One technology Microsoft has created for its high-speed storage access is named SMB Direct (yes...another "direct"). SMB Direct along with SMB multi-channel was introduced with Server 2012 and the SMB 3 suite. It makes use of the RDMA networking technologies found iWARP, InfiniBand, RoCE network adapters to provide unparalleled low latency and high-speed access to data without CPU overhead. Microsoft MVP Mikael Nystrom has expressed how much lowering latency to storage is needed to ultimately increase your virtual environment’s storage performance as SSD’s become the norm in datacenters. With SMB Direct and SMB Multichannel inside of SMB 3, Microsoft has replaced the need for fiber channel and iSCSI storage interconnects in the datacenter, and is going to make big use of it in its upcoming Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct feature set. With Storage Spaces Direct, Microsoft is allowing you to build a fault tolerant storage cluster using just disks attached to the servers, and run your virtual machines on top of the same hosts as your storage. Bottom line is your SAN might be a thing of the past in a future of Hyper Convergence.

Ever reminisce about playing some of those old classic arcade games in your youth and wish there was a way you could experience that same satisfaction without the need for a stack of quarters and finding an arcade shop that is still standing?  Putting together your own arcade machine is a great summer project that combines all your favorite video games of the past into a single entertainment system sure to keep you and your friends busy for years to come. 

For all Hybrid O365 Exchange environments, Microsoft has released a blog post stating that come April, they will be updating their TLS certificate for Office 365.

Being on the latest and greatest VMware ESXi version definitely can have it's benefits.  Not only do you get the advantages of making use out of some of the new features, but 6.0 also has some scalability benefits that kick the butt out of 5.5.  If you haven't checked on the EOS dates, 5.0 and 5.1 are slated to go end of support in August 2016.  Version 5.5 should have support into late 2018.

By Reed Martin and Nicolas Cuendet, Dell Coud Client-Computing

Originally wrote by Jeff McNaught (Executive Director of Marketing and Chief Strategy Officer at Dell Cloud Client-Computing)