In-Depth

Wells and city water have more in common with the cloud than you might think.

With Father's Day approaching, it got me thinking about my father, Darrel, and some of the great stories and lessons he shared with me while I was growing up. His father died when he was young, and although he had a loving mother, he had a hardscrabble childhood growing up in a small town in Utah. One lesson he inadvertently taught me when I was young that I would later reflect on was the importance of cloud computing.

As a kid, we used to visit the house he grew up in. One summer, my brother and I came across an old cemented water well on the property, and we started to talk to my dad about it. I thought that it was way cool to have this "free" source of water on the land that his family had complete dominion over. Then dad (as dads are apt to do) set me right.

Once, the well dried up and the well digger had to drill a deeper well to strike water. For the most part, we could pull water from the well on a regular basis, but during the hot Utah summers, the wind-powered well reliability was not optimal, and they had to use it judiciously.

They eventually moved to an electric well, but the cost of electricity to power the pump could get spendy. Money aside, dad said the worst part of having the well was worrying about potential health hazards; one autumn, the whole family became very ill and the doctor suspected that it had something to do with well water.

Taking these negative aspects of having a property well into account, my dad told me that it was a blessing when the city created a central water system by constructing a reservoir high up in the mountains. The city piped the water down to a station where it was monitored and treated. The vast majority of residents in the town jumped on the chance to join the new central water supply. Some agricultural and industrial users didn't cement up their wells, using them to supplement their city water; but for the most part, people found city water to be cheaper, more reliable and safer to use than well water.

So, how does my father's story about his family's well and city water relate to cloud computing? For the past 50 or so years, we've been using "well" technology in our datacenters. We put in our own servers, and although we sometimes get it right, we more than likely have to rely on getting professionals to help us set things up to make our servers efficient and workable.

We have a finite set of compute and storage resources that need to be closely monitored to prevent them from being used up. Even though we are diligent in preventing viruses and other security vulnerabilities, they still can get through the cracks and cause our datacenters great harm.

But just as a central city water supply solved problems for the citizens of my father's town, cloud computing can solve common issues and inconveniences in your datacenter. The cloud is a reservoir of compute and storage to draw upon as needed, and is almost impossible to deplete. Cloud compute centers are located near cheap, reliable power sources such as hydro-electric dams. Cloud providers can buy compute and storage devices by the boxcar load to get prices you can only dream about.

Due to the economy of scale, cloud centers can be staffed around the clock with dedicated professionals specialized in one aspect of the cloud, delivering a more reliable service. The staff can monitor compute and storage security, detecting and, more likely than not, preventing viruses and other security concerns from affecting your datacenter.

That's how my father taught me about the importance of cloud computing.

(In memory of my father, who taught me more than he realized, encouraged my curiosity, and loved his his wife and kids. He was a good man.)

About the Author

Tom Fenton works in VMware's Education department as a Senior Course Developer. He has a wealth of hands-on IT experience gained over the past 20 years in a variety of technologies, with the past 10 years focused on virtualization and storage. Before re-joining VMware, Tom was a Senior Validation Engineer with The Taneja Group, were he headed their Validation Service Lab and was instrumental in starting up its vSphere Virtual Volumes practice. He's on Twitter @vDoppler.

Continued here:
What My Father Taught Me About Cloud Computing - Virtualization Review

Server Room.Torkild Retvedt/Flickr

The modern world has given way to many wonders, but it has also brought about climate change via substantial CO2 emissions. One startup company wants to address these issues by using one of the biggest technological developments of the age to reduce carbon emissions in private home. Its solution? Use cloud servers to warm up peoples homes.

The startup in question is Nerdalize and on its website, the company provides a straightforward explanation as to what exactly it was trying to do. It basically involves using the heat that the servers used to power cloud storage would produce to provide warmth in homes in Holland. Not only will this help cut energy consumption in maintaining the servers, it helps reduce power usage in homes as well.

Combined, datacenters use up more electricity than India and generate more CO2 emissions than the airline industry, the websites write-up reads. One reason the industry is so energy intensive is that 40% of its total energy consumption on cooling to get rid of this heat. What a waste! Nerdalize avoids the datacenter entirely by placing these heat producing servers as aided heating systems in homes.

