Cloud Computing & Virtualization: Counterpart in Information Technology

August 7, 2015 Stewart Parkin

Virtualization has some basic characteristics which help organizations to reduce hardware investment, operating cost, maintenance charges, and consumption of energy. It improves performance of system, as well as capability to recover data in disaster. Virtualization plays an important role in the growth of cloud computing.

Abstraction is important for cloud computing; therefore, virtualization separates applications as well as operating system from underlying machines. Decoupled procedure makes them able to travel across clusters, data centers, and servers. Side by side, virtualization brings together memory, resources and storage into particular virtual environment, and makes it easy to share applications and computing capacity through cloud.

Infrastructure Management
As far as cloud computing is concerned, it is linked with notable features. Some of familiar characteristics are as follows:

Scalability
Automation
IT Management
Agility
On-demand Delivery

Virtualization is recognized as primary source to help with the growth of cloud computing. On the other hand, the cloud offers a variety of benefits to virtual environment. When resources are librated and organized in virtual settings, they are dispersed and provisioned as needed. The cloud offers on-demand access, automated delivery and flexibility to particular resources and accommodates growth requirements. As a result, complexity and cost are reduced; and resources can be best utilized and extra attention can be directed towards business operations.

Growth of Non-Virtual Clouds
It is a fact that the cloud does not need virtualization to flourish; however, pairing of these two help in harvesting maximum benefits easily. It is the basic reason why the cloud platform is assisted through hypervisors like Hyper-V, as well as VMware Sphere. Moreover, there are a variety of technologies which are targeting to authorize the cloud to grow without assistance of virtualization any more.

Open source community has presented CoreOS as simple and easy to use operating system. It is based on Linux Kernel, which is familiar to may around the world. Services which are not important are stripped and Linux allocation makes use of particular containers to deliver security, performance and dependability advantages of virtual machines by using similar abstraction parts for which virtualization is renowned for. There is no use of hypervisor to get maximum advantage. Conversely, CoreOS assures nominal performance operating cost, as well as capability to strap up the cloud power by utilizing a few machines only.

One more open source alternative is Docker. It is best for those who are concerned to tap into cloud with no virtualization hassle. It is a particular type of tool, planned to containerize applications in an environment (Linux) without the need to virtualize the whole operating system. Cloud deployment is given power from Docker to enable the delivery of processes, tasks and application easy across a single physical machine or group of virtual machines. It works flawlessly with system CoreOS and improves the efficiency, speed and flexibility of available containers, as well as their significant applications.

If your organization is getting benefit from virtual environment, it means you have taken initiative for an infrastructure (cloud based) for an easy conversion. Though virtualization administration come with their own challenges, technologies such as CoreOS and Docker can be adopted as alternatives.

Characteristics of Advanced Data Archiving Software

August 5, 2015 Kris Price

Data archiving is a specific process to transfer data to a storage device for future use. Unlike backups, data archives do not contain copies of actual data. Before selecting archiving software, there are many useful features to consider. Data archives are based on older, but important data that can be retained for compliance. Searchability is bare-bone feature that helps in providing useful solution for data archiving. To get significant search functionality, data archiving software have particular attributes:

Granularity
In order to carry on searches, granularity plays an important role. It is an indispensable capability which is necessary to perform e-discovery process. As bulk of data is examined at this stage to get important information, software must have competence to carry on searches on following basis:

Data Sources: Through search, access end results from which file server, such as Microsoft SharePoint, financial apps
Data Type: Microsoft Office document, PDF, email and many other files
Important Data: Files such as social security numbers, bank account number and credit card numbers
Author of Document: Search by author of file

Storage Optimization
Another significant feature, other than granularity, is known as Storage Optimization. When this feature is selected, it helps in reducing the amount of data, as well as access data in seamless way. Storage Optimization feature gives benefits in form of reducing operating costs and capital. It helps in improving information governance, access to data for analysis and reporting and lower risk.

It seems absurd to find a lot of copies of same data in search results. To cope with this situation, deduplication engine (available in archiving software) is used that works all the way to avoid such situations. Through compliance, effective policies are developed for keeping data in archives for a specific time period. Archiving is best for certain type of data that is required to be backed up, but will not be accessed frequently.

Flexibility
Third most important feature of archiving software is flexibility to support maximum data platforms and popular applications. Some software offer facility to archive data from social networking sites like organization content on Twitter or Facebook.

Additionally, wide range of sources, writing capabilities and data targets should be handled properly for extraction. An organization cannot afford to follow limited tracks, such as tape archives, when unlimited and affordable archival alternatives are offered to them. Wide-ranging media is supported to extract archived data. Furthermore, extracted data can be written to DVD, tape, Blu-ray and many other mediums.

In a nutshell, best software for data archiving require more features, such as automation and compliance regulation to assist users in managing data. Once you confirm what type of data is important for future use and how long you need to store that data in the archives, organization can get maximum benefit from archiving software.

Malware: One of the Common Reasons of IT Disaster

August 3, 2015 Rob Mackle

There are different types of IT disasters. One of the reasons of downtime is substandard system strategies to defend against malicious software, which is widely known with its abbreviated word malware. It is designed to attack computer systems. Users are usually unaware of malware in their system. If effective strategies for data protection are not used, business discontinuity and data loss can result.

Initially, malware was just a gag and a risk-free prank; however, it changed into serious threats with the beginning of online banking, e-commerce, and the Internet. Malware are developed to achieve specific goals. For instance, key logger malware is just like a spyware that keeps the record of key strokes to get an idea of password, username and off the record information.

Malware Statistics
It is not possible to define how many times malware occurs. A security expert has exposed through an AV-Test report* that uncovering of malware is increased more than 72 percent in one year. Through this report, it is noted 390,000 malware are registered each and every day.**

Some of the malware have gained worldwide popularity, due to certain goals and functions. Trojan is considered as common malware that attacks on data security system. Appearance of Trojan is appealing and useful just like mythical Trojan horse. In reality, it is infectious trespasser that gives way to other threats to enter in the system.

Causes of Malware
There are many causes which give way to malicious software but most common of them is user blunders. Some of the causes are as follows:

Email Attachment – When email system is manipulated, viruses get way to spread quickly. Once malevolent attachment is opened by a user, it damages the system, and forwards to all in contact list. If data protection system is not enabled, such threats will spoil your business reputation.

Infected Websites – Another source of malware is friendly looking website. When such websites are clicked, thousands of ads on system screen pop up.

Outmoded Software – Usually users ignore software update request at regular intervals. For invincible data security system, it is obligatory to use patched software. Old software is more prone to security threats and susceptibility. Malware developers focus on un-patched software to get some way to exploit system. When industry compliance is involved, the cost of un-patched software can be a staggering amount.

Sharing of Files – Sharing of files is one of the great threats to secured data. Unchained right of entry is given to malware, which often results in identity theft, fraud and sluggish network.

Precautionary Measures

Update your Software – Enhance the security features of your system by continually updating software. Always use some security based software to fix such issues.

Do not Open Email Attachments – For data security, do not ever try to open an attachment when you do not know the sender. In case, the person is in your contact list, always confirm from the sender before opening the attachment.

Careful Web Surfing – Do not click on each link which has some shady news.

Malware is an alarming threat for small, medium, and large enterprise companies. When data protection features are updated and users are trained how to work online, data can be prevented from security threats.

* — http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/pc-malware-rise-warn-security-firms/

** — https://www.av-test.org/en/statistics/malware/