model for most organizations supporting hybrid work models. It’s an access control method that requires identification and authentication of every user and every device, and provides role-based access to applications.

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is where Fortinet shines. In his presentation, Rammaha explained that Fortinet offers remote users secure access to applications with two models- Universal ZTNA and Secure Private Access.

Every FortiGate NGFW has Universal ZTNA built into it. It is enabled by default in devices that have FortiOS v7.0 or higher. The work of Universal ZTNA is to authenticate every device and user, and perform a security posture check before access.

Rammaha explained that Universal ZTNA has a software agent, a policy engine, and the ZTNA Application Gateway which enforces the policies. Users accessing the applications from remote locations, branch offices and campus have to go through the ZTNA Application Gateway no matter where the application is. The gateway allows or denies access to resources based on identity. Access is allowed only through SSL encrypted connections.

Fortinet SASE SolutionFortiSASE is a single-vendor solution that combines the cloud-delivered connectivity of Secure SD-WAN with Fortinet’s SSE, bringing to remote employees secure access to the internet, and to private and SaaS applications. Using the capabilities of Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Universal ZTNA and next-gen CASB, it secures these accesses and offers the best of networking and security.

FortiSASE has a simple cloud-based management that enables centralized control of users and applications. FortiGuard AI-powered security services are enabled across devices, users, applications and traffic, to provide consistent protection from the newest strains of threats.

Wrapping UpFortinet’s approach provides a resilient model to monitor and access resources in an increasingly complex and distributed digital world. It packages together the best of Fortinet’s networking and security offerings, to provide multiple lines of defense and an optimal security posture, with a surprisingly simple cloud-based management. It’s a comprehensive package that ensures both the highest level of security, and superior user experience.

To catch a live demo of the Fortinet SASE solution, and for other deep-dive presentations, be sure to check out Fortinet’s presentations from their appearance at the recent Networking Field Day event.

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Converged solutions have been taking root in IT for several years now. When the side-effects of having numerous tools and solutions in the environment were first felt, a desire for a combined solution started to develop among organizations. The awareness that a robust paraphernalia presents unpredictable complications and sloughs away resilience, turned up the urgency to adopt all-in-one solutions that make life easy for everyone.

Last week’s Networking Field Day event saw Aryaka present their all-in-one networking and security as-a-service solution. Hugo Vliegen, Senior Vice President of Product Management gave an overview of Aryaka’s integrated services, and talked about the solution architecture. Senior Director of Product Management, Natraj Iyer and Director Engineering, Anu Chettur, took the floor to offer a closer look under the hood, and a demo of the customer portal.

Holistic SolutionsDespite being two separate disciplines, networking and security are intertwined. Most vendors in these spaces tend to stick to one or the other. An SD-WAN vendor would provide the SD-WAN overlay, and the connectivity and managed services would come from a Managed Service Provider (MSP). This standard multi-vendor approach has some gaps. Essentially, more tools means more training, more siloes and overall more work. Think of the onboarding of the solutions, then the integration work to make them function together synchronously. Information siloes and gaps are another worry. A lot can get lost easily in the mix.

Alternatively, having a converged solution that mashes up networking, security and managed services into one integrated solution has several upsides. Organizations can turn down the technology fatigue from get go. Things will likely be more streamlined than scattered, and employees don’t have to put up with getting used to new features routinely. And at the end of the day, the organization saves money. It’s a win for everybody.

Aryaka Bonds Networking with SecurityThis is why Aryaka’s offering stands out from the rest of the vendors. Aryaka is a managed service provider with an impressive customer service record. As an MSP, Aryaka wears many feathers in its hat. Three-times winner of Gartner “Voice of the Customer” award, Aryaka offers a converged network service that encompasses SD-WAN, SASE and full life cycle management.

“We are a converged WAN service with security embedded, and it’s developed from the ground up. We optimize everything from a customer experience point of view,” said Vliegen.

Aryaka provides a global network anchored in the cloud. Aryaka calls it a “private superhighway” that connects organizations to regions around the world.

According to Aryaka, there are three things where it gets most of the firepower from – its agile network, superior customer service, and an unconventional approach. As opposed to those of other vendors, Aryaka’s is a holistic solution that constitutes the overlay, underlay and a managed service.

“We have a single unified network that has a private core where we can connect in all the offices, the users, the various flavors of cloud, and datacenters,” he said.

Vliegen further explained, “We’re in control of the workflows. We collapse the work of the software developers, the technology players, together with delivering the service. But what it boils down to is that we deliver a better workflow. In terms of agility, all of it is built from the ground up and connected with our technology. There’s not an orchestration layer in between. We have the services and support organization as well.”

Aryaka’s offering of a unified network service is quite unique. But there are several other ways too in which Aryaka delivers value for its customers – cost benefits, secure remote access, network reliability and performance gains among other things.

The ArchitectureAryaka has a zero trust WAN architecture that is the secret to its secure and consistent app experience. Aryaka’s private core layer-2 infrastructure, or what Natraj Iyer called the “middle mile” spans the globe, and comprises of over 40 service points-of-presence (PoPs), strategically sprinkled across regions. These are compute, storage and networking infrastructures that Aryaka has built over the past decade.

Aryaka believes that because of their strategic positioning, there is a service PoP “within 15 to 30 milliseconds of 90% of the world’s knowledge workers”.

Aryaka envelopes the entire architecture with security, from the PoP infrastructure to on-premises, in devices. It also has WAN optimizer built into it.

“We’ve a single architecture where security can live anywhere. The functions can live on-prem, they can live in the PoP, and we can manage them using the same service delivery systems so that all the elements can come together.”

About three years back, Aryaka started working on the security aspect with the goal to build a zero-trust WAN. Today, it has multiple products in the security bucket, the first of which is secure web gate (SWG) for the Internet. Additionally, the portfolio includes cloud access security broker (CASB) and firewall as a service (FwaaS), data protection and threat protection.

Aryaka’s other object of focus is observability. Aryaka provides high visibility of performance-impacting elements in the network, and large amounts of actionable insights. Vliegen informed that Aryaka is working on tuning up the observability with advanced insights in the coming years. Aryaka’s fully managed service also has a co-managed option.

“We have always integrated the convergence factor with lifecycle services to bring this one single experience of delivery that is agile and on-demand. You can completely outsource it to us.”

Everything is manageable from a single control plane which keeps all teams up to speed, no silos whatsoever. The management console has a rich set of security controls baked into it which include URL filtering, content filter and malware blocking.

Wrapping UpAryaka makes a compelling solution for multi-national and mid-market organizations who favor unified, single-vendor solutions. For them, Aryaka provides a fast SD-WAN network with security woven into its architecture, and enables SASE for an optimal security posture. Aryaka’s customers can leverage the trifecta of overlay, underlay and managed services from a single vendor, and enjoy a breadth of capabilities that includes, but is not limited to integrated cloud connectivity, zero trust security, and remote access. Being a unified solution, Aryaka requires little to no integration which further makes lives of engineers easier. Last but not the least, a converged solution like Aryaka’s is a cost-effective alternative to multiple point solutions that require paying several bills for the same functions.

Be sure to check out Aryaka’s presentations from the recent Networking Field Day event to learn more about their unified SASE service.

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As networks have grown bigger, operating them has become another worry. Operators in charge running the networks run into all sorts of performance and security issues, and those amount to a lot of problem-solving over the course of a workweek.

Last week at Networking Field Day event, Selector Software addressed this situation in their presentation. VP of Solutions, Debashis Mohanty, showcased the Selector AI platform in an introductory session. Mohanty explained the key capabilities of the solution, and walked the audience through some real-world deployed customer outcomes.

Living with ComplexityNetwork problems all seem to emerge from a common root – an obsolescent technique of operation. In the past, network operators had to navigate through a thicket of unorganized data to find issues to debug. These days, it only takes looking at dedicated data sources to spot an anomaly. There are a ton of monitoring tools in the market that bring this information up to the fingertips of operators.

But in a quite unexpected way, this opens a whole can of worms. Teams running the networks began reporting operational complexity of a never-before kind. With modern networks having far too many problems than those before, operators already spend big chunks of their workdays browsing through data – logs, config, events, metrics, alerts, what have you. Supplied by an array of disparate tools, these data are siloed like their sources. There are as many dashboards to look at as there are monitoring solutions deployed in the network.

But navigating through these disparate sets of data is only the morning mist. The real pain starts with the manual analysis and extrapolation.

“As soon as you get to the right dashboards, you have to write a structured query language or a SQL construct to get the data back, and the folks who are in the frontline trying to figure out what’s happening may not know the exact sequel language to get that insight. So, they go back and forth between these multitude of dashboards and try to figure out what’s happening.”

Once operators have passed that test, the information needs to be handed off to the teams to whom it may concern, and take it from there. This process from start to finish can take anywhere between days to weeks, and during an outage, every second wasted is dollar lost.

Selector Reimagines the Process with AISelector AI is an AI-based observability platform that provides actionable operational intelligence for multi-domain network infrastructures in real time. Using machine learning algorithms to automatically identify abnormal events and failures, and correlate them to the root causes with pre-built workflows, it reduces the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). In doing so, it eliminates data silos, dial down the alert noise and overall reduces downtime.

“The three main pillars of our product are – collect, correlate and collaborate,” explained Mohanty.

Selector AI coalesces data from heterogenous sources over a variety of protocols. With an AI-based data analytics approach, it speedily performs the grunt work of studying the data and identifying the warning signs arriving at insights. Without wasting any time, it passes the insights on to the teams using collaboration channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

ML-Based Data AnalyticsSelector AI seeks to make the journey from data to insights short, swift and less cumbersome. To that end, it has a set of well-defined, realistic goals. The first goal is to provide answers to the roll of questions that engineers may have.

“Our primary focus when we built the product was to provide curated, contextual, effective answers when someone asks the questions.”

The data it ingests includes, but is not limited to metrics, configs, alerts, event logs, flows and tables. Using its robust data integration, Selector AI ingests data in all formats from pre-integrated sources, data lakes, and databases including Splunk, InfluxDB, GitHub and more.

“When we started the company in the middle of the pandemic, everyone was remote, and all company operations were happening remotely. So, we integrated with Slack and Microsoft Teams so that engineers can ask questions and get responses easily. Our bot is a part of these channels, and users can do the debugging collaboratively,” said Mohanty.

Automatic baselining with tons of metrics and KPIs makes it possible to monitor metrics behavior closely and send out alerts quickly with automatic alert notification.

So that operators don’t have to go through their day tackling an alert storm before getting to triage and troubleshooting, the platform ranks the alerts in order of priority. It alerts the teams with the most critical ones for the day, and everything else that is a category behind comes after that.

Selector AI stores the insights so that users can access them later if they need to.

“It’s like a DVR, you can go in the past, see what happened, what things are correlated, and go back and forth.”

Selector AI is vendor-agnostic and comes in a combination of deployment models including cloud, on-premises, hybrid infrastructures, and customer VPC. It is also delivered as a SaaS solution. With the exception of a few dashboards, it is fully managed by Selector.

Selector AI can be bought on a flexible monthly or annual subscription. For anybody interested, there is a free 30-day trial available on their website.

Wrapping UpSelector AI ends the struggle of IT teams managing the network by replacing the manual steps of searching, analyzing and communicating with built-in automation. It visibly improves the process by introducing functions like proactive anomaly detection, identification of actionable correlations, prioritization of alerts, among others. When teams don’t have to spend a bulk of their time looking at data across a plethora of dashboards scattered across the screen, and insights are ready-to-use, it leads to faster and better decision-making. With Selector AI dialing down the complexity that hinders organizational success, teams can take actions and resolve outages much faster, leaving customers happy.

