Whether you are building a new or adding to an existing virtual or cloud environment on a shoestring budget, whether for work or for home use, there is quite a bit to consider before you purchase anything and it all boils down to your requirements which will dictate the technology you need for your virtual environment. In addition, this is a perfect time to address any deficiencies in your environment to not only address capacity issues, requirements, and security. Along with those considerations, planning the environment for the next three to five years can help shape the overall design. In fact that design, will be based on the answers from a growing list of questions.
TVP Strategy Archives
Steve Jobs – the man who made it all about Us
There are few people who get to be classified as true innovators – among them Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers. Steve Jobs has earned his place with these great agents of change. From the initial release of the Apple II, Jobs’ vision has changed the way we look at and interact with all of our technology.
Going to the Cloud Safely
Whether or not to put data into the cloud has been a debate since clouds were first formed. At a recent conference I was asked:
with all the security issues you brought up, why should I go to the cloud, I do not know the administrators, nor can I gain cloud visibility, so why go to the cloud at all? and if so which cloud?
There are a myriad of reasons to go to the cloud, not the least of which is politics or being told to go to the cloud. When the real question is:
which cloud services is my organization already using and how can I gain control over the data being placed into the cloud.
Link your Clouds using AFORE Cloudlink
AFORE Solutions has created AFORE Cloudlink, which won the Best of VMworld for Security at VMworld 2011 in the United States. Yet, many people were scratching their head saying, who are AFORE and why did they win. AFORE moved from a physical appliance to a virtual appliance about 3 years ago providing a way to move data between data centers in an encrypted fashion, which at the time was desperately needed. After three years they have made quite a few changes, but still have their core functionality, but now included data at rest encryption and the ability to stretch layer-2 and layer-3 networks between locations amongst others.
State of Secure Multitenancy Today
On 9/22 was held the Virtualization Security Podcast featuring Anil Karmel, Solutions Architect at Los Alamos National Library (LANL), to discuss their implementation of secure multi-tenant Cloud. LANL makes extensive use of the entire VMware product suite from vCloud Director down to the vShield components to implement their SMT cloud. They have also added into their cloud their own intellectual property to improve overall cloud security. It was a very interesting conversation about the state of SMT today.
Taking a Look at VMware Feature Limitations
Since the introduction of virtualization there has been sheer joy and excitement when having to work with application owners on the amount of resources they will need and not what they really think they want. I have seen all kinds of minimum, maximum, and special recommendation for all kinds of application over the years. In most cases, applications have evolved to be able to thrive in a virtual environment without too many limitations. Now it seems we have to verify which VMware features are fully supported with certain virtualized application also.