2012 Data Protection Concerns

Data Protection is still an issue with many small businesses and smaller enterprises who virtualize; Specifically around the Data Protection Process and eventually where to store the data. When I speak to people they are struggling with whether or not to place the data on tape, blu-ray, into the cloud, or other disks. Medium and Large Enterprises already have such policies in place, but like everything else, when they virtualized the policies may have fallen by the road side and now need to be recovered, dusted off, and put into practice. The choice of where the data will ultimately reside when disaster strikes is an ongoing discussion in the virtualization community. Ultimately, Data Protection is just that, protecting the data from loss, destruction, and allowing for quick recovery.

"U There" End User Computing Security

There needs to be better Data Loss Prevention applied to Social Media than there exists today and how that will be applied globally is a huge issue. But it is a growing trend. I see on twitter from those I know many things that should not appear: from the discussion of internal only intellectual property to locations sent to 4 square. Add into this, the myriad forms of ‘U There’ requests. It is so easy to tell people anything on twitter, that it also becomes a problem with telling people too much even in 146 characters. Yet, I also see the same when using text messages, chat, and other technologies. So what is the solution?

Xen port to ARM puts pressure on VMware

Stefano Stabellini, a senior software engineer at Citrix Systems, has announced a proof of concept port of the open source Xen Hypervisor for the ARM Cortex A15 processor. The project was started in early November and has already developed to the point where it is capable of booting a Linux 3.0 based virtual machine up to a shell prompt. The Xen port has progressed so rapidly due to a decision to take advantage of the virtualization features that were introduced with the ARMv7 architecture making it small and comparatively easy to develop. However, because of this it won’t be able to run on anything older than a Cortex-A15 processor.

The Speed of Change

The speed that technology changes are absolutely amazing in that as soon as you buy something, the next faster, bigger model comes out. I think back to around when I started my career and remember a workstation that I was using with a 200MHz processor and I was really thrilled when I got it bumped up to 64MB of ram. Now although the hardware was changing at blazing speeds you used to know you had a three to five year run with the operating system before you had to worry about upgrading and refreshing the operating systems. VMware has been changing the rules the last few years on major releases coming around every two years.

2011 Year in Review – Data Protection

2011 saw an increase in virtualized and cloud data protection solution partnerships and advancements. One of the biggest advancements is the growing support for Microsoft Hyper-V from long-time VMware specific backup solutions. Included in the new partnerships are team ups between performance management and data protection solutions, as well as an increase in the methods for replication and other forms of data protection. 2011 was a very big year in the Data Protection arena of cloud and virtualization. This is the 2011 Year in Review for data protection.

Year in Review – Moving to the Cloud?

The “cloud” has become quite the buzz word and in all appearances truly loved by the marketing side of the fence also. “Take it to the cloud.” That is one of my favorite lines from a Microsoft commercial campaign that I think really shows how mainstream the cloud has become. Facebook, iTunes, Twitter, Oxygen, Amazon and Acronis are all examples of different cloud services that I connect to on a regular basis. Services for the end users are becoming more and more abundant, which is absolutely fantastic for us, the consumer.