The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
Intel has introduced a new line of servers that can help your customers implement hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) faster, easier and more affordably.
What’s HCI? A software-defined, unified system that combines all the elements of a traditional data center — storage, compute, networking and management. The results include more simplicity, easier management and lower costs.
That may sound arcane, but it’s not. Many applications are suited for HCI. They include such bread-and-butter workloads as running file, email and web servers. Basically, HCI can help any job that requires both lots of compute and lots of storage, too.
Certified for you
Intel’s newest server line has been specially designed to optimize HCI. It’s known as the Intel Server System D40AMP family.
One big benefit of this new product line: Intel has already certified this new server family for leading HCI solutions. These include VMware vSAN and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
This means you won’t need to get the server certified, simplifying your deployment. For your customers, it means they can get the benefits of HCI while easily plugging into their existing IT infrastructure.
Loaded configurations
The Intel Server System D40AMP family can be configured with up to four nodes based on the 3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. That gets paired with up to 1 petabyte of NVMe SSD storage over the PCIe 4.0 interface standard, and up to 24TB of memory via Intel Optane Persistent Memory 200 series.
NVMe — short for Non-Volatile Memory Express — is a transport protocol for storage over PCIe. It combines low latency (that is, high speeds) with high reliability.
The Intel Server System D40AMP family supports two SSD formats: Up to 24x U.2 SSDs (six per node) and up to 32x E1.L “ruler” SSDs (eight per node).
These storage drives are fast. With PCIe 4.0 NVME at 4 lanes, you can move data at 8,000 MB/sec. Compare that with a SATA SSD’s top speed of 600MB/sec. The newer tech delivers a more than 10x performance improvement.
Novel form factor
One big change with the Intel Server System D40AMP family is the form factor. Most, if not all, other four-node, dual-socket servers are offered in the 2U rack-mount enclosure. But Intel has packaged the Intel Server System D40AMP family in 3U.
The top rack unit is dedicated to storage, while the bottom two are for compute. Intel believes 3U is the form factor of the future, at least for dense HCI servers.
The new servers are air-cooled, and that’s also done by rack unit. In the top U, there are four 40mm fans for storage. And in the bottom two, four 80mm fans for compute.
Better TCO, too
The new servers deliver gains around total cost of ownership (TCO), too. Their cost-per-virtual-machine ($/VM) over five years is lower than other technologies, and at any power budget. Also, Intel Optane persistent memory can provide impressive TCO benefits for memory-bound environments.
Security is built-in as well. This new server family comes standard with Intel Crypto Acceleration, Intel Software Guard Extensions, Intel Total Memory Encryption, and Intel Platform Firmware Resilience.
Your customers can rest easy for another reason, too. The new servers are protected by Intel’s standard 3-year warranty.
The Intel Server System D40AMP family is available now from select Intel partners. That includes system integrators, distributors, VARs and OEMs. And maybe you?
Check out related resources:
> Intel Server System D40AMP family product information
> Intel Server Configuration Tool
> Intel server sales and marketing resources
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
Are your small and medium business (SMB) customers complaining that the once-simple act of storing data has gotten complicated? If so, make things simple again. Tell them about network attached storage (NAS), used on premises.
NAS devices are highly scalable, easy to access, compliant, secure and recoverable. The latest versions are equipped with powerful processors, meaning today’s NAS devices can do a lot more than just store data.
All that’s important now for your SMB customers. They’re coping with a decentralized workforce storing data from who knows where. Rising data requirements from new business applications. And the challenge of keeping data safe and secure from increasingly devious criminals.
What’s more, many SMBs are now also struggling with limited budgets and small IT staffs. That can make storage innovation seem out of reach, affordable only for bigger companies with deeper pockets.
Public-cloud storage may seem like the answer. Services such as public-cloud storage are easy to set up and use, and they’re seemingly able to handle any amount of data.
However, once you’re storing large amounts of data in the public cloud, the costs can rise quickly. And the average SMB now manages a whopping 48 terabytes, according to Accenture.
New NAS workloads
Today’s NAS devices are a lot more sophisticated than the ones you may remember. Offerings from OEMs including Synology and QNAP are fitted with powerful CPUs. These go all the way up to the Intel Xeon Scalable processors commonly used in data-center servers.
These CPUs mean NAS devices be used for new workloads. They include video surveillance with facial recognition, virtual desktops, multimedia and image compression.
Also, many NAS devices can take add-in graphics and connector cards. That lets you expand the capabilities even further.
