Cloud computing and flash-based storage, two fast-emerging IT technologies, are driving each other forward as users of Internet-based services like social networks demand near-real-time access to ever-growing amounts of data.
Executives at Web-based companies like MySpace Inc. and Facebook Inc. are calling flash storage technologies vital to the future of businesses like theirs, which must deliver data to thousands of users simultaneously.
"In the last 20 years, spinning disk really hasn't gone any faster, and right now we're really on the cusp of a change with flash technologies," said Richard Buckingham, MySpace's (NWS) vice president of technical operations, speaking at The GigaOM Network's Structure 09 conference in San Francisco earlier this summer.
At the same conference, Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, predicted that "flash is going to have a very, very significant effect on not just storage, but infrastructure as a whole. I think it's going to have at least as significant an impact as going from single-core to multicore CPUs."
Flash storage is faster than hard disk drives because it doesn't need to spin a disk to get to a particular bit of data. With flash technologies like solid-state disk drives (SSD) and PCI Express flash cards, it's possible to read data anywhere in a storage device in less than a millisecond, compared with several milliseconds on a traditional hard disk drive. SSD and flash storage systems also take up less space and use less power than spinning disks.
The data centers of cloud-based companies are so big that all of those benefits really matter, said Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.
Although corporate IT shops could also take advantage of the performance gains, the high cost of flash technology will likely continue to blunt its progress in enterprise IT, according to analysts. IDC estimates that SSD storage costs as much as 25 times more than spinning disks on a per-gigabyte basis, said Jeff Janukowicz, an analyst at the Framingham, Mass.-based IT research firm.
Showing posts with label server news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label server news. Show all posts
Friday, August 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Cisco Into Server Computer Market
On Monday, Cisco ended months of speculation by revealing its first server computer at the company’s headquarters here. The product encroaches on the turf of Cisco’s traditional partners like Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M. and Dell, which have sold billions of dollars of computers over the years that flank Cisco’s core networking hardware, routers and switches. But John T. Chambers, the chief executive at Cisco, insisted the time was right for the company to turn more aggressive.
“What we are really talking about here is catching the next market evolution,” Mr. Chambers said, during a news conference.
Mr. Chambers said the rise of virtualization software has created the need for new types of server computers. Virtualization software, made popular by VMware, lets businesses run more software applications on each physical server, helping them save on capital costs.
Virtualization also muddies the boundaries between servers, storage systems and networking equipment, which must now deal with more fluid virtual applications rather than dedicated software.
With its Unified Computing System, Cisco bundles server, storage and networking systems in a single product. Cisco says it can run hundreds of virtual servers on a single machine.
Analysts said the product is the biggest strategic shift in the server market to occur in years. “This is definitely a transformative play,” said James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, who attended the Cisco news conference. “This is war and a direct frontal assault on I.B.M. and H.P.”
While servers are far less profitable than networking equipment, Cisco has worked with software makers like VMware and BMC to sell software and hardware together in order to command some of the highest profit margins in the server industry.
Source: nytimes
“What we are really talking about here is catching the next market evolution,” Mr. Chambers said, during a news conference.
Mr. Chambers said the rise of virtualization software has created the need for new types of server computers. Virtualization software, made popular by VMware, lets businesses run more software applications on each physical server, helping them save on capital costs.
Virtualization also muddies the boundaries between servers, storage systems and networking equipment, which must now deal with more fluid virtual applications rather than dedicated software.
With its Unified Computing System, Cisco bundles server, storage and networking systems in a single product. Cisco says it can run hundreds of virtual servers on a single machine.
Analysts said the product is the biggest strategic shift in the server market to occur in years. “This is definitely a transformative play,” said James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, who attended the Cisco news conference. “This is war and a direct frontal assault on I.B.M. and H.P.”
While servers are far less profitable than networking equipment, Cisco has worked with software makers like VMware and BMC to sell software and hardware together in order to command some of the highest profit margins in the server industry.
Source: nytimes
Friday, December 19, 2008
New Security Issues Raised by Server Virtualization
Many organizations are relying on the IT policies, processes and toolsets established in the “pre-virtual” datacenter to manage and protect virtual servers, which makes sense. However, virtualized environments do face the same operational threats and risks as traditional servers. But, there are also some specific server security implications that must be considered.
New Operating System
The virtualization layer, is effectively another operating system in the data center – the first in a long time that brings configuration and patching issues.
The good news is that hypervisors tend to carry a much smaller footprint than a traditional operating system with a correspondingly lower potential for security holes. And you will not find a hypervisor surfing the Internet and downloading code. But at the same time it is still relatively immature product, and vulnerabilities are continually found. These vulnerabilities are usually quickly fixed, but should be monitored and tracked.
The maturity of hypervisor technology also shows in its vetting and certificating infrastructure. Plug-ins and add-ons, for the most part, do not go through the testing and certification processes that we see on standard OS’s which can be problematic.
