Applied Communications’ newest security partner has announced their position in the Gartner 2010 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls. Key points outlined in the report include:

• Palo Alto Networks was recognized as a visionary in the Gartner 2010 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls.
• According to Gartner, “The rapid growth of business applications moving from the internal data center to external software as a service (and someday cloud services), along with the impact of what Gartner calls “the consumerization of IT,” has rapidly changed the definition of a “trust boundary” and the types of security controls that are required at that boundary.”
• Furthermore, Gartner notes: “In 2009, Gartner saw market pressures accelerate the demand for next-generation firewall platforms that provide the capability to detect and block sophisticated attacks, as well as enforce granular security policy at the application (versus port and protocol) level. ”

Palo Alto Networks’ next-generation firewalls enable policy- based visibility and control over applications, users and content. With this technology, enterprises can accurately identify and control applications, scan content to stop threats, and prevent data leakage – all with a single network device. By reducing the number of security devices in their networks, companies can save both capital expenditures and operational costs.

Download Report ]]> http://www.acmn.com/2010/03/18/paloaltomagicquadrant/feed/ 0 http://www.acmn.com/2010/01/26/extreme/ http://www.acmn.com/2010/01/26/extreme/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:41:27 +0000 Kristi Paul http://www.acmn.com/?p=873 New Networking Infrastructure Supports Multilayer Switching and Routing With Large Table Sizes Allowing Organizations to Transition From Physical, to Virtual, to Cloud Networks

The adoption of virtualization and outsourcing of infrastructure to managed hosting and cloud providers is driving demand for high performance and increased scale in the data center network. Extreme Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXTR) has responded with next-generation data center products to enable the migration to virtualized data centers and new infrastructure solutions that feature market-leading scalability, performance and simplicity.

Hosting companies and enterprises alike are scaling their data centers to realize the benefits of a virtualized infrastructure and cloud-based applications and systems. This new architecture enables resources to be dynamically managed and deployed and therefore delivers great organizational flexibility, agility and scale.

The physical network — providing essential interconnect and backbone within and between Data Centers globally — is the foundation for the new virtualized architecture and topologies. It is therefore essential that the network technology and systems be highly scalable, deliver powerful performance, capacity and capabilities to support large data center implementations. Whether these deployments are based upon Layer 2 or Layer 3 designs, the network must support a rapidly expanding number of virtual machines and a very large numbers of users within a limited power and physical footprint.

On January 26, Extreme Networks introduced new core and edge data center switching solutions that boost the physical network to deliver the scale and flexibility for a broad range of deployments. The BlackDiamond(R) 8900-xl modules and Summit(R) X480 stackable switches offer industry-leading data center solutions that allow for a variety of network architectures and topologies to be deployed by managed hosting companies and enterprises.

To learn more about Extreme Networks high performance data center solutions, visit:

http://www.extremenetworks.com/solutions/datacenter.aspx

Riverbed Technology is a leading provider of WAN optimization technology (branch office, data center, and mobile worker acceleration).  Solely focused on providing customers with solutions that enable faster, more efficient IT infrastructure, Riverbed has already helped more than 5,000 customers improve their busienss and accelerate critical business applications.  Not only will SharePoint implementations benefit from Riverbed solutions, but any applications that need to be accessed remotely will improve as well.  Steelhead appliances have also been instrumental in providing robust data protection and disaster recovery environments, including the enhanced security of encrypting data in flight.

www.infoworld.com/pdf/whitepaper/Why_SharePoint_Needs_Riverbed_WAN_Optimization.pdf

www.riverbed.com

One of the features in the new version of Data ONTAP 8.0 is the ability to use 64 bit aggregates, prior to this all aggregates were 32 bit.  The main reason to use a 64bit aggregate is to break the 16TB aggregate limit found in 32 aggregates.

