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Cisco to integrate ACI with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure in multi-cloud play

Cisco is outlining an architecture change that better reflects multi-cloud deployments as well as hybrid data center management. The company's vision revolves around a "data center anywhere" approach. The architecture rhymes with the multi-cloud approach that subsidiary AppDynamics pitched last week. According to Kentik, more enterprises are using multiple clouds and increasingly combining Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud along with their own infrastructure.That reality is why companies like Cisco, Dell, HPE, and IBM are increasingly working in cloud providers with their automation and data center platforms. Of those developments, the ACI move may have the broadest impact. By connecting ACI to the two largest cloud providers as well as Cisco's AppDynamics unit, the company is making a push to manage everything from containers to hypervisors to applications. Cisco calls the effort ACI Anywhere.

Spotlight

Cisco

Cisco was founded in 1984 by a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University. Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been leaders in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Today, with more than 71,000 employees worldwide, this tradition of innovation continues with industry-leading products and solutions in the company's core development areas of routing and switching, as well as in advanced technologies such as home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security, storage area networking, and wireless technology. In addition to its products, Cisco provides a broad range of service offerings, including technical support and advanced services.

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Virtual Desktop Tools

How to Start Small and Grow Big with Data Virtualization

Article | August 12, 2022

Why Should Companies Care about Data Virtualization? Data is everywhere. With each passing day, companies generate more data than ever before, and what exactly can they do with all this data? Is it just a matter of storing it? Or should they manage and integrate their data from the various sources? How can they store, manage, integrate and utilize their data to gain information that is of critical value to their business? As they say, knowledge is power, but knowledge without action is useless. This is where the Denodo Platform comes in. The Denodo Platform gives companies the flexibility to evolve their data strategies, migrate to the cloud, or logically unify their data warehouses and data lakes, without affecting business. This powerful platform offers a variety of subscription options that can benefit companies immensely. For example, companies often start out with individual projects using a Denodo Professional subscription, but in a short period of time they end up adding more and more data sources and move on to other Denodo subscriptions such as Denodo Enterprise or Denodo Enterprise Plus. The upgrade process is very easy to establish; in fact, it can be done in less than a day once the cloud marketplace is chosen (Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In as little as six weeks companies can realize real business benefits from managing and utilizing their data effectively. A Bridging Layer Data virtualization has been around for quite some time now. Denodo’s founders, Angel Viña and Alberto Pan, have been involved in data virtualization from as far back as the 1990’s. If you’re not familiar with data virtualization, here is a quick summary. Data virtualization is the cornerstone to a logical data architecture, whether it be a logical data warehouse, logical data fabric, data mesh, or even a data hub. All of these architectures are best served by our principals Combine (bring together all your data sources), Connect (into a logical single view) and Consume (through standard connectors to your favorite BI/data science tools or through our easy-to-use robust API’s). Data virtualization is the bridge that joins multiple data sources to fuel analytics. It is also the logical data layer that effectively integrates data silos across disparate systems, manages unified data for centralized security, and delivers it to business users in real time. Economic Benefits in Less Than 6 weeks with Data Virtualization? In a short duration, how can companies benefit from choosing data virtualization as a data management solution? To answer this question, below are some very interesting KPI’s discussed in the recently released Forrester study on the Total Economic Impact of Data Virtualization. For example, companies that have implemented data virtualization have seen an 83% increase in business user productivity. Mainly this is due to the business-centric way a data virtualization platform is delivered. When you implement data virtualization, you provide business users with an easy to access democratized interface to their data needs. The second KPI to note is a 67% reduction in development resources. With data virtualization, you connect to the data, you do not copy it. This means once it is set up, there is a significant reduction in the need for data integration engineers, as data remains in the source location and is not copied around the enterprise. Finally, companies are reporting a 65% improvement in data access speeds above and beyond more traditional approaches such as extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes. A Modern Solution for an Age-Old Problem To understand how data virtualization can help elevate projects to an enterprise level, we can share a few use cases in which companies have leveraged data virtualization to solve their business problems across several different industries. For example, in finance and banking we often see use cases in which data virtualization can be used as a unifying platform to help improve compliance and reporting. In retail, we see use cases including predictive analytics in supply chains as well as next and best actions from a unified view of the customer. There are many uses for data virtualization in a wider variety of situations, such as in healthcare and government agencies. Companies use the Denodo Platform to help data scientists understand key trends and activities, both sociologically as well as economically. In a nutshell, if data exists in more than one source, then the Denodo Platform acts as the unifying platform that connects, combines and allows users to consume the data in a timely, cost-effective manner.

