How VMware aims to distinguish itself in the cloud

VMware VP of Cloud Services Mathew Lodge acknowledges that the virtualization vendor “got started later than other folks” in the IaaS public cloud market, but he flatly denies that the company is slowing investment in this area. VMware’s position is that while it has catching up to do with cloud market leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, it also has strengths that can make it stand out.VMware used its annual VMworld conference in San Francisco this week to show off some of those differentiators, and teased more advances to come. HYBRID ALL THE WAY The company’s cloud strategy centers around VMware’s Unified Hybrid Cloud platform, as CEO Pat Gelsinger stressed in a pre-VMworld interview with Network World.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP beefs up enterprise security suite with tools to root out malware, app vulnerabilites

Hewlett-Packard has devised two new ways of securing enterprise systems in the endless war on malicious network attackers.One service inspects the Internet addresses being requested by employees for malicious links and the other service learns how an organization's coders write their programs.The two new releases aim to "protect the interactions among your most valuable assets: your users, your applications and your data," said Frank Mong, HP vice president of solutions. The company announced the new software at the HP Protect security conference, held this week near Washington.HP DNS Malware Analytics (DMA) monitors outbound DNS (Domain Name System) requests to ensure employee browsers aren't contacting rogue or malware Web sites. A DNS server provides specific numeric Internet addresses to end-user computers requesting Web sites by their domain names.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Test all the things: IPv6, HTTP/2, SHA-2

CloudFlare constantly tries to stay on the leading edge of Internet technologies so that our customers' web sites use the latest, fastest, most secure protocols. For example, in the past we've enabled IPv6 and SPDY/3.1.

Today we've switched on a test server that is open for people to test compatibility of web clients. It's a mirror of this blog and is served from https://http2.cloudflare.com/. The server uses three technologies that it may be helpful to test with: IPv4/IPv6, HTTP/2 and an SSL certificate that uses SHA-2 for its signature.

The server has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

$ dig +short http2.cloudflare.com A
45.55.83.207  
$ dig +short http2.cloudflare.com AAAA
2604:a880:800:10:5ca1:ab1e:f4:e001

The certificate is based on SHA-2 (in this case SHA-256). This is important because SHA-1 is being deprecated by some browsers very soon. On a recent browser the connection will also be secured using ECDHE (for forward secrecy).

And, finally, the server uses HTTP/2 if the browser is capable. For example, in Google Chrome, with the HTTP/2 and SPDY indicator extension the blue lightning bolt indicates that the page was served using HTTP/2:

This server isn't on the normal CloudFlare Continue reading

Private and Public Clouds, and the Mistakes You Can Make

A few days ago I had a nice chat with Christoph Jaggi about private and public clouds, and the mistakes you can make when building a private cloud – the topics we’ll be discussing in the Designing Infrastructure for Private Clouds workshop @ Data Center Day in Berne in mid-September.

The German version of our talk has been published on Inside-IT; those of you not fluent in German will find the English version below.

Read more ...

Verizon to introduce SDN security feature later this month

Verizon will introduce a virtualized firewall service across its global network later this month, part of its move into software-defined networking.The aim is to help businesses such as manufacturers or retailers, who may be running networks in far-flung places, to have better security when connecting their applications to the corporate network, said Shawn Hakl, head of network platforms and managed services for Verizon Enterprise Solutions.The type of organizations Verizon is aiming to attract are those running a Layer 3 private network who may want a better and more reliable connection for people using mobile apps.Mobile users will connect to whatever network is available and then onto Verizon's private network, Hakl said. Applications can securely connect, and the traffic can be put through the usual security inspections before it goes into the corporate network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware pitches network virtualization for better security

VMware is making a case that network virtualization can improve security in the enterprise.VMware, one of the biggest proponents of virtualizing the entire data center, says CIOs concerned about protecting their IT infrastructures from attackers should look at virtual networking, which has been around a while but isn't as popular as server virtualization."The security industry is messy and complicated, and we spend the bulk of our dollars on products that don't really solve the problem. It simply isn't working," said Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO, in a keynote talk at the VMworld conference in San Francisco.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft and VMware cozy up, forgoing past rivalry

