ITOA Types of Data

Any part of any infrastructure, application, or cloud is data. Data is used by applications, and myriad data is presented to IT organizations for their use, edification, insights, and more. But what really is this data? Can we classify the types of data in some way? Data classifications should not be just “structured” and “unstructured”; they must go deeper than …

VMware Log Insight Just Became a Whole Lot Free-er

Early last week, VMware made its vRealize Log Insight product available in a free limited form. The short version is that every copy of vCenter (full fat, not just essentials, as far as I can see) gets twenty-five restricted licenses of Log Insight now, rolled out through the usual software channels. This is an automatic upgrade, and …

Observability, Repeatability, and Visibility

Everyone wants visibility into their hybrid cloud of all resources and subsystems. We have expounded upon this need over the years as well as on how to gain some level of visibility. The tools exist, as do the methodologies. What we need now is better observability. Visibility is inherent in many tools today, but observability …

Virtualization Security at VMworld

It is that time of year again, when we see all the new toys, tools, ideas, and processes that make up the show called VMworld. This year, quite a few changes in virtualization security will be discussed by VMware and other organizations that work with virtual and cloud environments. One of the key messages will …

A Tale of Two Clouds

Recently I have had the pleasure of discussing security with a number of cloud providers. Specifically, we talked about what security they implement and how they inform their tenants of security-related issues. In other words, do they provide transparency? I have come to an early conclusion that there are two types of clouds out there: …

TCO of the Cloud

What is the total cost of ownership, TCO, of the cloud? When we think of the cloud, we think of using applications in the cloud such as Salesforce, Box.net, and others. We may even consider using security as a service tool such as Zscaler and others. In some cases we also think of placing our own workloads in the cloud using Amazon and other tools. The real question that comes to mind is the TCO of the cloud? Not now, but long term.