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Virtual Desktop Strategies

Metasploitable: A Platform for Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing

Article | July 26, 2022

Contents 1. Overview 2. Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing 3. Metasploit Penetration Test 4. Why Choose Metasploit Framework for your Business? 5. Closing remarks 1. Overview Metasploitable refers to an intentionally vulnerable virtual machine that enables the learning and practice of Metasploit. Metasploit is one of the best penetration testing frameworks that helps businesses discover and shore up their systems' vulnerabilities before hackers exploit them. Security engineers use Metasploit as a penetration testing system and a development platform that allows the creation of security tools and exploits. Metasploit's various user interfaces, libraries, tools, and modules allow users to configure an exploit module, pair it with a payload, point it at a target, and launch it at the target system. In addition, Metasploit's extensive database houses hundreds of exploits and several payload options. 2. Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing An ethical hacker is one who works within a security framework and checks for bugs that a malicious hacker might use to exploit networks. They use their experience and skills to render the cyber environment. To protect the infrastructure from the threat that hackers pose, ethical hacking is essential. The main purpose of an ethical hacking service is to report and assess the safety of the targeted systems and networks for the owner. Ethical hacking is performed with penetration test techniques to evaluate security loopholes. There are many techniques used to hack information, such as – Information gathering Vulnerability scanning Exploitation Test analysis Ethical hacking involves automatic methods. The hacking process without automated software is inefficient and time-consuming. There are several tools and methods that can be used for ethical hacking and penetration testing. The Metasploit framework eases the effort to exploit vulnerabilities in networks, operating systems, and applications and generates new exploits for new or unknown vulnerabilities. 3. Metasploit Penetration Test Reconnaissance: Integrate Metasploit with various reconnaissance tools to find the vulnerable spot in the system. Threat Modeling and Vulnerability Identification: Once a weakness is identified, choose an exploit and payload for penetration. Exploitation: The payload gets executed at the target if the exploit, a tool used to take advantage of system weakness, is successful, and the user gets a shell for interacting with the payload (a shellcode is a small piece of code used as the payload).The most popular payload, a set of malicious codes to attack Windows systems, is Meterpreter, an in-memory-only interactive shell. (Meterpreter is a Metasploit attack payload that provides an interactive shell for the attacker to explore the target machine and execute code.)Other payloads are: Static payloads (it enables port forwarding and communications between networks) Dynamic payloads (to evade antivirus software, it allows testers to generate unique payloads) Command shell payloads (enables users to run scripts or commands against a host) Post-Exploitation: Metasploit offers various exploitation tools for privilege escalation, packet sniffing, keyloggers, screen capture, and pivoting tools once on the target machine. Resolution and Re-Testing: Users set up a persistent backdoor if the target machine gets rebooted. These available features in Metasploit make it easy to configure as per the user's requirements. 4. Why Choose Metasploit Framework for your Business? Significant advantages of the Metasploit Framework are discussed below: Open-source: Metasploit Framework is actively developed as open-source software, so most companies prefer this to grow their businesses. Easy usage: It is very easy to use, defining an easy-naming conversation with the commands. This also facilitates the building of an extensive penetration test of the network. GUI Environment: It mainly provides third-party instances that are friendly. These interfaces ease the penetration testing projects by providing the facilities with services such as button clicks, over-the-fly vulnerability management, and easy-to-shift workspaces, among others. Cleaner Exits: Metasploit can cleanly exit without detection, even if the target system does not restart after a penetration test. Additionally, it offers various options for maintaining persistent access to the target system. Easy Switching Between Payloads: Metasploit allows testers to change payloads with the 'setpayload' command easily. It offers flexibility for system penetration through shell-based access or meterpreter. 5. Closing remarks From DevSecOps experts to hackers, everyone uses the Ruby-based open-source framework Metasploit, which allows testing via command-line alterations or GUI. Metasploitable is a vulnerable virtual machine ideally used for ethical hacking and penetration testing, in VM security. One trend likely to impact the future of Metasploitable is the increasing use of cloud-based environments for testing and production. It is possible that Metasploitable could be adapted to work in cloud environments or that new tools will be developed specifically for cloud-based penetration testing. Another trend that may impact the future of Metasploitable is the growing importance of automation in security testing. Thus, Metasploitable could be adapted to include more automation features. The future of Metasploitable looks bright as it continues to be a valuable tool for security professionals and enthusiasts. As the security landscape continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how Metasploitable adapts to meet the community's changing needs.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

Why Are Businesses Tilting Towards VDI for Remote Employees?

Article | June 8, 2023

Although remote working or working from home became popular during the COVID era, did you know that the technology that gives the best user experience (UX) for remote work was developed more than three decades ago? Citrix was founded in 1989 as one of the first software businesses to provide the ability to execute any program on any device over any connection. In 2006, VMware coined the term "virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)" to designate their virtualization products. Many organizations created remote work arrangements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the phenomenon will continue even in 2022. Organizations have used a variety of methods to facilitate remote work over the years. For businesses, VDI has been one of the most effective, allowing businesses to centralize their IT resources and give users remote access to a consolidated pool of computing capacity. Reasons Why Businesses Should Use VDI for their Remote Employees? Companies can find it difficult to scale their operations and grow while operating remotely. VDI, on the other hand, can assist in enhancing these efforts by eliminating some of the downsides of remote work. Device Agnostic As long as employees have sufficient internet connectivity, virtual desktops can accompany them across the world. They can use a tablet, phone, laptop, client side, or Mac to access the virtual desktop. Reduced Support Costs Since VDI setups can often be handled by a smaller IT workforce than traditional PC settings, support expenses automatically go down. Enhanced Security Data security is raised since data never leaves the datacenter. There's no need to be concerned about every hard disk in every computer containing sensitive data. Nothing is stored on the end machine while using the VDI workspace. It also safeguards intellectual property while dealing with contractors, partners, or a worldwide workforce. Comply with Regulations With virtual desktops, organizational data never leaves the data center. Remote employees that have regulatory duties to preserve client/patient data like function because there is no risk of data leaking out from a lost or stolen laptop or retired PC. Enhanced User Experience With a solid user experience (UX), employees can work from anywhere. They can connect to all of their business applications and tools from anywhere they want to call your workplace, exactly like sitting at their office desk, and even answer the phone if they really want to. Closing Lines One of COVID-19's lessons has been to be prepared for almost anything. IT leaders were probably not planning their investments with a pandemic in mind. Irrespective of how the pandemic plays out in the future, the rise of remote work is here to stay. If VDI at scale is to become a permanent feature of business IT strategies, now is the moment to assess where, when, and how your organization can implement the appropriate solutions. Moreover, businesses that use VDI could find that the added flexibility extends their computing refresh cycles.

