Addressing Obstacles to Cloud Computing

Traditionally, much of the IT infrastructure that we’ve built over the years can be divided fairly simply into storage (the place we save our persistent data), network (how we get access to the storage and get at our data) and compute (memory and CPU that crunches on the data). In fact, so successful has this model been that a trip to any cloud services provider allows you to order (and be billed for) exactly these three components.

We build effective systems in a cost-optimal way by using appropriate quantities of expensive and fast memory (DRAM for instance) to cache our cheaper and slower storage. But currently fast memory has no persistence at all; it’s only storage that provides the application the guarantee that storing, modifying or deleting data does exactly that.

Memory and storage differ in other ways. For example, we load from memory to registers on the CPU, perform operations there, and then store the results back to memory by using byte addresses. This load/store technology is different from storage, where we tend to move data back and fore between memory and storage in large blocks, by using an API (application programming interface).

New memory technologies are challenging these assumptions. They look like storage in that they’re persistent, if a lot faster than traditional disks or even Flash based SSDs, but we address them in bytes, as we do memory like DRAM, if more slowly. Persistent memory (PM) lies between storage and memory in latency, bandwidth and cost, while providing memory semantics and storage persistence. In this webcast, SNIA experts will discuss:

•Traditional uses of storage and memory as a cache
•How can we build and use systems based on PM?
•What would a system with storage, persistent memory and DRAM look like?
•Do we need a new programming model to take advantage of PM?
•Interesting use cases for systems equipped with PM
•How we might take better advantage of this new technology

This webinar is brought to you by the Vivit Testing Quality ALM Special Interest Group (SIG).

Join this webinar that will demonstrate how BNP Paribas started and performed evaluation of ALM Octane and is now using the tool to run complete agile testing lifecycles. The testing lifecycle will be presented as a live demo that follows Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) methodology and uses Gherkin notation for defining test suites.

The testing lifecycle starts with definition of requirements and user stories, heavily builds on test automation and advanced reporting, manages and synchronizes defects across tools, and feeds learnings from testing back into the requirements. It uses an integrated development and testing infrastructure including products like Confluence, Jira, Micro Focus ALM, Micro Focus ALM Octane, Jenkins, GIT, Cucumber, IntelliJ, TestCafe, and others.

BNP Paribas’s journey with agile test automation using ALM Octane started in 2017. The webinar presents in a nutshell how evaluation of ALM Octane was approached and conducted. It explains how new methods were introduced with the objective to leverage full tool functionality. The initiative has soon helped to increase testing efficiency and created important business value.

Webinar participants will learn:

• How BNP Paribas has conducted evaluation of ALM Octane
• Why ALM Octane is much more than just a successor of ALM/Quality Center
• How ALM Octane eases flexible management of its entire surrounding tool chain
• Why methodology like BDD shall precede tools, and not vice versa
• How Gherkin establishes a common language for the entire agile development lifecycle that helps integrating business, development, and testing
• How to use ALM Octane for pipeline management, reporting, defect synchronization, import of performance testing and BPT results, integration of in-sprint testing etc.

There are many challenges facing those who work in the ITSM field. It seems the most significant challenge is the constant changes, whether they are within the tools and customers you are supporting, the on-and-off boarding of employees, or the changes in your ITSM solution from upgrades or total replacement. The Micro Focus Adoption Readiness Tool can help you guard against these changes affecting your business.

• How to stop your knowledge leaving the building when the SME’s move on
• How to put together a knowledge repository and maintain your content efficiently
• How to create new content on the fly
• How to make this knowledge available for everyone at the point of need

Kubernetes (k8s) is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes promises simplified management of cloud workloads at scale, whether on-premises, hybrid, or in a public cloud infrastructure, allowing effortless movement of workloads from cloud to cloud. By some reckonings, it is being deployed at a rate several times faster than virtualization.

In this presentation, we’ll introduce Kubernetes and present use cases that make clear where and why you would want to use it in your IT environment. We’ll also focus on the enterprise requirements of orchestration and containerization, and specifically on the storage aspects and best practices.

•What is Kubernetes? Why would you want to use it?
•How does Kubernetes help in a multi-cloud/private cloud environment?
•How does Kubernetes orchestrate & manage storage? Can Kubernetes use Docker?
•How do we provide persistence and data protection?
•Example use cases

As Enterprise DevOps adoption hits the mainstream, organizations are looking to streamline and simplify their Development and Testing practices through the use of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD). Whilst CI and CD practices can provide significant benefits, such transformations are often led by Development teams, where little thought is given about the impact that the process and technology changes will have upon testing organizations, and the need to fully align all areas of the application delivery pipeline.
In this live webinar, join Micro Focus to understand:
• How development, test and release processes and pipelines can be easily and simply aligned
• How test automation can be a core component of your CD pipeline and why an orchestrated DevOps toolchain is key to successful DevOps transformation

This webinar is brought to you by the Vivit DevOps Special Interest Group (SIG).