Be sure to watch the Selector AI deep-dive presentation from the recent Networking Field Day event on the Tech Field Day website.

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The US Department of Justice has joined with 8 US states to take on Google’s ad platform. In a filing this week they announced the suit claiming that Google’s dominant position in the market affords them the ability to monopolize and eliminate their competition. Per Merick Garland, US Attorney General, Google controls the tech used to display ads, the tools used to buy that ad space, and the ad exchange that matches advertisers to publishers. The government wants Google to divest their ad management business from the rest of the company. This could be an issue for the tech giant as a reported 80% of their revenue comes from digital ads. The enterprise angle here involves what Google might be forced to do if they have to sell off the cash cow and how that could affect their service offerings, especially those that are free or insanely cheap thanks to being ad-supported.

0:33 | Intel Cools on Immersion Cooling Lab

Intel has decided to put their immersion cooling lab in Hillsboro, Oregon on ice. The 200,000 sq ft facility is seen as a cost-cutting measure for Intel as revenues from the chip market continue to chill. Immersion cooling has been seen as a way to combat the rising heat levels from CPUs and GPUs backed with transisitors with Intel rushing to the lead to try and set the as yet undefined standard. Girard, is this move by Intel going to freeze the market for these solutions? Or should we all just take a chill pill?

Read More: Intel kills $700M liquid cooling lab amid chip slump

2:16 | GoTo Hack Goes from Bad to Worse

You know those storeis about hacks in the news that just keep getting worse when you read into them? Well, GoTo is in the same boat now. You may recall that we discussed this hack last year on the Rundown as part of a story about LastPass having their shared cloud storage hacked and key information stolen. Well, GoTo, formerly known as LogMeIn, was the avenue for that hack and they have it much worse. Attackers were not only able to gain access to encrypted customer backups and exfiltrate them. You may say that it’s not too bad becaue they’re encrypted, right? Well, attackers were able to get away with at least one encryption key. That could be bad news indeed. Tom, what’s the outcome here for GoTo? Will they end up gone?

Read More: GoTo hack sees attackers get encrypted customer backups, and encryption key

6:19 | vRealize Log Insight Has Unintended Features Thanks to New Flaws

If you’re managing your log files with vRealize Log Insight Manager you are going to need to schedule a patch window. Announced this week are two new CVEs, both rated 9.8 on the Scary Meter. One is a directory traversal bug and the other is an access control exploit. VMware says that updating your installation to 8.10.2 should fix these two bugs as well as two other more minor attack vectors. Girard, how soon should people get this done?

Read More: Logfile management is no fun. Now it’s a nightmare thanks to critical-rated VMware flaws

8:28 | ChatGPT, Write Me A Prompt Where You Get Paid

As reported last week, Microsoft has decided to invest multiple millsions of dollars into ChatGPT, the AI system for writing term papers and performance reviews. Microsoft had already invested $1 billion into the platform and has added more cold hard cash to OpenAI, the parent company that runs ChatGPT. The investment, reportedly up to $10 billion, comes amid rumors that ChatGPT will start offering a professional tier subscription that costs around $42/month to provide faster, more stable responses and access to new features when they get added. No word yet on whether that amount is secretly the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Read More: Microsoft confirms it’s investing billions in the creator of ChatGPT

13:13 | DoJ Says Google Doesn’t Ad Up

The US Department of Justice has joined with 8 US states to take on Google’s ad platform. In a filing this week they announced the suit claiming that Google’s dominant position in the market affords them the ability to monopolize and eliminate their competition. Per Merick Garland, US Attorney General, Google controls the tech used to display ads, the tools used to buy that ad space, and the ad exchange that matches advertisers to publishers. The government wants Google to divest their ad management business from the rest of the company. This could be an issue for the tech giant as a reported 80% of their revenue comes from digital ads. The enterprise angle here invovles what Google might be forced to do if they have to sell off the cash cow and how that could affect their service offerings, especially those that are free or insanely cheap thanks to being ad-supported.

Read More: Justice department alleges Google tried to ‘eliminate’ ad market rivals in lawsuit

21:09 | The Weeks Ahead

Cloud Field Day 16 – January 25, 2023

Cisco Live EMEA – February 7 – February 8, 2023

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

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A study published by Global Market Insights Inc. predicts that the NAS (Network Attached Storage) market will overshoot a $100 billion before 2032. The forecast is a jolting reminder of the rapidly accelerating demand for data storage.

Through a Clear LensUnfettered data growth is a prominent driver for the market demand for network attached storage. Businesses need additional space to catch the spillover in a cost-efficient and access-friendly manner. Further blowing up the market revenue is the rising investment in AI, 5G and infrastructure expansion.

But underneath that, what’s inflaming the demand is an elevated awareness of storage systems. The customers today know what an efficient storage system should look like. The business requirements that have rose to the top are centralized storage, simplified data management, and of course rock-solid data protection, and traditional NAS comes up short.

NasuniA major participant in this space is Nasuni Corporation. Amid companies like HPE and NetApp that are rolling out their versions of storage, Nasuni is garnering a lot of attention as a provider that puts mitigating cost, capacity and security challenges above all things.

Its competitive differentiator is that it gives the users ways to do more with less. Nasuni’s flagship File Data Platform is a comprehensive solution that helps organizations meet the newer business challenges with consistent performance, cost optimization and ease of management. Cost being top of mind, Nasuni offers the solution on flexible and pocket-friendly plans targeted at the cost-conscious market.

TechTarget named Nasuni the silver winner of the best enterprise cloud storage two years in a row. The judges rated Nasuni based on its File Data Platform’s breadth of capabilities. Unlike traditional NAS, Nasuni offers a cloud-centric file data service that connects users to data anywhere, anytime. The solution offers a common namespace where NAS and cloud file storage can be combined and collaborated.

Nasuni is vendor and cloud-agnostic which gives users the additional flexibility to collect and collaborate files, no matter their location. The platform differs from other storage solutions by offering a global file system that can store massive sets of unstructured data, and scale limitlessly.

The Nasuni File Data PlatformWhen it comes to building a file storage service, Nasuni lets the biggest industry trends guide it. With hybrid work becoming a standard, Nasuni’s platform features an add-on Access Anywhere service which allows accessing from any location without any security risk to the data. With its file solution, a widely distributed workforce can collaborate across locations without experiencing any difference in access performance or connectivity.

A big area of focus for Nasuni is data protection. Nasuni’s File Data Platform has built-in, always-on ransomware protection that detects threats in real-time, and recovers files from nefarious attacks under minutes. The protection spans cloud to edge empowering organizations to rapidly recover from attacks across multiple locations, thus averting costly shutdowns.

Nasuni steps away from the traditional backup and recovery to avoid its limitations. As an alternative, Nasuni offers a cloud storage file backup and recovery service that is built into the platform. File backup runs in the background without user intervention. What better, Nasuni’s file solution scales infinitely, meaning even though backup happens at a higher frequency than on-prem backups, users never run out of space.

Nasuni leverages object storage which promises higher capacity and lower cost, thus making a perfect fit for volume-heavy unstructured data. Simplicity is assured with a single console management, on-demand capacity and built-in backup and DR. It’s flexible architecture allows deploying cloud, on-prem and hybrid applications easily.

Nasuni in 2022In 2022, Nasuni made two significant acquisitions bolstering its platform’s capabilities. First, it bought startup company DBM Cloud Systems in a 60-million-dollar acquisition in May.

Then in June, it made its second acquisition – an UK-based, file data management company Storage Made Easy (SME) for an undisclosed sum. This acquisition was targeted toward improving file accessibility and giving customers high-performance access from home and branch offices, as well as field locations with limited bandwidth.

Nasuni is a regular presenter at Field Day events. Watch them present their latest solutions at this past Tech Field Day event in Silicon Valley.

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Back before the pandemic, most people commuted to office daily. Then, everything changed when workers were sent home for “two weeks.” This forced remote connectivity to evolve from supporting the occasional worker to supporting most (if not all) staff. For IT Security, there was extra concern about how company data was accessed and where it was stored.

Most decent-size companies were already able to support remote access long before COVID. But this was more about granting secure access to internal systems. Plus, a lot of companies did not plan on how to support a remote workforce. With everyone working remotely, management tools like Active Directory group policies may not update like before as staff may not always connect to the VPN. Add in cloud applications, like Office 365, that staff may not need to connect to at all. Over time, it has become evident that VPN is not good enough.

Replacing VPNFortunately, there is Secure Access Service Edge, or SASE. SASE constitutes endpoint security solutions like secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), and VPN, plus replaced traditional WAN with SD-WAN.

Unlike traditional VPNs, end users should not need to think about when to connect back to the on-premises environment as the SASE solution would handle it. If end users need to access emails (such as Office 365), the connection should be direct to the cloud service. When the end user needs to connect to an on-premises server, the connection happens without the end user needing to initiate a VPN session.

Basically, there are two overall types of SASE solutions: converged and integrated. A converged solution is where a vendor includes every aspect of SASE. This makes the solution operationally simple but may not include best of breed through the entire SASE stack. On the other hand, an integrated solution is where the vendor provides the client part but connects back to another SD-WAN solution. This allows companies to use different solutions, so closer to best of breed, but having different vendor products working together could make things messier as they may not always work seamlessly.

SASE is a great tool for keeping end users safe while securing access to data, no matter if it is in an on-premises server or in the cloud. Of course, IT departments will have to transition from VPN to SASE. This could start with changing WAN connections over to SD-WAN to give a connection point for the SASE client. Then the VPN client can be replaced with the SASE client to keep that remote access functionality.

The problem is where security services have already been deployed to support remote workers. If there is already a web security product like Zscaler, does the company have to throw this out to go with a SASE provider from a networking company? Some vendors may say yes making the transition a bigger project. That is not something that may be appreciated.

VMware Can HelpVMware may not be the first to the SASE market, but they do offer an easier transition to SASE. Companies can deploy any part of VMware’s solution, or even go with the full converged solution if desired. By allowing for pieces of the solution to be installed, VMware is not forcing IT departments into a “rip and replace” scenario. Rather, the replacement can be done over time so as not to impact the business too much.

For instance, Zscaler has a secure web gateway product that processes millions of transactions daily (https://trust.zscaler.com/zscaler.net). The Zscaler client connector gets installed on laptops allowing internet access to be secured. Switching to some converged SASE solutions may require getting rid of Zscaler, which could complicate a SASE deployment. The VMware solution can allow internet access to continue through Zscaler but on-premises access goes through VMware SASE. If desired, Zscaler can be dropped later in favor of the VMware solution.

ConclusionVPNs are no more good enough to support remote and hybrid workers. By upgrading to a SASE solution, end users no longer need to make the decision when to connect over a VPN. However, replacing a VPN and existing web security solutions could be a daunting task. Fortunately, companies like VMware help by offering a SASE solution that can be deployed in stages while working with existing security services like Zscaler.

Recently, I was part of a discussion with VMware about their solution. You can listen to that conversation as part of the Tech Field Day Showcase or go to https://sase.vmware.com/sase to learn more about the offering.

