Given the VNXe’s expandability to include fibre channel cards in the future. This storage looks very attractive to those SMBs who have made the investment previously to move towards fibre. Making use of your existing infrastructure whether fabric or Ethernet would lower the cost of adoption for the low-end EMC product. The VNXe’s expandability is one of those items that makes it an attractive tool for other uses. What are those other uses with respect to security, DR, BC, and disaster avoidance?
TVP Category Archives
EMC VNXe Spurs Thinking Outside the Box
Chad Sakac mentions on his blog that VNXe “uses a completely homegrown EMC innovation (C4LX and CSX) to virtualize, encapsulate whole kernels and other multiple high performance storage services into a tight, integrated package.” Well this has gotten me to thinking about other uses of VNXe. If EMC could manage to “refactor” or encapsulate a few more technologies, I think we have the makings of a killer virtualization security appliance. Why would a storage appliance spur on thinking about virtualization security?
Cisco Pushing More vNetwork into Hardware
In the first Virtualization Security Podcast of 2011, we had Brad Hedlund with us once again. Not to talk about the Cisco Virtualization Security Gateway (VSG), but about the security of what I call physical-virtual devices that provide network virtualization within the hardware. Or what Brad Called Network ID Virtualization (NIV). Cisco has taken its VN-Link technology to extend the networking of a VM directly into the core switch when using vSphere.
Digging out after a Snowstorm: Similar to our virtual environments?
Sooner or later that perfect landscape of white is marred by new mounds of snow and clear-cut paths through it to the various locations on the property. When you look at these paths and the snow is high enough, they look like tunnels. The large tunnels (driveway) meet smaller and smaller ones. The perfect landscape of snow is now marred. This is just how a firewall looks when you put holes in it to let through various services. The more services, the more tunnels and paths will be cut. When speaking about the cloud or virtual environments, the increase in paths and entry points becomes a serious issue.
A New Year VMUG Challenge
It is the start of 2011 and I hope everyone has not broken their New Year’s Resolutions already. To start the year off, I would like to encourage and or challenge you to become a part of your local VMware User Group or VMUG as we like to call it. Last year I did a post on My Experience with VMUGs and I am a full supporter of this program and the good it can bring. Although I have a bias for the VMUGS over other types of user groups, the concept of people helping people rates high in my book and I would like to challenge you all to get involved.
Threat Analysis: Layers upon layers
When we think of the threat to a virtual environment or the cloud, what do we think about? First it is important to understand how the cloud is layered ontop of the virtual environment. Given a cloud stack, where are the entry points for SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and Cloud management? At the recent Minneapolis VMUG I attempted to relay that information to the attendees. Once we understood the layers we could then concentrate on the threat vectors to the cloud and virtual environment.