SecOps teams are always looking to strike a balance between staying ahead of new threats and not getting burned by older ones, all while having to do a hundred other things at once. The SecOps team at VMware will share their experience adopting a DevOps process for continuous improvement, while working to reduce the extreme utilization level of the Security Operations Center (SOC) team and to improve the overall security posture. The session will offer practical lessons learned, from a real 24/7 global SOC, without all the fancy buzzwords and feel good tips that don’t actually work in the real world.

Join this webinar to learn:

• How shifting the method of working has improved Security Monitoring, without having to spend more money
• What to be aware of when adopting new methods or techniques
• How to plan out goals and achieve them in environments where priorities constantly are shifting

Has hybrid cloud reached a tipping point? According to research from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), IT organizations today are struggling to strike the right balance between public cloud and their on-premises infrastructure. In this SNIA webcast, ESG senior analyst, Scott Sinclair, will share research on current cloud trends, covering:

•Key drivers behind IT complexity
•IT spending priorities
•Multi-cloud & hybrid cloud adoption drivers
•When businesses are moving workloads from the cloud back on-premises
•Top security and cost challenges
•Future cloud projections

The research will be followed by a panel discussion with Scott Sinclair and SNIA cloud experts Alex McDonald, Michelle Tidwell, Mike Jochimsen and Eric Lakin.

Kubernetes, microservices, AI and machine learning have forever changed the traditional enterprise tech stack. As DevOps practices become increasingly more adopted and widely used, automation is imperative for your tech teams and cloud infrastructure to remain scalable and turnkey. Join this live panel discussion with experts in the Cloud, IT Infrastructure and DevOps communities as they discuss these and other major trends, and what to look out for in the coming years.

Topics include:
- How to accelerate software delivery in the era of automation and composable infrastructure
- Infrastructure as code and changing organizational design
- How to properly set up your DevOps automation and see big cloud cost savings
- The future of DevOps in the cloud and real life use cases for applications and machine learning

Moderator: Robert Starmer, Cloud Advisor & Founding Partner, Kumulus Technologies
Panelists:
Syed Rasheed, Director of Portolio Solution, Red Hat
Tarak Modi, CTO, TekNirvana

We’re all accustomed to transferring money from one bank account to another; a credit to the payer becomes a debit to the payee. But that model uses a specific set of sophisticated techniques to accomplish what appears to be a simple transaction. We’re also aware of how today we can order goods online, or reserve an airline seat over the Internet. Or even simpler, we can update a photograph on Facebook. Can these applications use the same models, or are new techniques required?

One of the more important concepts in storage is the notion of transactions, which are used in databases, financials, and other mission critical workloads. However, in the age of cloud and distributed systems, we need to update our thinking about what constitutes a transaction. We need to understand how new theories and techniques allow us to undertake transactional work in the face of unreliable and physically dispersed systems. It’s a topic full of interesting concepts (and lots of acronyms!). In this webcast, we’ll provide a brief tour of traditional transactional systems and their use of storage, we’ll explain new application techniques and transaction models, and we’ll discuss what storage systems need to look like to support these new advances.

And yes, we’ll explain all the acronyms and nomenclature too.

You will learn:

• A brief history of transactional systems from banking to Facebook
• How the Internet and distributed systems have changed and how we view transactions
• An explanation of the terminology, from ACID to CAP and beyond
• How applications, networks & particularly storage have changed to meet these demands

Join SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) Education Chair and leading analyst Tom Coughlin and SSSI member Motti Beck of Mellanox Technologies for a journey into the requirements and trends in worldwide data storage for entertainment content acquisition, editing, archiving, and digital preservation. This webcast will cover capacity and performance trends and media projections for direct attached storage, cloud, and near-line network storage. It will also include results from a long-running digital storage survey of media and entertainment professionals. Learn what is needed for digital cinema, broadcast, cable, and internet applications and more.

LeanIn.Org’s mission is to empower women to achieve their ambitions and get to a more gender equal world.

Join Emma Roberts, Global Program Lead for Lean In, for a review of the state of women at work in 2018, in terms of the gains made, the inequities that remain, and the challenges that lie ahead.

In the fight for equality and forging a #BalanceforBetter, we have our work cut out for us. And many women around the world are leading the way.

Emma will also share practical and research based tips from LeanIn.Org on how everyone can be a better workplace ally for women in the workplace in 2019 and beyond.