Category Archives: Cloud Servers
KineticD Introduces Hybrid Cloud Support for VMware Virtualized Machines
TORONTO, Oct. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --KineticD, known for its cloud backup and data recovery services for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), today announced that its KineticCloud Backup for Servers product has been enhanced to protect VMware ESXi servers at the VM host level, providing fast, easy backups and restorations. It is now available in Beta for channel partners at no additional cost.
As more and more SMBs move to the cloud, many are looking at virtualization as a way to combine resources and reduce the costs of IT infrastructure. The VMware ESXi server allows customers to run multiple operating systems and/or machines from one physical server, saving hardware, data center space and resources. As a VMware Elite Partner, KineticD is able to deliver a cost-effective, smart, user-friendly way to safeguard virtualized machines, while providing greater flexibility and protection in the event of a disaster by allowing the user to keep local and remote copies of their machines.
"By integrating VMware into our product line, SMBs will be able to enjoy the same protection and assurance available to large enterprises," said Jamie Brenzel, CEO of KineticD. "As the adoption of virtualization grows, it is imperative that we deliver the technology that allows our customers to keep pace with these changes. We are excited to provide a product that meets the needs for local, virtual and cloud backup."
This true hybrid cloud solution ensures that if a machine does go down, it can be brought back up quickly, at the host level. By using the VMware Vstorage API, customers are able to back up data at the VM host level, simultaneously securing all or specific guest operating systems without causing downtime.
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About KineticD
KineticD, an early pioneer of cloud backup technology, has set a new industry standard by providing small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) with the same level of security and protection that is available to large enterprises. KineticD's patented KineticCloud Backup technology, known for its scalability, advanced data reduction capabilities and ease-of-use, has won prestigious industry awards and has been featured in many key industry publications. Founded in 2002, KineticD technologies and solutions are currently used daily by over 60,000 customers, 1,000 resellers, 100 MSPs and private label partners for online backup and recovery, archiving, disaster readiness, secure file sharing and remote access. For a free trial or to requestmore information, visitwww.kineticd.com/
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KineticD Introduces Hybrid Cloud Support for VMware Virtualized Machines
HP Adds Another Feather to its Cap: HP Cloud
By SiliconIndia| Thursday, 11 October 2012, 18:15 IST | 1 Comments
Bangalore: For years, Hewlett Packard was best known for its servers in the enterprise. But for now it seems the thought of cloud computing is taking over, as HP is the latest to join the cloud community, as enterprises are already satisfied with HPs cloud service.
HP cloud offers a long list of Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS, which certainly is a big-blow to major players like Amazon and Google.
HPs cloud is primarily built on OpenStack technology, which makes the service quite flexible when compared to other clouds. Another advantage is the price list. HP offers 1GB of RAM for 4 cents per hour which better when compared to Rackspaces 6 cents per hour for a 1GB machine.
But still with all these advantages, enterprises are a bit disappointed on the unavailability of operating systems such as Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Server. Marc Padovani, HP Cloud Services director of product management, has hinted that the Windows Server operating system will arrive sooner, rather than later.
HPs Persistent Storage:
From the traditional idea of having a separate storage of each web service, HP has introduced its version called HP Cloud Object Storage. Inspired from Amazon S3, the cloud object storage provides APIs for storing and retrieving files.
Another stand out quality is its web interface. Files can be uploaded directly as the browser handles the rest of computing process. Also there are network monitoring tools incorporated within the browser so that users can predetermine the ports to be opened on their respective machines. This saves the logging time into each machine to run a script.
The storage price is another big advantage in HPs cloud. While the uploading bandwidth comes free, the outgoing data has a price. After the first few free gigabytes, the cost per data downloaded is 12 cents.
Also Read: Top 10 Best Network Monitoring Tools
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HP Adds Another Feather to its Cap: HP Cloud
Will the cloud be the end of the IT department?
October 11, 2012, 6:00 AM PDT
Takeaway: Thoran Rodrigues looks at the ways that the cloud is likely to change the nature of the IT department and the roles that it serves.
One of the great promises that cloud vendors make is that the adoption of cloud computing greatly reduces IT costs for any company. A crucial part of this promise, that you can find on most cloud cost calculators available on the web, is the reduction in manpower costs. If you host a server internally, you need a System Administrator to manage that server; if you hire a virtual server with the same specifications from a public cloud provider, you dont need anyone, and whatever you were going to pay that person becomes cost savings. This naturally leads us to the following question: Will cloud computing be the end of the conventional IT department?
