2019 Knowledge Sharing Winners and Articles

The 2019 Knowledge Sharing Winners accept their awards at the ceremony.

L – R: Amr Shaheen, Mikhail Gloukhovtsev, Howard Elias, Trichy Premkumar, Mohamed Sohail, Christina Crowley, Cindy Etherington, Michael Apigian.

View Ceremony

2019 Competition Third Place Winner

Redefining Workplace Paradigms through Autonomous Ops

Mohammed Hashim,
Head - Technology Innovation Council
Digital Infrastructure
Brillio

This Knowledge Sharing article takes an in-depth look at the application of Autonomous Ops primarily leveraging Big Data Mining, Deep Learning and Cross-platform data processing platforms to drive auto-remediation, self-optimization and self-healing. It is also a helpful guide for enterprises adopting AO into mainstream business to increase productivity and enhance business performance while changing the skills required of human personnel.

2019 Competition First Place Winner

Why You Need Multi-cloud and How to Manage IT

Author Interview

Mikhail Gloukhovtsev

Sr. Solutions Architect

Digital Solutions, Cloud & IoT

Orange Business Services

This Knowledge Sharing article provides an overview of key aspects of multi-cloud computing that will help enable successful multi-cloud implementation. Topics discussed include the emerging multi-cloud concept, benefits of multi-cloud computing, architecture of multi-cloud solutions, implementation of multi-cloud strategy, cloud services brokerage, unified management of multi-cloud services, application and data portability across different clouds, and other aspects of multi-cloud services.

2019 Competition Second Place Winner

Redesign Backup Strategies for Next-Gen Data Centers

Author Interviews - Sohail and Shaheen

Mohamed Sohail
Senior Solutions Architect
Dell Technologies

Amr Shaheen
Partner Technology Strategist
Microsoft

and

George Crump
Founder, Lead Analyst
Storage Switzerland

This Knowledge Sharing article presents a real use case of a modern backup strategy in a next-gen data center, exploring the changes, challenges, and solutions. Multiple scenarios are provided to help design a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy that leverages robust backup and recovery methodologies with solutions and objectives introduced, shown, and discussed.

Best Of Data Protection

Protecting Oracle VLDB with Data Domain BoostFS

Author Interview

Trichy Premkumar,
Chief Technical Architect, Data Protection Solutions
Dell EMC – Asia Pacific and Japan

This Knowledge Sharing article introduces an efficient architecture to perform Oracle Incremental Merge (OIM) backups with Dell EMC Data Domain BoostFS. The BoostFS-based OIM backups discussed provide a simple, fast and efficient backup for any large Oracle database. The solution can be deployed in private or public cloud using either physical or virtual Data Domain.

2019 Articles Selected for Publishing

July
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Automating Install of Solutions Enabler using Ansible	Big Data	Ramani Malathy, Consultant, IT Infrastructure Dell Technologies	New Solutions Enabler releases require storage administrators to perform upgrades by transferring the code to the servers using a tool like Winscp and then manually installing or upgrading it on the servers. A great deal of manpower and time can be saved by using a tool like Ansible. This article describes a fast and efficient way to achieve Solutions Enabler install or upgrade by leveraging the Ansible provisioning tool and automating it.
Machine Learning-based Object Tracking	Machine Learning	Rajasekhar Nannapaneni, Sr Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Dell EMC	Several approaches exist for tracking object. In this article, a new machine learning algorithm is developed which aims to achieve higher accuracies for object tracking. The author discusses how classical machine learning techniques such as PCA, HOG, SVM and Naïve Bayes are used to perform object tracking which do not require as much compute as deep learning does and still perform reasonably well for object tracking.

August
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Unmatched Availability Solution for VxRail	Converged Infrastructure	Victor Wu Senior Solution Expert, Business Consultation BoardWare Information System Limited and Samson Tu, Senior Service Engineer, Professional Services BoardWare Information System Limited	This article describes how to plan and build the Active-Active (AA) Infrastructure, Active-Active-Passive (AAP) Infrastructure, and Point-in-time Recovery (PITR) Solution on VxRail Appliance.
Optimal mechanism of load balancing in multicloud: A JSQLW approach	Cloud	Shikha Pandey, Advisor, Learning Design & Development Dell Technologies \| Education Services	Many organizations have begun to adopt a multi-cloud approach to meet business demands and overcome the challenges of public and private cloud. This article focuses on the importance of multi-cloud in today’s technological world. Also presented is JSQLW (Join Shortest Queue with Left Work), an optimal mechanism of resource allocation and load balancing for heterogeneous cloud environments.