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Although the definition of hybrid cloud is loose, it’s inescapable that organizations are getting smarter about locating applications on-premises as well. In this episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, Michael Levan and Jon Myer join Stephen Foskett to discuss on-premises IT. It can seem that this discussion is driven by cost, but companies are actually getting a lot smarter and considering how to make the best use of resources in any location. In addition to on-prem versions of cloud platforms, OpenStack is still being deployed and OpenShift allows transparent location of applications. For Kubernetes applications, Rancher, Portainer, Lens, Arc, Anthos, and more. Cloud Field Day includes presentations from SoloIO, Forward Networks, and Fortinet, and all of these are important solutions for modern cloud as well. Cloud technology is a breath of fresh air for the datacenter and the people who work in modern IT, as applications are repatriated to the modern hybrid cloud.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsJon Myer

Michael Levan

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@_JonMyer

@TheNJDevOpsGuy

Twitter@SFoskett

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UK-based chip designer Arm is rapidly growing its automotive chip portfolio. The company, owned by SoftBank Group Corp, that you may have heard of in connection to the recent news of Arm’s possible listing on Nasdaq, is making headway despite stiff competition.

Arm’s chip designs power a majority of the smartphones and IoT devices in the market. The other big player is Intel. Intel dominates the laptops and desktop computer space. And now, both the behemoths are in automotive, building designs to power the most advanced fleet of self-driving cars of the decade.

A Much-Needed Course CorrectionA few years back, Arm maneuvered into a rapidly flourishing auto market, a decision that proved to be most astute for its future. For several years, Arm has been down on its luck, being faced with heavy-weight contenders. Investing in its automotive portfolio proved be a game-changer.

In February 2022, Arm unveiled a new image signal processor (ISP) for ADAS, the Mali-C78AE ISP, adding to its rapidly growing AE series. Believed to be critical to achieving complete driving autonomy, all of Arm’s processor IP from the AE series meet the ISO safety standards.

Apart from being the brain of the driver, automotive ISP also replaces the eyes. The sensors’ ISP picks up information that the processor computes to make decision.

But what gives Arm a competitive edge over OEMs like Qualcomm and Intel Mobileye, is that its processor IP comes with the safety requirements that make execution of L3+ ADAS a distinct possibility.

Image provided by ArmIn addition to vehicle perimeter, Arm is also pushing boundaries in in-vehicle infotainment or IVI. Arm has a range of solutions designed to deliver a “digital cockpit” by bringing to the customers a rich set of features inside the cabin. Heads-up Display (HUD), driver monitoring, HVAC control, rear-view camera, instrument cluster, rear passenger entertainment – ARM processors power a growing number of under-the-hood applications.

Financial Times reports a two-fold jump in its automotive business revenue since 2020. This spurt was followed by a 35% upshot in 2022, amounting to a fivefold growth in four years.

But Arm’s ambition does not stop there. Ahead of its public listing, Arm is seeking new avenues to pursue, and for now, the automotive market sits directly in its line of sight.

As rivals like Intel and MIPS get their hooks into the industry, Arm is redoubling its efforts to counter the competition, and gain control over bigger stakes in the market.

In an interview with Financial Times, Arm’s VP of Go-to-Market, Dennis Laudick said that development in automobiles has outpaced smartphones and datacenters. He added that the chip demand in cars is bigger now than ever before, because an extraordinary number of chips go into making feats like ADAS and AD possible in high-end cars.

Suffice to say that Arm’s concerted push is backed by strong market demands, and predictions of a chip shortage on the horizon. Already Arm holds about 85% of the market share for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) globally, and 55% of the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and is increasingly gaining purchase on the auto race.

Pushing AheadWhile Arm’s prospects are undoubtedly big, things aren’t entirely hunky-dory. In the past months, Arm has faced stiff competition from an exploding ecosystem of rivals, in particular, from one RISC-V. RISC-V Foundation, a Swiss non-profit outfit, has an open-source instruction set architecture which it markets as an alternative to Arm’s system IP. RISC-V’s open-source architecture lets engineers tweak and tune the IP to what they need, without paying royalties.

RISC-V is gaining traction in the Chinese market amid mounting trade restrictions. The open, expanding RISC-V ecosystem gives Chinese organizations a way to work around the restrictions and gain self-sufficiency in the semiconductor business. Arm on the other hand has chosen not to sell its high-performance Neoverse V line of chips to Chinese tech company, Alibaba, following the export restrictions of UK and US governments. However, Google’s recent endorsement of the RISC-V architecture proves that the attraction to open-source architecture is here to stay and grow.

New architectures like RISC-V may steer away some business from the established standards, but not all is sold on them. Experts believe that it will be long before everybody is a convert.

Arm is not likely to succumb to these market shifts. Already, the chip giant has invested heavily on its automotive portfolio, on both hardware and software sides, giving chipmakers more options to tinker with the designs before purchasing. Furthermore, it is leading the way with new and more capable solutions designed to provide clear and accurate information and powerfully quick decision-making. And given its track record in application processors for smartphones, Arm is well-positioned for continued sustainable growth in the auto industry.

Arm Vs IntelArm and Intel are the two chief forces in the microprocessor market. Arm does not manufacture its chips like Intel does. Instead, it licenses the ARM processor designs to companies like Snapdragon and Tensor who manufacture the chips in-house.

Image provided by ArmAs noted before, Intel controls the high-performance device market, while Arm reigns supreme in the low-power device sector that includes smartphones and tablets. In the past, Intel had attempted to make inroads in the smartphone processor market, but was largely unsuccessful.

Arm too has taken shots at penetrating Intel’s market by designing processors for laptops and computers, focusing on the low-power models and single-board systems. The Apple M1 chips which Arm collaborated on, showed that ARM processors can live up to the high standards of x86 chips.

As for the architecture, although both are aimed at providing devices more speed and power, Arm and Intel’s processors don’t share the same design. The ARM architecture is based on Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) ISA which delivers simpler tasks at higher efficiency, while Intel’s use Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC) that is made for handling complex tasks.

Supermicro’s Latest AnnouncementIn December last year, Supermicro, one of the biggest OEMs in the market, added a new series of ARM-based servers to its product line. Expanding on Supermicro’s MegaDC family, the Mt. Hamilton platform delivers high performance per watt and low latency responses.

A modular platform designed to meet a wide range of workload objectives, Mt. Hamilton addresses use cases spanning cloud-native applications, traditional workloads and AI. Mt. Hamilton uses Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max processors from Ampere Computing, and has a single motherboard design.

Arm Neoverse – From Cloud to EdgeArm’s growing participation in the automotive sector does not mean that it’s resting its laurels in other areas. In fact, around the same time that Arm started to involve in the auto market, it announced its Neoverse line of infrastructure CPU designs. It was Arm’s way of taking on the infrastructure market with renewed energy, after a period of stalemate, this time targeting the server and edge segments.

Arm has three lines of Neoverse core designs, namely E, N and V, optimized for edge, cloud and 5G networks. The classes E, N and V target efficiency, flexibility and max performance, respectively.

In September 2022, Arm launched the second generations of V and E cores, having already released the second iteration of N core design in 2021. In its second generation, the V2 platform transitioned from the older Amrv8.4 ISA to the new and more feature-rich Armv9 architecture getting significant security enhancements.

To check out Arm’s updated product line, head over to their website. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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When purchasing or subscribing to a new solution, organizations can send out a set of documents requesting information. These documents are of three different types, namely RFI or request for information, RFP or request for proposal and RFQ or request for price quotation.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITJust from their names, these requests may seem very similar, if not the same, but they have some sharp distinction. A company needs to fully understand those differences to exercise their right to information and get the most out of their investment.

In the article titled “Cloud Essentials+ Journey – Request for What?”, longtime IT professional and Field Day delegate, Tim Bertino talks about these requests outlining their differences. He writes,

Purchasing and implementing new solutions is a big part of the game for IT departments. Any time we deal with purchasing new gear or solutions, we are working with vendors, partners, and resellers. When working with these outside entities, there are different requests that we can draft to send to our partners/resellers/service providers. These are named request for information (RFI), request for proposal (RFP), and request for quote (RFQ). Here are my interpretations of these three request types.

To read the rest of the article, head over to Bertino’s blog Netication.com. Check out his “Cloud Essentials+ Journey” series for more resourceful materials on cloud journey. For more such interesting stories, sign up to our mailing list or follow us on social media.

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With both AMD and Intel supporting CXL in their newly-launched server platforms, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what has been delivered to date. This special episode of Utilizing CXL brings hosts Stephen Foskett, Craig Rodgers, and Nathan Bennett together to look back at 6 months of CXL announcements now that real products are shipping. We were pleased to see the support delivered by Intel and AMD, but also from Astera Labs, Samsung, SK Hynix, and MemVerge, as well as promising developments from ARM, Elastics Cloud, IntelliProp, Marvell, and many others.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Nathan Bennett, Focusing on Cloud, Automation, AI/ML, and Emerging Technologies. Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @vNathanBennett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.

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Our next Cloud Field Day Event is January 25, 2023! Tune in live on Tech Field Day’s website or LinkedIn starting at 8:00 AM Pacific Time on Wednesday. Here is a quick overview of what to look forward to from this event.

Cloud Field Day is our opportunity to look at the next generation of enterprise IT, from the datacenter to the public cloud, up and down the stack. Every Cloud Field Day event shows the many ways that cloud technology is impacting enterprise IT, and that’s certainly the case in January.

We’d like to give a special thanks to Forward Networks who is hosting us at their offices all day long, who will also be our first presentation of the day at 8 AM Pacific time. Forward Networks is presenting use cases for network digital twins in a cloud environment, bringing security, network ops, and cloud ops together as cloud sec ops. Next we’ll hear from Fortinet at 10 AM. The Fortigate cloud native firewall team will demonstrate attacks on a Fortigate firewall in an AWS environment with email and serverless applications. We’ll finish up with Solo.io at 2:30 PM. Solo.io is demonstrating the future of service mesh with cloud native 2.0 application networking.

All of our sessions are broadcast live on TechFieldDay.com and on the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page. These presentations will also be recorded and shared on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel soon after the event. We welcome you to follow along on Twitter using the #CFD16.

Thank you for joining Cloud Field Day live on January 25. While you’re on our website, join our mailing list to learn about upcoming events, see past presentations, and more.

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Modern flash endurance is dramatically better than early flash storage, but outdated assumptions about endurance persist. Range anxiety is causing many storage designers to invest in endurance they don’t need, instead of investing in the performance and capacity their customers actually need.

It turns out that most of the times, buyers aren’t in any danger of wearing out their flash. This should prompt a reconsideration of how endurance is taken into account when designing flash systems.

Measuring Lifetime WritesThere are two main approaches vendors use to describe drive endurance on their spec sheets: drive writes per day (DWPD) or total bytes written (usually as terabytes written (TBW)). They’re subtly different.

DWPD doesn’t really match the way users think about writes when using a system. They tend to think about throughput, which is about total bytes. At a given throughput rate, how long would the system last? That’s easier to work out if thought in terms of total bytes written.

A 7.68 TB flash drive with a rating of 1 DWPD would be able to handle 14,016 TB of writes before its industry standard 5-year warranty expires. That means for 20,000 TB of endurance, the drive needs to be bigger, right?

Not necessarily. Some 7.68 TB drives are rated differently for random vs. sequential writes. This is because sequential writes are more predictable, and the drive firmware can better manage the way writes are performed, extending the life of the drive. Sequential-write optimized 7.68 TB drives can support over 20,000 TB of writes in 5 years.

Costly mistakes can be sidestepped by bringing vendor drives specs into a common language, like total lifetime bytes. And if the kind of workload is matched to a drive optimized for that workload, then better investment choices can be made.

In fact, users probably don’t even need the endurance they think they need.

Actual EnduranceA large study of drive endurance found that most drives had used less than 15% of their predicted lifetime endurance. Drives simply don’t get used enough to wear out in most enterprise installations.