Your customers can even use an on-prem NAS device for hybrid cloud workloads. The storage device can essentially act as a private cloud.
In this configuration, the NAS device can store secure data — for example, electronic medical records — privately and on prem. And it can also store “cold” data —information accessed less often — in the public cloud.
Get NAS training
Before you can talk with your customers about looking into NAS on-prem storage devices, you may need to get up to speed on the technology yourself.
If so, you’re in luck. Intel Partner University is now offering a Competency on this timely topic called On-Premises Storage Fundamentals.
Competencies are deeper training curriculums that help you develop expertise in a specific product, technology or business segment. Complete a Competency, and you can also earn a digital badge to display on your website, in social media and elsewhere online.
The On-Premises Storage Fundamentals program comprises 10 courses. Of these, two courses provide an introduction. Then the remaining eight dive deeper into topics including virtualization, backups and fighting ransomware.
Intel Partner University is among the many benefits of membership in Intel Partner Alliance. Not yet a member? Learn more and register.
Learn more from an Intel infographic. Download it by clicking the link below:
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
Lenovo’s PC business is soaring. Microsoft is updating Azure services. And Dell is spinning off VMware.
That’s some of the week’s top 5 IT industry new stories reported by CRN. Here’s your tech provider’s roundup:
Lenovo PC Sales Soar in Q2 to $15.3 Billion
Led by bread-and-butter PC sales, Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group saw revenue soar 21% in the company’s second quarter, reaching $15.3 billion. This PC sales spike also drove Lenovo’s overall Q2 revenue to $17.9 billion, an increase of 23% over the year-earlier quarter. Net income for the quarter also rose, hitting $512 million, a 65% jump.
10 Big Microsoft Azure Announcements at Ignite 2021
During the second virtual edition of Microsoft’s Ignite conference, the company updated nearly a dozen of Azure cloud solutions. These include Azure Arc, Azure Active Directory, Azure Synapse, Azure Cognitive Services and Azure SQL.
5 Things to Know about Dell’s VMware Spinoff
Dell has shed its 81% stake in VMware, creating an independent software company worth some $64 billion. Here are the top 5 things investors and others should know about the deal.
HPE CEO says GreenLake ‘On Fire,’ Ups Recurring Revenue Forecast
CEO Antonio Neri (pictured below) told Wall Street analysts, “Customers are coming to us….Our pipeline is just amazing.” HPE is now forecasting a three-year compound annual growth rate of 35% to 45% for annualized recurring revenue, up from its prior forecast of 30% to 40%.
Microsoft 365 Monthly Pricing Backlash: Solution Providers Protest ‘Punitive’ Fee
More than 900 people have signed an online petition opposing a 20% fee on month-to-month Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The increase is expected to take effect in March 2022.
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
Call it a perfect storm of cyber insecurity: A new survey report from HP finds that at the same time cyber threats are on the rise, IT teams are having a harder time delivering security support.
The HP report comes just as the Biden administration issued a related directive. It requires nearly all U.S. executive branch agencies and departments to patch approximately 200 cybersec vulnerabilities considered to be major risks.
“Every day, our adversaries are using known vulnerabilities to target federal agencies,” said Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a statement.
The HP report, produced by the company’s Wolf Security unit, is based on 2 surveys. One is a Toluna online survey of 1,100 IT decision-makers in 7 countries including the U.S. The other was a YouGov online survey of 8,433 adults in the same 7 countries who worked from home during the pandemic.
Report highlights
Here are highlights from the HP Wolf Security report:
Shadow IT is growing: Nearly half of office workers (45%) bought IT equipment to support home working in the last year. But as shown by the chart below (courtesy of HP), only about half of workers had IT check or install their new gear.
Phishing works: Three-quarters of IT teams say they’ve seen a rise in the number of employees who open malicious emails and click on dangerous links. And about half of home workers admit they’ve clicked on a malicious email. Yet 70% of them failed to report it to IT. A quarter didn’t think it was important, 1 in 5 said it was too much of a hassle, and about 1 in 10 feared reprisal.
Rebuild rates are up: PCs get rebuilt after a known infection, and roughly 8 in 10 IT teams say the number of rebuilds has risen during the pandemic. But the problem could be even worse. 8 in 10 IT teams worry that employee devices might be compromised without the employees realizing it.
