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Dell EMC VxRail P570F Review
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The Dell EMC VxRail family of appliances are hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) underpinned by VMware vSAN. VxRail has long been the lead product when VMware talks about vSAN as the concept of deploying and managing the VxRail appliance is appealing to many. Of course Dell EMC and others sell vSAN Ready Nodes for those who want a little more control over server configuration. VxRail isn't new to the lab of course, we wrote about the features like streamlined deployment and rigorous compatibility testing that Dell EMC brings to the table in early 2017. Much has changed since then; primarily Dell EMC has migrated off whitebox servers to PowerEdge servers. This is not an insignificant change, primarily because PowerEdge servers bring additional management and reliability features to the table that VxRail appliances can benefit from, further strengthening the Dell EMC/VMware vallue propostion when discussing the benefits of the VxRail appliance vs. Ready Nodes or roll your own options.
FEATURED by Tom Fenton
Dell EMC CloudIQ Review
CloudIQ is a free, cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) solution that allows customers to monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot Dell EMC’s storage systems (Unity, SC Series, XtremIO, and PowerMax/VMAX) with a HTML5 browser. Since its release in 2016, Dell EMC has steadily been adding improvements and features to CloudIQ to make it an actionable service for their customers.
December 13th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
KubeCon 2018 Bits
This week KubeCon took place in Seattle, offering over 8,000 attendees (2,000 on the waiting list didn’t make it) an updated vision on Kubernetes as well as the projects under development and consideration. Thus far three projects have graduated (Kubernetes, Prometheus and Envoy) a dozen or so are incubating and many more are hopeful within the Sandbox. Over 125 event sponsors wanted to be sure the attendees understood their view and involvement in these projects, most of them going way beyond simply offering Kubernetes distributions. Security was a hot topic as well as management and deployment of these projects.
December 13th, 2018 by Marshall Gunnell
Dell Precision 3930 Rack Workstation Review
Dell’s Precision 3930 Rack is a powerful, unintrusive 1U workstation that provides extreme performance with an affordable pricing model. The unit’s short and narrow design allows users to maximize their workspace by tucking the Precision 3930 away in a server room, keeping the work area quiet and uncluttered. It is also an integrable device into data centers and complex OEM medical imaging and industrial automation solutions with its extended operating temperatures, dust filters, legacy PCI slots, and its remote power switch.
December 12th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
IDC Release 3Q18 Worldwide Server Tracker
International Data Corporation (IDC) ran its quarterly Worldwide Server Tracker for the third quarter of this year. Again we see the numbers trending up for server sales, this marking the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. And once again, we see Dell make the top of the list.
December 11th, 2018 by Michael Rink
Elastifile Announces Cloud File Service For Google
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Today Elastifile announced signups for early access to Elastifile Cloud File Service (ECFS). ECFS leverages tight integration with Google Cloud infrastructure to make it easier to deploy and manage file storage in the public cloud.
December 11th, 2018 by Michael Rink
IBM Announces Spectrum Scale On NVIDIA DGX-1 Server
IBM recently announced a converged appliance developed with NVIDIA, the IBM Spectrum AI with NVIDIA DGX. The Spectrum DGX combines NVIDIA’s DGX-1 server with IBM’s Spectrum Scale on all-flash.
December 10th, 2018 by Marshall Gunnell
Liqid Element AIC Review (7.68TB)
The Liqid Element AIC is an extreme performance, high capacity PCIe SSD, incorporating four m.2 NVMe SSDs and a PCIe switch in a HHHL package. It is designed to handle performance-demanding workloads and offer full compatibility with existing systems that support NVMe devices. Available in the half-height half-length standard form factor, the Element sports a Gen 3.0 x8 PCIe interface that utilizes the latest NVME protocol. The Element has both Data Center and Enterprise models available, with capacities up to 15.40TB and 12.80TB, and offers incredible performance up to 1.25M IOPS or 7GB/s in bandwidth.
December 10th, 2018 by Lyle Smith
QNAP TS-977XU Now Available
QNAP has announced the availability of the TS-977XU AMD Ryzen NAS series, the company’s first 1U hybrid-structure NAS. The TS-977XU is powered by a selection of AMD Ryzen 3 1200 and Ryzen 5 2600 processors with up to 6 cores/12 threads and features redundant power supply models. The new QNAP line features 4x 3.5-inch SATA drive bays for HDDs and 5x 2.5-inch SATA drive bays for SSDs to enable caching and Qtier auto-tiering storage. The TS-977XU also supports QNAP's new software-defined SSD extra over-provisioning, allowing users to allocate additional OP space to SSDs and to attain enterprise-grade performance and lifespan from consumer-grade SSDs.
December 10th, 2018 by Michael Rink
VMware Announces Service Mesh
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Today VMware announced a new service built on the foundation of the Istio Service Mesh, Vmware NSX Service Mesh. VMware is currently targetting a beta release early 2019 that will support only VMware Cloud PKS; with support for additional platforms rolling out later.
The Memblaze PBlaze5 910 is a high-performing NVMe SSD designed to significantly enhance application performance. Equipped with 64-layer 3D NAND, the PBlaze5 features massive single-disk capacity up to 15.36TB, which is 40% more than previous models. Memblaze indicates that this will allow their new SSD to increase rack density in storage server applications, saving space and lowering energy costs. Adding ever more energy efficiency to data centers, the 910 series is also reported to increase performance by 38% per watt and supports 16 power mode settings, ranging from 10W to 25W.
The Dell EMC SC5020 fits with Dell EMC's midrange storage portfolio and is available in a range of configurations including HDD, SSD and hybrid. Billed as a flexible workhorse for SMBs, the SC5020 doesn't drop features/functionality to be price competitive. In fact, in terms of capabilities, the SC5020 is on par with the 
Today Samsung released its own take of quad-level cell (QLC) NAND with the 860 QVO SSD. Samsung continues to do its own thing, even with naming conventions, and refers to the technology as 4-bit. The 860 QVO is aimed at maintaining Samsung’s 3-bit performance while lower the costs and thus creating a more efficient and cost-effective product. 
During their Step Ahead event in Beijing, Memblaze launched a new series of 500 NVME drives as well as an expansion of its 900 line to 910 and 916. We will be looking at the 910 series in this review. The new 910 drives are offered in two form factors and leverage 64-Layer 3D NAND, which allows the drives to come in capacities as high as 16TB. This higher density can lead to denser racks or rack consolidation in the data center.
