Key Points:
- At its
思科
Live conference in Las Vegas, Cisco executives said the new product, called ‘Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI clusters’, will feature Cisco networking
gear, Cisco compute solutions running on
英伟达
GPUs and DPUs
, Nvidia AI Enterprise software, and VAST data storage.
- Cisco executives claim that Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI clusters will be the first data center product line that can be cloud-managed. The company said select customers will have early trial access during the 2024 fourth quarter with general availability expected shortly after.
- In an interview with Data Center Knowledge this week,
Murali Gandluru
, Cisco’s vice president of product management for data center networking, said the jointly developed solution with Nvidia will allow enterprises to “partake in the AI evolution” and to “easily design, deploy, operate, and manage full-stack AI infrastructure in a plug-and-play model.”
-
Arista Networks
last week announced
it is collaborating with Nvidia to develop a software agent to better manage networks and servers in AI clusters. Dell Technologies
, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
, and Lenovo
also have partnerships with Nvidia to develop generative AI hardware solutions.
- Nexus HyperFabric AI clusters have been developed for enterprises that are seeking to adopt AI infrastructure for generative AI and AI inferencing workloads but want to deploy it in a much simpler way, according to
Kevin Wollenweber
, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s networking, data center, and provider connectivity division.
- Not every enterprise wants to use cloud-based management tools, however. For those organizations, Cisco said it has improved the Nexus Dashboard, a software tool for managing data center networks on-premises.
You already know that every day at Data Center Knowledge
brings advice, trends and strategies for data center professionals on how to design, build, and manage world-class data centers.
That means original reporting from our team of journalists and unique commentary you won’t see anywhere else! But in case you missed them, here are some of our other must-read favorites from this week:
Staying Cool Under Fire
Key Points:
- Some data center fires may be so serious that it is impossible to enter the premises
. Fortunately, the fire was relatively minor on this occasion. However, it set off a chain of events that made it appear worse than it was.
-
James Monek, CISSP
, director of technology infrastructure and operations at
Lehigh University
, Pennsylvania, explained the whole story during a session at
Data Center World
.
- That process laid out who declared the emergency, the procedures to follow, who was ultimately responsible for resolving the incident, and the priorities in terms of which operations and service tiers should be recovered or addressed first and which could wait.
- Monek stressed the value of stressing what went right. In this case, the fire suppression system worked as designed, the staff made it onsite quickly despite snowy conditions, and video conferencing software was utilized to keep everyone informed.
How Will the UALink Impact Data Centers?
Key Points:
- UALink applies to accelerators found on GPUs, enabling hardware
powering AI training and inference workloads to interconnect with one another more efficiently. Version 1.0 of the standard will enable data center operators to connect up to 1,024 accelerators in a single computing pod. It is set to be formally adopted later this year.
- “Ultra-high performance interconnects are becoming increasingly important as AI workloads continue to grow in size and scope,” said
Martin Lund
, executive vice president of
思科
’s common hardware group. “Together, we are committed to developing the UALink which will be a scalable and open solution available to help overcome some of the challenges with building AI supercomputers.”
- The companies that adopted the UALink standard are members of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC), an industry group supporting cooperation around Ethernet-based networking
.
-
AMD
,
博通
, Cisco,
英特尔
, and
惠普企业服务
also signed on to form the open industry standard. A notable absence among the companies who pledged themselves to the standard is
英伟达
, which uses its own NVLink to interconnect GPUs.
Inside Azure Outages
Key Points:
- Data Center Knowledge has been tracking
Microsoft Azure
outages
for over a decade. With so many using Azure services for vital business applications on a day-to-day basis, these disruptions often have a significant impact on Azure customers.
- Early in 2023, Microsoft experienced a three-hour outage
of its core M365 offerings due to Azure network issues, wiping out some of its most popular services. Wide area network troubles were the cause of the outage.
- In September 2018, Microsoft blamed “severe” weather for an Azure Cloud outage that affected 40 Azure services
. According to Microsoft, a “severe weather event, including lighting strikes” near one of its San Antonio, Texas, data centers caused a voltage spike, which in turn lead to a cooling issue.