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Virtual Desktop Strategies

Network Virtualization: Gaining a Competitive Edge

Article | July 26, 2022

Network virtualization (NV) is the act of combining a network's physical hardware into a single virtual network. This is often accomplished by running several virtual guest computers in software containers on a single physical host system. Network virtualization is the gold standard for networking, and it is being adopted by enterprises of all kinds globally. By integrating their existing network gear into a single virtual network, enterprises can save operating expenses, automate network and security processes, and set the stage for future growth. Businesses can use virtualization to imitate many types of traditional hardware, including servers, storage devices, and network resources. Three Forces Driving Network Virtualization Demand for enterprise networks keeps rising, driven by higher end-user demands and the proliferation of devices and business software. Through network virtualization, IT businesses are gaining the ability to respond to evolving needs and match their networking capabilities with their virtualized storage and computing resources. According to a recent SDxCentral survey, 88% of respondents believe that adopting a network virtualization solution is "mission critical" and that it is necessary to assist IT in addressing the immediate requirements of flexibility, scalability, and cost savings (both OpEx and CapEx) in the data center. Speed Today, consider any business as an example. Everything depends on IT's capacity to assist business operations. When a company wants to 'surprise' its clients with a new app, launch a competitive offer, or pursue a fresh route to market, it requires immediate IT assistance. That implies IT must move considerably more swiftly, and networks must evolve at the rapid speed of a digitally enabled organization. Security According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, the average organization experiences two successful cyberattacks every week. Perimeter security is just insufficient to stem the flood, and network experts are called upon to provide a better solution. The new data center security approach will: Be software-based Use the micro-segmentation principle Adopt a Zero Trust (ZT) paradigm In an ideal world, there would be no difference between trustworthy and untrusted networks or sectors, but a ZT model necessitates a network virtualization technology that allows micro-segmentation. Flexibility Thanks to the emergence of server virtualization, applications are no longer linked to a specific physical server in a single location. Applications can now be replicated to eliminate a data center for disaster recovery, moved through one corporate data center to another, or slipped into a hybrid cloud environment. The problem is that network setup is hardware-dependent, and hardwired networking connections restrict them. Because networking services vary significantly from one data center to the next, as an in-house data center differs from a cloud, you must perform extensive personalization to make your applications work in different network environments—a significant barrier to app mobility and another compelling reason to utilize network virtualization. Closing Lines Network virtualization is indeed the future technology. These network virtualization platform characteristics benefit more companies as CIOs get more involved in organizational processes. As consumer demand for real-time solutions develops, businesses will be forced to explore network virtualization as the best way to take their networks to another level.

