Trend Micro: Info Graphic on Journey to the Cloud

Trend Micro provided us a very interesting info graphic on a Journey to the Public Cloud with a list of which of their tools secure that Journey. What is interesting about this info graphic is the steps outlined in this journey to the Cloud and the threats and issues as you step along this path. These steps are well thought out and are useful to everyone as they look at their virtualization and cloud security options moving forward.

VMware vSphere v5 and Storage DRS

Recently VMware announced version 5.0 of their vSphere virtualization solution with a theme of reducing complexity, enabling automation, and supporting scaling with confidence. As a key component for supporting cloud, virtual and dynamic infrastructure environments, vSphere V5.0 includes many storage related enhancements and new features.

Impact of Latest vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Model upon Data Center Virtualization and Virtualization Management

VMware has updated the vRAM pricing for vSphere 5 to address certain customer issues, and deserves a great deal of credit for acting this quickly and decisively to the feedback that was generated by the initial announcement. However, even with the new vSphere 5 vRAM pricing the question is now raised as to whether competing and less expensive virtualization platforms are acceptable for some entire companies, and some use cases within what used to be 100% VMware shops. VMware has created an opening for Microsoft, Citrix, and Red Hat. As this sorts itself out, the virtualization platform landscape will change – resulting in a minimum in a new focus on tools to manage multiple virtualization platforms.

And we are Worried About VMware's Licensing?

I was reading through a recent article about the new Java 7 release, which contradicts Oracle’s current support statement with respect to licensing. The License from Oracle exclusively states Java 7 is only supported on those hypervisors Oracle currently supports: Oracle VM, VirtualBox, Solaris Containers, and Solaris LDOMs except where noted. That last phrase is rather tricky, so where do we find such notes. Is the noted the support document stating that they support Oracle products within a VMware VM? Or is it somewhere else in the license? This leaves out all major hypervisors: Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft. If you cannot find a note saying things are supported, somewhere.
This implies quite a bit for the future of Java support within most PaaS environments being built today. In essence, they cannot upgrade to Java 7. Which means they may fall behind. This would impact OpenShift, Amazon, Google, CloudFoundry, SalesForce, and others.

ROI/TCO of Virtualization and Cloud Security

The 7/7 Virtualization Security Podcast with Steve Kaplan, Vice President of INX’s Data Center Virtualization Practice and well known ROI/TCO expert within the virtualization and cloud space, joined us to talk about the ROI and TCO of virtualization and cloud security. We discussed someways to view virtualization and cloud security, but mostly the fact that many people may not think ROI or TCO even applies until a problem occurs and you need to rush in and find and fix the leak that lead to a break-in. In essence, the ROI of proper security tools is your entire business.