In terms of innovative ideas, this would definitely rank at the top when it comes to energy conservation. Cloud storage servers have become important enough in the tech industry that they are now affecting power consumption in a big way. Instead of directing that power to negate the heat that these servers produce, using that heat for something else would be conservation at its best, Futurism notes.

As for how the company would even profit off of this arrangement, the main business model will revolve around selling data space. On the part of the homeowners, savings of about $337 from heating will be one of the advantages. Then theres the savings on data storage costs on the part of businesses, which should amount to a 50 percent reduction.

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Startup Warms Homes With Cloud Storage And Cuts CO2 Emissions - EconoTimes

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on Monday turned its focus to small and medium size businesses (SMBs) with news of a partnership with ClearCenter to bring ClearOS, a Linux-based operating system, to HPE Proliant servers. The vendor also announced that its refreshing and broadening its Proliant server portfolio.

SMBs are always looking to have an easier way to manage their IT or simplify and they want to do it in a secure and affordable way," Tim Peters, vice president and general manager of Proliant Rack and Tower Servers and SMB Solutions at HPE, told us.

Peters took aim at the allure of public cloud services, and dissed Microsoft when a while back it raised the entry point for Microsoft Windows '16, saying that the cost of compute on premises went up. HPE, he noted, is offering the channel a way to fight back in the SMB space.

ClearOS, for example, was designed specifically to meet the needs of SMB organizations,Peters said.It has a simplified, web-based user interface, its open source, and HPE is providing it preloaded on targeted SMB servers, in an integrated solution, at no additional cost.

For HPE partners, the integrated ClearOS/server sale comes at a lower cost compared to a Windows server platform which HPE will continue to support, Peters said.

Since the ClearOS is preloaded, all the customer has to do is decide which services they want with that platform," he said.

The HPE SMB market is 100 percentchannel-led. With the new Linux product, partners can deliver more value-add versus dealing with the nuts and bolts of installing and configuring the system, Peters suggested.

In a return of the Proliant MicroServer, HPE announced a new Gen 10 portfolio that includes the ProLiant ML30 and ProLiant DL20 servers with the new Kaby Lake Intel processor. The new SMB servers come preloaded with ClearOS.

Some new server features: AMD graphics embedded in the chip; dual-display port connectors; and optional GPU support on a PCIe slot, according to the vendor.

HPE offers pre-loaded ClearOS on the HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen 10, as well as the ML 110, ML 30 and DL 20.

The third piece ofMonday's announcement addresses intelligent provisioning ofClearOS on HPEs broad portfolio of Proliant Servers, including the DL 60, DL 80, Tower products such as the ML 110, ML 350, ML 150 and up through the DL 360 and 380.

We believe that this [announcement] addresses the need of minimizing the complexity of IT [for SMBs], of cloud and on premise[s] in a lower-cost way," said Peters.

ClearCenter also offers an application marketplace for ClearOS. Individual apps run as cloud, server, network and gateway services on ClearOS.

The ML 30 and DL 20 are shipping now. The preloaded ClearOS serversand the Proliant MicroServer will ship in June.

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HPE Targets SMBs with New Servers and ClearOS Linux - Channel Partners

News

"We found almost 43 TB of data exposed and 1,000 apps affected by the HospitalGown vulnerability."

Echoing the findings of a similar recent report, Appthority has published investigation results that found nearly 43 TB of enterprise data was exposed on cloud back-ends, including personally identifiable information (PII).

The company's new "2017 Q2 Enterprise Mobile Threat Report" report (free upon providing registration info), Appthority found "data leakage" from mobile apps that send data to unsecured cloud back-ends. Appthority said mobile security concerns typically focus on a triad of other factors -- apps, device threats and network threats -- but unsecured back-ends are a new threat vector that goes hand-in-hand with cloud computing. This data leakage on the back-end was dubbed the "HospitalGown" threat by the company because of that garment's open back-end.

"In total, we found almost 43 TB of data exposed and 1,000 apps affected by the HospitalGown vulnerability," Appthority said in a blog post last week. "Looking at a subset of 39 apps, we still found 280 million records exposed, a total of about 163 GB of data. This is a staggering amount of leaked information, and in some cases represents the entirety of customer or operational data for an enterprise."

