Author: David

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Kevin Normandeau.

The modern IT environment is evolving to include better hardware, more virtualization technologies and now, cloud computing. One of the biggest barriers in moving towards a private cloud model are security and compliance concerns. Organizations are working to protect their cloud platforms as more data centers become distributed. There’s little argument that there are numerous benefits to a private cloud – but some challenges still exist. This white paper from Cisco takes a look at the private cloud computing model and how security plays a role. When looking at cloud characteristics, some of the topics covered include:

• On-demand self-service
• Resources pooling
• Rapid elasticity
• Measured services
• Broad network access…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Lucas Mearian.

Microsoft announced today that it will acquire cloud storage vendor StorSimple. The terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The move is designed to advance Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision and enable its customers to better leverage hybrid cloud computing, the two companies said.

StorSimple, which opened three and a half years ago and began shipping appliances this spring, is among a relatively new breed of companies to offer an appliance that stores data onsite while replicating or mirroring it to an offsite, public cloud storage provider. Among other companies selling cloud-connected appliances are Nasuni and TwinStrata…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Edwin Schouten.

One of the benefits of cloud computing is increased efficiency; services are rapidly deployed and ready for use in a matter of minutes versus the weeks or months it traditionally takes. But there is more to cloud computing than just getting your compute resources, storage capacity or application as a service within minutes. Based on personal experience with cloud consumers, here are the top five business benefits beyond efficiency.

Business agility

Getting the compute resources you need when you need them tends to shorten IT projects resulting in less FTE to deliver the project and a quicker and more predictive time-to-market. Being able to deliver results faster, cheaper and with more quality might just give your business a competitive edge and make her more nimble on her feet. I have seen a data analytics project being reduced from 4 months to just 3 weeks, reducing the projects time-to-market and overall cost significantly…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

NetApp has contributed Data ONTAP 8 Clustering drivers to OpenStack, giving service providers and enterprises better resources when building private and public clouds based on the platform, it said on Monday.

The addition of drivers for Data ONTAP 8 Clustering to OpenStack Folsom, the latest version of the open source cloud platform, allows organizations to automate management of NetApp storage pools, or clusters, and to scale the cloud infrastructure. That will in turn allow enterprises to increase storage efficiency and reduce disk and power needs, the company said…

Grazed from BizJournals. Author: Cromwell Schubarth.

Big Data analysis, mobile devices and cloud computing are being rapidly adopted by businesses, giving chief information officers big problems, according to a new study from Forrester Research and Juniper Networks. Juniper Chief Information Officer Bask Iyer wrote in a blog on Monday that networking demands are growing exponentially.

"We calculated data transmission in bytes and assessed the markets for our products in terms of thousands of customers," Iyer said. "Now we think about information in terabytes and speed in gigabytes. We are creating products to reach billions of customers."…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Software-defined networks and data centers are the future if enterprises want to manage their infrastructure with the agility of cloud computing providers, but they’re nowhere near ubiquity yet. However, according to two senior VMware executives, the pieces are in place and maturing every day.

When companies think about a move toward software-defined networks, they’re really thinking about how to build a “meta operating system” that brings intelligence to their applications. According to VMware CTO for Global Field and Customer Initiatives;Paul Strong, speaking Tuesday at our Structure: Europe conference in Amsterdam, we’re almost there, but the network is the final bottleneck that must be overcome in order to deliver true agility for applications…

Grazed from FCW. Author: John Moore.

Security concerns typically provide the chief source of rain for the cloud parade, as worries about data leakage and other cyber maladies have caused federal IT managers to think twice about cloud computing. Indeed, more than 50 percent of respondents to an 1105 Government Information Group survey declared that cloud solutions lack sufficient security.

The government is looking for ways to assuage that anxiety and spark cloud adoption because federal data center consolidation efforts — not to mention the Obama administration’s cloud-first policy — rely on the technology. Therefore, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) brings together officials from the General Services Administration, Department of Homeland Security and Defense Department, among others, to provide a standardized approach for determining the security of cloud-based services…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Jack Clark.

Storms lie ahead for HP, IBM, Dell and any other major original equipment maker, due to the rise in cloud computing, three chief technology officers have hinted. In a fireside chat on Tuesday at GigaOm Structure Europe in Amsterdam, Werner Vogels, Amazon’s chief technology officer, was asked how the transition to cloud computing could effect enterprise IT hardware vendors.

"From my point of view I think individual companies will be buying less and less hardware all the time," Vogels said. Along with these issues, Vogels said: "I think there will be less and less datacentres and we will be operating more and more of those." It was not clear whether Vogels meant Amazon or cloud computing companies as a whole when he said this, but either way in my opinion this shift threatens the large OEMs…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

As cloud computing continues to gain momentum, system administrators are looking for more ways to integrate with their cloud model. There are now more direct use cases for cloud computing, which require greater levels of customization. The ability to enhance the cloud experience and have cross-cloud compatibility has helped form the Cloud API (Application Programming Interface) environment. Now, administrators can integrate applications and other workloads into the cloud using these APIs.

But which model is the right one, and how can you incorporate an API into your cloud?…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Patrick Jobin.

Now that cloud computing is officially in the mainstream, we’re seeing a growing interest in data center energy consumption. Since electronic components are constantly becoming smaller and more powerful, data centers must now deal with the heat generated by having thousands of high-power processors tightly packed into a small space. And because cloud computing is based on virtualization, the overall utilization of this hardware is much higher than it would be in a “one box, one application” data center environment.

The problem of exponentially-growing power consumption becomes even more pronounced when you consider steadily dropping hardware prices. We’ll soon reach a point where the electricity required to power data centers is a greater financial burden than even the hardware and maintenance costs put together…