Validate throughout the Stack: AFORE CypherX

When we look at the secure hybrid cloud, there seems to be a missing piece, a piece that is used to validate identity via the role based access control assigned to applications, data, and systems allowed to access that is dynamic instead of normal static firewall rules that are either port or vm-centric. The software defined data center needs security to move with it and not remain static. Yes we could manipulate the rules on the fly, but those manipulations require that we know who is using a particular VM at a given time and in the case of a server, the VM could be used by more than one user at a time, so we need something more dynamic. Privileged access to data needs to be enforced throughout the stack and not just within an application or by encrypting data. This is a key component of the software defined data center.

See You at the Show

See you at the show! The time is almost here where several thousand people from around the world will make the pilgrimage this year to San Francisco for VMworld 2013. This will be my last post before the start of the show and people are packing and preparing to leave I wanted to share with you what I think is the way to get the most out of your time at the show.

Next Generation Data Protection: HotLink DR Express

The next generation of data protection is not just about backup or replication into and out of the cloud, but about inexpensive recovery directly into a cloud in a hypervisor agnostic manner. Recovery is the key to backup and while we spend many hours ensuring that our backups happen in a timely manner, we spend very little time testing those backups and ensuring that recovery can happen at any time for any workload, not just those that are mission critical. Next generation data protection must also be extremely simple to use, setup, and configure. Is your data protection tool a next generation tool or lost in the past somewhere?

HP Releases New Thin Client amidst a Growing Market

HP announced the newest addition to the top of their thin client device line. The t820 series focuses on delivering the highest level of performing thin clients, targeting users that historically have not been able to use thin clients in the past. In a press release on August 19th, “There is new and growing demand in today’s market for quad-core processing and multimedia graphics on thin clients,” said Jeff Groudan, marketing director, Thin Clients, HP. “With the HP t820, we’ve delivered a more advanced thin client solution to give companies the speed and performance required for their most demanding applications.”

Continuous Operations for Zero Downtime Deployments

The old way of delivering software was to bundle up the software and ship it, sell the software off the shelf, or allow customers to download and install it. In the “shipping model”, it was the buyer’s responsibility to install the software, manage the uptime, patch, monitor, and manage capacity. Sometimes the buyer would perform all of those tasks themselves, or sometimes they would hire a third party to handle it for them. In either case, the buyer of the software had total control over if and when the software was updated and at what time a planned outage would occur in order to perform the patches or upgrades.