Knowledge Sharing 2020 | Dell Learning

2020 Knowledge Sharing Winners and Articles

The 2020 Knowledge Sharing Winners accept their awards at the ceremony.

2020 Competition First Place Winner

Mikhail Gloukhovtsev

Sr. Solutions Architect

Digital Solutions, Cloud & IoT

Orange Business Services

In this article, awarded 1^st Place in the 2020 Knowledge Sharing Competition, Mikhail Gloukhovtsev explores the emerging concept of 5G and cloud computing symbiosis and how it transforms cloud computing. This transformation results in new cloud computing architectures, affects various businesses using cloud services, and enables new business opportunities. Mikhail reviews key challenges in 5G-cloud solutions and provides insight on how to develop cloud-services strategies in the era of 5G.

2020 Competition Second Place Winner

Project Alvarium: The Future of Edge Data

Steve Todd
Dell Technologies Fellow
Dell Technologies

In this article, awarded 2^nd Place in the 2020 Knowledge Sharing Competition, Steve Todd explores the future of edge data and how the Project Alvarium community can advance the adoption of Data Confidence Fabrics (DCF), a proposed industry standard which allows business applications to measure the "confidence" or "trustworthiness" of data created on the farthest reaches of IoT and edge deployments. Steve provides an overview of Project Alvarium, what problems it solves, and how it will be implemented.

2020 Competition Third Place Winner

Distributed Intelligent Security Agents for IoT

Sandra Mamdouh Sidhom
Sales Engineer Analyst
Dell Technologies

In this article, awarded 3^rd Place in the 2020 Knowledge Sharing Competition, Sandra Mamdouh Sidhom examines an intelligent-based approach to detecting abnormal behavior in IoT systems. Sandra discusses the existing paradigms of distributed intelligent agents as well as the security threats taking place in the IoT domain, then examines whether it is feasible to utilize the distributed intelligent agents to detect abnormal behaviors in the IoT environment.

Best Of Data Storage

The Evolution of Enterprise Storage

Bruce Yellin

Over the last two decades, the world of enterprise storage has gone through revolutionary changes. Concepts of performance, cost, capability, and features have taken on new meanings. Now, computer storage is on the cusp of yet another shift. Moore’s Law is being kept alive with new types of storage that doubles the performance while halving the cost. In this article, awarded Best of Data Storage in the 2020 Knowledge Sharing Competition, Bruce Yellin explores the dramatic changes in enterprise storage happening this decade through easy-to-follow explanations and examples of these developments.

Best of Data Protection

Immutable Data Protection for Any Application

Please Read: Customers who apply the set of Avamar Immutable Backup hotfixes on either Avamar 19.4.0-124 or Avamar 19.7.0-82, or who are upgrading to Avamar 19.8 or later releases, should not use the procedures in this document. This document is being retained for archival reasons, and should only be referenced by customers who implemented it on earlier releases of Avamar.

Mike van der Steen
Principal Systems Engineer
Dell Technologies

In this article, awarded Best of Data Protection in the 2020 Knowledge Sharing Competition, Mike van der Steen provides an overview of the fundamental Data Domain features leveraged to create immutable copies of backup data, the process of creating them, the recovery process and a sample script to automate the daily tasks of creating these immutable copies. While the primary focus of Mike’s article is based on backup applications, it can be extended to incorporate any application storing data on Data Domain, hence providing immutable data protection for any application.

Best of Quantum Computing

Harnessing Uncertainty

Terence Johny
Solutions Engineering Specialist
Dell Technologies

The world has been steadily pacing toward the goal of Quantum supremacy. Will it improve the quality of the human life experience, or will it add another layer of complexity to our existence? In this article, awarded Best of Quantum Computing in the 2020 Knowledge Sharing Competition, Terence Johny explores the quantum world and deciphers some of the core phenomena that govern the quantum realms, while trying to bind those concepts to modern quantum computing architecture.

