VMware on Oracle Cloud: What You Need to Know

Oracle’s announcement of its new VMware hybrid cloud partnership last month is all about control. Oracle wants to make it dead simple to move your VMware workloads to its cloud. It also wants to give you the ability to control where your data resides, if you happen to be a company concerned about data sovereignty, for example. At the end of the day, it now offers a fully VMware Cloud Foundation-certified solution in the Oracle Cloud. This should appeal to existing Oracle customers looking at consolidating their cloud billing. You can add this service to an existing Oracle account and take advantage of its universal credit pricing. Will it save you money over Amazon or Microsoft? Possibly, but not necessarily. All the cloud vendors have published pricing and then also negotiated pricing, for large customers. In the end, it will depend on your specific compute and storage needs.

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Backup and Disaster Recovery

Veeam Announces Backup-as-a-Service for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure

Business Wire | October 05, 2023

Veeam® Software, the leader in Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery, announced two new offerings which combine the confidence and reliability of Veeam’s backup and restore capabilities with the ease-of-use of Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS). Cirrus by Veeam, which is available today for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure customers, provides a simple, flexible, reliable and powerful BaaS offering. It gives companies the option of simplifying the management and administration of their backup operations with all the resiliency of Veeam technology. Veeam will launch a new, enhanced version of the BaaS offering in Q1 2024, available through Veeam service providers, the Microsoft Azure marketplace, and Veeam’s online store. "450,000 customers trust Veeam to protect their business and keep it running, which has led us to become the #1 global provider of data protection and ransomware recovery," said Danny Allan, CTO at Veeam. "We're now giving customers those trusted capabilities - for Microsoft 365 and for Microsoft Azure - delivered as a service. Through this new BaaS offering, customers have increased flexibility in how they wish to use Veeam to protect their business, whether in the cloud, on-premises or in a hybrid model." Cirrus by Veeam was acquired from CT4 who developed the cloud-native service utilizing Veeam’s industry-leading data backup and ransomware recovery platform. Customers can now choose from several options in how they wish to utilize Veeam and manage their Microsoft 365 and Azure data New Cirrus by Veeam: Delivers a simple, seamless SaaS experience, without having to manage the infrastructure or storage. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 and Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure: Deploy Veeam’s existing software solutions for Microsoft 365 and Azure data protection and manage the infrastructure. A backup service from a Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partner: Built on top of the Veeam platform, with value-added services unique to the provider’s area of expertise. Cirrus Cloud Protect for Microsoft 365 Cirrus for Microsoft 365 builds on the industry's leading Microsoft 365 backup solution – Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 – and delivers it as a service. It simplifies a customer’s backup strategy with software, infrastructure, and unlimited storage in an all-in-one cloud service, allowing organizations to leverage powerful data protection and security technology with a simple, seamless user experience. Trusted, reliable technology: Customizable backup, flexible recovery options and powerful search capabilities. All-inclusive backup service: Simplifies Microsoft 365 backup by providing everything a customer needs, bundled together at one price. Modern, secure and intuitive: Keeps business-critical data protected with built-in immutability; no software to download or infrastructure to maintain. Cirrus Cloud Protect for Microsoft Azure Data on Microsoft Azure is exposed to the same cyber threats and data loss as anywhere else, and it’s the owner’s responsibility to protect it. Cirrus Cloud Protect for Microsoft Azure is a fully hosted and pre-configured solution that delivers proven, resilient backup and recovery. Quick ROI: Speed time to value by removing blockers like implementation, patching and remediating misconfigurations. Enterprise-readiness: Leverage backup, security and FinOps best practices in a service built for Azure Well-Architected Framework. Confident recoverability: Comprehensive, native protection with the most customizable RPOs and recovery to any location. About Veeam Software Veeam®, the #1 global provider of Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery, provides organizations with resiliency through data security, data recovery and data freedom for their hybrid cloud. The Veeam Data Platform delivers a single solution for Cloud, Virtual, Physical, SaaS and Kubernetes environments that give businesses peace of mind their apps and data are protected and always available so that they can keep their businesses running.

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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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VPN

Automox Announces Immediate and Secure Actions at Scale to Keep IT Fast and Compliant

globenewswire | September 21, 2023

Automox, the leader in AI-powered IT automation, is proud to announce two new capabilities, FixNow and PowerShell Signing. Combined, these new features further extend Automox’s industry-leading automation, speed, and security to enable organizations to act immediately to enforce and audit configuration, remediate vulnerabilities, install or remove software, query devices, and more. According to a 2019 IT Outage Impact Study, human error was the #1 cause of IT outages in the United States and Canada, and the #3 cause globally. Using FixNow for immediate testing and validation enables IT professionals to confidently automate configuration changes at scale and to minimize the potential for human error. FixNow runs Automox WorkletsTM immediately at scale across IT environments without a VPN or servers. With a catalog of over 300 automations that span Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, FixNow runs securely in real-time on the devices you choose. Early-access Automox customers are already confirming the value of FixNow. Matthew Rehm, Director of Information Systems at Methodist Theological School in Ohio said, “[FixNow] made updating some machines so much easier than having to schedule.” And David Thomson, IT Manager, St Andrew's First Aid in the UK said, “I use FixNow when evaluating new Worklets. The capability to execute instantly allows me to see instant results without cluttering up my existing policies.” “The value of immediate and secure action at scale cannot be overstated. We know time is of the essence, and FixNow lets our users remediate fast,” said Tim Lucas, CEO of Automox. “FixNow is the fastest and most secure way to audit and fix hundreds or even thousands of devices immediately.” According to a 2020 study by Cisco, PowerShell accounted for more than 33% of critical threats detected on endpoints. Automox PowerShell Signing will ensure script integrity and adherence to security best practices by enabling remote or all script signing to further reduce potential attack surfaces. Whether you automate or immediately execute PowerShell with FixNow, tasks like configuration, software deployment, and patching will be signed. To ensure the integrity of scripts from Automox and enable IT teams to adhere to security best practices, all PowerShell commands and automations will be self-signed by Automox. Once enabled, organizations can enhance their security posture by disallowing unsigned and potentially malicious PowerShell from running in their environment. “All Automox customers will be able to opt-in to sign every PowerShell command sent through Automox, so they can be confident that critical endpoint management tasks like configuration updates were unchanged in transit to managed devices,” said Jason Kikta, Automox CISO. “This is a major advance in security for IT teams. Dual-use and fileless PowerShell scripts comprise nearly half of the critical security threats on endpoints.” FixNow is available to Automox customers today as a free preview, Secure Signing will be made available to all Automox customers shortly. About Automox Automox is the IT automation platform for modern organizations. It makes it easy to keep Windows, macOS, and Linux endpoints patched, configured, controlled, and secured – without servers or VPNs. Using AI-powered automation, IT professionals can fix critical vulnerabilities faster, slash cost and complexity, and win back hours in their days. Join thousands of companies transforming IT operations into a strategic business driver with Automox.

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