The rise of cloud-based infrastructure was one of the biggest developments in IT during the past few years, and now we are seeing extensive innovations in cloud security as well. More companies are moving their business-critical data away from onsite data centers and into cloud-based infrastructure. With that in mind, 2016 is going to be another dynamic year for cloud security, as more users and IT teams will be looking for ways to enhance their cloud security while achieving heightened visibility of their cloud-based IT assets. The migration of business workloads to the cloud brings many benefits, but one potential challenge is that the “old ways” of managing IT security don’t work as well in the cloud environment.
[video] SQL Orchestration with @DanKLynn | @CloudExpo @AgilDataInc #Cloud
“There’s a very common problem that the enterprise data industry hasn’t solved yet – as companies add data and new features into their application they add new data stores that are specialized for those purposes and it becomes an operational nightmare to manage. We think we have an interesting angle on that,” explained Dan Lynn, CEO of AgilData, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 17th Cloud Expo, held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
AWS opens up EC2 Container Registry to all
Cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened its technology for storing and managing application container images up to public consumption.
The AWC EC2 Container Registry Service (ECR) had been exclusively for industry insiders who attended the launch at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas in October. However, AWS has now decided to level the playing field, its Senior Product Manager Andrew Thomas revealed, guest writing on the blog of AWS chief technologist Jeff Barr. Thomas invited all interested cloud operators to apply for access.
As containers have become the de facto method for packaging application code all cloud service providers are competing to fine tune the process of running code within these constraints, as an alternative to using virtual machines. But developers have fed back teething problems to AWS, Thomas reports in the blog.
ECR, explains Thomas, is a managed Docker container registry designed to simplify the management of Docker container images which, developers have told Thomas, has proved difficult. Running a Docker image registry, in a large-scale job like an infrastructure project, involves pulling hundreds of images at once and this makes self-hosting too difficult, especially with the added complexity of spanning two or more AWS regions. AWS clients wanted fine-grained access control to images without having to manage certificates or credentials, Thomas said.
Management aside, there is a security dividend too, according to Thomas. “This makes it easier for developers to evaluate potential security threats before pushing to Amazon ECR,” he said. “It also allows developers to monitor their containers running in production.”
There is no charge for transferring data into the Amazon EC2 Container Registry. While storage costs 10 cents per gigabyte per month all new AWS customers will receive 500MB of storage a month for a year.
The Registry is integrated with Amazon ECS and the Docker CLI (command line interface), in order to simplify development and production workflows. “Users can push container images to Amazon ECR using the Docker CLI from the development machine and Amazon ECS can pull them directly for production,” said Thomas.
The service was effective from December 21st in the US East (Northern Virginia) with more regions on the way soon.
ESI installs HPC data centre to support virtual prototyping
Manufacturing service provider ESI Group has announced that a new high performance computing (HPC) system is powering its cloud-based virtual prototyping service to a range of industries across Europe.
The new European HPC-driven data centre is based on the Teratec Campus in Paris, close to Europe’s biggest HPC centre, the Très Grand Centre de Calcul, the data centre of The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The location was chosen in order to make collaborative HPC projects possible, according to ESI. The 13,000 square metre CEA campus has a supercomputer with a peak performance of 200 Teraflops and a CURIE supercomputer capable of running a 2 Petaflops per second.
ESI’s virtual prototyping, a product development process run on computer-aided design (CAD), computer-automated design (CAutoD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) software in order to validate designs, is increasingly run on the cloud, it reports. Before manufacturers commit to making a physical prototype they create a 3D computer-generated model and simulate different test environments.
The launch of the new HPC data centre gives ESI a cloud computing point of delivery (PoD) to serve all 40 of ESI’s offices across Europe and the world. The HPC cloud PoD will also act as a platform for ESI’s new software development and engineering services.
The HPC facility was built by data centre specialist Legrande. The new HPC is needed to meet the change in workloads driven by virtualization and cloud computing with the annual growth in data is expected to rise from 50% in 2010 to reach 4400% in 2020, according to Pascal Perrin, Datacenter Business Development Manager at Legrand.
Legrand subsidiary Minkels supplied and installed the supporting data centre hardware, including housing, UPS, cooling, monitoring and power distribution systems. The main challenge with supporting a super computer that can ramp up CPU activity by the petaflop and with petabytes of data moving in and out of memory is securing the supporting resources, said Perrin. “Our solutions ensure the electrical and digital supply of the data centre at all times,” he said.