It turns out that drive firmware appears to be the most significant factor affecting drive reliability. Bugs in the software are more likely to trigger problems that cause drives to be replaced, not overuse of the drives that wears them out early.

Familiarity with workloads and drive behavior, which is used to make firmware improvements, is therefore something to keep in mind when selecting a flash drive vendor.

Given the discussion of drive endurance specs above, focusing merely on DWPD or total bytes written without an understanding of workloads would be a mistake.

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Captioned: “Annual replacement rates for different drive families, grouped by firmware version. (Source: Stathis Maneas et al., “A Study of SSD Reliability in Large Scale Enterprise Storage Deployments,” 2020, 137–49, https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast20/presentation/maneas)”A Word on PE CyclesThe rules of thumb used to be that each increase in cell-level technology (single-, to multi-, to triple-) dropped the number of PE cycles by about a factor of 10. Thus, with starting SLC cells starting at around 100,000 lifetime PE cycles, TLC cells would end up with around 1,000 PE cycles.

This log-linear approach is easy to remember, but it’s not quite accurate. Enterprise MLC cells were able to get 3 times the PE cycles of regular MLC (30,000 instead of 10,000), and TLC cells also managed 3x the log-linear predicted cycles (3,000 instead of 1,000).

When the discussion gets to QLC 3D NAND, things are very different. Instead of the rule-of-thumb predicted 100 PE cycles, one can get at least 1,000. In fact, modern QLC 3D NAND drives with their vastly more sophisticated firmware are regularly able to achieve 2,000 or even 3,000 PE cycles, which brings them into TLC level endurance range.

Naïvely assuming that there’s a substantial difference in PE cycles between modern QLC flash and TLC flash is going to lead to wrong decisions. It’d be foolish to rest on assumptions and not look at what modern drives are actually capable of.

ConclusionModern enterprise flash lasts much longer in real-life situations than users tend to assume. Drive reliability has very little to do with theoretical endurance under most enterprise conditions.

It’s time to get over range anxiety and start looking at the wealth of real data that modern storage systems offers. If the industry can let go of outdated fears, buyers may well be able to invest in storage systems that provide superior result for them.

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When Intel unveiled the Gen 4 Xeon Scalable processors (covered in this latest piece, and in the Rundown) earlier this month, some of Intel’s most recognized partners threw their weight behind it. And just days later, so many of them rolled out their respective Gen 4 Xeon powered server systems.

Host Stephen Foskett noted in today’s Rundown, “Now that the Sapphire Rapids products have been officially announced, we’re seeing a lot more people talking about what the processor can do. It’s important to recognize that Sapphire Rapids has actually been out there for about a year. I’m hearing that some of the hyperscalers are already rolling it out in volume for customers. There certainly have been a lot of appearances of Sapphire Rapids servers at events like OCP and SC22, and so we’re finally getting a look at where the rubber meets the road, which is servers and storage devices that are using Sapphire Rapids in production.”

As a quick refresher, here’s what the new generation of Intel Xeon Scalable processors bring to the table – the highest number of built-in accelerators of any processor, support for PCIe Gen 5, DDR5 memory and introduction of CXL 1.1.

One major point of difference is improved multi-socket scaling. Its 4 and new 8 socket configs are still unsupported by AMD processors.

Supermicro X13The same week that Intel rolled out the new generation of Xeon Scalable processors, Supermicro launched its X13 generation of servers. Supermicro’s launch claimed the top spot in the long line of server launches witnessed this week. Where other companies rolled out a handful of new models, Supermicro stood out with its release of a full stack comprising 15 new server families.

Powered with the new Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the X13 range offers multiple flavors ranging from 8-socket systems to high-density servers, accelerated servers with GPU to company flagship models. Optimized for a wide variety of workloads, the servers can handle anything from cutting-edge AI and Deep Learning tasks, Metaverse and 3D simulation, to cloud, media and enterprise applications. More on this in today’s Rundown.

HPE ProLiant Gen11HPE joined the chorus with the launch of the new ProLiant Gen11 servers for Intel. The servers include four models, namely, ProLiant DL320 Gen 11, ProLiant DL360 Gen 11, ProLiant DL380 Gen 11 and ProLiant ML350 Gen 11. Designed to take on a broad range of workloads from private and hybrid cloud to VDI, the models use Sapphire Rapids at the core.

HPE also released a set of ProLiant Gen11 servers for AMD late last year. This lineup utilizes the newest AMD EPYC Genoa processors.

Dell PowerEdge ServersAt SC22 last year, Dell previewed some of the new PowerEdge servers. This week, just days after the launch of the Intel Sapphire Rapids, Dell introduced 13 PowerEdge servers with the new Intel Xeon processors.

This is a big upgrade for Dell. Up until Sapphire Rapids, Dell was using Skylake Xeon SP processors from back in 2017. Having missed the 3rd Gen, Cooperlake, that was launched in 2020, the Sapphire Rapids platform will bring extra compute power and efficiency gains for Dell’s customers.

For this generation, Dell also embraced the Nvidia DGX H100 platform bringing to the customer’s its own flavor of DGX H100 systems.

Cisco UCS C-Series and X-Series Gen7Timed with the release of Intel’s release last week, Cisco unveiled the Cisco UCS C-Series and X-Series 7th Gen servers. Powered by the new Intel Sapphire Rapids processors, both the series of servers address the key demands of compute and storage for modern workloads like AI/ML and data analytics.

NVIDIA DGX H100Piggybacking on Intel’s launch of Sapphire Rapids, NVIDIA and its partners debuted the new generation of NVIDIA DGX H100 systems, expanding on its accelerated computing systems lineup, NVIDIA Hopper. The computing systems are turbocharged with NVIDIA’s proprietary H100 Tensor Core GPUs and the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

Powered by energy-efficient AI, the systems have proven to deliver 25 times greater efficiency and big cost savings compared to standard datacenter servers. NVIDIA is calling it “the greenest generation” thus far. The new systems will provide impressive gen-over-gen performance and efficiency increases, delivering more computation per watt.

In 2023, we will likely hear some announcements on more flexible and interesting servers using CXL memory. CXL 2.0 and 3.0 should come in the next generation of AMD and Intel processors and servers.

To explore more, follow the embedded links. Be sure to check out this week’s Rundown where hosts Stephen Foskett and Jon Myer cover the releases in detail. And for more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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Artificial Intelligence is making strides in all directions. It’s presence in certain spheres of IT has made technologies sharper, and day jobs of engineers a lot easier. One of the areas where AI is outpacing other technologies is network security.

Lately the employment of AI in network security has yielded remarkable results in reducing security incidents. But AI is a sharp tool, and in the wrong hands, it can very easily be our undoing.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITIT professional and Field Day delegate Tony Mattke shares his insider view on using artificial intelligence in network security, and predicts if AI will gain more purchase in Information Security in 2023. In a recently posted article, he writes,

Gartner has been saying that “next big thing” in network security is the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies for years now… Mainly because these technologies have the potential to revolutionize the way that network security is managed by enabling systems to learn and adapt to new threats in real-time.

Read the rest of the article – “Will 2023 be the year of Artificial Intelligence of InfoSec?” on Mattke’s blog Router Jockey. For more interesting stories like this, sign up to our mailing list for free.

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Supermicro, Dell, HPE, Cisco, and others have introduced the first server lines based on Intel’s recently-announced 4th generation Xeon processors. And of course Nvidia is also supporting these new processors with their H100 DGX platform. Let’s take a look under the hood and see how Sapphire Rapids brings new capabilities to these devices!

1:42 | Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Touts AWS Innovation

One week after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is credited with saying how AWS innovation is helping Amazon and its customers. AWS is a separate business inside of Amazon. A separate $20.5 billion dollar side business reported in their 2022 Q3 revenue. Andy did note that AWS employees would not be affected by the layoff round at Amazon. Jon, how is AWS not laying off but Amazon is, and will it continue?

Read More: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Touts AWS Innovation

3:47 | Global IT Spending 1% Below Expectations in 2022

We’re all seeing that IT spending isn’t as strong as it could be, and this was seemingly confirmed by a recent report from Gartner. They had predicted 0.8% growth in 2022 but instead spending was down 0.2%. This doesn’t sound like much, but things aren’t looking much better in 2023. What’s your take?

Read More: Global IT Spending Decreased in 2022

5:35 | Norton LifeLock Compromised Password Manager Accounts

Attackers used login details obtained from third-party platforms. Not for a few but thousands of NortonLifelock customers received a “warning” notifying them that hackers have successfully compromised Norton Password Manager. Jon, What’s someone supposed to do about securing their passwords now that it seems most online platforms are getting breached? Put it on a sticky? Jon are we seeing the end of password management systems or software?

Read More: NortonLifeLock notifies thousands of users about compromised Password Manager accounts

7:26 | Pure Storage Introduces Energy Efficiency SLA

Pure Storage was early to the eco game with their so-called Evergreen storage concept, but now they’re backing this up with an energy efficiency SLA for Pure1 customers. Customers can get service credits if their capacity-per-watt expectations aren’t met, though this should be pretty easy for Pure to ensure. Since storage is your game, what’s your take on this news, Stephen?

Read More: With Industry-First Energy Efficiency Guarantee, Pure Storage Further Expands SLA Offerings for Evergreen//One

10:14 | ChatGPT is the hottest topic since sliced bread

Rumors that Microsoft will expand ChatGPT access due to their Open AI investment continue to swirl and CEOs are buzzing about ChatGPT-style AI at the World Economic Forum. Jon, are more companies focusing on ChatGPT and will it replace Google Search?

Read More: Microsoft to expand ChatGPT access as OpenAI investment rumors swirl

12:26 | Sapphire Rapids Servers are Launched

Read More: New Dell PowerEdge Servers with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids Launched

Read More: Cisco Unveils Its Most Powerful and Energy-Efficient Computing Systems

Read More: The Greenest Generation: NVIDIA, Intel and Partners Supercharge AI Computing Efficiency

Read More: Massive Supermicro X13 Generation for 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Launched

Read More: HPE ProLiant Gen11 Servers with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Launched

23:47 | The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 30 – January 18 through January 20, 2023

Cloud Field Day 16 – January 25, 2023

Cisco Live EMEA – February 7 – February 8, 2023

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

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Network automation, if done right, can produce results equal to magic, but that is an outsize promise and might I say, even a bit misleading, to make to someone who has merely scratched the surface. The first steps to tapping into network automation is to understand the engineering part of it, and the best way to do that is through training.

If you’re looking to getting handsy with network automation or somewhere mid-way dizzy with confusion, you’re in luck. The internet presents information galore straight from the mouths of IT professionals’ that can help you there.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt ITOne of those resources is Anton Karneliuk’s article on network automation. In response to the questions he gets from his readers, Karneliuk, a network expert, put together a list of helpful tips for network engineers on how to start and continue to use network automation. He writes,

The amount of things you need to learn in order to succeed is huge and growing daily with new tools and platforms released. However, the good news is that we provide you everything you need to start successfully in the role.

To read the tips, read Karneliuk’s article – “Tips For Network Engineers Willing to Transit to Network Automation”. Sign up to our weekly newsletter and never miss a story again.

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Is enterprise IT capable of weathering a recession better than any other area of business? The vendors of the technology would have you believe that they’re not going to be affected by a coming slowdown in purchasing. The analysts say that there is trouble brewing on the horizon. What is it about infrastructure that makes it more likely to be a safe bet? In this episode, Tim Bertino, Ethan Banks, and Tom Hollingsworth discuss the various ways that investing in tech helps grow business but also the potential pitfalls of companies that think they’re bigger than the economic indicators.

