In most cases, smaller organizations don’t have the capital to build a complete I.T. infrastructure. They may be left without a plan to secure and back up their important data.  In addition, hiring full-time support is too costly, so they often rely on one or more of their more technical employees to handle desktop and server issues.

According to Fredrickson, “At first, Applied Services was going to serve the smaller business community by providing desktop and server support, as well as a selection of security options such as managed firewalls and antivirus .  The more we talked to business owners, the more we began to fully understand their requirements.  Not only do they need the daily support we initially planned to offer, but they are also concerned about protecting their important business data.  They want to recover data quickly if they mistakenly delete an important document or a disaster hits their office building.” 

In addition, Applied Communications started to talk to current customers about Applied Services.  Says Kristi Paul, President and CEO, “The more we discussed the potential offerings, the more the feedback pointed us towards a more extensive portfolio of services.  Some of our current customers shared that they were finding it difficult, in the current economy, to afford some of the innovative functionalities of virtualization. In addition, it is too costly to secure space and build an offsite infrastructure for disaster recovery.” 

In response to this important input, Applied Services decided to build a complete data center using the best of breed solutions that Applied Communications has offered its enterprise customers over the years.  Not only will Applied Services provide managed desktop, server and security services, but they will also offer Applied Services Virtual Private Server and Virtual Data Center.

For additional information:

Contact us!

Two of Applied Communications’ solution partners are tackling these new threats.

Lightening Fast UTM!

Long time partner, SonicWALL has introduced their “lightning-fast active/active UTM (unified threat management) approach.  UTM firewalls enhance the completeness of threat blocking capabilities to include Anti-Virus, IP Security, and more. An Application Firewall extends that protection beyond threats to the management and control of data and applications which pass through the network security appliance. This extended capability provides bandwidth management and control, application level access controls, data leakage control functionality, restrictions on the transfer of specific files and documents, and much more. The Application Firewall is available as part of gateway anti-virus, anti-spyware and intrusion prevention on all SonicWALL E-Class NSA, NSA and TZ 210 solutions.

Sonicwall and Gartner on next generation firewalls

It’s time to reinvent the firewall!!!

We are excited to introduce Palo Alto to our line of solutions.  Palo Alto Networks was founded by security visionary Nir Zuk, with a mission to re-invent the firewall so it can once again become the most strategically important security device in the network.  Today, Palo Alto Networks offers real innovation in the firewall, enabling unprecedented visibility and control of applications and content – by user, not just IP address – at up to 10Gbps with no performance degradation.  These next generation firewalls accurately identify applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or SSL encryption – and scan content to stop threats and prevent data leakage. Enterprises can for the first time embrace Web 2.0 and maintain complete visibility and control, while significantly reducing total cost of ownership through device consolidation.

Palo Alto Networks delivers the only next-generation firewall that provides policy-based visibility and control over applications users and threats.

• Run multiple operating systems on a single computer including Windows, Linux and more.
• Reduce capital costs by increasing energy efficiency and requiring less hardware and increasing your server to admin ratio.
• Ensure your enterprise applications perform with the highest availability and performance.
• Build up business continuity through improved disaster recovery solutions and deliver high availability throughout the datacenter.
• Improve enterprise desktop management & control with faster deployment of desktops and fewer support calls due to application conflicts.

However, with any move to virtualization, it is important to remember the rest of the network, as virtualization usually means migration to blade servers and increased density.

In a virtualized blade environment, each cabinet “virtually” becomes a mini-data center that needs to have its own power, cooling, and management plan.

Applications that run on top of your virtualized environment can add or take away the benefits received through virtualization. Improperly architected solutions can drain server memory, absorb I/O, and escalate management requirements.

When planning, expect virtualization to expand in the data center. Virtual I/O is the logical next step beyond shared storage and shared processors.  Virtualization  requires a lot of connectivity.  In fact, six to eight Ethernet connections per server are common, plus two Fibre Channel connections. The total costs, including switches and cabling, can be expensive.

However, I/O virtualization can cut that cost in half.  With up to 64 connections to each server, this allows plenty of expansion capability for future requirements.

Also, storage requirements typically increase in a virtualized environment, as does the cost of management.  Backup and recovery solutions that provide global deduplication across VMs can help address this, as can solutions that centralize the process.

For more information, check some of these useful links…

 http://www.vmware.com/technology/virtualization.html

http://www.xsigo.com/

http://www.netapp.com/us/solutions/infrastructure/virtualization/server/

Over the past 15 years, the Internet has changed global communications, business processes, and consumer behavior in an unprecedented way. This change caused many organizations to consolidate data centers and build new types of web applications for rapid development and integration needs. As a result, data centers have become massive collections of servers, networks, storage, and security devices in a constant state of growth and change. Data centers have become the 24×7 foundation of today’s global business world. Rapidly changing business requirements make managing these data centers a real challenge for IT. The data center must be highly available and resilient enough to fail over gracefully to other facilities if need be. Data centers must be able to meet current needs, but also provide enough headroom for unanticipated future requirements. Data centers must be extremely secure in order to detect and prevent increasingly ominous threats. Finally, data centers must have the ability to move lots of traffic across servers, storage devices, and public and private networks. It is a belief that these extraordinary technical demands will be anchored by resilient flexible networking infrastructure based upon Ethernet technologies.

10Gb Ethernet will become the data center foundation. As prices rapidly decline, 10GbE switches will become standard equipment for connecting a multitude of virtual servers in growing data centers throughout the world. This trend has already begun and will likely accelerate in spite of current economic woes. Over the next few years, 10GbE will be replaced with 40GbE and 100GbE in the same pattern.

