Recently I took a cross country driving trip as we moved from outside of Boston, which has been inundated with snow, to Austin TX, which has no snow. Aside from the reasons for the move, we found several cloud based business critical applications to be invaluable while traveling long distances: navigation and communication. It may seem that there could be many more, but given our devices, it boiled down to just those two: finding our way and keeping in touch with other.
TVP Strategy Archives
Edward L. Haletky, aka Texiwill, is an analyst, author, architect, technologist, and out-of-the-box thinker. As an analyst, Edward looks at all things IoT, big data, cloud, security, and DevOps. As an author, he has written about virtualization and security. As an architect, Edward creates peer-reviewed reference architectures for hybrid cloud, cloud-native applications, and many other aspects of the modern business. As a technologist, Edward creates code prototypes for parts of those architectures. Edward is solving today’s problems in an implementable fashion.
Migrating Business Critical Applications to the Cloud
We at The Virtualization Practice, LLC have migratedg our business critical applications to the cloud. How simple was that task? It was not as easy as we have heard from others, and not as difficult as some have had, but it was not as simple as move my VM and run. Why is this? What are the methods available to move to the cloud? How do they stack up to what actually happens. Theory is all well and good, and I have read plenty of those architectures, but when the shoe leather hits the cloud where are we? Here is a short history, a comparison of methods, and some conclusions that can be drawn from our migration to the cloud.
Virtualizing Business Critical Applications: Data Protection
A major aspect of virtualizing any business critical application is data protection which encompasses not only backup, but disaster recovery, and business continuity. It is imperative that our data be protected. While this is true of all workloads, it becomes a bigger concern when virtualizing business critical applications. Not only do we need backups, but we need to protect the business, which is where business continuity comes into play.
Security Automation = Good Security Practice
As I shoveled even more snow, I was starting to think about automation, as in how could I get something to shovel the snow for me, which lead to thinking about automation within the cloud. I see lots of discussion about automation in the cloud. Many of my friends and colleagues are developing code using Puppet, Chef, vCenter Orchestrator, etc. This development is about producing the software defined datacenter (SDDC). However, I see very little in the way of security automation associated with SDDC.
Evaluating Clouds
When evaluating clouds there are three major criteria that are used first before we get into the nitty gritty of how the system works. The criteria is not always in writing but it is in the back of everyone’s mind and in many cases are nebulous to define. Herein, I will try to look at those criteria in order to aid others in making the same decisions I have had to make lately while evaluating clouds.
Virtualizing Business Critical Applications – Integrity & Confidentiality
Recently I discussed Virtualizing Business Critical Applications and security, which includes availability, confidentiality, and integrity. However, that discussion was more about visibility into the environment for security operations. I purposely left off the discussion of gaining integrity and confidentiality of the data housed within those business critical applications.