On-Premises for Today’s Podcast:PanelistsTim Bertino

Ethan Banks

ModeratorTom Hollingsworth

Twitter@TimBertino

@ECBanks

Twitter@NetworkingNerd

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CXL is being rolled out in production and more reliability, scalability, and security features are being added all the time. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on enterprise-grade CXL with John Spiers, CEO of IntelliProp, talking about the ongoing evolution of CXL. IntelliProp is bringing a CXL fabric solution to market the enables memory expansion outside the server over a fabric. CXL 3.0 introduces memory fabrics, but it will take more development to bring features like high availability, routing, peer-to-peer, failover, and re-routing while preserving cache coherency and enabling management, and IntelliProp is working to bring all this to the spec.

As we discussed in our last episode with Dan Ernst from Microsoft Azure, CXL delivers acceptable memory latency, and John expects that this will continue with fabrics to some extent. IntelliProp will profile memory and enable tiered memory that matches application needs. The company is also working to enable advanced features, including sharing memory between systems, in association with the CXL consortium.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Nathan Bennett, Focusing on Cloud, Automation, AI/ML, and Emerging Technologies. Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @vNathanBennett.
John Spiers, CEO of Intelliprop. Connect with John on LinkedIn and learn more about Intelliprop on their website.

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When companies think of affordable cloud storage, they think of Backblaze. For years, organizations have fawned over Backblaze’s clear and considerate pricing. But it’s time to celebrate Backblaze for something else.

Over the past few years, the cloud economy has shaped up before our eyes. Hyperscalers have emerged and taken control of the market, and what may very well be the age of cloud colonialism has begun. As consumers stand by, waiting for the macroeconomic ill wind to blow over, the fight for greater market share rages on.

In a very real sense, these companies cultivate and control the cloud culture, shaping the future of the industry. We are quick to put a premium on their robust infrastructures and services. But we are often slow to admit how, in the battle of these titans, interests of customers with shallow pockets or those pulling back on CAPEX expenses are grossly overlooked.

These underserved classes of customers require an easy and affordable path to cloud. For them, hyperscalers have little to offer.

As cloud giants rake up business, a few cloud providers are unselfishly dedicated to making cloud costs predictable to those who need it to be. But most importantly, these companies are making organizations’ journey to the cloud easy, and uncomplicated.

Backblaze is one such company that has been working through the years to deliver cloud storage for low cost, in a simplistic format consumable to these outfits. We had the opportunity to catch up with Pat Patterson, Chief Tech Evangelist, and author at Backblaze, to talk about the past, present and future of the company.

A New IdentityGestalt IT’s Stephen Foskett kicked off the conversation by asking whether Backblaze still identifies as a data protection company.

Patterson revealed that Backblaze, in recent years, has moved on from data protection to pursue the avenue of S3-compatible storage. Patterson explained that the B2 Cloud Storage which is their on-demand cloud storage solution services three distinct market segments – archive and backup, media and entertainment, and the third and most interesting, application storage.

“That (application storage) is where companies are actually interacting with our APIs rather than just plugging the key and secret into a third-party tool. They’re building apps against our S3-compatible API and that’s the area 9 out of 20 of our biggest customers are,” informed Patterson.

Backblaze offers two suites of APIs – S3 compatible for a wider support, and B2 Native for functionalities not covered by the former.

The Open-Bucket FiascoOpen S3 buckets are one of the potential sources of data breach. This problem has preyed on some of the industry’s biggest players. For some of its customers, Backblaze is responsible for full data lifecycle from the point of upload to deletion. On being asked if stories of vulnerabilities and security incidents cause worry for Backblaze, Patterson replied that Backblaze has a whole different approach to avert the problem.

“We are S3 compatible – we are not a clone of S3. And one of the ways in which we’re different is managing visibility of data. It is much simpler in Backblaze.”

Big vendors like AWS offer differential visibility which besides ensuring flexibility, tends to make things complicated at the customers’ end. In Backblaze, things are pretty simple and painless. Backblaze offers equal visibility for all objects in the bucket. There are two settings – public and private read, and that works for a majority of the applications.

Something Old2021 marked a bend in the road for Backblaze when the beloved Backblaze Storage Pods came to an end. Backblaze started building storage pods back in 2009, when it was the only vendor to assemble them in-house. After its 10th anniversary, word got out that Backblaze was planning to build the next generation of pods, Storage Pod 7.0.

But things took a turn and in 2021, Backblaze decided to altogether terminate the production of Storage Pods. The reason they cited was pretty apparent – the emergence of high-density storage servers in the market and their cost-competitiveness rendered the once popular Storage Pods dated and unpractical.

Something NewStorage Pods coming to an end was a sad day for Backblaze, but in the bigger scheme of things, it was a minor wrinkle in the plan. Backblaze has since staged a remarkable rebound and is moving full speed ahead to a future in cloud.

When it comes to lowering costs, Backblaze talks the talk and walks the walk. It’s budget-friendly cloud storage solution is already proof of that. But, more recently, Backblaze added another service to the catalogue- the Universal Data Migration which takes that initiative to the next level. The cloud-to-cloud migration service allows users to move volumes of data to B2 Cloud Storage without paying high egress fees. At no cost to the users, they can lift and shift large datasets to Backblaze B2 using Flexify.IO.

Backblack Universal Data Migration Service Like everything else with Backblaze, this too is a cut-and-dried drill. Users can avoid the whole fuss of manually offloading and repopulating data from their current storage to Backblaze. They have Flexify.IO to simplify the transition.

Flexify.IO is a migration interconnect that helps organizations jump from one cloud provider to another easily and flexibly. Using inter-cloud bandwidth, Flexify.IO copies data from the current storage to Backblaze B2 at cloud-native speed. This allows faster and more secure migration of data. On Backblaze B2, users can enjoy a reliable and on-demand cloud storage at a fraction of the cost of competition.

In ConclusionClearly, there is more to Backblaze than meets the eye at once. As the bigger players fight over the bigger slice of pie, Backblaze is trying to bring cloud storage within the reach of customers for whom the big providers do not bring particularly fitting choices. Its continued effort has made it a shorthand for low-cost and simplified object storage, bringing to customers unlimited S3 compatible storage for less. While the Internet continues to enjoy the fun, educational resources Backblaze puts out for the community, we look forward to them expanding on their inventory of user-friendly cloud storage solutions that accelerate the cloud journey for one and all.

To explore their list of offerings, head over to Backblaze’s website. For more stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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It’s already a new year and we’re kicking it off in style with another edition of Networking Field Day! The flagship networking event returns for more great discussion and learning in Silicon Valley January 18-20. You’re not going to want to miss a minute of the great conversations.

Networking Field Day Presentation ScheduleWe start the event on Wednesday, January 18 with our first presentation from Anuta Networks. They are excited to give the delegates an update on their technology and discuss how they’ve been deploying it to a wide range of customers. The next presenter is Juniper Networks who is returning once again to discuss the advances they have made in data center networking and beyond. There’s sure to be some excitement! The final presenter of the first day is Aryaka who will be joining Networking Field Day for the first time. They’re a big player in the managed SD-WAN and SASE space and our audience is excited to hear all about it!

Thursday, January 19 kicks off with a presentation from Cisco. They’ll be bringing in a lot of great technology and demos to show off what their customers have been asking them for in the past few months. Afterwards we’ll get an update from Arista and what’s hot in the market for data centers and cloud networking. The Arista team always brings some great discussion to the event so make sure you tune in to see it. We will wrap up Thursday with a special delegate panel talking about the Future of Networking in 2023. This interactive conversation is one of the highlights for our Tech Field Day audience so make sure you ask lots of questions for the delegates to debate.

Friday January 20 opens with our friends at Fortinet who will be talking all about SD-WAN and fabrics and how the two can combine with other great technologies to build a comprehensive solution. The final presenter for the event will be a brand new company, Selector AI. They’ve got an exciting analytics and observability that you’re definitely going to want to see in action!

Follow Along with Field DayNetworking Field Day 30 will take place live January 18-20, 2023. You can follow along on our website at TechFieldDay.com as well as the Networking Field Day 30 event page. For those that want to watch on LinkedIn make sure you check out the Tech Field Day LinkedIn page during the event as well. After the broadcast you can catch the recordings on-demand at the Tech Field Day YouTube channel. If you want to participate live in the conversation don’t forget to follow Tech Field Day on Twitter and use the hashtag #NFD30. We can’t wait to hear from you!

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Yesterday, Intel unveiled the highly-anticipated, fire-breathing 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors – Intel Xeon CPU and Intel Data Center GPU Max Series. Intel promises colossal performance and efficiency gains with the new line of processors, calling them drivers for workload acceleration.

The launch event which was streamed live on Intel’s website, was star-studded with high-ranking executives from Intel including CEO, Pat Gelsinger himself, and Sandra L. Rivera and Lisa Spelman.

Gelsinger, kicked off the event with a keynote speech that nicely summed up the products.

“The 4th Gen and the Max family deliver extraordinary performance gains, efficiency, security, and breakthrough new capacities in AI, cloud and networking, delivering the world’s most powerful supercomputers that have ever been built.”

On Jan. 10, 2023, Intel introduced 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, delivering the most built-in accelerators of any central processing unit in the world. (Credit: Intel Corporation)The 4th Gen Xeon processors are built with the current computing challenges top of the mind. Sandra Rivera, executive VP and GM of Intel’s Data Center and AI Group set the stage for the release. Referring to the Xeon family of processors, she said, “For three generations of Intel scalable processors, we’ve architected our datacenter solutions with your business needs in mind. Our unique approach is focused on providing real-world purpose-built workload acceleration that delivers superior system performance at greater efficiencies.”

Intel targets industries widely from edge to cloud, datacenters to 5G networking, with the Xeon line of processors. More than 100 million Xeon Scalable processors are deployed in the market today.

But Intel does not view “purpose-built workload acceleration” as something achievable with just stuffing more cores in. For Intel, true workload acceleration takes “a true system level approach” in which “highly optimized software is tuned to the differentiated features in the hardware in order to accelerate the most critical business workloads including AI, networking, HPC and security.” The 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors realize this with an architecture optimized with max compute density and high-bandwidth memory to power some of the world’s most cutting-edge workloads.

A Paradigm ShiftRivera noted that the 4th generation processors set in motion “a paradigm shift” as with them, organizations will be able to overcome decades of computing challenges, especially in high-performance computing industries.

Intel is working with the industry’s leading OEMs and ODMs on this. The 4th Gen Xeon processors are already activated by a lot of Intel’s peers in the industry including, AWS, IBM, Oracle, Google Cloud, Cisco and Fujitsu, all of whom have experienced breakthrough results.

The Intel Data Center GPU Max Series is code-named Ponte Vecchio, and the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, and the Intel Xeon CPU Max Series go by the highly familiar names of Sapphire Rapids and Sapphire Rapids HBM.

Power Savings and Efficiency GainsThe Gen 4 Xeon processors have the most built-in accelerators seen in any datacenter processor in the market. When tested with general workloads, the processors showed an average of 2.9 times increase in performance-per-watt efficiency, which Intel claims are real world numbers.

Intel promises lower total costs of ownership and operations in datacenters with the new processors. Built with differentiated features which allow optimal utilization of resources and greater power efficiency, the 4th Gen Xeon processors deliver improvements of up to 66%.

SustainabilityIntel has made massive strides in sustainability with the latest generation of processors. According to a press release published in Intel’s News section of the website, the 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors are Intel’s most sustainable processors for datacenter till date. The processors unlock massive power and performance thresholds by optimal utilization of CPU resources for maximum sustainability.