IT support is faltering: Over 8 in 10 IT teams say the pandemic has put a bigger strain on tech support. The cost of providing security support has risen, on average, by 52%. And three-quarters of IT teams say the amount of time required to triage a threat has increased in the past year. Put it all together, and you can see why 77% of IT managers worry about their staff feeling so overworked and burnt out, they’ll quit.
Cyber solutions
What’s the cyber solution? HP Wolf Security recommends several things, including:
> Employ tools for greater endpoint visibility — you can’t manage what you can’t see.
> Look into threat containment and isolation tools. These can prevent malware from spreading after a partial breach.
> Adopt Zero Trust principles. This approach essentially assumes you’ve been breached already. So Zero Trust systems verify each and every request as though it had originated from an open network.
Learn more: Get a copy of the HP Wolf Security report, Out of Sight & Out of Mind (13-pp. PDF).
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
The indispensable source for professionals who create, implement and service technology solutions for entrepreneurs to enterprise.
The 12th gen Intel Core desktop processors announced last week by Intel notably deliver a bunch of firsts:
> They’re the company’s first processor family built with the new Intel 7 process.
> The first Intel processors to support both DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connectivity.
> The company’s first to feature 2 micro-architectures coordinated by Intel Thread Director.
> And the first family to support a new cache architecture.
Initially, the line comprises 6 unlocked desktop processor SKUs, ranging from i5 to i9. They’re available with up to 16 cores and 24 threads; up to 30MB of Intel Smart Cache (L3); and up to 14MB of L2 cache.
The new CPUs also offer up to 20 lanes — a mix of up to16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 plus up to 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0. Performance revs up to 5.2 GHz with TurboMax.
Compared with its previous generation, Intel says the new CPUs deliver:
> Up to 36% faster photo-editing performance
> Up to 32% faster video-editing performance
> Up to 37% faster 3D-modeling performance
> Up to 100% faster multiframe rendering
Topping the current lineup of 12th gen Intel Core CPUs is the i9-12900K gaming processor. Intel calls is the “world’s best gaming processor.” Compared with previous generations, the i9 delivers up to 30% more performance, according to Intel.
2 micro-architectures
The processor family’s 2 micro-architectures represent what Intel says is the company’s biggest architectural shift in a decade. Intel has essentially divided the processor design into Performance-cores and Efficient-cores.
12th Gen Intel Core Processor architecture: P-cores & E-cores
P-cores, as they’re known, are optimized for handing single and lightly-threaded performance, and for enhancing both gaming and productivity workloads. E-cores, by contrast, are optimized for handling scaling, highly threaded workloads. They’re also designed to minimize interruptions from background task management.
These 2 micro-architectures are coordinated by Intel Thread Director, a scheduler designed to work with Windows 11. Thread Director monitors the runtime instruction mix, provides runtime feedback to the OS, and dynamically adapts guidance based on the thermal design point, operating conditions and power settings.
The 12th gen Intel Core family’s new cache architecture involves a common cache shared among P-cores, E-cores and processor graphics. The biggest benefits from this are said to be faster game loading and smoother frame rates.
For enthusiasts and gamers, these new Intel processors can be overclocked. To help, Intel has upgraded 2 tools: Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (now at version 7.5) and Intel Extreme Memory Profile (now 3.0).
Partners galore
Intel says 140 of its partners in 30 countries will add 12th gen Intel Core CPUs to their products by year’s end. They include Tier 1 vendors Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo.
First out the gate was Dell Alienware. At last week’s Intel Innovation event, an Alienware exec briefly introduced the Aurora R13, a gaming desktop powered by 12th gen Intel Core processors. When maxed out with the new i9K CPU, the Alienware Aurora R13 will retail for $3,720.
Alienware Aurora R13 gaming desktop: Intel i9K inside
Unit pricing for the new 12th gen Intel Core processors starts at $264 to $589 for unlocked processors. If you’re interested in building PCs around these new CPUs, you can place a pre-order now. Shipments are set to begin this Thursday, Nov. 4.
If Intel’s own projections are right, these new CPUs will be big sellers. Intel says it expects to ship hundreds of thousands of units by year’s end, and more than 2 million units by next March.
As part of its 12th gen push, Intel plans to expand the processor family to include not only desktops but also laptops. The company expects to be shipping 28 SKUs to OEM partners by early next year.
Explore more:
> Product brief: 12th Gen Intel Core Processors
> Press release (includes initial SKU table): Intel Unveils 12th Gen Intel Core, Launches World’s Best Gaming Processor
> Webcast: Intel Innovation keynote
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