Improving Virtualization and Cloud Management Security with Symantec CSP

The 3/22 Virtualization Security Podcast brought to light the capabilities of Symantec Critical System Protection (CSP) software. This software successfully implements a manageable version of mandatory access control policies based on role-based and multi-level security functionality within the virtual environment. More specifically on those systems that are critical to the well being and health of your virtual and cloud environments such as all your management and control-plane tools (VMware vCenter, Microsoft SCVVM, XenConsole, etc.). In addition, Symantec CSP will monitor your virtualization hosts for common security issues. This in itself is great news but why are we just hearing about this now? Is this a replacement for other security tools?

IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go

There are many different types of metrics pertaining to storage and IO that can be grouped into Performance, Availability, Capacity, Economics and Energy (PACE). Every application or workload has some characteristics attribute of Performance, Availability, Capacity, Economics and Energy that can be further broken down into metrics that are more detailed.

Windows 8 – Extending the Desktop to the Mobile World

There has been a lot of buzz and coverage about Windows 8 since its consumer preview. There will be some very cool features with this release and one feature that really stands out with me is that Microsoft added an additional supported processor type in that Windows 8 will run on Intel, AMD and now ARM based processors. That gives Windows 8 the ability to run on desktops as well as mobile phones and tablets.

Atlantis ILIO Pimps Virtualized Citrix XenApp: who needs VDI?

Virtualizing Presentation Virtualization Workloads is increasingly seen as beneficial and more acceptable. As Citrix XenApp customers move into 2013 it is likely they’ll move more physical instances to virtual. To enhance RDS VM workloads with shared storage – Atlantis release ILIO for XenApp, the first solution designed specifically to accelerate provisioning, boot time and application response time

Future Proofing Data Protection: Approaching Fast!

Quantum recently announced a ‘Flexible path to Next Generation Backup and Disaster Recovery’, which dovetails nicely with my thoughts on future proofing data protection. Quantum has created, with the help of Xerox, a way to have multi-tenant data protection at the level of the tenant and not just the cloud provider.