2020 Articles Selected for Publishing

August
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Factors Influencing Anatomy of Digital Future	Transformation	Sabyasachi Panda Manager, Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies	Transformation does not simply happen out of the box nor is it something that will be enabled if you adopt a cloud strategy. This aricle examines the digital revolution currently underway and explores key markers – the '12 C's' – that identify with and are poised to change the anatomy of the digital future.
NVMe THE FUTURE	Storage	Abhijith M Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies \| PSS and Naga Koduru Senior Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies \| PSS	This article offers guidance to strengthen tenant confidentiality by finding smart alternatives for storing the salt values in the database of vCenter Server or similar administration tools of other hypervisors. The article identifies a security concern that either limits the use of a resource optimization technique or puts it as a vulnerability and defines vendor-neutral alternatives for a more effective application of memory sharing.
Securing Memory Sharing for Cloud Tenants	Cloud	Sameh Talaat Senior Advisor, Customer/Technical Training Dell Technologies and Hussein Baligh Senior Advisor, Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies	This article enables readers to learn a breadth of topics in unstructured data, learning more about how object storage solutions can change their business, the inner workings of such solutions and how they are evolving businesses who use them. Readers will gain a strong understanding in what blockchain is, how it functions in its many different forms, and how it, along with other emerging technologies like machine learning, can be used to improve these types of deployments.
An Objective Use of Blockchain in Object Storage	Blockchain	Anthony Dutra, Systems Engineer Dell Technologies William Lupo Senior Software Engineer Thomson Reuters and Varshith Anil Kumar Senior Software Engineer Wayfair LLC	This article introduces NVMe and a brief background of protocols currently used. This paper provides an overview of the types of approaches used by NVMe in the SAN environment to increase performance and reduce bottlenecks. Benefits of using NVMe in the data center and the advantages of using NVMe over other protocols is also discussed.

September
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Customer Sentiment Analysis	Data Science	Sucheta Dhar and Prafful Kumar	This article focuses on analyzing customer’s reviews on certain products using natural language processing (NLP) and describes how to build a machine learning model to classify these customers into returning customers or if the customers are happy, neutral or not satisfied with the product.
Manual Storage Sizing	Storage	Poorna Prashanth, Manager Dell Technologies	Understanding storage performance KPI’s is important when initiating presales conversation with customers and to identify root cause of performance issues which would help improve product positioning.This article describes different performance and capacity metrics that would impact overall storage performance behavior and provides a methodology to perform storage sizing manually without use of any tools while considering performance and capacity metrics.
Fine-Tuning Deep Neural Networks	Deep Learning	Rajasekhar Nannapaneni, Sr Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Dell EMC	Applied to many key problems in various applications, Deep Neural Networks has emerged as one of the significant ideas of machine learning in the last decade. In this article, several tuning techniques of deep neural networks are discussed which enhance performance of the overall deep network. Also, a novel deep neural network is developed and applied on a benchmark dataset “CIFAR-10” to showcase the results and working of these tuning techniques.
Bridging Digital Transformations Through RPA	Automation	Mohammed Hashim, Head of Technology Innovations - Digital Infrastructure Brillio	Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can bridge the gap of co-existence between Legacy and Cloud applications, by retaining the usefulness of the legacy system and adding the efficiencies of the cloud. This article discusses the adoption strategy of Intelligent automation continuum, the global automation market, tactical RPA transformation use cases, deployment methodologies, keys to a successful implementation, phased ROI planning and future enhancements.