[slides] Cloud Lock-In | @CloudExpo #PaaS #Cloud
Clearly the way forward is to move to cloud be it bare metal, VMs or containers. One aspect of the current public clouds that is slowing this cloud migration is cloud lock-in. Every cloud vendor is trying to make it very difficult to move out once a customer has chosen their cloud.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Naveen Nimmu, CEO of Clouber, Inc., advocated that making the inter-cloud migration as simple as changing airlines would help the entire industry to quickly adopt the cloud without worrying about any lock-in fears. In fact by having standard APIs for IaaS would help PaaS explode much faster as there is no need to support plethora of clouds by every PaaS vendor.
Pitfalls of Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 1: Mailbox Size, Spam Filtering, & Address Change
There are several pitfalls that organizations experience when doing Microsoft O365 migrations. This is the first part of a three part video series where I outline some of the most common pitfalls I’ve seen organizations run into. A lot of people don’t fully understand how much your IT deficit has impact on your ability to migrate data. In this first video, I discuss Mailbox Size, Spam Filtering, & Address Changes. If you’re looking for more information around O365 migrations, I recently held a webinar with a couple of my colleagues that takes a deep dive into the topic.
Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 1
Interested in learning more about Microsoft O365 Migrations? Download David’s recent webinar, “Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality“
By David Barter, Practice Manager, Microsoft Technologies
Converting VirtualBox to Parallels Desktop
Guest blog by Sylvester Sebastian Nino, Parallels Support Team While working with Parallels Desktop and helping our customers, I often go through our knowledgebase as the best source of product-related information. For instance, recently, I helped a customer over the phone convert his virtual machine from VirtualBox to Parallels Desktop by simply going through the […]
The post Converting VirtualBox to Parallels Desktop appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Working Remotely this Holiday Season? Don’t Forget to Download Parallels Access
Do you have senioritis at the end of the year, getting antsy to get out of the office for a few days to disconnect from work and connect with family and friends? I know I do. I also know that the second I check my phone when I’m home for the holidays, there will be […]
The post Working Remotely this Holiday Season? Don’t Forget to Download Parallels Access appeared first on Parallels Blog.
NetApp confirms $870m SolidFire acquisition – but don’t think this is all about flash
(c)iStock.com/laflor
Cloud storage and data management firm NetApp has announced the acquisition of all-flash storage system provider SolidFire for $870 million (£586m) in cash.
The all-flash offering across three key market segments – traditional enterprise infrastructure buyers, application owners and next-generation infrastructure buyers – is a key reason for the purchase, NetApp argues.
“This acquisition will benefit current and future customers looking to gain the benefits of webscale cloud providers for their own data centres,” said NetApp CEO George Kurian. “We look forward to extending NetApp’s flash leadership with the SolidFire team, products and partner ecosystem, and to accelerating flash adoption through NetApp’s large partner and customer base.”
On the other side, SolidFire CEO and founder Dave Wright argues the acquisition represents a “tremendous opportunity to double down on our mission”, while noting that putting all-flash storage as a single market “obscures the true landscape of the data centre today.”
“All primary storage is moving to flash – fast,” he wrote in a company blog post. “The all-flash array market is not a sign of a niche market – it is displacing spinning disk at an exponential rate, with no sign of slowing down.
“There is no doubt that the IT industry is in the midst of a transformation the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades,” he added. “Customers navigating this transformation need vendors with solutions that span the full range of data centre environments and application use cases.”
In October last year, SolidFire was slurping up series D funding of $82m, bringing the overall capital raised to $150m. Jay Prassl, SolidFire VP marketing, explained to this publication at the time that the Colorado-based firm did not want to be in the position of being “forced to go public”, citing the case of Violin Memory and its less-than-stellar IPO in 2013.
Not everyone has the same opinion of the deal, however. Even though fellow enterprise flash storage provider Pure Storage went public in October – and Wright tweeted congratulations to his ‘friends’ at the company – the Mountain View firm decided to stick the knife in.