Microsoft's new, more collaborative approach to the computing industry was on display at VMware's annual conference in San Francisco Tuesday, when executives from both companies shared the stage to talk about new device management features in Windows 10.As VMware Executive Vice President Sanjay Poonen explained, VMware and Microsoft, historically fierce rivals, have been working together more closely under the leadership of Satya Nadella. That work has now borne fruit in the form of Project A2, a new service that brings together VMware's AirWatch device management service and its App Volumes application delivery technology. Using Project A2, Windows 10 users can log in to their corporate account, get their device set up for use with a company's resources and then get all the applications they need provided straight from IT. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMworld 2015 Day 2 Keynote Liveblog

The day 2 keynote kicks off with another Cloud Academy presentation… After the video wraps up, Sanjay Poonen takes the stage. Poonen briefly recaps yesterday’s messaging, and then moves into the focus of today’s keynote—focusing on the “any application and any device” part of the “Ready for Any” messaging.

According to Poonen, the core of the solution for “any application on any device” is VMware’s Workspace Suite. Workspace Suite creates the magic of “enterprise computing with consumer simplicity.” How? It starts by building upon the core of virtualized infrastructure, made possibe by VMware’s compute, storage, and network virtualization solutions. Combined with a strong management layer and hybrid cloud solutions, this becomes the software-defined data center (SDDC). Somehow, though, this stuff needs to be connected to the end users—via desktop, mobile, content collaboration, and tying it all together with identity management. Poonen points to innovation in all of these areas.

Obviously, mobile is a category that is growing very rapidly, and Poonen talks about VMware’s movement in this space via the AirWatch acquisition. And the use of mobile devices is also key to VMware’s identity efforts as well. Poonen shows a video with a few customer testimonials, and then introduces Continue reading

Shadow BYOD runs rampant in federal government

Government CIOs have been struggling mightily with developing prudent policies to enable employees to use their personal mobile devices for work without putting sensitive information at risk or otherwise compromising the security of agency systems.[ All About BYOD: Strategies, Resources, News and More ]As it turns out, many federal employees haven't been waiting for those policies to take effect before introducing their devices into the workplace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

6 disaster recovery do’s and don’ts from Hurricane Katrina survivors

Ten years ago, the Gulf Coast was completely devastated by Hurricane Katrina, leaving thousands of businesses in New Orleans and the surrounding area under water and without power for weeks.But while most disasters — natural or otherwise — can’t compare with the magnitude of Katrina, there were some hard lessons learned that could help organizations be better prepared for the next catastrophe.IT leaders in New Orleans and nearby cities share how they maintained or resumed business operations in the wake of Katrina and what the experience taught them. Here are their disaster recovery do’s and don’ts — sage words of wisdom from the trenches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Simple Helix chooses CloudFlare to ignite white-hot Magento performance

Today’s guest blogger is George Cagle. George is a system administrator at Simple Helix, a CloudFlare partner.

Some months ago, we made a big bet on partnering with CloudFlare for performance improvements and website security for our Magento hosting customers. Customer experience is core to our business and relying on another company is a major deal. CloudFlare is now included in Default–On mode for select Simple Helix hosting plans and can be added to any existing plan. The results have been great and we wanted to share a couple successes with the rest of the CloudFlare community.

Testing the waters

The first thing one notices after melding their site with the worldwide CloudFlare CDN network is just how fast a website becomes. In Simple Helix’s testing, we found that proper CloudFlare implementation can yield 100% speed increases, and an even faster 143% speed increase when paired with the Railgun™ web optimizer for dynamic content.

Adding CloudFlare will certainly improve performance, but it can also significantly improve security through the Web Application Firewall feature. The security benefits of having the CloudFlare service can be seen after just the first few days of adoption as outlined below:

 Total number of threats mitigated Continue reading

1 … 3,347 3,348 3,349 3,350 3,351 … 3,853