If we follow the vendors logic to its final conclusion, we would end up in a situation where the only place where one could find infrastructure (server, networking, even operating systems) management jobs would be with the cloud infrastructure providers themselves. These crucial areas of IT would essentially disappear over time, as jobs became more and more scarce. The idea of not needing IT is a double-edged sword: on one hand, business users, especially those that have a poor relationship with IT, find this very appealing, and use it as a big reason to promote the cloud; on the other hand, it generates resistance from IT departments, who understand that the whole idea of not needing anyone is just a myth.
Several of the assumptions people make about cloud servers are simply not true, and some are actually being actively denied by cloud vendors. Backup is one such assumption. Many people still assume that cloud servers are automatically backed up, dont set up any kind of backup scheme, and end up losing a lot of data. The fact is that cloud providers dont perform any kind of automated backup unless you explicitly ask them to do so, which is something most users forget to do.
Security management is another issue. Its easy to think that, since your server is hosted on someone elses infrastructure, theyll worry about all the security matters for you, but nothing could be further from the truth. When you hire a cloud server, most cloud providers will deliver a virtual server with some sort of remote connection enabled. This means that, unless you set your server up behind some sort of firewall or with protection rules, it is basically open to attack from outside as soon as it goes up. While I dont have any stats on this point, Ive seen some servers I set up with FTP access being attacked less than five minutes after going on-line.
This means that having someone from IT managing your servers, even the hosted ones, can be very important. Sure, you can do it yourself, but then youre in the same position as if youd been trying to manage an internal data center yourself. The fact is that, for most people, a cloud server is just like an internal server, only it gets stored somewhere else. This means you need a systems administrator just as you would on any other server.
Cloud apps are, in a sense, even more problematic. With whom does responsibility for the environment reside? What happens if a user accidentally deletes important data or a user account gets broken into? Proper management of passwords, backup policies, access control strategies, and other issues is even more important. Solution providers limit their responsibility to making your data available at the predefined SLA; they say absolutely nothing about backing your data up, or being able to restore it later. The same goes for managing users and passwords: the responsibility is entirely on the hands of the user. If all your accounts are configured with default or weak passwords, youre running a real risk of someone invading them and stealing sensitive data.
As more and more data moves to cloud apps, they are becoming interesting targets, and attacks will take an upward trend. This means that, more than ever, you need IT people to manage your cloud application environment, just as you needed people to manage your infrastructure.
The cloud, then, does not threaten IT jobs, nor does it reduce the importance of IT departments. If anything, the short-term trend is an increase in importance as users realize that they need the help of IT to manage the complex server and application environments that are being created ad-hoc in their rush to move to the cloud.
Penguin Computing's New Scyld Cloud Management Platform Makes It Easy to Move HPC Applications to the Cloud
FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Penguin Computing today announced the availability of the Scyld Cloud Management Platform (SCMP) on its public HPC cloud Penguin Computing on Demand (POD). SCMP is a comprehensive software suite that makes it easy to implement service-based on-demand access for HPC applications. SCMP provides services for:
SCMPs storage system is based on the distributed open-source storage system Ceph, which supports file-based, block-based and object-based storage. The management of virtual servers leverages OpenStack, an open-source solution for creating and managing large groups of virtual servers in a cloud computing environment. All SCMP components are accessible through an intuitive web-based interface, as well as a web-service API.
As the first organization to offer commercial cluster management solutions for HPC and as one of the first to offer a public HPC cloud, we have a solid foundation on which we built SCMP, says Tom Coull, Senior VP of Software and Services at Penguin Computing.
SCMP is also the foundation of Penguin Computings upcoming Scyld Cloud Manager (SCM), a packaged software suite that will enable customers to build their own public and private HPC clouds.
An early adopter of SCMP is the global biotechnology company Life Technologies. The Scyld Cloud Management Platform has enabled Life Technologies to offer cloud-based genomic sequencing analysis services through its Torrent Suite Cloud offering.
SCMP is the core component of our Torrent Suite Cloud infrastructure, says Matt Dyer, associate director of Bioinformatics at Life Technologies. It enables us to offer a flexible solution for processing and managing genomic sequencing data to our customers. Typical use cases include software development and testing, as well as data sharing in collaborative projects.
For more information, please visit http://www.penguincomputing.com.