October
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Data in Driver Seat of Modern Vehicles	Data Science	Shankar R Solutions Architect Dell Technologies	This article describes a framework that can provide effective performance for achieving data center energy efficiency through intelligent resource allocation. How this framework can prevent violating Service Level Agreements (SLA) with the aim of green cloud resource deployment is also discussecd. Deployment using the proposed framework is achieved using Reinforcement Learning and Fuzzy Logic for green solutions.
SecureMLM - Privacy Aware Machine Learning Model	Machine Learning	Shikha Pandey Advisor, Customer/Technical Training Dell Technologies	This article looks at the role that data plays in Autonomous vehicles and Micro Mobilty vehicles, exploring how data is contributing to these two different modes of transport. It begins with a deep dive into how a Driverless Car manufacturer is collecting, storing, processing, analyzing and leveraging machine learning on data gathered from different sources (cameras and sensors) of their cars. The author then discusses how data collection and data processing is boosting the Bike-Sharing program which is enabling greater use of "Green Vehicles".
Resource Allocation Using Reinforcement Learning	Cloud	Chethan Nagaraj and Manu Joshi	This article emphasizes the importance of Machine Learning in modern technologies such as multi-cloud. A framework known as “SecureMLM – a novel privacy-aware machine learning model used to design and develop end-to-end security solution during data migration – is also proposed.
Enhanced NetWorker(AI) to WOW Customer Experience	Storage	Arvind Kumar A R Customer Support Associate - Frontline Commvault	This article explains how the NetWorker Application can be enhanced to make the it more AI/ML-enabled and ease the process and convenience to get information typically required by a Technical Engineer/ Analyst as part of troubleshooting. This enhancement improves the Customer Support Experience and reduces time to Resolution/Fixing.

November
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Study of the Use of Anonymity Models	Security	Carmen Marcano, Director, Business Process Management Dell	How can a data holder release data without compromising the identity of the subjects while maintaining its utility? This article explores analyze k-anonymity, t-closeness and l-diversity as frameworks that can be implemented to reinforce the privacy levels of the Personal Identifiers.
Use Dell Technologies to Solve Your Dark Data Challenges	Data Science	Sonali Singh	Growth of dark data, the data genreated during various computer network operations, could seriously impact buisness models. This article will discuss how the Dell Technologies solution helps customer manage dark data and use it as smart data. Architecture of converged platforms is also explained.
AI and ML Workloads Platform: Cloud or On Edge	Machine Learning	Harshit Dixit, Senior Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies and Rani Priya S, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies	This article looks at why, with emerging technologies and 5G, public cloud is not the only place to host your ML, AI, and Intensive data applications. The authors discuss how to identify the best place to host these workloads depending upon the organization’s requirements, reduce cost and staff time to deliver them, and optimize outcomes for the business.
Optimal Path Routing Using Reinforcement Learning	Storage	Rajasekhar Nannapaneni, Sr Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Dell EMC	To obtain optimal path for an I/O between source and target nodes, an effective path finding mechanism among a set of given nodes is desired. This article describes development of a novel optimal path routing algorithm using reinforcement learning techniques from AI. The algorithm can be easily extended to software defined networks (SDNs), storage area networks (SANs), backup infrastructure management and other applications where optimal path behavior is required.

December
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Innovating with Lean Six Sigma	Process Improvement	Animesh Gupta	Massive data sets collected by industries should be mined with powerful data analysis methods that produce meaningful results from the provided data. It is possible to make effective decisions by utilizing these analysis methods in each step of Lean Six Sigma cycles.This article provides a guide that can help apply Lean Six Sigma to make faster, more reliable decisions with the data.
Data Protection for Containers	Data Protection	Naveen Chandrashekar, Director Business Process Management	Though it may seem that data protection is not needed for containers, critical parts of the Containers infrastructure must be backed up to protect against disaster in the data center. This article examines how traditional data protection methods using a backup server and backup storage are changing to software-defined solutions, wherein data protected in the virtualized environment is protected in the cloud.
Future of Container Native Storage	Containers	Sarthak Sharma, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Dell and Abhisek Sharma, Senior Sales Engineer Analyst Dell	Almost any application can be containerized, but it is important to understand the amount of effort required to ensure that the transition to containers preserves performance and maintains or improves security. This article examines the utility of CaaS (Container as a Service) and its implementation in two major cluster management vendors; Kubernetes by Google (open source) and EC2 by Amazon (closed source).
Faction with Isilon	Isilon	Sai Ganesh, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Presales Solution Services Hari Narayanan S, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Presales Solution Services and Dhriva Kumar Urajala, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Presales Solution Services	Faction can help transform your on-prem storage platform into a multi-cloud-ready data footprint. This leading multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service enables you to leverage your Isilon footprint from multiple public clouds at once, facilitated over high-speed, low-latency connections. This article discusses how organizations can leverage Faction with Isilon to undergo efficient, effective IT Transformation.