September
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Game Theory on Storage Systems	Data Science/Storage	Abdulkadir Özdamar Field Service Engineer 2 Dell Technologies	Game theory is widely used in financial aspects to model rivalry between companies and countries. Recently, it has been connected to systems administration issues, i.e. control of power, spectrum allocation, medium access control and routing in a heavy traffic environment within computer science. This article briefly explores game theory, its theoretical applications to storage systems, and its potential for improving future storage systems and easing a storage administrator’s job.
Open Architectures for IoT Data Monetization	Internet of Things	Steve Todd Dell Technologies Fellow Dell Technologies	The Internet of Things is driving the rise of a new paradigm: data brokers that allow data producers to sell their IoT data to consumers. This article explores the emergence of data brokers and data exchange platforms, presents open architectures that will enable data producers to package and sell their data, and describes the best approaches for packaging, storing, analyzing, valuing, and selling data.

October
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Moving towards DevOps with Vagrant	DevOps	Malathy Ramani Consultant, IT Infrastructure Dell Technologies	Vagrant is a powerful tool that can ease an organization’s transition to DevOps and Infrastructure-as-code solutions. This article discusses the process of setting up a simple Vagrant environment on top of Oracle VirtualBox on a laptop as well as setting up Ansible, a provisioning tool on top of a Vagrant host.
Saving The Future of Moore’s Law	Server/Storage	Bruce Yellin	This article explores the computing world from the end of World War II and traces the observations of one of the industry’s true visionaries, Gordon Moore, over the last few decades. The central issue is whether Moore’s original predictions still hold and if they do, will they continue for another five, ten or twenty years as technology continues to evolve. The article reviews the engineering know-how that aided his predictions and future technologies that have yet to make it to the market.

November
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Serverless by Design: The Hybrid Cloud	Cloud	AnthonyDutra Systems Engineer Dell Technologies WilliamLupo Senior Developer Thomson Reuters Varshith Hakkithimmanahalli Anilkumar Senior Developer Wayfair	This article captures the importance of serverless technology to the future of IT infrastructure. It provides an overview of serverless technology, along with an examination of the available serverless public cloud technologies, and a description of the skills required to take advantage of it. The authors discuss where and how serverless can be used in existing infrastructures to enable hybrid cloud-like functionalities and touch on the future of how technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Blockchain can be empowered further by serverless.

December
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Human Emotion Recognition using Machine Learning	Machine Learning	Rajasekhar Nannapaneni Sr Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Dell EMC	Emotion recognition, one of the crucial non-verbal means by which communication occurs, helps identify the mood and state of the person. This article discusses development of a novel machine learning algorithm that uses human facial expressions for emotion recognition and a comparative study is made with existing algorithms.
On Premises Infrastructure for Serverless Computing	Server	Chethan Nagaraj Sales Engineer Analyst Dell EMC and Ravi Sriramulu Manager 2, Sales Engineer Analyst Dell EMC	This article examines how serverless architecture combines Function as a Service (FaaS) and Backend as a Service (BaaS), among other things and the business sectors it caters to. The authors discuss current implementation of the service from Public cloud providers, the issues that arise from it, i.e. vendor lock-in, security, optimization, and drawbacks from the serverless architecture such as start-up latency, testing, deployment, versioning, and migration.

January
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Journey to Multi Cloud Demystified and Simplified	Cloud	Anuj Sharma and Benedikt Mayer	This article provides insight to how enterprises can overcome the myriad challenges they face to realize the full potential of their multi-cloud strategy and transform how they do business. Topics include: • An overview of multi-cloud and current adoption data • A framework for moving toward a multi-cloud environment • Best practices in a multi-cloud environment • Dell Technologies’ unique multi-cloud advantage

February
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Towards Standardization of Backup Methods	Backup	Umit Dericioglu Backup Operations Delivery Team Lead Dell EMC	This article reviews backup methods and definitions, proposals which might pave way to a possible standardization, and suggestions and new ideas to improve backup services.
Human Fetus Health Prediction using Decision Tree	Machine Learning	Rajasekhar Nannapaneni Sr Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Dell EMC	Inference achieved from analyzing human unborn baby health cardiotocographic data indicates whether the fetus is normal, suspect with action needed, or pathologic with immediate action needed. It is critical to make this inference quickly as any delay could be a risk to both fetal and mother. This article details the development of a machine learning-based decision tree algorithm that will classify fetus health into normal, suspect and pathologic based on the given cardiotocographic data.

March
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Flummox around Osmotic Computing with Dell Technologies	Edge Computing	Shadaab Mohiuddin Principal Systems, Development Engineer, Dell Technologies Tabraiz Amman Principal Systems Development Engineer, Dell Technologies and Sreedevi Katabattuni Senior Systems Development Engineer, Dell Technologies	This article explores the promise of osmotic computing to provide better services on unreliable computing nodes, i.e. mobiles, smart watches, and other power- and resource-constrained devices – coupled with limited scalability and unreliable network availability options, to interact with services hosted on cloud computing (especially Infrastructure-as-a-service [IaaS]) that support deployment of reliable services across several application domains.