Read More
Virtual Desktop Tools

Evaluating the Impact of Application Virtualization

Article | August 12, 2022

Why Should Companies Care about Data Virtualization? Data is everywhere. With each passing day, companies generate more data than ever before, and what exactly can they do with all this data? Is it just a matter of storing it? Or should they manage and integrate their data from the various sources? How can they store, manage, integrate and utilize their data to gain information that is of critical value to their business? As they say, knowledge is power, but knowledge without action is useless. This is where the Denodo Platform comes in. The Denodo Platform gives companies the flexibility to evolve their data strategies, migrate to the cloud, or logically unify their data warehouses and data lakes, without affecting business. This powerful platform offers a variety of subscription options that can benefit companies immensely. For example, companies often start out with individual projects using a Denodo Professional subscription, but in a short period of time they end up adding more and more data sources and move on to other Denodo subscriptions such as Denodo Enterprise or Denodo Enterprise Plus. The upgrade process is very easy to establish; in fact, it can be done in less than a day once the cloud marketplace is chosen (Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In as little as six weeks companies can realize real business benefits from managing and utilizing their data effectively. A Bridging Layer Data virtualization has been around for quite some time now. Denodo’s founders, Angel Viña and Alberto Pan, have been involved in data virtualization from as far back as the 1990’s. If you’re not familiar with data virtualization, here is a quick summary. Data virtualization is the cornerstone to a logical data architecture, whether it be a logical data warehouse, logical data fabric, data mesh, or even a data hub. All of these architectures are best served by our principals Combine (bring together all your data sources), Connect (into a logical single view) and Consume (through standard connectors to your favorite BI/data science tools or through our easy-to-use robust API’s). Data virtualization is the bridge that joins multiple data sources to fuel analytics. It is also the logical data layer that effectively integrates data silos across disparate systems, manages unified data for centralized security, and delivers it to business users in real time. Economic Benefits in Less Than 6 weeks with Data Virtualization? In a short duration, how can companies benefit from choosing data virtualization as a data management solution? To answer this question, below are some very interesting KPI’s discussed in the recently released Forrester study on the Total Economic Impact of Data Virtualization. For example, companies that have implemented data virtualization have seen an 83% increase in business user productivity. Mainly this is due to the business-centric way a data virtualization platform is delivered. When you implement data virtualization, you provide business users with an easy to access democratized interface to their data needs. The second KPI to note is a 67% reduction in development resources. With data virtualization, you connect to the data, you do not copy it. This means once it is set up, there is a significant reduction in the need for data integration engineers, as data remains in the source location and is not copied around the enterprise. Finally, companies are reporting a 65% improvement in data access speeds above and beyond more traditional approaches such as extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes. A Modern Solution for an Age-Old Problem To understand how data virtualization can help elevate projects to an enterprise level, we can share a few use cases in which companies have leveraged data virtualization to solve their business problems across several different industries. For example, in finance and banking we often see use cases in which data virtualization can be used as a unifying platform to help improve compliance and reporting. In retail, we see use cases including predictive analytics in supply chains as well as next and best actions from a unified view of the customer. There are many uses for data virtualization in a wider variety of situations, such as in healthcare and government agencies. Companies use the Denodo Platform to help data scientists understand key trends and activities, both sociologically as well as economically. In a nutshell, if data exists in more than one source, then the Denodo Platform acts as the unifying platform that connects, combines and allows users to consume the data in a timely, cost-effective manner.

Read More
Virtual Desktop Strategies

Network Virtualization: Gaining a Competitive Edge

Article | July 26, 2022

Contents 1. Overview 2. Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing 3. Metasploit Penetration Test 4. Why Choose Metasploit Framework for your Business? 5. Closing remarks 1. Overview Metasploitable refers to an intentionally vulnerable virtual machine that enables the learning and practice of Metasploit. Metasploit is one of the best penetration testing frameworks that helps businesses discover and shore up their systems' vulnerabilities before hackers exploit them. Security engineers use Metasploit as a penetration testing system and a development platform that allows the creation of security tools and exploits. Metasploit's various user interfaces, libraries, tools, and modules allow users to configure an exploit module, pair it with a payload, point it at a target, and launch it at the target system. In addition, Metasploit's extensive database houses hundreds of exploits and several payload options. 2. Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing An ethical hacker is one who works within a security framework and checks for bugs that a malicious hacker might use to exploit networks. They use their experience and skills to render the cyber environment. To protect the infrastructure from the threat that hackers pose, ethical hacking is essential. The main purpose of an ethical hacking service is to report and assess the safety of the targeted systems and networks for the owner. Ethical hacking is performed with penetration test techniques to evaluate security loopholes. There are many techniques used to hack information, such as – Information gathering Vulnerability scanning Exploitation Test analysis Ethical hacking involves automatic methods. The hacking process without automated software is inefficient and time-consuming. There are several tools and methods that can be used for ethical hacking and penetration testing. The Metasploit framework eases the effort to exploit vulnerabilities in networks, operating systems, and applications and generates new exploits for new or unknown vulnerabilities. 3. Metasploit Penetration Test Reconnaissance: Integrate Metasploit with various reconnaissance tools to find the vulnerable spot in the system. Threat Modeling and Vulnerability Identification: Once a weakness is identified, choose an exploit and payload for penetration. Exploitation: The payload gets executed at the target if the exploit, a tool used to take advantage of system weakness, is successful, and the user gets a shell for interacting with the payload (a shellcode is a small piece of code used as the payload).The most popular payload, a set of malicious codes to attack Windows systems, is Meterpreter, an in-memory-only interactive shell. (Meterpreter is a Metasploit attack payload that provides an interactive shell for the attacker to explore the target machine and execute code.)Other payloads are: Static payloads (it enables port forwarding and communications between networks) Dynamic payloads (to evade antivirus software, it allows testers to generate unique payloads) Command shell payloads (enables users to run scripts or commands against a host) Post-Exploitation: Metasploit offers various exploitation tools for privilege escalation, packet sniffing, keyloggers, screen capture, and pivoting tools once on the target machine. Resolution and Re-Testing: Users set up a persistent backdoor if the target machine gets rebooted. These available features in Metasploit make it easy to configure as per the user's requirements. 4. Why Choose Metasploit Framework for your Business? Significant advantages of the Metasploit Framework are discussed below: Open-source: Metasploit Framework is actively developed as open-source software, so most companies prefer this to grow their businesses. Easy usage: It is very easy to use, defining an easy-naming conversation with the commands. This also facilitates the building of an extensive penetration test of the network. GUI Environment: It mainly provides third-party instances that are friendly. These interfaces ease the penetration testing projects by providing the facilities with services such as button clicks, over-the-fly vulnerability management, and easy-to-shift workspaces, among others. Cleaner Exits: Metasploit can cleanly exit without detection, even if the target system does not restart after a penetration test. Additionally, it offers various options for maintaining persistent access to the target system. Easy Switching Between Payloads: Metasploit allows testers to change payloads with the 'setpayload' command easily. It offers flexibility for system penetration through shell-based access or meterpreter. 5. Closing remarks From DevSecOps experts to hackers, everyone uses the Ruby-based open-source framework Metasploit, which allows testing via command-line alterations or GUI. Metasploitable is a vulnerable virtual machine ideally used for ethical hacking and penetration testing, in VM security. One trend likely to impact the future of Metasploitable is the increasing use of cloud-based environments for testing and production. It is possible that Metasploitable could be adapted to work in cloud environments or that new tools will be developed specifically for cloud-based penetration testing. Another trend that may impact the future of Metasploitable is the growing importance of automation in security testing. Thus, Metasploitable could be adapted to include more automation features. The future of Metasploitable looks bright as it continues to be a valuable tool for security professionals and enthusiasts. As the security landscape continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how Metasploitable adapts to meet the community's changing needs.

