AMD: EPYC Is Still The Virtualization King Despite VMware Change

Dylan Martin | February 05, 2020

AMD is downplaying the impact of VMware's move to double licensing costs for processors with more than 32 cores, saying that its processors can still drive major cost savings for virtualization, even if the economics of its higher core count processors have "slightly" changed."AMD continues to lead the industry on performance, features and TCO in virtualized environments for both 1 socket and 2 socket systems," the company said in a statement to CRN. "While the new VMware licensing guidelines change the economics slightly for higher core count processors, AMD remains committed to VMware as a winning virtualization solution for AMD EPYC customers."

Spotlight

Onsite host Joe Zollo asks VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram and President Sumit Dhawan to break down the news coming out of VMware Explore Las Vegas.


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Virtual Desktop Tools, Desktop

Other World Computing Releases MacDrive 11 with Full APFS Support, Unleashes Most Complete Tool for Access of Mac Disks on Windows PCs

PR Newswire | July 05, 2023

Other World Computing® The leading end-to-end ecosystem solution provider of computer hardware, accessories, and software for both consumers and professionals – today announced the release of MacDrive 11 with full APFS support, making it the most complete single solution for seamlessly accessing Mac-formatted drives and media on a Windows PC. Along with complete access, MacDrive 11 performs more than 40% faster than other available solutions – all while protecting your data from failure. For over 25 years, MacDrive has been the industry standard for reading, writing and managing HFS+ Mac disks in Windows. MacDrive 11 builds on this strong tradition by adding unmatched support for APFS disks with full read and write access, and protections not available in any other solution. MacDrive is the most robust, most advanced utility enabling users to share drives between Macs and PCs. MacDrive 11 comes in two variations; Standard to access almost any APFS or HFS+ formatted Mac drive, and Pro with advanced disk support for OWC's SoftRAID and Apple RAID 0/1 volumes. MacDrive 11 APFS Functionality Highlights: Read and write: MacDrive 11 is the only solution that provides full read-and-write support for APFS volumes–even if the volume has duplicated files or has been backed up by Time Machine. Crash Protection: Unlike other solutions, if an APFS disk is unexpectedly unplugged, existing files and data are safe, and won't be corrupted. Multi-volume disks: APFS allows users to create multiple volumes in a single partition and share free space between volumes. Only MacDrive lets user effortlessly switch between volumes to access all of their data. Formatting: Don't have a Mac, but want to share files with someone that does? MacDrive enables the creation APFS and HFS+ volumes right on a PC. Snapshots: When backed up with Time Machine, macOS creates "snapshots" on APFS volumes. MacDrive provides access to all snapshots, letting users restore deleted or edited files from previous states, even when a Time Machine backup isn't available. Duplicated files: In macOS, APFS files can be instantly duplicated, without consuming additional disk space. Only MacDrive provides full read-write access to duplicated files on APFS volumes. Make Windows Smarter Once installed, MacDrive 11 makes Windows "Mac aware" by enabling PCs to read and write Mac disks just like PC disks. There is nothing to launch or learn; simply connect a Mac disk and access almost any hard drives, SSDs (solid state drives), CDs, DVDs, floppies, and more. Additional MacDrive 11 Features: Full circle compatibility: Streamline editing and collaboration processes by sharing Mac disks with Windows users as well as formatting Mac disks direct from a PC for true cross-platform workflows. Repair Mac disks: MacDrive's Disk Repair feature will automatically detect issues with Mac disks and will fix common errors on disks (HFS+ only). Time Machine backups: Browse through Time Machine backups as well as copy those files and folders to a Windows PC. Native or virtual: Works with Apple's Boot Camp utility and virtualization software like VMware Fusion or Parallels. File defragmentation: Improve disk performance with automatic file defragmentation and optimization (HFS+ only). Read-only option: "Read Only" mode is perfect for forensic specialists and law enforcement to prevent changes to disks. About Other World Computing (OWC) Other World Computing (OWC), founded in 1988, provides Mac and PC enthusiasts with reliable solutions for computer hardware, accessories, and software at both the consumer and professional levels. In opposition to our disposable world, OWC's products are intended to serve as the life-extending foundation of personal and/or professional digital life, from capture to completion, enabling users to maximize their technology investments. The company has extended its quality, long-term solutions for creative professionals to serving enterprises, small businesses, and education administration. OWC's award-winning team of technologists, engineers, creatives, and professionals have a passion for improving technology and are dedicated to bringing the best solutions that last and true leadership in doing so sustainably for the benefit of all.

