At AI Field Day 4, VMware demonstrated a significant shift towards Private AI, emphasizing the need for balance between AI innovation and stringent data privacy in enterprise environments. As Ken Collins writes, the introduction of VMware’s Private AI Foundation showcases an ecosystem developed for flexibility, enabling companies to bring AI closer to their data across different environments. As the enterprise AI landscape evolves, VMware’s strategic partnership with NVIDIA and emphasis on internal AI applications position the company as a key player in an era where data privacy, choice, and performance are paramount.
Qlik Presents About AI on AIFD4
At AI Field Day, Qlik unveiled their comprehensive AI strategy, focusing on enabling customers to tackle the complexity and scale of AI integration into their operations with solutions like predictive analytics, AutoML, and their 170K-strong model portfolio. With initiatives like Qlik Staige, the company facilitates the use of AI for those new to the field, using established algorithms and bringing structured and unstructured data together for added value. Read more about the Qlik presentation in this LinkedIn Pulse article by Gina Rosenthal!
VAST Data Operationalizing AI
At AI Field Day 4, Keith Townsend engaged with VAST Data’s John Mao and Neeloy Bhattacharyya to discuss the company’s innovative architecture that separates the persistent data layer from stateless logic, optimizing access patterns and improving data preparation efficiency for AI applications. Gina Rosenthal highlights their global namespace approach and the unique “VAST DataBase” system, they are streamlining data availability and scalability across the pipeline.
Google Cloud at Intel Day @ #AIFD4
At AI Field Day, Google Cloud’s Brandon Royal presented insights into AI platforms and infrastructure, emphasizing the shift from the internet to mobile and AI. He introduced Gemini, Google’s multi-modal model, and unveiled Gemma, a family of lightweight models. Royal discussed safety measures and highlighted GKE’s role in AI, covering CPUs, GPUs, and TPUs. A demo showcased Gemma on GKE supporting 8K tokens. Ameer Abbas, Senior Product Manager at Google Cloud, focused on Developer and Operational Productivity with Duet AI, demonstrating code development and transformation capabilities for enterprise builders and developers. Read more in this LinkedIn Pulse article by Gina Rosenthal.
VMware by Broadcom Presents Private AI With Intel at AI Field Day 4
During AI Field Day 4, VMware stepped up to showcase how Intel AMX CPUs can be leveraged for Large Language Models (LLM) on vSphere, presenting a CPU-centric approach to AI tasks commonly handled by GPUs. As discussed by Gina Rosenthal, Earl Ruby of Broadcom (VCF) demonstrated the potential of Intel’s AMX technology in both older Ice Lake and newer Sapphire Rapids systems, achieving model fine-tuning and inference without the use of GPUs. This approach champions using CPUs for AI when feasible, reserving GPU use for scenarios demanding lower latency, and highlights the compatibility requirements for effectively implementing AI with Intel’s hardware in a vSphere environment.
Storage for AI: Data Professional Overview
The use of the term ‘data management’ is subject to varying interpretations between data professionals and storage providers, leading to some confusion when discussing the scope of services. Solidigm highlights the unique storage requirements for AI, as Karen Lopez wrote, emphasizing that AI servers need significantly more capacity and have specific data demands across different stages: Data ingest, Data prep, Training, Checkpointing, and Inference. As data professionals, our understanding of these distinct data workloads enables us to contribute valuably to discussions on data architecture, especially in collaboration with companies like Supermicro, who integrate these storage solutions into their AI server offerings.
Private AI Foundation With NVIDIA: Data Professional Overview
VMware by Broadcom, in partnership with NVIDIA, has introduced the Private AI Foundation, focusing on enhancing in-house data management and AI processing through privacy, choice, cost management, performance optimization, and compliance agility. As highlighted by Karen Lopez, data quality and protection are essential for accurate AI results, prompting data professionals to stay alert to components like vector databases for fast, complex data retrieval. Key takeaways emphasize the importance of not overlooking data fundamentals amidst AI advancements, reminding professionals that AI cannot replace the need for robust data management.
AI Field Day 4 Kicks Off With VMware’s Private AI
Gina Rosenthal is delivering real-time insights on each AI Field Day presentation, starting with her take on VMware’s advancements in AI. In their presentation, VMware highlighted the ease of deploying AI applications on existing infrastructure with a focus on robust security and privacy, leveraging their Private AI and partnerships with industry leaders like NVIDIA. VMware’s session delved into how their solutions, geared towards the generative AI market, are enabling customers to significantly improve operational tasks such as documentation search, boasting a 500% effectiveness increase.
Intel Day Kicks Off at AI Field Day 4
As AI Field Day 4 continues into day two, Gina Rosenthal turns her attention to the capabilities of Intel Xeon CPUs in AI, particularly in inference workflows, as presented by Ro Shah, AI Product Director at Intel. Shah delineated the growing trend towards generative AI with large models, while recognizing that enterprises are more inclined to adopt smaller language models, positioning Xeon as a suitable solution for these scenarios. Intel’s commitment to serving the AI market extends beyond hardware, showcasing their strategy of enabling AI across the board through developer support, tool extensions, and a strong partnership ecosystem.
Why Storage Matters for AI – Solidigm
During AI Field Day 4, Solidigm, alongside partner Supermicro, spotlighted the pivotal role of storage in AI, as discussed by Gina Rosenthal. Ace Stryker of Solidigm emphasized the need to shift from HDDs to solid-state drives, aligning with the trends of chip spending growth and the demand for higher storage in AI servers. Supermicro’s Wendell Wenjen and Paul McLeod further discussed the integration with WEKA and the importance of storage in AIOps, indicating that a substantial portion of Supermicro’s revenue is derived from AI-related ventures.
