Network perimeters are all but erased and traditional security strategies such as stacking don’t adequately address the current needs of a modern enterprise. Many companies are still using strategies rooted in 2002 technologies and approaches. The new intelligence-based security model is one that integrates several alerting, analytical and preventative tools into a central monitor and management best practice.
In a recent blog post, Art Coviello, the executive chairman at RSA, posed an important question. How do we move from traditional security to intelligence-driven security? In his answer he described that the quickly interdependent exchanges between parties (B2C, B2B, B2P, etc) have grown beyond the traditional means of securing the enterprise.
NetApp Puts File Storage Proposal to OpenStack
At the OpenStack Summit this week NetApp submitted a prototype and proposal for consideration by the OpenStack Foundation Technical Committee and the unity at-large for file share service capabilities.
OpenStack doesn’t have native management support for file-based storage systems so NetApp is proposing to add a file-share service broad enough to address a range of file system types in the next Havana release of OpenStack.
It says it got good feedback for its blueprint during the previous Grizzly development cycle and its proposal is abstracted to address any number of shared or distributed file system types from CIFS and NFS/pNFS to Gluster or Ceph.
The widgetry, it says, could either be an extension to the existing Cinder project (currently referred to as OpenStack block storage) or implemented as a separate project.
The point of the integration is to extend access to applications written for file-based storage without needing a separate management interface.
Amazon announces S3 cloud storing two trillion objects
What’s the best way to put the kibosh on your competitor’s latest key cloud release?
Make a statement loaded with braggadocio yourself, as Amazon has done by announcing that two trillion (2 x 10¹²) objects are now stored on its S3 cloud – a turnaround of 1.1m requests per second.
Microsoft, of course, launched Windows Azure Infrastructure Services earlier this week, and knocked off the price of compute, storage and bandwidth between 21% and 33% in a bid for direct competition with Amazon Web Services.
As a result this latest update, in a blog post from AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr, becomes even more interesting.
Amazon hit one trillion objects in S3 back in June last year, with each object in the cloud ranging from zero to 5 TB in size.
“It took us six years to grow to one trillion stored objects, and less than a year …
Big Data and Cloud – A Perfect Match
“Like any successful software space in the technology world, open source in the cloud has and will be playing an important role in the overall success of cloud,” stated Sanjay Sharma, Principal Architect at Impetus Technologies, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “OpenStack, like open source technologies, enforces commercial vendors to continuously enhance their offerings while providing end users with a lot of options to choose from.”
Cloud Computing: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it’s about saving time – agree or disagree?
Sanjay Sharma: Totally agree. The move to the cloud not only saves money but also enables saving time and transforming business to be truly Agile to meet an ever-changing market and customers’ demands.
Cloud Expo NY: Fast-Track Your Transformation to Enterprise Private Cloud
What are all the requirements for planning, preparing, deploying, monitoring, and managing enterprise private clouds from a cloud builder’s perspective?
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Anand Akela, Sr. Principal Product Director at Oracle, will show how Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle VM as well as Oracle’s full range of hardware including engineered systems are utilized to power an enterprise private cloud.
Anand Akela is Sr. Principal Product Director at Oracle, focusing on cloud, virtualization, and infrastructure management offerings within the Oracle Enterprise Manager portfolio. Prior to his current role at Oracle, he worked at HP in various product marketing, product management, and engineering roles in the systems management, servers, data center energy efficiency, and enterprise software areas. Akela serves as the chairman of Data Collection and Analysis workgroup at the Green Grid, an industry consortium developing and promoting energy efficiency for data centers and enterprise systems.
AppZero Offers One Step Migration from WS2003 to WS2012
With Windows Server 2003 end of life approaching, companies will be faced with moving large numbers of enterprise applications. We provide the only way to upgrade existing server applications from WS2003 to WS2008 or WS2012 in a cost effective and time saving way.
AppZero, the fastest and most flexible way to move server applications from the datacenter to the cloud, has released V5.3 enabling users to «up-level the OS» of their existing server applications to WS2012.
Professional’s Choice is the Focus of Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 Preview
Today Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 becomes available in a feature-complete preview. With Parallels commitment towards professional hosting, the 11.5 release is focused on professional aspects of the product, including business growth, upgrading, upsell and ease of operations, for both web hosts and website owners.
Easier to adopt and grow
Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 makes it easier to move from previous versions of Parallels Plesk Panel, helping service providers take advantage of the latest technology and security, and rapidly grow their businesses.
