Should Your Private Cloud Use a Single or a Dual Firewall?

– Brought to you by 2X Cloud Computing guest blogger Brien M. Posey –

Many private clouds are constructed in a way that allows clients to connect either locally or from the Internet. In the case of Internet connectivity, the Web Portal and Secure Client Gateway components that are used to facilitate the connection are almost always located behind a perimeter firewall. While the need for an Internet firewall is more or less undisputed, it is important to consider as to whether there might be advantages to implementing other firewalls within the private cloud infrastructure.

In order to answer this question, it is important to consider the nature of the inbound traffic. The Internet has been described as the most hostile environment on earth. The perimeter firewall’s job (at least in this case) is to block every TCP and UDP …

CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics famous for chasing after the so-called God Particle these days, has tapped Rackspace to help it build a hybrid cloud computing system so capacity can be brought to bear on big workloads as needed.

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CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics famous for chasing after the so-called God Particle these days, has tapped Rackspace to help it build a hybrid cloud computing system so capacity can be brought to bear on big workloads as needed.

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Australian Government agencies have some new regulations to consider when they are contemplating moves to the cloud, particularly clouds hosted outside of Australian borders. These guidelines, known as “The Australian Government policy and risk management guidelines for the processing and storage of Australian Government information in outsourced or offshore ICT arrangements”, are part of the broader Protective Security Policy Framework announced earlier this year and are aimed at protecting data being stored and processed in cloud environments.
The Framework document clearly acknowledges the benefits that Australian Government agencies can gain from moving to cloud environments but points out that privacy, security, integrity and availability of personal information cannot be sacrificed in pursuit of these benefits. In particular, “offshoring” of information (e.g., using US-based cloud services) is highlighted as a situation that creates a number of challenges in this arena, and the Framework is meant to help agencies determine when to use these services on a case-by-case basis.

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Before talking about the cloud of tomorrow, in his General Session at 12th Cloud Expo, Kevin Clarke, Director of Cloud Platform Engineering for Verizon Terremark, describes what core characteristics compose the cloud of today, and discusses three fundamental features: independent architectures, multi-tenant infrastructures and the concept of ‘different controls. He explores the challenges that exist in running enterprise applications, or what he calls the “hard stuff” and the ideal features future cloud offerings should provide enterprises.
Kevin Clarke is the Director of Cloud Platform Engineering for Verizon Terremark. He is responsible for building the Verizon cloud platform that brings “Cloud without Compromise” computing to the Enterprise. Prior to joining Verizon, Kevin was the Director of System Engineering in the midrange storage division of EMC, where he ran System Architecture, Performance and Security. Kevin spent 21 years working in Silicon Valley for Sun Microsystems in Cloud Computing, Solaris Operating Systems and Storage. He holds a BSCS and MBA from Northeastern University in Boston.

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Cloud computing is steadily working its way into the U.S. federal government, potentially simplifying access to information for the public, but also creating some consternation over who ultimately controls that data.
Some federal agency managers are reluctant to hand over their data to cloud computing providers, for fear of diminished security or potential hassles should they need to switch vendors, according to an article on FederalTimes.com.
But the government’s growing appetite for collecting information is forcing agencies to consider the promised benefits of cloud computing, such as storing and managing their data for less money and the ability to access data from any device over the Internet. The latter is a major tenet of the Obama administration’s push to make more data accessible to the public, and to increase productivity by allowing employees to access systems and files remotely, or via the cloud.

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Following several discussions with fellow bloggers and industry executives, I found it quite fitting that the natural cloud leaders are the top software and web giants: Google, Microsoft and Amazon. While Amazon’s AWS is The public cloud today Google recently reported that it is doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from the campuses of Amazon and Microsoft, in order to expand its cloud technology team and engineers. Over two years prior to these Google’s expansion news, Microsoft reported that 90% of its R&D investment was earmarked for cloud technology. Last month they finally announced that that Windows Azure Cloud Services now support auto-scaling. For these reasons and more, the following points will strengthen the trivial perception that cloud technologies should and will prosper in the hands of this software giant trio.

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“We have just recently launched a new product called Mission Critical Cloud, which is a VMware-based public cloud solution. We did that because we are seeing more and more demand to outsource and to outsource in a cloud fashion from larger enterprises,” stated Robert Miggins, Senior Vice President of Business Development at PEER 1 Hosting, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

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Microsoft held a Build conference targeting developers and showed significant their cloud capabilities. This note summarizes their strengths and challenges.
When you think of IT vendors and cloud computing, companies like Amazon and Google first come to mind because they are very successful with start-ups that leverage their cloud services. HP, IBM and Oracle are making big strides primarily by targeting large enterprises with private cloud solutions. Cisco, EMC and Intel are primarily technology vendors serving as arms providers to cloud service providers. Microsoft falls in a unique category that dominates certain IT segments and covers customers ranging from start-ups, consumers and large enterprises. The recent Microsoft Build conference provided many opportunities to learn about a range of the company’s cloud computing capabilities.

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