Read More
Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

Metasploitable: A Platform for Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing

Article | June 8, 2023

Although remote working or working from home became popular during the COVID era, did you know that the technology that gives the best user experience (UX) for remote work was developed more than three decades ago? Citrix was founded in 1989 as one of the first software businesses to provide the ability to execute any program on any device over any connection. In 2006, VMware coined the term "virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)" to designate their virtualization products. Many organizations created remote work arrangements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the phenomenon will continue even in 2022. Organizations have used a variety of methods to facilitate remote work over the years. For businesses, VDI has been one of the most effective, allowing businesses to centralize their IT resources and give users remote access to a consolidated pool of computing capacity. Reasons Why Businesses Should Use VDI for their Remote Employees? Companies can find it difficult to scale their operations and grow while operating remotely. VDI, on the other hand, can assist in enhancing these efforts by eliminating some of the downsides of remote work. Device Agnostic As long as employees have sufficient internet connectivity, virtual desktops can accompany them across the world. They can use a tablet, phone, laptop, client side, or Mac to access the virtual desktop. Reduced Support Costs Since VDI setups can often be handled by a smaller IT workforce than traditional PC settings, support expenses automatically go down. Enhanced Security Data security is raised since data never leaves the datacenter. There's no need to be concerned about every hard disk in every computer containing sensitive data. Nothing is stored on the end machine while using the VDI workspace. It also safeguards intellectual property while dealing with contractors, partners, or a worldwide workforce. Comply with Regulations With virtual desktops, organizational data never leaves the data center. Remote employees that have regulatory duties to preserve client/patient data like function because there is no risk of data leaking out from a lost or stolen laptop or retired PC. Enhanced User Experience With a solid user experience (UX), employees can work from anywhere. They can connect to all of their business applications and tools from anywhere they want to call your workplace, exactly like sitting at their office desk, and even answer the phone if they really want to. Closing Lines One of COVID-19's lessons has been to be prepared for almost anything. IT leaders were probably not planning their investments with a pandemic in mind. Irrespective of how the pandemic plays out in the future, the rise of remote work is here to stay. If VDI at scale is to become a permanent feature of business IT strategies, now is the moment to assess where, when, and how your organization can implement the appropriate solutions. Moreover, businesses that use VDI could find that the added flexibility extends their computing refresh cycles.

Read More
Virtual Desktop Strategies

Network Virtualization: Gaining a Competitive Edge

Article | July 26, 2022

Network virtualization (NV) is the act of combining a network's physical hardware into a single virtual network. This is often accomplished by running several virtual guest computers in software containers on a single physical host system. Network virtualization is the gold standard for networking, and it is being adopted by enterprises of all kinds globally. By integrating their existing network gear into a single virtual network, enterprises can save operating expenses, automate network and security processes, and set the stage for future growth. Businesses can use virtualization to imitate many types of traditional hardware, including servers, storage devices, and network resources. Three Forces Driving Network Virtualization Demand for enterprise networks keeps rising, driven by higher end-user demands and the proliferation of devices and business software. Through network virtualization, IT businesses are gaining the ability to respond to evolving needs and match their networking capabilities with their virtualized storage and computing resources. According to a recent SDxCentral survey, 88% of respondents believe that adopting a network virtualization solution is "mission critical" and that it is necessary to assist IT in addressing the immediate requirements of flexibility, scalability, and cost savings (both OpEx and CapEx) in the data center. Speed Today, consider any business as an example. Everything depends on IT's capacity to assist business operations. When a company wants to 'surprise' its clients with a new app, launch a competitive offer, or pursue a fresh route to market, it requires immediate IT assistance. That implies IT must move considerably more swiftly, and networks must evolve at the rapid speed of a digitally enabled organization. Security According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, the average organization experiences two successful cyberattacks every week. Perimeter security is just insufficient to stem the flood, and network experts are called upon to provide a better solution. The new data center security approach will: Be software-based Use the micro-segmentation principle Adopt a Zero Trust (ZT) paradigm In an ideal world, there would be no difference between trustworthy and untrusted networks or sectors, but a ZT model necessitates a network virtualization technology that allows micro-segmentation. Flexibility Thanks to the emergence of server virtualization, applications are no longer linked to a specific physical server in a single location. Applications can now be replicated to eliminate a data center for disaster recovery, moved through one corporate data center to another, or slipped into a hybrid cloud environment. The problem is that network setup is hardware-dependent, and hardwired networking connections restrict them. Because networking services vary significantly from one data center to the next, as an in-house data center differs from a cloud, you must perform extensive personalization to make your applications work in different network environments—a significant barrier to app mobility and another compelling reason to utilize network virtualization. Closing Lines Network virtualization is indeed the future technology. These network virtualization platform characteristics benefit more companies as CIOs get more involved in organizational processes. As consumer demand for real-time solutions develops, businesses will be forced to explore network virtualization as the best way to take their networks to another level.