About Penguin Computing
For well over a decade Penguin Computing has been dedicated to delivering complete, integrated Enterprise and High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions that are innovative, cost effective, and easy to use. Penguin offers a complete end-to-end portfolio of products and solutions including workstations, rack-mount servers, custom server designs, power efficient rack solutions and turn-key clusters. Penguin also offers the Scyld suite of software products for efficient provisioning and infrastructure monitoring. For users who want to use supercomputing capabilities on-demand and pay as they go, Penguin provides Penguin Computing on Demand (POD), a public HPC cloud that is available instantly and as needed.
Looking to cloud shop? Marketplaces are the new place to do it
A few weeks ago Amazon Web Services announced a marketplace for its cloud services in which users could order a variety of applications to run on the company's cloud servers. Not surprisingly, other cloud providers are now rolling out almost the exact same feature, with Savvis being the latest.
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VMWARE OPENS UP: VMware: Now you can send your VMs to Amazon's cloud (and then back to us)
Savvis, which telecommunications company CenturyLink bought last year for $2.5 billion, today announced the beta launch of Savvisdirect, aimed at mid-market enterprises as a public cloud service that includes an app marketplace. It's meant to complement enterprise-grade cloud and managed service offerings from Savvis, and it will operate as a new business unit within the company. Whereas Savvis is aimed at enterprises because of its focus on virtual private clouds and managed services, Savvisdirect is meant to provide easy on-board, swipe of the credit card access to public cloud resources.
To start, Savvisdirect's marketplace will include applications from a variety of vendors, including Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and security programs from Symantec and McAfee, for example. "It's critical to have fluid, frictionless click-to-buy cloud services," says Andrew Higginbotham, president, Savvisdirect, noting that the Savvisdirect offering is aimed at IT administrators, developers and business users who want to rapidly onboard cloud-resources and commonly used enterprise applications, but have them hosted in a public cloud-like environment.
In addition to the app store, Savvis will also have virtual servers that can be rented by the hour, month or annually that can be used as a development platform for building new or customized applications, creating a platform as a service layer on top of the traditional Infrastructure-as-a-service offering from Savvis.
Savvisdirect is announced as a public beta today and is expected to be rolled out in general availability in the fourth quarter of this year.
Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.
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Looking to cloud shop? Marketplaces are the new place to do it
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Cloud? [INFOGRAPHIC]
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Few words in tech have had more buzz over the past couple years than the omnipresent cloud. Cloud computing has ushered in a new era of technology, changed the way many companies do business and facilitated the age of mobile devices and social networking.
But not every organization has been so quick to flock to the cloud. A major outage to cloud computing servers used by Instagram this summer showed the potential pitfalls for businesses and brands.
The following infographic from CA Technologies CloudViews is based on a recent survey of IT leaders; it shows just how and why some companies have been slow to adapt.
Among its more interesting findings: While 80% of respondents say cloud computing drives innovation, more than 50% say they had no immediate plans to implement it. Why the disconnect? Job anxiety could be one reason. A shade under half of respondents say they believe companies will have to create entirely new IT jobs to accommodate a transition to the cloud, while 56% say cloud computing will require current employees to learn new skills.
For more, check out the full infographic below. Then, tell us in the comments: Do you think cloud computing is critical for all organizations today, or can some afford to sit out?
Mashable is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashables 20 million unique visitors and 6 million social media followers have become one of the most engaged online news communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.
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Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Cloud? [INFOGRAPHIC]
SpiderOak Set to Announce Industry-First for the Cloud: 'Zero-Knowledge' Collaboration
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 8, 2012) - An inherent lack of privacy has emerged as a key issue for large enterprises and SMBs that rely on 3rd party cloud providers. While Box CEO Aaron Levie is set to announce a new collaboration platform,SpiderOak asks that companies consider a critical question: is your data really safe when cloud providers have plaintext access to all documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations stored on their servers?
While Box announced its solution today, later this year SpiderOak will announce an industry first 'Zero-Knowledge' collaboration tool -- allowing enterprises to use cloud technologies without the risk of exposing data outside of the organization. This is an extension of SpiderOak's 'Zero-Knowledge' Privacy Environment whereby no one -- including SpiderOak employees -- ever has plaintext access to customer data.
Nowhere is the tension between the convenience of the cloud and end-user ignorance more apparent than this year's conference hosted by Box -- BoxWorks -- and its theme, "Business Without Boundaries." Like all other cloud providers, Box advertises security and asks for trust while remaining fundamentally at risk from the more critical issue -- privacy. Box and other cloud providers require access to this data in order to perform their basic functions and service. As such, anyone with the proper access controls (or those who illegally obtain them) can view enterprise data at any time.