New Target in the Datacenter
Given its access to multiple Virtual Machines (VMs), the hypervisor is an obvious target for attackers, which if compromised could potentially provide access to a range of servers rather than a single “physical” server. And, you only have to look at the buzz coming out of the Black Hat conferences to understand how much of a target the hypervisor represents.
Intrahost threats
A successful guest breakout, would result in an attacker gain access to all traffic from the virtual machines. This was an attack in a lab, but you can bet these researchers are not the only ones in this race.
Referred to as “Hyperjacking”, an attack like this would lead to a compromised platform, allowing full access to all hosted guests. Malicious software could also disguise its presence from traditional security tools that reside in software layers above the hypervisor.
While from a pragmatic point of view, we have not yet heard of a working prototype or found a virus in the wild that attacks the hypervisor yet; - the writing is on the wall and it is only a matter of time before we do.
Existing Security Tools
The traffic inside the host effectively occurs on a “private LAN”, meaning that traditional network server security tools cannot see it, making it impossible to inspect or protect traffic inside this “dead zone.”
Also, many types of security and monitoring tools need to know what they are protecting and where it is in order to be effective - the mobility of VMS can be problematic here.
Other security technologies like IDS, IPS, Data Leak Prevention and Malware Prevention also can be impacted. The constant change enabled by virtualization can place dynamic demands on any “static” types of security solutions, in even small virtualized infrastructures.
Increased Risk of Sprawl
With virtualization we are now dealing with environments where traditional control systems and processes does not work very well, where IT staff is having to plug the gaps with manual process and tracking, and where new VMs can be deployed in minutes. This means a much higher risk of sprawl in the virtual world than in the physical.
In working with customers we have found that most organizations with reasonable control systems will still have around 30 percent of the VMs in their environment that are unnecessary or obsolete, but it takes an audit to figure out which ones and where they are.
Sprawl also increases complexity. Running more VMs in the environment than you need make it
* More difficult to spot the dangers
* More difficult to maintain configurations, and
* More difficult to troubleshoot
Source: itworld.com/virtualization/59445/new-security-issues-raised-server-virtualization
New Operating System
The virtualization layer, is effectively another operating system in the data center – the first in a long time that brings configuration and patching issues.
The good news is that hypervisors tend to carry a much smaller footprint than a traditional operating system with a correspondingly lower potential for security holes. And you will not find a hypervisor surfing the Internet and downloading code. But at the same time it is still relatively immature product, and vulnerabilities are continually found. These vulnerabilities are usually quickly fixed, but should be monitored and tracked.
The maturity of hypervisor technology also shows in its vetting and certificating infrastructure. Plug-ins and add-ons, for the most part, do not go through the testing and certification processes that we see on standard OS’s which can be problematic.
New Target in the Datacenter
Given its access to multiple Virtual Machines (VMs), the hypervisor is an obvious target for attackers, which if compromised could potentially provide access to a range of servers rather than a single “physical” server. And, you only have to look at the buzz coming out of the Black Hat conferences to understand how much of a target the hypervisor represents.
Intrahost threats
A successful guest breakout, would result in an attacker gain access to all traffic from the virtual machines. This was an attack in a lab, but you can bet these researchers are not the only ones in this race.
Referred to as “Hyperjacking”, an attack like this would lead to a compromised platform, allowing full access to all hosted guests. Malicious software could also disguise its presence from traditional security tools that reside in software layers above the hypervisor.
While from a pragmatic point of view, we have not yet heard of a working prototype or found a virus in the wild that attacks the hypervisor yet; - the writing is on the wall and it is only a matter of time before we do.
Existing Security Tools
The traffic inside the host effectively occurs on a “private LAN”, meaning that traditional network server security tools cannot see it, making it impossible to inspect or protect traffic inside this “dead zone.”
Also, many types of security and monitoring tools need to know what they are protecting and where it is in order to be effective - the mobility of VMS can be problematic here.
Other security technologies like IDS, IPS, Data Leak Prevention and Malware Prevention also can be impacted. The constant change enabled by virtualization can place dynamic demands on any “static” types of security solutions, in even small virtualized infrastructures.
Increased Risk of Sprawl
With virtualization we are now dealing with environments where traditional control systems and processes does not work very well, where IT staff is having to plug the gaps with manual process and tracking, and where new VMs can be deployed in minutes. This means a much higher risk of sprawl in the virtual world than in the physical.
In working with customers we have found that most organizations with reasonable control systems will still have around 30 percent of the VMs in their environment that are unnecessary or obsolete, but it takes an audit to figure out which ones and where they are.
Sprawl also increases complexity. Running more VMs in the environment than you need make it
* More difficult to spot the dangers
* More difficult to maintain configurations, and
* More difficult to troubleshoot
Source: itworld.com/virtualization/59445/new-security-issues-raised-server-virtualization
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