Cisco Live EMEA and Tech Field Day Extra Embodies “Better Together”
Attending Cisco Live EMEA and Tech Field Day Extra as a single mother on maternity leave, Zoe Rose highlighted the significance of community in shaping careers while juggling the demands of parenthood. Her experience underscores not only the flexibility and inclusion of these industry events but also the support structures that make participation feasible for parents. Rose’s story is an inspiring testament to the power of community and organizational support in fostering professional growth, even amidst the complexities of personal life transitions.
Meraki Switching 17 – Encapsulating ‘Better Together’ by Providing Context
Meraki’s upcoming MS17 features, highlighted at Cisco Live EMEA by Brennan Martin and Alex Burger, are tailored to reduce burdens on IT teams through efficient data aggregation, contextualized insights, and trend visualization. As Zoe Rose discusses, the update is set to streamline operations by introducing dynamic profiles for switchports, enhanced packet capture analysis, and comprehensive device health dashboards, with an API to further customize thresholds and alerts. While a ‘single pane of glass’ for network management remains a complex goal, these changes reflect a product evolution responsive to customer feedback and aimed at alleviating workload, underscoring Cisco’s commitment to user-centric innovation.
Runaway K8 Clusters, Meet Your Match: Platform9’s Elastic Machine Pool (EMP)
Although Jim Czuprynski prefers monolithic architectures like Oracle’s Exadata, as an experienced Oracle DBA he recognizes the common issue of memory over-allocation in containerized environments, driven by the containerization trend. Platform9’s EMP toolset was presented as a solution which introduces an alternative virtualization layer, streamlining resource usage and potentially curbing the over-provisioning habits of Kubernetes engineers. With a focus on enhanced performance and cost efficiency, EMP’s potential to optimize Kubernetes configurations was highlighted at Cloud Field Day, a novel approach eagerly eyed by those in cloud resource management.
Winning the Private (Cloud) War: SoftIron’s Hyperscaled Solutions
Jim Czuprynski reacts to SoftIron’s presentation at Cloud Field Day. They presented a private cloud vision that readily adapts to the challenges of interconnectivity, scalability, and disaster resilience, necessities underscored by recent calamitous events. SoftIron’s tailored solutions, capable of delivering up to 16PB clusters, show their commitment to meeting the elastic computing needs of diverse, growth-oriented IT infrastructures. Read more in this LinkedIn Pulse article!
Cloud to Ground Deployment Magic
Dell Technologies introduced the concept of “Cloud to ground” at Cloud Field Day 19, reflecting the growing interest in cloud repatriation and the desire to bring cloud-like operations to on-premises datacenters. Their APEX Cloud Platform aims to simplify this transition, providing a management solution that integrates with existing tools like Azure console and OpenShift Advanced Cluster Management to automate and manage Cloud OS deployments on Dell hardware. While this innovation aids in the automation and management of on-prem hardware, Ned Bellavance notes that it’s not a full public cloud experience nor a private or multicloud management plane, but rather a significant step towards simplifying hybrid cloud environments for Dell users.
Hardware Vendors Are Providing Better Network Monitoring Than Most Software Vendors
As Thomas LaRock wrote about earlier, 70% of enterprises use private clouds, including those with public-facing websites, pointing out the implicit challenge these companies face in securing their networks against DDoS attacks. Broadcom is innovating in this space with their Trident5-X12 chip featuring the NetGNT engine, which offers real-time traffic analysis and anomaly detection to bolster network security measures. However, despite the advancement in hardware-based security solutions, the onus remains on customers to develop and train the neural network models needed to identify and categorize threats—a task that requires specialized skills.
Better Switch(es) to Fight
Cloud Field Day 19 concluded with Broadcom, as Jim Czuprynski writes in this LinkedIn Pulse article, turning the often-overlooked networking components into a topic of significant impact for cloud infrastructure. Broadcom’s Trident5-X12 chip features smart built-in capabilities to scrutinize every network packet, potentially catching and blocking suspicious traffic such as DDOS attacks in real-time. This technology underscores the importance of robust network security measures, requiring system administrators to be proactive in training and adapting to emergent threat patterns, reinforcing our defense against sophisticated cyber threats.
Dell – Streamlining Cloud – On and Off Premises
Camberley Bates’ LinkedIn Pulse article examines Dell’s latest solutions—APEX Storage for Public Cloud and APEX Cloud Platform—introduced at DTW 2023 and further elaborated during Tech Field Day. These offerings aim to enhance cloud management both on and off-premises, with the SDS-based APEX Storage designed for scalability in AWS, Azure, and eventually GCP, complemented by the APEX Navigator for comprehensive management. The article also highlights APEX Cloud Platforms’ on-premises integrations for OpenShift, AzureStack HCI, and VMware Tanzu that simplify deployment and lifecycle management.
Multi-Cloud: Because Life Isn’t Painful Enough
Thomas LaRock’s LinkedIn Pulse article wittily addresses the complexities of multi-cloud management and introduces Dell’s APEX Cloud Platform with APEX Block Storage, focusing on how it can ease the burdens of handling high-performance workloads across different cloud providers, despite the potentially higher costs associated with enterprise-level storage solutions and multi-cloud management tools like APEX Navigator.
When CPUs/GPUs Are Not Enough: NeuroBlade’s SPU
Drawing from experience with high-performance Exadata DBMs, Jim Czuprynski considers the challenges in running complex analytic or ML workloads in containerized databases like Apache Spark. NeuroBlade has stepped in with a potential solution for these scalability issues in massive, containerized environments by introducing the SQL Processing Unit (SPU), designed to offload and accelerate these demanding tasks. Touted to boost analytical performance by up to 10x, the SPU exemplifies hardware innovation tailored for the needs of private cloud computing, heralding a promising future for data-intensive workloads.