"Cloud technology companies, including Box, demand and expect enterprises to inherently trust them with their most valuable possession -- their data. However and as we have seen time and time again, this proposition is fraught with risks in security and data privacy from both internal and external threats. Ultimately business does in fact need boundaries," said Ethan Oberman, CEO of SpiderOak. "SpiderOak is built around 'Zero-Knowledge' privacy. As such, trust no longer sits at the center of our sales pitch because we are never in a position where we can betray the trust of our customers. Why? Simple. We don't have access to the plaintext data."
SpiderOak: Built for Privacy
SpiderOak's centralized and fully protected solution enables enterprises to take full control of the cloud in a managed environment while not relinquishing privacy to a 3rd party provider. In contrast, Box.net and other cloud companies are forced to advertise and push security as they cannot make the same 100% privacy guarantee.
"Today's enterprise environment demands a higher standard of privacy in the cloud," said Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst at IT-Harvest. "Sensitive data is often distributed around the world, with employees collaborating and sharing information on a host of disparate, mobile and intelligent devices. A majority of enterprises in today's business environment don't retain full control of their data in the cloud nor do they have the option of fully controlling and managing it, either on-site or off-site. SpiderOak is designed with complete privacy in mind, representing a much-needed advance in the world of enterprise cloud environments."
The SpiderOak Blue line of enterprise products empowers companies to maintain the industry's most confidential cloud environments. It is impossible for anyone outside of company's IT departments to see data, unless those IT departments have shared it. Available in on-premise and SpiderOak hosted solutions, SpiderOak Blue enables companies to comply with the most stringent privacy, info-security and auditing requirements in a fully confidential cloud technology environment.
For more information on all SpiderOak: Blue products, please visit https://spideroak.com/business_learn_more/.
About SpiderOak SpiderOak provides a cloud backup, sync, and sharing environment that is 100% private. Our 'Zero-Knowledge' Privacy Standard ensures absolute confidentiality between you and your data, everywhere, every time and from every device. With SpiderOak, you maintain full and complete control of your data in a centralized, managed and fully protected environment. SpiderOak: we've got your back(up).
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SpiderOak Set to Announce Industry-First for the Cloud: 'Zero-Knowledge' Collaboration
Cloud management platforms key for cloud security
You did it: You managed to carefully shepherd your organization through the minefields of cloud computing. You selected a security-friendly provider, carefully planned your architecture and migration, and even implemented a nice set of cloud-specific security controls, with a mix of public and private clouds. Excellent job.
Then you were smashed by the freight train of reality as developers, administrators and even business units shattered your well-laid plans by, you know, actually using the darn cloud. Instances began spinning up left and right, quickly falling out of security and compliance because of old patch levels, improperly configured security groups, and all the little, tiny changes introduced by maintaining state through day-to-day usage.
We struggle to manage these issues with our traditional infrastructure, but at least in those circumstances we have a modicum of physical control. It isn't like business units are sneaking into the data center to add new 1U servers to the racks. But in the cloud? Assuming you set it up properly to actually leverage the advantages of cloud computing you will have new servers and applications
Managing basic operations under these conditions is extremely challenging -- outside of security -- especially when you dig into the technical issues of managing your entire infrastructure through network connections and APIs. For example, one friend once had to launch disaster recovery plans because an administrator accidentally used the wrong command line. Instead of shutting down three key servers on Amazon Web Services, he "terminated" them. If you don't know, terminate on AWS means immediately stop this server and erase all associated storage irrecoverably.
Companies like RightScale Inc. and enStratus Networks Inc. insert a proxy in front of the management plane to provide greater compatibility, control and policy-based management across heterogeneous cloud deployments.
However, a new breed of tools and services is emerging to help with the complexities of managing cloud infrastructures. Companies like RightScale Inc. and enStratus Networks Inc. insert a proxy in front of the management plane to provide greater compatibility, control and policy-based management across heterogeneous cloud deployments.
Although the primary goal of these cloud management platforms is operations, when you get down to it, a large percentage of security is really just operations. Keeping systems patched, positioning instances in the right parts of the network, controlling which administrators can manage which resources are all critical security functions that don't necessarily need to be part of security.
Let's look a little deeper into how these tools work (although keep in mind different vendors have different implementations and this is a broad generality). Normally we manage cloud through a mix of direct API calls, command line tools or Web interfaces. Administrators (and users) have access to all or some of these resources across different cloud platforms, which requires some complex entitlement and user management. Also, even when you can restrict their activities, it's either so granular as to be incredibly complex or so broad that it's worthless.
Plus, there are other, extensive operational functions like patching that must be managed with a patchwork of tools.
