Name: The Software-Defined Data Center - What It Is and Why It Matters
Start: 2016-09-22T16:00:00Z
End: 2016-09-22T16:21:41.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 3.67

Evaluator Group Inc., an IT storage analyst firm, has been covering Information Management, Storage and Systems for over 15 years. Executives and IT Managers use us daily to make informed decisions to architect and purchase systems supporting their digital data.   

We surpass the current technology landscape by defining requirements and providing an in-depth knowledge of the products as well as the intricacies that dictate long-term successful strategies.

Our services include the Evaluator Series Research Library, lab validations, technical insights, and strategic advising.

Containers have exploded like popcorn across your company’s developer and user communities, creating islands of Kubernetes automation in the hybrid and multi-cloud landscape.  Managing this situation is becoming near impossible – it has introduced a flood of new security and compliance challenges into an environment of already scarce platform engineering and SecOps talent.  The only possible path to success is to create (and enforce) management, security, and compliance standards.  There are a sea of choices.  How will you approach the selection?  

This session is geared towards ITOps and those responsible for selection and deployment of Container Management Platforms. We will introduce the top issues you will want to consider as you map out your plan for standardization and point you to added resources for helping with research and selection.  

• Establishing control without losing productivity – is it possible? 
• Container management: Service or Platform? What are the tradeoffs?
• Security and Flexibility: how can you integrate the developer innovation chain? 
• Integrated container management or best-of-breed point solutions – what are the options?
• Legacy production – to integrate?  Or cut ties to the past?
• Hybrid and Multi-cloud – are there solutions that cover it all?

Tackling the Monster: Standardizing Management of Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Containers

In this session, we will review how container ecosystems differ from other application environments.  As Kubernetes continues its rapid assent towards becoming the predominate management framework for containers, there are implications for applications and container ecosystems resources.  With the standardization of interfaces for compute, networking and storage within Kubernetes, these frameworks will impact how these resources are consumed and managed by applications, developers and system operators.

We will look specifically at the need for persistent storage and a common set of interfaces that enable storage system to provide persistent storage to Kubernetes (K8s) managed containers.  The emergence of the Common Storage Interface, or CSI specification is rapidly shifting the discussion among dev/op teams and storage vendor.  Questions addressed include:

1) How does persistent storage work with containers?
2) What storage options are available with K8s?
3) What hybrid cloud options are their for persistent K8s storage?
4) How is CSI best used with K8s?

Storage in Hybrid-cloud and Container Environments: What You Need to Know

Object storage is gaining attention due to its increased maturity and capabilities with nearly all Cloud providers offering object storage as well as many on-site and hybrid deployment options.  However, comparison of offering capabilities, use cases and performance has been difficult due to a lack of comparative information.  Evaluator Group covers Cloud, on-site and hybrid object storage offerings and has also developed a set of tests and benchmarks that may be used to test object storage system performance.  

In this presentation we will present an overview of the Object storage landscape and discuss the IOmark-OBJ workload and benchmark tool for testing object storage performance as well as some of our workload testing results.

Object Storage – Performance Testing using IOmark-OBJ

Digital transformation is happening! It’s driving companies to adopt new ways to capture and analyze data (the new oil), to discover new insights and optimize the way they run their businesses.

IT is evolving to meet these new requirements, becoming more agile to keep up with dynamic markets - and the competition. The Cloud is a key, but on-prem infrastructures are, and will be, a part of most enterprise’s future. 

Join Eric Slack, Sr Analyst with the Evaluator Group and see how CI, HCI and Composable can address this need for agile, comprehensive infrastructures that reduce time for design, configuration, deployment and operations.

Converged, Hyperconverged and Composable - The Key to Agile IT Infrastructures

Even with a cloud-first strategy, enterprise IT is increasingly concluding that there will always be an on-premises component, leading them to the conclusion that the hybrid cloud is the only long-term end state. This presentation focuses on the data aspect of hybrid cloud. Storage is foundational to computing. The same statement is just as true for hybrid cloud computing. This presentation looks briefly at the data aspect by identifying use cases (DR, data protection, archive, etc.) and then looks into how users are implementing and managing hybrid cloud storage.