AI and Deep LearningIntel continues to democratize AI with its hardware, and the latest series of Xeon processors pushes AI deeper into datacenters. Gen-over-gen, the latest Xeon Scalable processors offer 10 times higher performance for PyTorch real-time inference and training. Intel QuickAssist Technology enables data encryption with 47% fewer cores maintaining the same level of performance.

Lisa Spelman, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Intel Xeon products who has so far been part of 8 Xeon processor launches informed that Intel’s journey of built-in AI acceleration in Xeon started in 2017. Intel has since added to the hardware acceleration working closely with the software ecosystem making sure that the out-of-box performance is better with each generation.

Intel introduced the Intel Data Center GPU Max Series for high performance computing and artificial intelligence. The Data Center GPU Max Series is a high-density processor, packing over 100 billion transistors into a 47-tile package with up to 128 gigabytes of high bandwidth memory. (Credit: Intel Corporation)“With this improved performance, you can deliver deep learning, and training DL and inference workloads like natural language processing (NLP), recommendation systems, image recognition.”

“For the first time Intel is integrating high-bandwidth memory into the Xeon processor and delivering Xeon Max.” Xeon Max is Intel’s first x86 based processor to have integrated bandwidth memory. Intel’s goal was to tackle the memory bandwidth inadequacy that often starves high performance computing workloads like life sciences and genomics, high energy physics and such.

Xeon Max overcomes the problem of wasted resources like compute cycles, energy and cost with increased memory bandwidth. Compared to other systems, the product brings 3.7 times performance improvement, and consumes 68% less energy.

SecurityRivera noted, “Intel is the only silicon provider to offer Application-level Isolation with Intel Software Guard Extensions which provide the smallest attack surface for confidential computing, whether that’s in private, public or edge computing cloud environments.”

The 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors further empower confidential computing with a new Virtual Machine Isolation technology, the Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX). Already in use in Microsoft Azure that will debut TDX later this year ahead of its general availability, the technology helps cloud providers lift and shift applications to a secure confidential computing environment in the cloud without making laborious code changes.

4th Gen Xeon offers communication service providers twice the performance per Watt which is critical to fulfilling high quality of service, scaling and energy requirements for vRAN workloads. Compared to the previous generation, the new generation will also offer 30% better performance for their 5G workloads. “This improvement is delivered through new instructions but also through our next generation platform which delivers improved memory and PCIe bandwidth, and it’s all delivered in the same power envelope as the prior generation.”

Watch Intel present Intel Habana Labs AI accelerators for Deep Learning at the recent AI Field Day event in Silicon Valley.

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If you were curious as to when Intel would launch their fourth generation Xeon processors you can satisfy that curiosity. Intel’s long-rumored Sapphire Rapids architecture is now official as of this week. The biggest takeaways from the official coverage are the inclusion of accelerators on the CPU die to help increase performance for specific workloads such as SSL, 5G, and networking built around DPDK. This features comes alongside Intel On Demand, a service that allows you to purchase a CPU now and unlock accelerators in the future for a fee. There’s even discussion of support for Optane and CXL! This and more on this week’s Rundown.

0:38 | WD and Kioxia Restart Merger Talks

Western Digital is restarting talks with Kioxia about a potential merger between the brands. You may recall that there were talks back in 2021 that eneded up going nowhere. WD is looking at some strategic alternatives thanks to the double whammy of a declining flash memory market and interest from noted activist investor and Tazmanian Devil Elliot Investment Management. The details of the proposal include the two providers being united into one publicly traded company but are still in a very early stage. WD and Kioxia already have a partnership together in a joint venture. Stephen, is this merger going to come through this time around?

Read More: Western Digital, Kioxia Revive Merger Talks With Flash Memory Demand Sinking

4:05 | AWS Encrypts S3 By Default

It’s a new year which means it’s time for AWS to change some default settings. Before you get upset this is actually a very good change! Amazon announced that S3 will now encrypt all new objects by default. This long-requested change ensures that all objects saved to the storage system will be encrypted without user intervention. The encryption method used, SSE-S3, has been available for quite a while but it required user intervention to enable it. Tom, what do you think about this change?

Read More: Amazon S3 Encrypts New Objects By Default

7:23 | Microsoft Officially Has A Fungible Asset

Something we covered on the Rundown late last year is finally official. Fungible has been acquired by Microsoft to integrate their DPU technology into Microsoft Azure. The Fungible team will be joining the datacenter infrastructure team and reportedly will be working on multiple DPU solutions. Stephen, with the phrasing of that statement do you think that Microsoft is going ot keep Fungible as an internal-only offering? Or could we see it being offered commercially?

Read More: Microsoft announces acquisition of Fungible to accelerate datacenter innovation

10:19 | FAA Orders Airlines to Fix Altimeters for 5G

Want to know what it looks like when a government agency is finally tired of stalling and inaction? Ladies and gentlemen, the FAA. The airline oversight agency has announced a sweeping order that sets a 2024 deadline for aircraft operators to either install new altimeters or shield existing models to eliminate the supposed threat from C-band 5G radios. The new rules come amidst a flurry of back-and-forth arguing from providers like AT&T and airlines. The providers had slowed the rollout of C-band tech near airports as a show of good faith to allow airlines to fix altimeters but the lobbyists for the airlines wanted to make the ban permanent. The FAA evidently thought differently. Approximately 8,000 aircraft will need to be adjusted, with around 200 of those requiring a full replacment of equipment. Tom, did the FAA do the right thing here?

Read More: Airworthiness Directives; Transport and Commuter Category Airplanes

13:39 | Intel 4th Gen Xeon Rides the Rapids

If you were curious as to when Intel would launch their fourth generation Xeon processors you can satisfy that curiosity. Intel’s long-rumored Sapphire Rapids architecture is now official as of this week. The biggest takeways from the official coverage are the inclusion of accelerators on the CPU die to help increase performance for specific workloads such as SSL, 5G, and networking built around DPDK. This features comes alongside Intel On Demand, a service that allows you to purchase a CPU now and unlock accelerators in the future for a fee. There’s even discussion of support for Optane and CXL! Stephen, you’ve been following this release very closely for a while now. Tell us what stands out for you.

Read More: 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids Leaps Forward

33:17 | The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 30 – January 18 through January 20, 2023

Cloud Field Day 16 – January 25 through January 27, 2023

Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023

Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023

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Gartner defines multi-cloud as “the deliberate use of cloud services from multiple cloud providers for the same general class of IT solutions or workloads”. But in practice, multi-cloud is more complicated than that. Imagine using a multi-cloud strategy for all your data. You portion out volumes of data to various public clouds to avail the best-of-breed service. This would solve a lot of the data inflation problem that we are grappling with, but not without presenting its own exclusive set of challenges.

Recently, Gestalt IT had the opportunity of having a briefing from Faction, Inc. We met with Matthew Wallace, CTO at Faction to talk about the problems faced by enterprises in multi-cloud, and how Faction seeks to solve them.

The Less-Than-Elegant Realities of Multi-CloudEnterprises sitting on a glut of data sees multi-cloud as the way to make it work. One can argue that scattering data and applications across cloud platforms has many merits, not the least of which are freedom from notorious vendor lock-ins and access to best-in-class services, but there’re bigger problems tied to it that need to be dealt with too.

One of chief ones that Wallace drew attention to was data gravity. Data gravity is a problem that challenges the idée fixe that multi-cloud is the easy answer to data proliferation in enterprises.

The literal meaning of the phrase “data gravity” goes something like this – bigger bodies of data exert a pull toward smaller applications and datasets much like gravity. Because of this, the smaller bodies end up closer to the large volumes of data. This gravity is often likened to the force that keeps planetary bodies of smaller mass orbiting around those of bigger masses.

In a network, this may seem like a good thing because the closer the apps are to data, the lower the latency. But as these smaller datasets grow in size, processing them becomes precarious.

Aside from data gravity, woes of data migration and compliance headaches in multi-cloud are equally debilitating to business outcomes. But there is another thing that is causing big worries for enterprises going multi-cloud. Industry-wide, CIOs have vented their discomfort and frustration over growing cloud costs engendered by data gravity. Enterprises are starting to recognize that stitching together applications or pouring out data into multiple cloud comes as at steep cost. The ensuing rise in storage needs is ratcheting up their cloud bills.

Uncoupling Multi-Cloud from Its Headaches“Multicloud is not multiple clouds,” pointed out Wallace. There is a clear distinction between the two and that makes all the difference. Where using multiple clouds involves making multiple copies of the same data to keep it accessible via all clouds in question, multi-cloud involves using only a single copy of the data across cloud platforms, no duplicates, no migration.

Image Provided by Faction, Inc.Faction believes that going multi-cloud need not be fraught with these many challenges. Faction Cloud Control Volumes offers a way around them. It’s a cloud-adjacent storage platform that stores data centrally so that enterprises can extract value out of their data in an affordable and intelligent manner.

“Our method is to present the same copy of data from the same back-end storage systems into all the clouds at the same time, over the network. The focus we have is to make that network fabric super high-speed and low latency to make it feel like it’s in every cloud natively,” informed Wallace.

Faction Cloud Control VolumesCloud Control Volumes is set up on a high- performing proprietary network called Faction Internetwork eXchange or FIX via which it connects to public clouds like AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud.

CCV offers users the ability to pick a cloud from get go via the Faction Portal. They can choose the required throughput, attach it to the chosen cloud service, and get started. Administrators can flexibly share bandwidth between providers, and add and delete connections as required. “You can reallocate, and you don’t even have to know ahead of time,” said Wallace.

Image Provided by Faction, Inc.There’s no limit to the number of Virtual Private Clouds you can share that bandwidth across. While hyperscalers limit sharing bandwidth to only a handful of VPCs, Faction’s network architecture allows for a lot more flexibility in terms of scalability and sharing.

“We’re actually abstracting the clouds away,” Wallace pointed out. “But what if you want to use the unique things across every cloud?” This especially makes sense for data-intensive workloads in genomics and AI to “steal intelligence from that PaaS layer to actually use what’s unique across each cloud.”

Faction eliminates the inescapable complexity in multi-cloud while preserving the unique strengths of each provider. By reducing the number of copies of data down to one and centralizing it to be accessible via a high-throughput connectivity, it removes all silos and puts everything together on a single plane.

With Faction, you don’t need to pay egress fees when moving data out from one provider to the next. But that is not the only way it saves organizations money. When working with multiple cloud providers, users have the choice to spin up capacity in the platform that offers the best economics without the hassles of data migration.

There is also a second piece that CCV addresses. “Our product automatically takes care of data gravity, connectivity, synchronization and egress charges,” Wallace said. “But we’re also seeing a lot of growing use cases that’re sharing or collaborating across enterprises. A lot of these enterprises are multi-cloud either by choice or by circumstance. For them, being able to have teams share data across clouds becomes a challenge.”

Faction has a data-first approach with which it delivers multi-cloud capabilities on an unified plane. Faction creates a single centralized copy of data that sitting in its native storage can be accessed any time, via any cloud. This setup, devoid of any data siloes, makes it easy for any number of teams to collaborate.

There are three performance tiers of storage to choose from – Ultra High, General Purpose and Archive which are designed to ensure that performance is finely matched to the requirements of the workloads, and users have tight control over the cost.

Faction has a REST API that all portal functions run through. It automates network provisioning making it possible for organizations to seamlessly switch between providers. Other functions include network monitoring and ticket access.