Read More
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Spotlight

Cisco

Cisco was founded in 1984 by a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University. Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been leaders in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Today, with more than 71,000 employees worldwide, this tradition of innovation continues with industry-leading products and solutions in the company's core development areas of routing and switching, as well as in advanced technologies such as home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security, storage area networking, and wireless technology. In addition to its products, Cisco provides a broad range of service offerings, including technical support and advanced services.

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Virtualized Environments

VeriSilicon Unveils the New VC9800 IP for Next Generation Data Centers

Business Wire | January 09, 2024

VeriSilicon today unveiled its latest VC9800 series Video Processor Unit (VPU) IP with enhanced video processing performance to strengthen its presence in the data center applications. The newly launched series IP caters to the advanced requirements of next generation data centers including video transcoding servers, AI servers, virtual cloud desktops, and cloud gaming. The VC9800 series of VPU IP boasts high performance, high throughput, and server-level multi-stream encoding and decoding capabilities. It can handle up to 256 streams and support all mainstream video formats, including the new advanced format VVC. Through Rapid Look Ahead encoding, the VC9800 series IP improves video quality significantly with low memory footprint and encoding latency. With capable of supporting 8K encoding and decoding, it offers enhanced video post-processing and multi-channel encoding at various resolutions, thus achieves an efficient transcoding solution. The VC9800 series of VPU IP can seamlessly interface with Neural Network Processor (NPU) IP, enabling a complete AI-video pipeline. When combined with VeriSilicon’s Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) IP, the subsystem solution is able to deliver enhanced gaming experiences. In addition, the hardware virtualization, super resolution image enhancement, and AI-enabled encoding functions of this series IP also offer effective solutions for virtual cloud desktops. “VeriSilicon’s advanced video transcoding technology continues leading in Data Center domain. We are working closely with global leading customers to develop comprehensive video processing subsystem solutions to meet the requirements of the latest Data Centers,” said Wei-Jin Dai, Executive VP and GM of IP Division of VeriSilicon. “For AI computing, our video post-processing capabilities have been extended to smoothly interact with NPUs, ensuring OpenCV-level accuracy. We’ve also introduced super resolution technology to the video processing subsystem, elevating image quality and ultimately enhancing user experiences for cloud computing and smart display.” About VeriSilicon VeriSilicon is committed to providing customers with platform-based, all-around, one-stop custom silicon services and semiconductor IP licensing services leveraging its in-house semiconductor IP.

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Backup and Disaster Recovery

Minimize the Cost and Downtime of Disaster With Scale Computing's Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Planning Service

PR Newswire | October 25, 2023

Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced its Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Planning Service, designed to help organizations establish a comprehensive, regulated plan for responding to unforeseen downtime. The service provides Scale Computing customers and partners with the tools, guidance, and resources to create a playbook for data backup and recovery, enabling businesses to endure a disaster scenario with minimal loss. Scale Computing also recently announced that it is a finalist for the Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Project of the Year in the 2023 SDC Awards for its work with Austrian managed service provider GiGaNet and its long-time partner the Zillertaler Gletscherbahn group. Voting for the SDC Awards is open at sdcawards.com/vote until November 10th, 2023. Data breaches are one of the biggest and most costly contributors to downtime for businesses. In 2023, the average cost of a data breach globally reached an all-time high of $4.45 million, a 15.3% increase from 2020. Simultaneously, the average length of business disruption following a ransomware attack in the United States reached 24 days last year, up 60% from just two years prior — a significant increase when downtime costs exceed $300,000 per hour for over 90% of mid-sized and large enterprises. For more than half of those businesses, the hourly outage costs range from $1 million to over $5 million. Recovery from an outage adds additional expense from which many enterprises are unable to bounce back. "Disaster can strike at any time, and every organization needs a consistently regulated playbook for how the business will respond — from action plans to recovery plans for bringing online the mission-critical servers businesses depend on," said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder, Scale Computing. "Knowing what systems need to be protected, planning for the ability to recover them, and having a full action plan for recovery should be at the forefront of every IT department's agenda, at the beginning of any infrastructure addition. With Scale Computing Platform, the plan for disaster recovery starts before equipment is even put into production, so IT leaders have a plan in place from day one that they can enact to ensure their business stays up and running, with minimal loss, should disaster strike. Our Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Planning Service enables businesses to proactively classify systems based on their importance and implement a robust action plan, ensuring that our customers' and partners' critical systems are protected, validated, tested, and ready for recovery at any time." Whether a minor data loss or a business-wide shutdown, having a well-defined business continuity strategy is crucial to minimize financial impact, ensure continuous employee productivity, meet compliance and regulatory requirements, decrease liability obligations, reduce downtime, and minimize the risk of negative exposure. Scale Computing's BCDR Planning Service includes planning, deployment, documentation creation, and disaster recovery testing, covering every aspect to keep businesses prepared and resilient. The service is offered to Scale Computing Platform customers, which brings simplicity, high availability, and scalability together to replace existing infrastructure for running virtual machines with an easy-to-manage, fully integrated platform that allows organizations to run applications regardless of hardware requirements. About Scale Computing Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, Scale Computing Platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime, even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. Edge Computing is the fastest-growing area of IT infrastructure, and industry analysts have named Scale Computing an outperformer and leader in the space, including being named the #1 edge computing vendor by CRN. Scale Computing's products are sold by thousands of value-added resellers, integrators, and service providers worldwide.