A Cloud-First Guide to Hybrid Cloud Storage

Converged and Hyperconverged technologies have been out for a number of years. And now Composable is here, and being touted as the next big thing in the Integrated Infrastructure space.  All of these technologies are evolving, including Hyperconverged being sold as SDS.  How do you know what fits or is right for your environment?  Should you be considering these as a replacement for your current systems or for new apps? 

Evaluator Group covers all these technologies and can help you understand what they are and what they can do and if they’re right for you. Join Sr. Analyst Eric Slack for this informative webinar "CI, HCI and Composable - What they Are, Where they Fit and Where they Don’t”

CI, HCI and Composable - What they Are, Where they Fit and Where they Don’t

What are the top use cases in AI? Or should we say, what will be the top use cases in the next 5-10 years? How are companies using the disciplines of Machine Learning, Deep Learning and HPC? What is needed to enable faster adoption? What technology changes are expected or required? Evaluator Group and Tractica, leading analyst firms on the topic of Artificial Intelligence come together to discuss these topics of market adoption and technology requirements. 
 
This is an INTERACTIVE session. We will start with short presentations then open up the Fireside chat. The audience is invited to submit their questions and participate in what will be a lively discussion.

Technology Trends & Use Case in AI

There are many developments going on in the industry for storing and managing information.  This webinar will cover the major trends, explaining the development and status as well as the potential impact on data center environments.  Technologies such as advanced flash and storage class memory and enabling software and systems for digital transformation will be covered.  Randy will give the industry analyst view of the trends and provide background on the maturity and adoption.

2018: Trends in Information Storage and Management

Leverage Vexata Active Data Fabric Ecosystem for AI, Deep Learning, Machine Learning and Cognitive Pipelines

Digital Transformation is cutting across industries and making a profound impact in our lives. Data is the new oil, however, businesses need a different approach to drill this oil, in a way it impacts the business processes positively and instantaneously. Existing datacenter infrastructure falls short in meeting the requirements of these new distributed and massively parallel pipelines and datatypes and need to evolve.

Several trends are proving to democratize Digital Transformation vision and technologies are emerging as building blocks. Notably Convergence of HPC, Big Data Analytics, and Artificial intelligence markets, driven by GPU computing, open sourcing of ML / DL frameworks, Distributed architectures, faster storage media like NVMe and 3D-Xpoint and faster networking with NVMeOF are fueling these trends.

Join this webinar and learn about the latest industry trends, vertical use cases and how Vexata with its Active Data Fabric ecosystem is uniquely positioned to help its customers cross the chasm.

Webinar takeaways:
1. Future of Analytics – move from descriptive to prescriptive and now to cognitive, leveraging Deep Learning, neural nets, streaming paradigms
2. Business Value of Digital Transformation – remain competitive, survive and thrive.
3. Remove infrastructure bottlenecks, particularly as they pertain to storage and data management when using AI, Deep Learning, Cognitive pipelines for use cases across verticals like:
- EDA / Manufacturing
- Media and Video Analytics
- Genomics, Precision medicine
- Speech Recognition
- Industrial IoT
- Financial and Security Analytics
- Retail Customer Churn / Sentiment Analysis

Crossing The Digital Transformation Chasm

In a recent survey of enterprise hybrid cloud users, the Evaluator Group saw that nearly 60% of respondents indicated that lack of interoperability is a significant technology-related issue that they must overcome in order to move forward. In fact, lack of interoperability was chosen above public cloud security and network security as significant inhibitors. This webcast looks at enterprise hybrid cloud objectives and barriers with a focus on cloud interoperability within the storage domain and the SNIA’s Cloud Storage Initiative to promote interoperability and portability of data stored in the cloud.

Multi-Cloud Storage: Addressing the Need for Portability and Interoperability

High-Performance Computing (HPC) paradigms were born from the need to apply sophisticated analytics to large volumes of data gathered. The rise of open source and increased affordable hardware offerings helped Big Data to become an alternative approach. 

As HPC and Big Data continue their own trajectories, they borrow ideas and learn from each other. How does artificial intelligence impact this and how can these technologies benefit one another in 2018 and beyond?

HPC, Big Data and Digital Transformation: Driven by Artificial Intelligence

The term “Software-Defined" sounds like marketing hype but this technology is behind much of current IT systems’ advanced features and functionality - really. And, it didn’t start with software-defined storage. In this webinar Evaluator Group Sr. Analyst, Eric Slack, explains where software-defined came from, how it’s shaping IT infrastructure and what you can expect from this technology.