In ConclusionThere are two sets of use cases that Faction’s Cloud Control Volumes best serves – one that requires lots of data sharing across cloud for data-intensive applications like ML, Financial Analytics, Life Sciences and Genomics and such, and the other that is looking to unlock breakthrough economics in multi-cloud. For both, it brings the best of public cloud. By preserving the specialties of every cloud in question, and rendering them on a common abstraction plane that levels the differences, it enables easy tracking and controlling of data from a single plane. The high bandwidth, low latency infrastructure that it operates on makes sure that application performance never suffers.

To learn more about Cloud Control Volumes, head over to Faction’s website. For more interesting stories like this, keep reading here at Gestaltit.com.

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The Python Web Conference is back. After 2022’s mega event, it’s returned in full blast this year. 2023 marks the 5th anniversary of the Python Web Conference, and great things are expected.

Five day long, the Python Web Conference 2023 will have over 50 live talks, and 400 guests from more than 40 countries will be in attendance.

It is 100% virtual. You can tune in live from your home, a coffee shop or wherever in the world you are, no need to get on a plane or drive to a venue. It will be hosted on LoudSwarm. So, just grab a chair and make yourself comfortable in front of a screen.

A Little on Python Web ConferencePWC began in 2019 as an initiative to bring developers together on a platform to hold discourses on current topics on tech. Over the years, the event garnered a lot of attention from developers, and the list of guests and sponsors grew considerably.

Hosted every year and attended by developers from mid to advanced level from the world over, PWC is believed to be the biggest web conference on Python. Where other events scaled back because of the pandemic-time constraints, the Python Web Conference only got bigger and better, garnering more participants and sponsors each year.

Tracks and TalksEach year, the conference focuses on a set of hot topics around which several sessions are offered. Industry experts from all over the world conduct these sessions which range from informational to educational.

This year, the topics chosen are some of tech’s most burning themes. The list begins with AI/ML and Big Data and goes on to include Cloud Native, Containers, CI/CD, Microservices, Security and Serverless.

Daily schedules include open interactive sessions where guests can get together and have group discussions on the topics. There are live talk sessions if you up for some tech wisdom from renowned industry pundits.

Fun After-Event ProgramsThe fun starts with end-of-day socials where guests gather and mingle, and try their hand at activities like origami. Imagine being in a room where there are only peers with like interests communicating their passions and sharing their stories.

These concluding events are just as fun and socially invigorating as the sessions are rich and educational. They’re a great way to meet new people, make connections, find opportunities and feel inspired.

Sponsors and PartnersLike each year, this year too, the sponsor list is swarming with familiar names from the tech world. Django, EuroPython Society, IndyAWS, Women & Hi Tech, Women Who Code to name a few. The event is covered by a wide panel of media partners among whom Gestalt IT is one.

Python Web Conference 2023 is brought to you by Six Feet Up. The event is set to kick off in March from 13th to 17th between 9am and 3pm ET. Tune in for a series of entertaining, immersive and hard-hitting sessions on some of the industry’s hottest themes.

For those who are interested, a full event schedule is available on the Python Web Conf website. If you are looking to buy tickets, get a 15% off on us. Use the code featured in the image above to redeem the discount. Gestalt IT is also giving away complimentary tickets for two lucky winners. To claim it today, follow us on Twitter.

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The whole concept of the cloud is evolving, from traditional datacenter to cloud-native applications to the next generation of hybrid cloud. This episode of On-Premise IT, sponsored by NetApp, features Arjan Timmerman, Vuong Pham, Stephen Foskett, and Phoebe Goh discussing the evolved cloud. Data gravity and sovereignty is leading enterprises to reconsider the platforms chosen to host their applications. Although terms like hybrid cloud, private cloud, and multicloud are changing, customers care more about functionality and practical applications. Data must be made available both inside and outside the datacenter but it must be managed and protected in these locations and comply with regulations and industry best practices. Businesses are increasingly using multiple cloud services as well, from public IaaS to their own datacenter Kubernetes environment. This makes it especially difficult when considering data services and tools since they must support a wide variety of platforms.

On-Premises for Today’s Spotlight Podcast:PanelistsVuong Pham

Arjan Timmerman

Twitter@Digital_KungFu

@ArjanTimm

NetApp PanelistPhoebe Goh, Product & Marketing Leader at NetApp. Connect with Phoebe on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Learn more about BlueXP from NetApp here.

ModeratorStephen Foskett

Twitter@SFoskett

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One of the advantages of Kubernetes development and operations is the modular construction of the infrastructure itself. This advantage is extremely prevalent when it comes to integrating storage: Kubernetes has the right level of abstraction so it can keep a loosely-coupled connection to the back-end storage subsystem. Although the Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI) is a helpful abstraction, one long-time challenge is that it limits the number of platform-specific features that can be utilized by containers. This makes Dell’s new Container Storage Modules (CSM) approach a huge benefit, since it unlocks all the features at the hardware and software storage subsystem to bring those capabilities closer to the applications running on Kubernetes.

Abstractions With AdvantagesContainer Storage Modules (CSM) are built on top of the Container Storage Interface (CSI). This allows abstraction to remain while also getting more intelligence from the container platform layer, bringing the benefits of scalable enterprise storage platforms closer to the cloud-native nature of Kubernetes. CSM removes the need to program key features into Kubernetes itself, reducing complexity in the core Kubernetes codebase.

The CSM concept creates appropriately-opinionated modules that are loosely coupled. This is the ideal level of interoperability, because any underlying storage system with enhanced capabilities can expose those features using CSM as a common method.

Who Will Use CSM Features?The primary consumer and administrator of storage in traditional enterprise environments is a storage administrator (or perhaps the operations team). But companies are now creating a new practice group, dubbed platform operations. Even though they are more developer-centric, the platform ops teams are still on the “Ops” side of DevOps.

CSM now allows developers to pick and choose how to leverage features since it allows programmatic access to them. The current modules that are available and fully supported by Dell today include authorization, replication, resiliency, observability, and volume snapshotting. There are more in tech preview today (app mobility and secure), and we expect that these will reach production-level support soon.

It’s easier to think of the value if we look at some active use-cases that Kubernetes operators and cloud-native application developers will know very well.

Use-Case #1 – Scaling Container StorageThe original intent of containers was ephemeral computing, but this has shifted. Today, long-running workloads and shared container storage have become common as DevOps teams seek to get the most out of Kubernetes as a hosting platform without having to refactor their applications to be 100% stateless.

The issue with stateful, long-running workloads is that they can have operational patterns that aren’t “typical” for Kubernetes. One of the challenges is how to scale storage without re-spawning containers to a new location. Application developers and operations teams have been holding back app migrations to Kubernetes because of the limits to storage scalability.

Using CSM to abstract the underlying storage lets developers present and manage the storage endpoint programmatically. They will not have to worry about requesting access through a ticketing system to make changes because they can either be given access to manage it themselves or the operations teams can use simple, programmatic methods to operate and expand, contract, or set properties like tiers and capabilities for the storage system.

Use-Case #2 – Authorization For Container StorageAccess to storage is traditionally managed at the cluster layer, and there has not been effective granular access based in the core RBAC for Kubernetes. This is very risky and leads to issues like allowing unnecessary access or, even worse, leaking authentication code and secrets.

The authorization module in CSM remedies this concern through the programmatic selection of a storage target for the container based on some criteria (e.g. location, encryption state, type of storage). It also allows for programmatic management of authorization.

CSM authorization allows application developers to include storage access in their process with much less risk exposure. It also makes quotas and other properties of storage management much easier for the operations teams without having to manually allocate at the storage subsystem for every request. Authorization is now exposed to the container with the native CSI and existing properties that are already part of storage management in Kubernetes.

Use-Case #3 – Cross-Cluster Data Replication and RecoveryAnother common challenge facing Kubernetes DevOps teams is cross-cluster data replication. Application failover and recovery to alternate clusters is a challenge when complex data and applications are involved. CSM allows for snapshots to be created and replicated to a secondary cluster. When the new containerized application is spawned in that cluster, it will have the latest revision of the data. This array-based replication for cloud-native environments allows DevOps teams to realize higher performance, simplified management, and an efficient use of resources. In particular to performance, the replication available through Dell’s CSM helps enterprises avoid the overhead of data transfer being done in software above the storage hardware, instead completing the replication at the storage array level.

The unique advantage is that CSM methods can combine all three of these use-cases. By having scalable underlying storage that does not require container and node restarts to recognize configuration chances is game-changing. The ability to authorize storage access extends quota management and storage type access management across the whole environment instead of just inside each cluster.

This is a fantastic solution for business continuity and disaster recovery and gets rid of the need for the replication to be handled inside the application itself. Considering how developers manage storage today, they will be very excited to hear about using CSM for Replication.

ConclusionKubernetes and cloud-native application design is a big change for many organizations. The lack of specific performance-oriented support of powerful underlying storage systems has long held back application modernization. CSM brings features like replication, resiliency, extended observability, and volume-level snapshotting to ensure programmatic control and the right abstraction to keep Kubernetes core as simple as possible.

The work being put out by the Dell platform team to expose and fully leverage storage features using Container Storage Modules is a huge win for enterprises adopting Kubernetes as a containerized application hosting platform. The team has produced lots of helpful CSM resources, from the core guide to specific live GitHub content for each of the associated modules. CSM is the beginning of a new era in storage integration that will hopefully drive more innovation by the entire Kubernetes community and supporting vendor ecosystem.

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Google Cloud is one of the top three cloud providers in the industry. Although it was the last to enter the scene, it has caught up really quickly with the other two top contenders, AWS and Microsoft Azure. With AWS unshaken in the number 1 position, the race is tight between GC and Azure. For years GC has been aiming for the second position, and now its efforts may be paying off.

According to an estimate put together by Google staff, GC is closing in on Azure. Based on a leaked Microsoft document that was internally analyzed, and looking at the current market stats, Google employees have reason to believe that Google Cloud is much closer to being second in the leading position than analysts estimate.

A Brief HistoryAbout fifteen years back, Google entered the then emerging cloud market in baby steps, following AWS. It came up with a developer tool which later went on to become the Google Cloud Platform that we know today. In 2008, two years after AWS was launched, Google released App Engine, a serverless app development and hosting platform, in preview. The release was targeted at a limited set of audience. The first 10,000 people could test-ride it on a first-come, first-serve basis. Using a 500 MB storage capacity, 200M megacycles of CPU and 10 GB bandwidth per day, developers could run their applications on App Engine.

With App Engine, the goal was to provide a ready-to-use, no-maintenance, scalable platform for web applications. After three years, in 2011, App Engine was taken down from preview mode and released as a commercial product. Over the years, Google added scores of new services under the GCP banner making it a hyperscale cloud infrastructure.

What Customers Say They Love about the Google Cloud PlatformGoogle Cloud’s rise to the hyperscaler status is backed by some very positive reviews from the customers. The Google Cloud Platform is trusted by some of the industry’s biggest entities. Its overwhelming domination in domestic and overseas markets owes to not one but a series of factors.

Google has a golden reputation. Its network infrastructure is gargantuan, spanning some 35 regions, 106 availability zones and 176 edge locations. Among its customers, GCP has the reputation of being easy to use and reliable. GC runs on the same infrastructure that powers some of Google’s most widely used products like Google Search and YouTube. A global network that is continually expanding, it offers high-bandwidth connectivity, low latency, built-in redundancy and layered security. Customers can granularly design their storage on GCP, enjoy a quick and easy set up, and fuss-free management from a single console.