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Server Virtualization, VMware

StorMagic Introduces Edge Control Software to Simplify SvSAN Monitoring and Management

Business Wire | October 18, 2023

StorMagic®, solving the world’s edge data problems, today announced the immediate availability of a new Software as a Service (SaaS) tool that allows users to easily monitor and manage all of their SvSAN clusters around the world. StorMagic Edge Control simplifies the process and tools required for day-to-day SvSAN cluster administration. SvSAN customers with multiple locations can significantly reduce the time spent managing their edge sites, whether they are using VMware, Microsoft or KVM hypervisors. “ESG research shows increasing demand for data storage at the edge which fuels an increased need for monitoring solutions that can help address the complexity of storage at the edge,” said Scott Sinclair, practice director at Enterprise Strategy Group. “SvSAN customers can greatly benefit by adding StorMagic Edge Control into their toolkits; the dashboard views and list formats will make centralized data management much easier and more accessible.” Edge Control delivers centralized administration for SvSAN environments of all sizes. Customers can now manage all SvSAN deployments in any location from a single pane of glass. Dashboard and system views provide a fast but comprehensive status of all of their virtual storage appliances (VSAs), allowing them to keep their environment up-to-date more easily and react faster as needed. “StorMagic customers of any size can now manage their entire SvSAN estate, whether it’s one site or thousands of sites around the world,” said Bruce Kornfeld, chief marketing and product officer, StorMagic. “Edge Control is particularly interesting for customers who are considering switching from VMware to Microsoft or Linux KVM because SvSAN and Edge Control are both hypervisor agnostic.” Pricing and Availability Edge Control version 1.0 is available today from StorMagic. SvSAN customers can download and begin using the software immediately, free of charge. About StorMagic StorMagic is solving the world’s edge data problems. We help organizations store, protect and use data at and from the edge. StorMagic’s solutions ensure data is always protected and available, no matter the type or location, to provide value anytime, anywhere. StorMagic’s storage and security products are flexible, robust, easy to use and cost-effective, without sacrificing enterprise-class features, for organizations with one to thousands of sites.

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Virtualized Environments

VeriSilicon Unveils the New VC9800 IP for Next Generation Data Centers

Business Wire | January 09, 2024

VeriSilicon today unveiled its latest VC9800 series Video Processor Unit (VPU) IP with enhanced video processing performance to strengthen its presence in the data center applications. The newly launched series IP caters to the advanced requirements of next generation data centers including video transcoding servers, AI servers, virtual cloud desktops, and cloud gaming. The VC9800 series of VPU IP boasts high performance, high throughput, and server-level multi-stream encoding and decoding capabilities. It can handle up to 256 streams and support all mainstream video formats, including the new advanced format VVC. Through Rapid Look Ahead encoding, the VC9800 series IP improves video quality significantly with low memory footprint and encoding latency. With capable of supporting 8K encoding and decoding, it offers enhanced video post-processing and multi-channel encoding at various resolutions, thus achieves an efficient transcoding solution. The VC9800 series of VPU IP can seamlessly interface with Neural Network Processor (NPU) IP, enabling a complete AI-video pipeline. When combined with VeriSilicon’s Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) IP, the subsystem solution is able to deliver enhanced gaming experiences. In addition, the hardware virtualization, super resolution image enhancement, and AI-enabled encoding functions of this series IP also offer effective solutions for virtual cloud desktops. “VeriSilicon’s advanced video transcoding technology continues leading in Data Center domain. We are working closely with global leading customers to develop comprehensive video processing subsystem solutions to meet the requirements of the latest Data Centers,” said Wei-Jin Dai, Executive VP and GM of IP Division of VeriSilicon. “For AI computing, our video post-processing capabilities have been extended to smoothly interact with NPUs, ensuring OpenCV-level accuracy. We’ve also introduced super resolution technology to the video processing subsystem, elevating image quality and ultimately enhancing user experiences for cloud computing and smart display.” About VeriSilicon VeriSilicon is committed to providing customers with platform-based, all-around, one-stop custom silicon services and semiconductor IP licensing services leveraging its in-house semiconductor IP.