- According to Microsoft, a reaction of precautionary automated shutdowns caused by a fire-suppression gas led to seven hours of service glitches in September 2017
. Azure engineers said the fire suppression system was activated during routine maintenance.
- Check out the rest of our Microsoft Azure outage highlights from the last 10 years.
Incoming DCIM Market Growth
Key Points:
- From overseeing infrastructure equipment in remote cabinets to sprawling hyperscale data centers, DCIM
solutions offer a comprehensive approach to monitoring and measuring.
- Omdia’s IT Enterprise Insights: IT Spending Sourcing 2024 survey sheds light on how organizations are budgeting for IT needs this year. Highlighting a familiar pattern, the data showed that the majority (65%) of IT budgets will be directed towards maintaining existing systems and services, while 18% will go towards expanding current services and 17% towards transformative initiatives in 2024.
- Omdia expects that organizations will increasingly turn to automation, AI
-enabled optimization, and as-a-service models to manage costs and drive more investment towards transformative projects over the next five years.
- According to Omdia’s chief analyst
Roy Illsley
: “DCIM is set to be a $6.3 billion market by 2030, driven by the twin forces of sustainability and the need to optimize efficiency in data centers as the GenAI wave impacts enterprise customers.”
Major Moves Inside the Industry
The Data Center Knowledge News Roundup brings you the latest news and developments across the data center industry – from investments and mergers to security threats and industry trends.
Key Points:
-
Cologix, Inc.
?has announced the?completion
?of its fourth data center in Columbus, Ohio. The COL4 facility is being promoted as the first AI-ready colocation data center in the region, laying the groundwork for “seamless AI integration with cloud services.”???
- US colocation firm
DataBank
?held a dedication ceremony for its new?Orangeburg Data Center Campus
?in the Hudson Valley, New York State. The company’s first data center on the campus – the 30 MW ‘LGA3’ facility – is currently under construction and will open in early 2025.??
- In?Europe
, a data center?construction?boom is occurring in smaller secondary markets across the continent, with a record 273 MW of new capacity expected this year, according to?fresh insight
?from?CBRE. This includes 56 MW of capacity already delivered in the first quarter and exceeds the previous record of 228 MW set in 2022.?
- In?Asia-Pacific
?data center news,
谷歌
has committed to making $2 billion in?investments?in Malaysia, including developing?its first data center and a cloud facility
?in the country.?
- Raxio Group, a data center company backed by global investor?Meridiam Infrastructure Partners?and US private equity firm?Roha Group, is?opening?its first facility
?in Mozambique as part of its $290 million investment strategy in?Africa
.?
Latest Major Tech Layoff Announcements
Original Story by Jessica C. Davis
, Updated by Brandon Taylor
Key Points:
- As COVID drove everyone online, tech companies hired like crazy. Now we are hitting the COVID tech bust as tech giants shed jobs by the thousands.
- Updated June 7, 2024 with layoff announcements from
Oda
,
微软
, and
谷歌
.
- Check back regularly for updates to InformationWeek
's IT job layoffs tracker.
Chip Watch: Commentary of the Week
Key Points:
-
英特尔
has begun shipping the first of its next-generation server processors
: a 144-core Intel Xeon 6 processor with Efficient cores (E-cores) that is designed for public and private clouds in situations where power efficiency and performance are critical, the company announced today (June 3).
- At the Computex conference in Taiwan today, Intel shared more information on the Intel Xeon 6 family and Gaudi 3 AI accelerators, including architecture details, performance metrics, and product launch dates between now and the first quarter of 2025. This includes the launch of the 288-core
Intel Xeon 6 E-core chip, which is expected early next year.
- Intel Xeon 6 P-core processors will perform AI inferencing 3.7 times better than AMD EPYC processors, while Xeon 6 E-core processors will provide 1.3 times better performance per watt over AMD EPYC chips on media transcoding workloads, said
Matt Langman
, general manager and vice president of Intel Xeon 6 processors, during a media briefing.
- Intel also announced pricing for its Gaudi AI accelerators. A standard AI kit including eight Intel Gaudi 2 ?AI accelerators with a universal baseboard costs $65,000, which is one-third the cost of competitive AI accelerators, the company said.
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