Ethernet will ultimately replace legacy transports. Just as TCP/IP and Ethernet proliferated in voice, metropolitan, and video applications, Ethernet will also replace other networking technologies like Fibre Channel and Infiniband over time. This transition will be driven by ever-increasing Ethernet bandwidth combined with new standards and hardware offload processors.

CIOs should plan for the all Ethernet data center. IT executives must create data center designs that embrace 10GbE today and expand Ethernet use over time. To do so, CIOs should follow technology progress, maximize network flexibility, and work with vendors like Extreme Networks that can meet short and long term requirements.

Meet one of Applied Communications’ solutions who is addressing the network challenges in the Data Center right now…

 Extreme’s powerful, yet simple data center solutions>

Read more: http://www.infoblox.com/library/l-genLibrary.cfm?section=l-whitepapers&libId=137#ixzz0OU80gGif

orginal article at http://www.infoblox.com/library/l-genLibrary.cfm?section=l-whitepapers&libId=137

NetApp, a pioneer in Ethernet storage, continues to advance the technology with leadership and innovation. Today, NetApp offers standards-based products that support converged Ethernet (FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS) data access and help customers streamline their data centers and maximize ROI. With partners such as Cisco and QLogic, NetApp is expanding Ethernet as a storage infrastructure, offering a next-generation unified target adapter for its storage systems, switches, and converged network adapters (CNAs). The move to converged data and storage networks has recently driven increased adoption of 10GbE in the data center; NetApp 10GbE target port shipments have more than doubled since June of 2008, from 3,000 to more than 7,500.

“We have been testing our new FCoE infrastructure over the last few months and have been impressed most by the performance,” said Howard Eddy, vice president of Information Technology at Subaru New England. “For instance, we are seeing over 75% greater performance on SQL versus our existing DAS solution. We’ve also been able to dramatically reduce our overall complexity for our storage and networking by streamlining down to a single network technology: Ethernet.”

With NetApp and its solutions partners, customers can build end-to-end FCoE infrastructures while still supporting existing Fibre Channel investments and take a phased approach to consolidating their data centers around Ethernet. Now customers can build out their Ethernet infrastructure over time and while protecting previous infrastructure investments. In addition to the unified target adapter for NetApp systems, NetApp now offers the new QLogic 8100 Series CNA, which offers customers greater choice and flexibility while building out their infrastructures. With this adapter, customers can run both FCoE and IP traffic through the same port and on the same wire, eliminating the need and expense for separate SAN and LAN adapters and cables.

“FCoE is changing the way customers can use Ethernet in their data centers,” said Amit Vashi, vice president of Marketing, Host Solutions Group, QLogic. “Together with NetApp, we’re adding value to FCoE by helping customers reduce data center complexity when running multiple protocols as they move to a unified Ethernet infrastructure.”

NetApp also offers Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches, a leading family of high-performance, low-latency switches for data center networks supporting lossless 10GbE, Fibre Channel, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet. The Cisco Nexus Series switches offer a highly cost-effective access-layer strategy for Gigabit Ethernet and mixed Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet server environments.

“FCoE is a logical extension of our unified storage architecture,” said Patrick Roger, vice president of Solutions Marketing at NetApp. “With our leadership in the space, we’re helping more customers than ever meet their business needs without undue cost and complexity and without sacrificing investments they’ve already made in more expensive Fibre Channel systems. With our partners like QLogic and Cisco, customers will have an ever-growing ecosystem of compliant, end-to-end solutions as the Ethernet growth trend continues.”

NetApp has been an active participant in the development and marketing of the Fibre Channel over Ethernet standard, which the FC-BB-5 working group of the T11 Technical Committee recently completed work on and unanimously approved as a final standard for FCoE, as well as the Data Center Bridging (DCB) standard within the IEEE.

“FCoE is out of its infancy and has emerged as a flexible and cost-effective technology for enterprise infrastructures,” said Dennis Martin, president of Demartek. “NetApp, with its network of partnerships, has a unique ability to provide end-to-end, native 10GbE unified solutions and is poised as a leader as this technology continues to grow in popularity and demand. I have tested the end-to-end NetApp® unified solution in the Demartek lab and seen it in action.”

The next-generation FCoE unified target adapter, Ethernet switch, and CNAs mentioned above are all available for order.

For more information about the QLogic 8100 Series CNA, please visit http://www.qlogic.com/Products/Datnetworking_products_landingpage.aspx.

To read today’s Ethernet announcement from Brocade and NetApp, please visit www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20090811-brocade-fcoe.html.

For more information on NetApp Ethernet storage news, visit www.netapp.com/us/company/news/fcoe/fcoe-partnerships.html.

For more information about NetApp’s solutions partnerships with Cisco and QLogic, please visit www.netapp.com/us/solutions/solution-partners/infrastructure/platform-networking.html.

Discuss this news in the NetApp Community, where you can exchange thoughts and ideas on a variety of topics with our community members. Collaborate with our company, engage in conversation with NetApp leaders and employees, our customers, and partners. Participate in our passion to go further, faster. Join now at www.netapp.com/us/communities.

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Discover NetApp’s passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

NetApp, the NetApp logo, and Go further, faster are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

Forward-Looking Statements
In addition to historical information, this document contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements contained herein represent NetApp’s beliefs regarding future events, many of which are, by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside NetApp’s control. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the future of and trends in the Ethernet industry.

NetApp cautions readers that the forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include the adverse global economic and market conditions, risks associated with the anticipated growth in network storage and content delivery markets, NetApp’s ability to deliver new product architectures and enterprise service offerings, and other important factors as described in NetApp’s reports and documents filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. NetApp disclaims any obligation to update and revise the forward-looking statements contained in these materials based on new information or otherwise.

orginal artical at http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20090811-fcoe-dcb-solutions.html