We understand that professional hosters are growing and need technology solutions that will make that growth possible. In Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5, the ease of switching from other versions has been designed in, delivering a simplified and reliable transfer experience.
For example, the updated migration manager is designed to identify possible transfer limitations in advance, allowing you to configure new servers with the correct services, disk space and other resources before starting the transfer process.
During transfers, a new and streamlined process will now communicate errors in a way that is easier to identify and react to, and will help with troubleshooting by keeping all relevant logs in a single dedicated folder. For example, everything about recent transfers will be stored in /usr/local/psa/PMM/logs/migration-2013-04-10-19-39-22-557/.
At the same time, we are also enabling the transfer of sites with remote databases (avoiding «database already exists» errors) and improving backup compression by using pigz instead of gzip which reduces backup time up to 3x. (pigz = “parallel implementation of gzip” – a fully functional replacement for gzip that exploits multiple processors and multiple cores to the hilt when compressing data)
Some of our customers are running a mix of old and new panel versions because of the need to support new and old websites running with different PHP versions. With 11.5 you can mix and match PHP versions on a single server, allowing you to consolidate all websites into the latest version of the panel.
Windows hosters will find Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 to be considerably faster on many backup and upgrade functions. Mail data is backed up and restored differently (not using slow IMAP), and MS SQL backups are sped up significantly by using native MS SQL backups. Additionally, 11.5 introduces deferred file transfer for less traffic and faster response times.
With these changes it will be easier for you to upgrade to the latest version of Parallels Plesk Panel, achieve greater security and comprehensive IPv6 support, prepare to grow into a multi-server solution someday, and deliver new services beyond shared hosting.
Easier to upsell
With Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 you can maximize and control your upsell process with management of panel promotions, notifications, and licenses.
With previous versions of Parallels Plesk Panel you had to go outside of the panel to upgrade, upsell or communicate with your customers. With 11.5 and a new License Key Administrator interface called “KA Partner Central” (coming soon – not part of this Preview) you will be able to deliver custom notifications to your users and modify notifications in the panel. Shortly after Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 releases, we will improve reporting and management of licenses to make it easier to track how and where your Parallels Plesk Panel licenses are used. We’ll also make it easier to add, suspend, or do other typical license operations in a clean, more modern UI.
Along with the growth of the Parallels Plesk Panel catalog of both open source and commercial applications, we have also improved the application experience by adding better search and browse capabilities and a quick unattended application installation experience. To support integration of some premium e-mail applications, such as Open-Xchange, Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 adds support for the APS Mail Aspect.
Managing applications is also easier in Parallels Panel 11.5. You can install a specific version of an application (for example, if you expect plug-in compatibility issues), and easily keep applications up-to-date. Users get update notifications and can turn on automatic application updating. Hosting providers can turn on forced updates of all applications on the server – to guarantee security patches are loaded, for instance.
Full Control
Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 makes the most sophisticated professional web hosting features available to both Windows and Linux admins in a way that is easy to understand and use.
With older versions of Parallels Plesk Panel, some of our partners were frustrated because we did not give them enough control over the system and had to translate your sophisticated system administrative skills into a “Plesk way” of getting things done. We have addressed this concern in Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 with many improvements for technical users. Parallels Panel 11.5 is more admin-friendly, so less training time is required. Plus, this latest version empowers webmasters to manage PHP and Web Server settings site-by-site in an SEO-safe manner – which includes appropriate configuration of redirects, domain aliases, www-prefix and appropriate suspend to keep sites showing up in search engines.
Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 moves to well-understood, standard management practices used by Linux and Windows administrators. For Linux Admins, Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 significantly simplifies the structure of the user’s home directory, allowing you to put your files where you need them, avoiding confusion with “strange” system folders so you can easily locate what you need. It also makes significant improvements in the CLI (command line interface) for admins who want to bypass the GUI to operate more rapidly.
Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 makes the server administrator and infrastructure provider’s life easier with support of the well-known Atomic and Remi repositories which provide multiple 3rd party updates. To gain maximum performance, our new Hybrid Web Server can send static content and PHP scripts to nginx, while other scripts can still be executed in Apache. Plus, for convenience, database users can access multiple databases with the same credentials for all databases they have access to.
We enable multiple versions of PHP on any server, and you can define the PHP version used per website. This can be your custom PHP build or PHP downloaded from an alternative repository. Additional versions are selected per site and work with the FastCGI or CGI handlers.