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Backup and Disaster Recovery

Minimize the Cost and Downtime of Disaster With Scale Computing's Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Planning Service

PR Newswire | October 25, 2023

Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced its Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Planning Service, designed to help organizations establish a comprehensive, regulated plan for responding to unforeseen downtime. The service provides Scale Computing customers and partners with the tools, guidance, and resources to create a playbook for data backup and recovery, enabling businesses to endure a disaster scenario with minimal loss. Scale Computing also recently announced that it is a finalist for the Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Project of the Year in the 2023 SDC Awards for its work with Austrian managed service provider GiGaNet and its long-time partner the Zillertaler Gletscherbahn group. Voting for the SDC Awards is open at sdcawards.com/vote until November 10th, 2023. Data breaches are one of the biggest and most costly contributors to downtime for businesses. In 2023, the average cost of a data breach globally reached an all-time high of $4.45 million, a 15.3% increase from 2020. Simultaneously, the average length of business disruption following a ransomware attack in the United States reached 24 days last year, up 60% from just two years prior — a significant increase when downtime costs exceed $300,000 per hour for over 90% of mid-sized and large enterprises. For more than half of those businesses, the hourly outage costs range from $1 million to over $5 million. Recovery from an outage adds additional expense from which many enterprises are unable to bounce back. "Disaster can strike at any time, and every organization needs a consistently regulated playbook for how the business will respond — from action plans to recovery plans for bringing online the mission-critical servers businesses depend on," said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder, Scale Computing. "Knowing what systems need to be protected, planning for the ability to recover them, and having a full action plan for recovery should be at the forefront of every IT department's agenda, at the beginning of any infrastructure addition. With Scale Computing Platform, the plan for disaster recovery starts before equipment is even put into production, so IT leaders have a plan in place from day one that they can enact to ensure their business stays up and running, with minimal loss, should disaster strike. Our Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Planning Service enables businesses to proactively classify systems based on their importance and implement a robust action plan, ensuring that our customers' and partners' critical systems are protected, validated, tested, and ready for recovery at any time." Whether a minor data loss or a business-wide shutdown, having a well-defined business continuity strategy is crucial to minimize financial impact, ensure continuous employee productivity, meet compliance and regulatory requirements, decrease liability obligations, reduce downtime, and minimize the risk of negative exposure. Scale Computing's BCDR Planning Service includes planning, deployment, documentation creation, and disaster recovery testing, covering every aspect to keep businesses prepared and resilient. The service is offered to Scale Computing Platform customers, which brings simplicity, high availability, and scalability together to replace existing infrastructure for running virtual machines with an easy-to-manage, fully integrated platform that allows organizations to run applications regardless of hardware requirements. About Scale Computing Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, Scale Computing Platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime, even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. Edge Computing is the fastest-growing area of IT infrastructure, and industry analysts have named Scale Computing an outperformer and leader in the space, including being named the #1 edge computing vendor by CRN. Scale Computing's products are sold by thousands of value-added resellers, integrators, and service providers worldwide.

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Server Virtualization, VMware

StorMagic Introduces Edge Control Software to Simplify SvSAN Monitoring and Management

Business Wire | October 18, 2023

StorMagic®, solving the world’s edge data problems, today announced the immediate availability of a new Software as a Service (SaaS) tool that allows users to easily monitor and manage all of their SvSAN clusters around the world. StorMagic Edge Control simplifies the process and tools required for day-to-day SvSAN cluster administration. SvSAN customers with multiple locations can significantly reduce the time spent managing their edge sites, whether they are using VMware, Microsoft or KVM hypervisors. “ESG research shows increasing demand for data storage at the edge which fuels an increased need for monitoring solutions that can help address the complexity of storage at the edge,” said Scott Sinclair, practice director at Enterprise Strategy Group. “SvSAN customers can greatly benefit by adding StorMagic Edge Control into their toolkits; the dashboard views and list formats will make centralized data management much easier and more accessible.” Edge Control delivers centralized administration for SvSAN environments of all sizes. Customers can now manage all SvSAN deployments in any location from a single pane of glass. Dashboard and system views provide a fast but comprehensive status of all of their virtual storage appliances (VSAs), allowing them to keep their environment up-to-date more easily and react faster as needed. “StorMagic customers of any size can now manage their entire SvSAN estate, whether it’s one site or thousands of sites around the world,” said Bruce Kornfeld, chief marketing and product officer, StorMagic. “Edge Control is particularly interesting for customers who are considering switching from VMware to Microsoft or Linux KVM because SvSAN and Edge Control are both hypervisor agnostic.” Pricing and Availability Edge Control version 1.0 is available today from StorMagic. SvSAN customers can download and begin using the software immediately, free of charge. About StorMagic StorMagic is solving the world’s edge data problems. We help organizations store, protect and use data at and from the edge. StorMagic’s solutions ensure data is always protected and available, no matter the type or location, to provide value anytime, anywhere. StorMagic’s storage and security products are flexible, robust, easy to use and cost-effective, without sacrificing enterprise-class features, for organizations with one to thousands of sites.

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