“This acquisition shows very clearly that NetApp is still scrambling to piece together a viable flash strategy,” Pure VP products Matt Kixmoeller wrote. He added: “Although we hold the folks at SolidFire in very high regard, we are confident our technology trumps. Our product lead will only grow at SolidFire is slowed down by the coming years of integration, in-fighting, and confusion that come via acquisition.”
This reporter is reminded of January 2014 when enterprise mobility management provider AirWatch was acquired by VMware. Citrix, a rival of VMware’s on desktop virtualisation and end user computing (EUC) among others, issued a blog in response describing the latter’s vision for EUC as “laughable on many counts.” The post was later pulled.
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of NetApp’s 2016 fiscal year, with Wright leading the SolidFire product line within NetApp’s product operations.
The white space between hand-crafted and automated approaches to the cloud
(c)iStock.com/ymgerman
The journey to the cloud will be faster for some than others. For startups, the decision is easy, they are “cloud first”. They have low overheads and can test products and services in new markets with ease. This model is one of the main reasons that the likes of Uber and Airbnb have succeeded where the dot-com companies of the late 90s failed (that, and consumer Internet access and the rise of smartphones).
For CIOs of larger organisations, it’s a different picture. They need to move from a complex, heterogeneous IT infrastructure into the highly automated – and, ultimately, highly scalable – distributed platform.
On the journey to homogeneous cloud, where the entire software stack is provided by one vendor, the provision of managed services remains essential. And to ensure a smooth and successful journey, enterprises need a service provider that can bridge the gap between the heterogeneous and homogeneous. In specific terms that means a bridge between: the network and the data centre; the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) and DevOps; infrastructure and professional services; and finally, local and global services.
This transformation in IT services is being driven by a need to match IT capabilities to an increasingly demanding business. CEOs are beginning to see the connection between digital investments and business objectives. According to a recent PwC survey, 86% of CEOs say a clear vision of how digital technologies can help achieve competitive advantage is key to the success of digital investments.
Businesses demand a lot from technology. They expect 100 per cent connectivity and application uptime. Their customers likewise expect availability of services around the clock – and flock to social media to let the world know if they can’t get them. Businesses expect IT to support the mobile revolution, to help employees become more productive and to ultimately help the company become more profitable. It’s a big ask.
At the same time, there’s increasing pressure on the technology function. Cost containment, shorter implementation cycles and (the dreaded) regulatory compliance are all issues for the CIO to contend with ‒ not to mention finding motivated, skilled and loyal staff to help them with these challenges or the myriad of other problems that go with their day-to-day jobs.
It’s easy to see the attraction of moving infrastructure and applications to the cloud; flexibility and choice. Those two attributes deliver the business agility that’s every bit as important as potential cost savings. This contrasts with the traditional service value proposition where complex processes are managed by a third party.
This 20-year-old traditional service model can be compared to a restaurant where the chef cooks the meal in front of the guests. There’s a time where you do want to go to the restaurant and watch them cook right in front of you because you want to watch the preparation process step by step. It might be important to you from an architecture or a compliance perspective, or just an awareness standpoint, to know every single step of the way.
There’s nothing wrong with this model in principle but it has been superseded, in many instances, by the modern era of cloud and software as a service (SaaS). These are models that deliver data at the press of a button. Even when you take the hand-crafted approach at one end and the highly automated cloud and SaaS model on the other, there’s a lot of white space in between.
This white space is where many companies are today. The situation is like an 80s robot serving drinks: if it feels like an antiquated robot and looks like an antiquated robot, the chances are that you have a dud robot on your hands. You’re not really getting the true automated user experience you expected. You may be able to glean that there is some virtualisation and automation in the core of the service, but you’re missing out on good user experience, or getting something that’s bolted together.
Modernising these old service approaches requires a lot of thinking, but at the end of the day, automation always wins over headcount. Autonomic management systems can also ensure that there is full integration between the workflow and platform as a service (PaaS) framework with security/attack detection, application scheduler and dynamic resource provisioning algorithms.
Eventually that automated user experience will be able to take those edge cases that we typically reserve for human instruction and deliver something much more sophisticated. Some of the features of autonomic cloud computing are available today for organisations that have completed – or at least partly completed – their journey to the cloud.
The cloud era has been with us for a while but the momentum is gathering pace. IT managers now trust and understand the benefits. With more and more demand on digitisation and the monetisation of IT services, companies need – and now expect – an agile IT service that can finally match the demands it faces.