The report mirrors the findings of an earlier report by RedLock Inc., which revealed many security issues primarily caused by user misconfigurations on public cloud platforms, with Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) figuring prominently. RedLock claimed it found 82 percent of hosted databases remain unencrypted, among many other problems.

The AWS cloud was also mentioned in the new report from Appthority. One of the key findings of the report said: "The enterprise threat is real: The apps connect to unsecured databases on a range of popular enterprise services, including Elasticsearch and Amazon Web Services."

Unsecured Elasticsearch servers and MongoDB databases were prime targets of a series of ransomware attacks earlier this year that generated widespread publicity in the security field. However, that publicity apparently wasn't enough to significantly alleviate the issue.

"As our findings show, weakly secured back-ends in apps used by employees, partners and customers create a range of security risks including extensive data leaks of personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data," the report states. "They also significantly increase the risk of spear phishing, brute force login, social engineering, data ransom, and other attacks. And, HospitalGown makes data access and exfiltration far easier than other types of attacks."

Key findings of the report as listed by the company include:

The company said its Mobile Threat Team identified the HospitalGown vulnerabilities with a combination of its dynamic app analysis tool and a new back-end scanning method, looking at the network traffic on more than 1 million enterprise mobile apps, both iOS and Android.

As with the misconfiguration problems identified in the RedLock report, Appthority emphasized that all cases of HospitalGown vulnerabilities were caused by human errors, not malicious intent or inherent infrastructure problems.

Appthority said it disclosed information about the exposed data to app developers and to affected providers, such as AWS.

"In some cases, the issues were remediated immediately," the company said. "Unfortunately, in others, we received no response and the data is still exposed."

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer for 1105 Media.

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Unsecured Cloud Back-Ends Still Pose Security Threat, New Report Says - Virtualization Review

The primary selling point for those promoting the adoption of cloud computing services has been that it is quite affordable. The economic advantages that are clearly available through the adoption do not only come through lower procurement costs. The numerous profits that come with the all inclusive cost cutting benefits of cloud computing tools cover areas like procurement, operation, deployment and many more. These are the key areas where the primary avenues through which those who choose to employ cloud computing gain. Looking at them in sequence clearly demonstrates that the benefits claimed are real and available to all who decide to migrate to cloud systems.

Procurement of cloud computing solutions such as cloud servers, and cloud software is considerably cheaper than other equivalent options. Weighing in choices of any cloud engine software with other software used on other similar platforms as witnessed by most vendors is that cloud applications are affordable. This also applies to the cost of installing a cloud server as compared to other servers of equal capacity. A cloud server is considered to cost a part of what an equivalent dedicated server will cost. This is evident that during the procurement stage is that cloud computing option is going to save you money.

In deployment cases, cloud computing varieties have many cost benefits over the other technologies. Deployment speed is the primary benefit of the cost efficiency. With cloud solutions you can deploy immediately unlike other technologies that need substantial amounts of time for preparation and setup before deployment. Quick applications means your organization will at effect start to realize the advantages of the resources you have invested. In this case you will not only be saving cash but also gain more income from your investment.

One of the other deployment benefit of employing cloud technology is the expertise demanded. If you incur lower skill level requirements it would mean you will experience lower wage bills. This aspect of cloud computing extends to the operation phase where running cloud servers and cloud software comes with a lower wage bill. The drop in costs of deployment and operation are important benefits that are instant and long term to business entrepreneurs who apply cloud computing. Once the technology is applied the benefits can be felt and continued use through out the life of the business operations where cloud computing is used.

The scalability together with efficiency promote the operational cost benefits offered by cloud computing. The scalability of cloud computing ensures that your business will not need to have excess capacity as is the case with other technologies. The boost and downfall in demand for computing resources can be quickly and simply be equated to the high scalability of the cloud. Since most of the cloud computing resources are billed on consumption, it is easy to achieve cost efficiency. If you are using cloud engine software, you will only pay for the specific productive consumption. There are other cost benefits of using cloud computing and you should consider migrating your business systems to the cloud.

Those talking about cloud computing services know that providers like OnApp offer good deals There are many financial savings to be seen from using cloud computing tools

Photo By OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

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How Cloud Computing Can Work To Save Your Company Money - Good Herald