Cloud management platforms are usually a proxy between the users and the cloud management plane. The proxy has access to the entire cloud infrastructure, and users run through the proxy instead of making direct API calls. They don't even have access rights to the cloud's management plane.
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Cloud management platforms key for cloud security
Dell supercomputer effort spawns new line of servers
Dell has developed a line of servers based on designs the company is using in an upcoming 10-petaflop supercomputer called Stampede, which will be fully deployed at the University of Texas, Austin, starting next year.
The PowerEdge C8000 servers are built with standard Intel x86 CPUs and can be equipped with graphics processors or additional storage to improve performance on database tasks, high-performance computing operations and cloud workloads.
Users will be able to mix and match graphics processors, storage, memory and other elements inside the servers, said Armando Acosta, a product manager at Dell.
For its part, the Stampede supercomputer includes thousands of C8000 servers with a total of 272TB of memory and 14 petabytes of storage. Dell and the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas worked together on Stampede. The design for the C8000 servers blossomed as the supercomputer came to fruition, Acosta said.
The supercomputer will use eight-core Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors and co-processors code-named Knights Corner, which Dell said will speed up scientific and math calculations.
As for the new servers, the basic C8220 chassis can have up to eight blade servers; each server can contain two CPUs with up to 16 processing cores, two internal hard drives and additional storage and networking options. For instance, the servers can be hooked up to the new C8000XD storage box for expandable hard drive or SSD options.
The C8220X, a more advanced model in the new lineup, has more RAM and storage and can be equipped with graphics processors. All of the servers are designed for use in highly parallel computing environments, Acosta said.
Pricing starts at $35,000 for the C8220, $42,000 for the C8220X and about $25,000 for the C8000XD storage box.
This version of this story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an article that appeared earlier on Computerworld.com.
Read more about hardware in Computerworld's Hardware Topic Center.
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Dell supercomputer effort spawns new line of servers
How to share documents with iCloud
The new dream in computing is keeping all of your files in the cloud, on remote servers that you can access from anywhere at any time. Apples cloud-based syncing and storage service, iCloud, debuted in June 2011. Still, only since the release of OS X Mountain Lion that enough applications have started to support iCloud document syncing for this feature to be useful. Working with iCloud is fairly simple, but you need to know the ground rules if you plan to start storing your documents in the cloud.
If you dont have a free iCloud account, or if youre just starting out with it, this article will give you an overview of how to set up a new iCloud account. To store documents in the cloudno matter which application puts its files thereyou also need to activate the Documents & Data setting in the iCloud pane in System Preferences, as well as in the Settings of any iOS device you plan to use (to do so, selectSettings > iCloud). Once youve done this, any iCloud-compatible app can store files in iCloud.
For now, only a limited number of applications can store files in iCloud. By files, I mean documents that you create, not data that an application such as Calendar stores in the cloud. On the Mac, many of Apples apps do support iCloud, including Preview, TextEdit, the iWork 09 suite (Pages, Numbers, andKeynote), and GarageBand.
Third-party apps that store documents in the cloud include text editors such as iA Writer, Byword, and Smultron; the PDF editor PDFpen; the graphics editor Pixelmator; and some others. At this point, compatible programs can produce files in Microsoft Office formats, but Microsoft Office itself doesnt support iCloud.
Note that Apple lets onlyapps sold through the Mac App Store use iCloud to store documents. If your favorite productivity app is only sold directly by the developer, youre out of luck.
If youre using an application that can save documents in the cloud, doing so is fairly simple. Say youre using TextEdit. After youve created a new document, press Command-S, and make sure the Where menu shows iCloud. Name the file and click Save, and the document will be sent to the cloud.
Once youve saved a file to the cloud, you can access it from multiple devices. Say you have a desktop Mac and a laptop; you can save any files you need on the road in iCloud and access them from either computer as long as you use the same app.
To open files youve saved to iCloud, press Command-O in an iCloud-savvy application, then click on the iCloud button. Youll see something like this:
Note that in the above screenshot you see a folder. To create a folder, just drag one file on top of another, as you would with icons on an iPhone or iPad. Name the folder, and itll be saved on iCloud.
You may have a number of files on your Mac that youd like to put in the cloud; this is straightforward. Just open a file with an application that can put documents on iCloud, choose File > Move To, then choose iCloud from the Where menu. If you want to move a file from the cloud to your Mac, click on the Where menu and find the folder where you want to place the file. If the folder where you want to move the file isnt in the menu, choose Other from the bottom of the menu, and navigate to the location you want.