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Virtual Desktop Tools

Applied Digital and ZEDEDA Form a Strategic Partnership to Provide New On-Demand Transmutable AI Cloud Service

globenewswire | August 14, 2023

Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD) (“Applied Digital”), a designer, builder, and operator of next-generation digital infrastructure designed for High-Performance Computing (“HPC”) applications, today announced it has formed a strategic partnership with ZEDEDA, the leader in edge orchestration. The strategic partnership will enable Applied Digital to use ZEDEDA’s award-winning management and orchestration software solution, powering Applied Digital’s new integrated on-demand Transmutable AI cloud service offering to address the exploding demand for AI computing resources and infrastructure. Transmutable AI allows customer workloads to run seamlessly across a commutable infrastructure environment. This new service will augment Applied Digital’s recently launched AI cloud service by leveraging Applied Digital’s bare-metal infrastructure. By integrating ZEDEDA’s management and orchestration service, this offering will enable enterprise customers to purchase and use GPU resources on-demand and at scale across all of Applied Digital’s data centers for both virtualized and bare-metal edge and cloud AI environments. The service will provide customers with a seamless experience, encapsulating dynamic on-demand and long-term allocation, fully integrated with orchestration, storage, and networking across all instances and applications. Customers will be able to purchase GPU resources by the hour and allocate any Applied Digital resources needed during a project's initial development, enabling effortless scaling as the project progresses into production. The new service is expected to go live during the second half of 2023. “As our customers leverage AI workloads and HPC applications in increasingly new and innovative ways, we must be able to provide the resources they need where and when they need them,” said Wes Cummins, CEO of Applied Digital. “ZEDEDA’s cloud-native orchestration platform, coupled with our next-generation proprietary data center assets, provides the ideal foundation for us to seamlessly deliver these resources.” The surge in AI and machine learning-based applications has created new demands from customers to dynamically access the compute resources needed to execute and scale critical AI, machine learning, and HPC workloads. “We’re excited to partner with Applied Digital,” said Said Ouissal, founder and CEO of ZEDEDA. “We believe the cloud computing paradigm should be extended everywhere, and we have already witnessed this at the far edge of the network. Generative AI is now demanding new learning and inference infrastructure requirements, specifically in power efficient environments, validating that edge computing is truly ubiquitous and transformative”. About ZEDEDA ZEDEDA makes edge computing effortless, open, and intrinsically secure — extending the cloud experience to the edge. ZEDEDA reduces the cost of managing and orchestrating distributed edge infrastructure and applications while increasing visibility, security and control. ZEDEDA delivers a distributed, cloud-native edge management and orchestration solution, simplifying the security and remote management of edge infrastructure and applications at scale. About Applied Digital Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD) designs, develops, and operates next-generation data centers across North America to provide digital infrastructure solutions to the rapidly growing high-performance computing (HPC) industry.