What is "Software-Defined" & Why Should You Care? (It’s More than Just SDS)

Internet of Things applications present a complex challenge to the supporting storage infrastructure: large volumes of streaming data that often need to be analyzed in real time. 

IoT storage requires performance at scale and at a cost that won’t put projects out of reach. Join this webinar with John Webster, Sr. Analyst and data storage technologies expert, for a look at these requirements in more detail and new ways to prioritize them with today's storage technologies.

Storage Architectures for IoT

Every new or recycled idea that comes along is going to be the ‘only way things are done in the future' according to some. This narrow view has been offered in the area of storing and managing information since modern computing began. The reality is much more messy. Different approaches for handling information are used and in reality, the processing and management of information use mostly unrelated solutions. This BrightTalk session will look at evolving datacenters and how information is handled including the storage technologies employed. There will be different approaches that will be discussed as part of the presentation.

Datacenters and Storage Models of the Future

While the public cloud has been extremely nimble for service delivery, private clouds also offer rapid deployment options with the added benefit of greater control. Many ways to get to the private cloud are now available to enterprise IT developers and administrators ranging from do-it-yourself to complete turnkey appliances located on and off premises. In this webinar we outline the deployment models currently available to users and highlight some of the offerings currently available.

The Private Cloud Appliance Landscape

Hyperconverged infrastructures combine compute and storage components into a modular, scale-out platform that typically includes a hypervisor and some comprehensive management software. The technology is usually sold as self-contained appliance modules running on industry-standard server hardware with internal HDDs and SSDs. This capacity is abstracted and pooled into a shared resource for VMs running on each module or ‘node’ in the cluster. Hyperconverged infrastructures are sold as stand-alone appliances or as software that companies or integrators can use to build their own compute environments for private or hybrid clouds, special project infrastructures or departmental/remote office IT systems.
 
Learning Objectives
Understand what hyperconvergence is – and is not
Understand the capabilities this technology can bring
Discussion of where this technology is going
How and where it is being used in the Enterprise

Hyperconverged – What is it, What it can do and How the Enterprise is using it

Hyperconverged Infrastructures (HCIs) are popular solutions for a wide range of computing applications in small and medium-sized businesses. Their ease of deployment and operation, plus the ability to consolidate less efficient infrastructures into a comprehensive solution from a single vendor, have made them a good fit in these organizations. However, in the enterprise, companies with over 1000 employees, HCI adoption has been more limited. Certain use cases, such as providing a turnkey infrastructure for an enterprise’s remote and branch offices, are becoming more common. But what other usage scenarios are these larger companies looking at for hyperconverged appliances?

Hyperconverged Deployments Making Inroads into the Enterprise

Monitor with Discipline – The Application Stack

SDDC: The datacenter of the future

Exploring the Software Defined Data Center

Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Enabling Software-Defined Data Centers

Wanted: Women in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math

Software-Defined Data Center

The term Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) is making the rounds in the IT world. But while most companies may never actually build an SDDC, it’s important that IT organizations understand what this concept means and what it says about the future of IT infrastructure. In this 30 minute webinar, Evaluator Group Sr. Analyst, Eric Slack will define the software-defined data center concept, give some examples of software-defined products and technologies and discuss what how companies of all sizes can take advantage of this trend.

The Software-Defined Data Center - What It Is and Why It Matters

Welcome to the virtualization community on BrightTALK! Whether it affects servers, storage, networks, desktops or other parts of the data center, virtualization provides real benefits by reducing the resources needed for your
infrastructure and creating software-defined data center components. However, it can also complicate your infrastructure. Join this active community to learn best
practices for avoiding virtual machine sprawl and other common virtualization pitfalls as well as how you can make the most of your virtualization environment.

Virtualization

The data center management community focuses on the holistic management and optimization of the data center. From technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing to data center design, colocation, energy efficiency and monitoring, the BrightTALK data center management community provides the most up-to-date and engaging content from industry experts to better your infrastructure and operations. Engage with a community of your peers and industry experts by asking questions, rating presentations and participating in polls during webinars, all while you gain insight that will help you transform your infrastructure into a next generation data center.

Data Center Management

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Storage

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Big Data and Data Management

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End User Computing

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The Software-Defined Data Center - What It Is and Why It Matters

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