January
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Whole Genome Sequencing in Life Science	Isilon	Gangadhara N and Lenin Ponnappa	This article discusses the vital role Isilon and ECS Storage play to store all the data that will be sequenced from the genome. The process of how the data (Genome) is sequenced and the way it would be stored and secured is the focus of this article.
VMware Cloud Foundations: Re-defining Hybrid Cloud	VMware	Anuj Sharma Sr. Principal Engineer Dell and Benedikt Mayer Sr. Principal Engineer Dell	VMware Cloud Foundation combines VMware’s leading technologies to deliver a standardized software defined datacenter platform to environments of any size. This article discusses VMware Cloud Foundation architecture followed by deployment scenarios including NSX-V & T integration, Stretched Cluster and Pivotal Container Service (PKS). Design and sizing considerations are also covered along with aspects of troubleshooting.
Pass the Hash	Security	Nikhil Gowda Dell Technologies	A Pass the Hash attack exploits an implementation weakness in the authentication protocol where password Hash remain static from session to session until password modification is done. This article provides awareness of the technique, ways to control Pass the Hash, and consolidates all the information from finding a Pass the Hash threat to controlling it.
Y NOT VMware Cloud on Dell EMC - A one-Stop Shop	Cloud	Vinayak Coimbatore Sivanand	The shift from CapEx to OpEx is one of the main things that companies like about public cloud. The right Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will help in reduce cost and Operational Overhead to the Organization. This article discusses how best to leverage a VMware Cloud on Dell EMC Storage.

February
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Security Reshaped in the Digital Transformation Era	Security	Mohamed Sohail, Senior Engineer Solutions Architecture Dell Technologies and Nour Mahmoud, Assistant Professor of Information Technology Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence Cairo University Nourmahmoud@cu.edu.eg and Robert Lincourt, and Mohamed Hamed, Assistant Professor of Information Technology Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence Cairo University	The imminent threat of cybercrime grows alongside digital transformation. As a result, new techniques in cybersecurity are being developed to mitigate the increased levels of risks. This article provides security best practices that don't slow your business down. Rather, they speed it up.
Three Use Cases for Storage Class Memory (SCM)	Storage	Hussein Baligh, Senior Advisor, Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies and Lina Eissa, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies and Ebrahim Serag, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Dell Technologies and Abdelrahman El Nakeeb, Data Center Account Manager Dell Technologies	An exciting new technology arose in the last few years to bridge the gap between DRAM and SSD: Storage Class Memory, (SCM). With its unique combination of speed, low cost, and high performance, SCM promises a transformation in how to handle read-intensive emerging applications such as AI workloads, bio-informatics, big data analytics, IOT analytics, in-memory databases, and high-performance computing. This article provides a brief history of memory and storage, the concept of SCM, SCM technologies, and SCM use cases.
Convolutional Neural Network	Deep Learning	Shwetha Lokesh, Associate Sales Engineer AnalystDell Technologies	Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is a feed-forword neural network generally used to analyze visual images by processing data with grid-like topology. This article examines what CNN is, how it recognizes an image, CNNs internal layers, and use cases that explain what CNN exactly is.
Isilon Sizing: Sizing For Accurate Capacity	Isilon	Bhupendra Singh, Manager Presales Solution Services Dell EMC	Multiple factors affect usable capacity of the Isilon cluster such as protection scheme, number of small files, and more. This article looks at how small file affects storage efficiency of the Isilon cluster, how Isilon sizing tool calculates usable capacity of the cluster and how considering small file efficiency can help avoid incorrectly sizing usable capacity. How to use available tools to calculate the capacity overhead due to small files and then utilize the same information to size an Isilon solution with accurate capacity is also explored.