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Virtual Desktop Strategies, Virtual Server Infrastructure

Databloom AI Announces Beta Release of Blossom Sky in Google Cloud

prnewswire | August 21, 2023

DataBloom AI, a leading provider of virtual data lakehouse solutions, today announced the beta release of Blossom Sky for Google Cloud. The beta release is part of Databloom AI's cooperation with Google for Startups Cloud Program. Blossom Skyis the first virtual data lakehouse (VDL) on the market. It enables organizations to store, process, and analyze data within multiple data lakes and data warehouses via a single, unified platform. Federated data processing enables customers and users to manage and process their data directly at the source through data pipelines, including low-level data operations like map, join, filter, or map reduce and high-level machine learning operations such as KMeans, SGD or PageRank. This provides organizations with a number of benefits, including: Increased Data Scalability and Flexibility: Blossom Sky enables organizations to leverage their existing data infrastructure without centralizing data. This provides organizations with the ability to scale up or down as required. Reduced Data Duplication and Complexity: Blossom Sky removes the need for expensive Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) and data transfer costs, reducing data duplication and making data management easier for organizations. Better Data Security and Governance: Blossom Sky brings federated data processing to every organization as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. Time to insights (T2I): Blossom Sky brings together data silos in a single data management platform, making it easier for organizations to discover, analyze, and act on data, resulting in faster T2I. "We are excited to partner with Google Cloud to bring Blossom Sky to market," saidAlexander Alten, CEO of Databloom AI. "Google Cloud's infrastructure and services provide the perfect foundation for our platform, and we believe that this partnership will help us to accelerate our growth and reach more organizations around the world." AboutDatabloom AI Databloom AI, headquartered inMiami, FL, is one of the world's leading virtual data lakehouse providers. Databloom's cloud-based data lakehouse platform allows organizations to consolidate, manage, and analyze data across multiple data lakes or data warehouses in one, single platform.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

ePlus Expands SD-WAN Managed Services to Include Support for Palo Alto Networks

prnewswire | July 26, 2023

ePlus inc. (news) today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, ePlus Technology, inc., has extended its portfolio to include SD-WAN Managed Services for Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN to include: Proactive monitoring and alerting Policy management Virtual private network path and policy configuration management to SaaS applications Application-based configuration to ensure optimum performance and security Underlay management of private, public, and dedicated data transport connections. "Adding SD-WAN Managed Services expands our existing service capabilities for Palo Alto Networks solutions, including next-generation firewall management and first-call Enhanced Maintenance Support," said Lee Waskevich, vice president of security strategy for ePlus. "The distributed nature of both applications and users has continued to blend responsibilities for networking and security teams to combat the latest cyber threats and provide an optimum user experience. ePlus Managed Services deliver on this convergence to help generate successful outcomes for our customers." "We are pleased to expand our SD-WAN Managed Services offerings to include support for Palo Alto Networks," said Wayne St. Jacques, vice president of managed services at ePlus. "By offloading the management and remediation of their Prisma SD-WAN solution, customers are poised to increase uptime and performance, optimize business-critical applications, achieve measurable cost savings, and maintain segmentation and inspection policies to ensure compliance with their security policy." ePlus also offers Managed SD-WAN offerings for Cisco, Meraki, and Fortinet. For more information about ePlus SD-WAN Managed Services, visit https://www.eplus.com/solutions/networking/Software-Defined-Networking. For details about ePlus' Palo Alto Networks offerings and partnership, visit https://eplus.com/partners/showcase-partners/palo-alto-networks. About ePlus inc. ePlus has an unwavering and relentless focus on leveraging technology to create inspired and transformative business outcomes for its customers. Offering a robust portfolio of solutions, as well as a broad range of consultative and managed services across the technology spectrum, ePlus has proudly achieved more than 30 years of success, carrying customers forward through adversity, rapidly changing environments, and other obstacles. ePlus is a trusted advisor, bringing expertise, credentials, talent and a thorough understanding of innovative technologies, spanning security, cloud, data center, networking, collaboration and emerging solutions, to organizations across all industry segments. With complete lifecycle management services and flexible payment solutions, ePlus' more than 1,700 associates are focused on cultivating positive customer experiences and are dedicated to their craft, harnessing new knowledge while applying decades of proven experience. ePlus is headquartered in Virginia, with locations in the United States, UK, Europe, and Asia‐Pacific.

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