A big factor contributing to Google Cloud’s control over large stakes in the cloud markets is its open ecosystem. Instead of getting customers locked in with one vendor, Google Cloud lets its customers choose their solutions from other vendors as well. Google has the history being a front runner in open source, and now it leads the way in open cloud ecosystems and interoperability. Open cloud gives customers greater autonomy and control over the infrastructure and their assets by letting them deploy GC services in edge locations, on premises and in other public clouds.

Another big reason is security. Google maintains high standards of security which hyperscalers are known to do, thus helping organizations stay compliant and secure on its infrastructure. All security solutions engineered at Google are available to customers on Google Cloud Platform. GCP provides a zero-trust environment and a rich set of compliance and security controls for workloads. GCP’s suite of security tools and processes is focused on detection of potential threats and prevention of breaches. Google’s involvement with military projects requiring top Impact Level support in the past and more recently, puts a seal on its claimed security standards.

Support available on the Google Cloud Platform is wide-ranging and one of the most loved features. Under the Customer Care umbrella, there are basic and paid support services. The basic service that involves support for billing and payments is free and included within the subscription, and available in multiple regions and languages. Paid packages come in three flavors – Standard, Enhanced and Premium, and include unlimited technical support, quick response times and customer-centric services.

Customer-Centric PrivacyGoogle has a distinct perspective when it comes to security and privacy. Among many of the things it focuses on, privacy-centric customer interaction is a chief one. This mindset echoes through all its security and privacy policies that fundamentally prioritize protection and privacy of customers’ data.

This is because Google caters to industries like hospitality where Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is rife, and therefore requires additional security. Google’s security policies and advisories for these customers are specifically designed to elevate awareness of cyber threats. Through encryption, Google secures PII at rest, in transit and while processing. Google Cloud is also dedicated to building out GDPR compliant customer data platforms that also conform to other data protection laws to ensure that its customers are able to offer their clients a personalized, customer-first experience.

A DoD ContractThis past December, Google landed a lucrative multi-billion dollar cloud-computing contract with Pentagon. The contract awarded jointly to Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle may amount to a colossal figure of $9 billion.

The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract was designed by the Department of Defense in 2021 as an effort to rely on multiple cloud vendors to leverage the best of cloud capabilities for tactical and national security missions.

But working with DoD is not a first for Google. The tech giant has formerly been associated with one of Pentagon’s military projects, but this time, its a cloud computing project involving an indefinite delivery of service for the length of the contract.

Growth in Recent YearsThe Google Cloud unit has grown rapidly driving growth for the mothership. We’ve seen that play out especially over the past five years. Since 2019, Google Cloud’s headcount has doubled, and recorded year-over-year revenue showed a growth of 47% when GC reported its operating profit in 2021.

However, Google, like the other two cloud giants, does not report revenue income from its Google Cloud Platform in dollar figures, which makes it hard to ascertain how it is doing compared to its rivals.

As for the tally Google’s employees came up with, analysts are pretty divided on it. Some have dismissed it, while others are still inspecting with a closer eye. But the fact remains that Google Cloud stands shoulder to shoulder in what is considered one of the most high-stakes battles in the tech industry. Well-capitalized and with its size of infrastructure, Google has never had problem attracting customers or snagging the most profitable deals, and that record holds with its cloud business. Seeing the business it has amassed and the sizable YOY sales growth, the theory that Google Cloud may be catching up in time with the other two top-tier providers is not debatable.

If you are looking for more, head over to the Tech Field Day website where you will find lots of interesting technical presentations by Google Cloud from the recent Cloud Field Day event.

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Cloud architects have long wished for more flexibility in how memory is provisioned in servers, and CXL is finally delivering on a decade of promises. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Stephen Foskett and Craig Rodgers talk to Dan Ernst of Microsoft, who is deeply involved in bringing CXL-attached memory to fruition within Azure. Dan was previously involved in the Gen-Z effort, and feels that CXL picks up the baton and brings valuable real-world benefits to cloud server architecture. Memory has a bigger impact on overall IT platforms than many are aware, and is already the costliest component in large servers. Per Amdahl’s Law, it makes sense to look for cost savings in memory. And this is doubly the case because DIMMs only come in certain sizes so memory is usually over-specified. CXL memory modules cost a bit more than a DIMM, but this is offset by efficient right-sizing, and CXL is already cheaper than 3D stacked DIMMs.

Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen’s writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
Craig Rodgers, Solutions Architect at Camlin Group. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @CraigRodgersms.
Dan Ernst, Principal Architect working on Future Azure Cloud Systems, Microsoft Azure. You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn. Read about Microsoft Azure’s work with CXL here.

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In this article presented by Hammerspace, Andy Banta discusses how Hammerspace Global Data Environment can speed up complex operations and interactions involved in electronic design automation.

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In this Mobility Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Wyebot’s Wireless Intelligence Platform provides holistic visibility into the complex wireless ecosystem giving engineers the power to magnify into problem areas and troubleshoot them effectively from a distance.

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Intel isn't happy that the source code for their Alder Lake BIOS has been leaked online. The UEFI code was nabbed by someone and posted to the Internet as a 6 GB file containing all kinds of secret things. One of the big finds is the private key for Intel Boot Guard, a seuciry feature designed to create a secure booting environment. No official word has been released on who leaked the data but signs point to an ODM in China that created a Github repository that was cloned and distributed rapidly. Tom, how bad is this for Intel?

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In this Networking Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Nokia's Data Center Fabric technologies reimagines automation at scale

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In this podcast, Tom Hollingsworth and the panel discuss the idea that Network Access Can’t Be Controlled From The Edge.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how integrating Prosimo into your infrastructure can help make the transition to Mulitcloud easier.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how the next generation of Google Hyberdisk will take the storage solution to the next level.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha highlights Ryan Smith's detailed thoughts of the Sapphire Rapids accelerators his shown at the demo.

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In this article presented by Solidigm, Justin Warren discusses how four corners is a great starting point, but many will more out of it by expanding on it with good architecture choices.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how RackN breaks down the silos that exist between tools, processes and teams in IT, making it possible to share, swap, connect and reuse workflows flexibly.

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Since taking over AMD's enterprise chip business in 2014, Forrest Norrod has built the perennial also-ran into a CPU powerhouse. Now that AMD is truly a major player in CPUs, the company has broadened into network adapters (acquiring Xilinx and Pensando for DPUs) and is seeing traction in ML. The Next Platform sat down with Norrod for an in-depth interview covering the competition with Intel, the development of CXL, why they bought Xilinx and Pensando, and what the future holds. This is something we've been covering for years here at Gestalt IT, so what more does this interview tell us? This and more on this week's Rundown. Head to GestaltIT.com for show notes.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha breaks down Commvault's Metallic Threatwise and how its able to fight off attacks and mitigate damages post-attack.

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In this episode Tom and his panel of delegates debate the premise that You Don’t Need Wi-Fi 6E Today.

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In this Cloud Field Day Extra article, Sulagna Saha discusses how a unified data services solution like NetApp Cloud File Services makes consumption of a hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure infinitely easier and ultimate cost-friendly for enterprises.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha highlights Timothy Prickett Morgan's discussion on the Ada Lovelace GPU and compares the performance of L40 GPU accelerator with that of its precursor Ampere A40.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha brings to light Chris Evans' thoughts on his test drive with Verge.io's software-defined data center.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how an observability solution like Kentik can greatly help with navigating the complex cloud cost landscape

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Find out more about Mobility Field Day 8 coming your way October 5-6, 2022!

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Intel Innovation 2022 is happening this week and that means lots of coverage of the things that Intel is talking about and showing off. Pat Gelsinger has been on the job for a little less than two years and he's been working tirelessly to keep Intel relevant. From the admission that Moore's Law isn't dead just yet but may involve chiplets to the end of Optane and the anticipation for Sapphire Rapids there is a lot of buzz going on. Stephen, there's a lot to discuss around the announcements but let's start with a simple appraisal - How does Intel look two years into the Pat Era? This and more

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In this article presented by Hammerspace, Chris Evans discusses how Hammerspace is addressing the challenges of Hybrid Cloud Storage.

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In this Cloud Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses the promises of StormForge's Bi-Dimensional Autoscaling with resource utilization and cost management.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha highlights Brian Krebs' look at the anatomy of ATM skimmers and writes on how to protect yourself from them.

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I sat down with Keith Townsend for a special crossover episode of the Gestalt IT Checksum and CTO Dose at VMware Explore 2022. Our conversation focused on CXL, a new technology that promises to revolutionize server architecture by disaggregating memory, I/O, and accelerators from the CPU. Although this isn't an entirely new concept, CXL has broad industry support and the first products are hitting the market today. Will CXL revolutionize server architecture or is it just another tool in the arsenal for datacenter architects?

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In this Networking Field Day 29, Sulagna Saha discusses how Juniper Networks' Apstra platform from where operators can observe all elements of a datacenter, study the correlations, and manage them easily with the click of a button with smart intent-based networking.

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In this episode, Brian Knudtson, Gina Rosenthal and Alastair Cooke join Stephen Foskett in this discussion that tries to define the ways in which VMworld has changed and what to expect from the future VMware Explore conferences.

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In this Networking Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses why Broadcom's Tomahawk 5 series is a game-changer for datacenters.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha highlights Backblaze's study on the SSDsin the Backblaze Cloud Storage platform.

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In this article, Sulagna Saha how Jeffrey Burt establishes the power of using the network to connect the data center, public cloud, edge, and more.

All Archives - Gestalt IT: Recent Episodes

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TDBank uses generative AI to support customer service and help customers faster with solution suggestions.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Phil is talking all about #ZTNA right now, with #SWG and #CASB for #SASE. If you know, you know. If you don't, watch the @TechFieldDay sessions later today!

ArubaAtmosphere #TXDx Aruba have put 2x more memory in 730 series access points.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Aruba Central can put APs into a deep sleep mode that can reduce power consumption but up to 80%. That keeps them from consuming resources when they're just sitting idle.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere #AI realtime comparisons of behavior to find imposters and keep them from wreaking havoc on your network from @HPE_Aruba_NETW

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere The University of Houston supports research so they have to be innovative in their network to ensure their faculty and students are able to accomplish their goals.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere some #AI stats. pic.twitter.com/r0kndhU6wg

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Private 5G is great for large outdoor areas like ports or public spaces. And also for challenging radio environments, like factory floors.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Private 5G is going to live beside Wi-Fi for use cases.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere The @HPE_Aruba_NETW 730 AP is tri-band, which has 30% more traffic capacity. And it has a barometric sensor for pinpoint location.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Aruba Central can detect strange behaviors from IoT devices and ensure they are doing what they're supposed to do and not acting as entry points into your network.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Camera, edge sensor, and motion detectors are just some of the new IoT devices that @HPE_Aruba_NETW can connect.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere The future of farming is analyzing individual nutrition needs and growing what we need to survive and thrive.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Why is it so important to connect rural areas? 1% of the world's population feeds the rest of us. If they can thrive we can end worries about food security.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Edge computing? How about managing thousands of cows with sensors to ensure the quality of their milk and the health of the animal.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Phil welcomes Teddy Bekele, the CTO of Land O'Lakes to talk about how they're using @HPE_Aruba_NETW technology in their #agriculture business.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Phil welcomes Teddy Bekele, the CTO of Land O'Lakes to talk about how they're using @HPE_Aruba_NETW technology in their #agriculture business.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere Networking for AI means Ubiquitous Coverage and Low Latency.

TFDx #ArubaAtmosphere There are over 200,000 #Airheads and more than 2,000 at #HPEDiscover.