Improved security is addressed through support for additional administrators on Linux (so there is no need to share passwords) and by secure FTP, so you can be PCI compliant and mitigate risks of intercepted user passwords.
Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 is the most sophisticated and feature rich panel product on the market, delivering unparalleled control and professional grade usability and administration. Spending less time on administration and training new admins will drive increased efficiency.
With Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5, you are also only a step away from a next-level multi-server professional hosting solution, Parallels Plesk Automation. This solution is a natural evolution of Parallels Plesk Panel, and allows you to centralize mail and administration, manage Linux and Windows web hosting on the same system, and grow into VPS and services hosting over time. Only Parallels Plesk Panel gives you a clear path to growth.
Best Usability for Website Owners
Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 lowers support and churn by delivering best-in-class usability for website owners.
Website and domain management is at the core of Parallels Plesk Panel. Although the prior version 10.x GUI looked attractive, the usability for websites and domains operations required improvement.
For Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 we reworked the user interface to make working with sites more comfortable. Now, the Websites and Domains tab is the home screen with all domains and websites listed prominently on this screen. Our new Active List feature saves time for website owners by giving them more information about their sites and domains along with common tasks in an easy to navigate interface. We are also introducing graphical help screens, built-in operations search, entity search and training videos along with fully searchable documentation.
For email in Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5, you will have more choice of webmail clients – including Roundcube and Horde IMP 5.0.
Taken together these additions improve customer self-service and satisfaction, lowering support costs and customer churn risks for service providers.
You can download Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 Preview here: http://www.parallels.com/download/plesk/11.5
Adam Bogobowicz, Sr. Director of Product Marketing
HP’s Moonshot Could Lower Cloud Computing Costs
Hewlett-Packard doesn’t shy away from taking a few cheap shots every now and again, and its latest line of servers, called Moonshot, proves it.
HP has introduced a new line of servers that could be considered a major game changer in terms of power consumption and the cloud.
HP’s new servers consume 89 percent less power and cost 77 percent less to purchase than comparable HP servers. The new line of servers, called Moonshoot, could help CIOs uncover greater savings from cloud computing, according to an article on PCMag.com.
“Finding more cost-efficient servers is key and vital to how we serve up our applications.” said Brent Juelich, vice president of application services for cloud computing provider Savvis.
He has run Hadoop and other analytics software on the new Moonshot servers and said they perform well compared to traditional HP servers. He said he expects Moonshot could help Savvis pass along savings from power, heating and cooling costs to customers.
The HP Moonshot 1500 box delivers a «compelling new infrastructure economics by using up to 89 percent less energy, 80 percent less space, and costing 77 percent less, compared to traditional servers,» according to the company.
Intel to Buy API Maven Mashery
Sometime this quarter Intel expects to close on its just revealed intended purchase of Mashery, a seven-year-old multi-tenant SaaS start-up that manages API technology – APIs being the lingua franca of the Internet.
Intel already has its own Expressway API Manager.
Terms were not disclosed but the rumor is Intel is spending something like $120 million or $180 million on the acquisition.
The ReadWrite Web blog, which says it’s covered Mashery closely for some time, figures the “implications of the deal are huge: it signals Intel’s recognition that the central processing unit is no longer a silicon chip. It is the network.”
And evidently, like IBM, software and services are the place to retreat to. Remember, Intel bought McAfee for $7.7 billion in 2010. Now it’s supposedly appealing more to start-ups than the old-line PC houses.
Day 4 Keynote at Cloud Expo New York | Go Beyond IaaS
Many organizations want to expand upon the IaaS foundation to deliver cloud services in all forms – software, mobility, infrastructure and IT. Understanding the strategy, planning process and tools for this transformation will help catalyze changes in the way the business operates and deliver real value.
In his Day 4 Keynote at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Sheng Liang, CTO Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix Systems, will discuss the new ITaaS model and how to begin the transformation.
Sheng Liang is CTO Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix Systems. Formerly CEO of Cloud.com, he’s a technology visionary who developed the Java Virtual Machine at Sun Microsystems, and a serial entrepreneur. Before Cloud.com he co-founded web application firewall vendor Teros Networks (also acquired by Citrix), and was a member of the senior management team at SEVEN Networks and Openwave Systems, which developed software products for over 100 wireless and wire-line service providers around the world.