March
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Operation "Olympic Games"	Security	Kshitij Yadav, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Dell EMC and Abhiram T.S, Associate Sales Engineer Analyst Dell EMC	This article focuses on how AI/ML is being and will be used in media and entertainment to generate profits. This author outlines some challenges presented by our modern culture and how businesses are adapting to a dynamic marketplace in media and entertainment using statistics from specific sources to support the thesis.
Implementation of AI/ML in M&E Vertical	Artificial Intelligence	Saif Al Rehman, Manager Remote System Engineering Dell Technologies	Stuxnet-based malware attacks are a major threat to a number of industries, including power production plants, electrical grids, and defense organizations. This article examines the history of the Stuxnet system, its motivation, and its impact on the world political stage.
Solving FSI Challenges with Dell EMC UDS	Isilon	Bhupendra Singh and Sai Ganesh	This article explores the Financial Service Industry (FSI), covering the different workloads in FSI, and the challenges faced in dealing with these workloads. The authors consider the different operational challenges that can arise and how Dell EMC Isilon and Dell EMC ECS can help overcome these challenges.
Multiple Active Data Centers Solution	Storage	Victor Wu, Senior Solution Expert, Business Consultation BoardWare Information System Limited	This article describes how to plan and build a multiple active Data Centers solution. It explores how to plan and design the hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) as multiple active Data Centers solution across three separate locations and discusses a sample solution for multiple active Datacenters based on different SLA requirements and application tiers conditions. This solution includes software-defined storage (SDS) and Active-Active-Passive (AAP) infrastructure.

April
Title	Category	Author	Summary
Long-Term Retention and Archiving Digital Files	Storage	Vinicius Assis Alliance Lead Dell Technologies	This article analyzes actions taken for long-term storage of electronic files, including entities responsible for standardization, hardware and software technologies and storage processes. Preliminary analysis is also conducted between groups of software that generate and do not generate files, in addition to highlighting real cases that occurred to solve the lack of standardization in extensions and nomenclature. Physical storage technologies are highlighted and an explanation of the view of technology professionals.
PowerChain – Based on Blockchain 3.0	Blockchain	Rajasekhar Nannapaneni Sr Principal Engineer, Solutions Architect Dell EMC	This article discusses the concepts and internals of blockchain technology, applications of blockchain in several domains, types of blockchain – public and permissioned – along with concepts of distributed storage which facilitates next generation blockchain 3.0 technology. This article emphasizes Private Blockchain solution, termed “PowerChain” for Enterprises. This solution is formulated using various Dell Technologies products and solutions in combination with some of the leading technologies that could pave way for Hybrid Blockchain solution thereby addressing some unique use cases.
Validation of Isilon F800 for EDA workload	Isilon	Xiao-Jing Coroel Zhu Senior System Engineer Dell EMC	Electronic Design Automation (EDA) design is storage I/O intensive. As designs move to smaller physical silicon geometries, design complexity and storage requirements for the corresponding EDA tool flow grows exponentially. This article presents methods and front end/back end tools that can be used to achieve realistic benchmarking and deeper understanding of EDA workflow.
Evolution of 5G & Engineering SLA for Scalable XaaS	Automation	Shadaab Mohiuddin Principal Systems Development Engineer Dell Technologies and Tabraiz Amman Principal Systems Development Engineer Dell Technologies	Fifth Generation Mobile technology (5G) has revolutionized how wireless networks and operations are handled. Because 5G has high error tolerance, it can enable high-quality services to be offered, causing ramifications such as how Servive Level Agreements will be engineered. This article provides information on moving from a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to a Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA) architecture, discussing micro data centers and autonomous hardware.