ONTAP 7.3 helped with this in that it changed the way the 16TB was calculated, it no longer counted the parity drives in the 16TB which gave you an extra ~20% usable space in your aggregates (actual savings varied based on disk size).  As mentioned before, to expand beyond the 16TB a 64 bit addressing scheme needed to be used, the following shows the limit of either aggregate type:

32 bit aggregates are calculated by 2^32 * 4KB = ~16TB
64 bit aggregates are calculated by 2^64 * 4KB = ~67,108,864 (67 million petabytes)
Note: There are limits to the maximum sizes of 64 bit aggregates which are based on controller model

Those limits are currently:

A few things to note with that are that the maximum file/LUN size is still 16TB and that the maximum volume sizes for dedupe volumes remains the same.

When sizing your system keep in mind that the root aggregate must be 32 bit, it is also important to note that you cannot currently convert a 32 bit aggregate into a 64 bit aggregate (or vice versa).  The next major release of ONTAP 8 will have the ability to convert 32 bit to 64 bit non-disruptively however.

Along the same lines, you cannot perform block level transfers between aggregate types – Volume SnapMirror(VSM) between 32 bit and 64 bit aggregates will not work.  (Qtree SnapMirror(QSM) however will work as it is file based, as will NDMP)

The default type for creating new aggregates is 32 bit, for 64 bit you need to specify a -B 64 if using CLI or select the checkbox if using FilerView.  After upgrading to ONTAP 8.0 7-mode all existing aggregates will remain 32 bit (as mentioned before you cannot non-disruptively convert them yet to 64 bit)

Originally posted at: http://mtellin.com/2010/01/06/netapp-64-bit-aggregates-in-ontap-8-0/

Official Seagate page.

xsigo demo

Obviously you need to be aware that enabling compression will add additional load onto your system but keep in mind you can use FlexShare to set lower priority to system level (e.g. SnapMirror) operations.  Another thing to keep in mind is that FlexShare is assigned per volume, so it doesn’t have to assign ALL of your SnapMirror transfers a low priority.

Enabling compression is as easy as modifying the /etc/snapmirror.conf file, you can enable compression on existing SnapMirror relationships.  The changes you need to make are as follows:

At the top of snapmirror.conf you need to establish a connection name and assign the source and destination filers to it.  For my example this will be:

sm1=multi(940-1,940-2)

<connection name>=multi(<sourcefiler>,<destinationfiler>)

Now you need to modify the existing line for the SnapMirror schedule, my example looks like this:

sm1:test_vol 940-2:test_vol_recv compression=enable – 10 * * *

Example:

For my example I was setting this up on a FAS940, I ran ‘sysstat –s 1’ before running the snapmirror and it averaged about 1% CPU usage

Source NetApp:

Destination NetApp:

After kicking off the initial snapmirror transfer I re-ran the same command and it returned an average CPU usage of 72% on the destination and 100% on the source.

Source NetApp:

Destination NetApp:

So again if you have a busy system, you will need to decide if the decreased WAN traffic outweighs the added load on your system.  I kicked off a ’snapmirror initialize’ and then monitored the transfer with ’snapmirror status -l’ and saw that I was getting a steady 8.0:1 compression ratio on my transfer.

Originally posted at http://mtellin.com/2009/11/23/using-compression-with-snapmirror-transfers-in-ontap-7-3-2/

A user community of EXOS Scripts!  Check it out!

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!

NetApp released v1.0 of their VSC for VMware vSphere, VSC is a plugin for vCenter which allows anyone connecting with the VI Client to access it.  What is nice about the tool is it allows you to see an overview of your storage environment and ensure things are configured inline with NetApp’s recommended best practices and, if they aren’t, allows you to set the recommended values.

Click on the pictures for a larger view, you can see it adds a new tab called NetApp when the ESX server is selected.  In my environment we are using all NFS for storage to the ESX boxes, so in the next screen I show the ‘Storage Details – NAS’ option:

What is nice about this view is I can quickly see I need to make a couple changes on the NetApp, the ucode settings should be set to on and the atime update should be set to on as well.

As mentioned before, there are also ESX specific settings that should be set to follow best practices, by right clicking on the ESX hosts listed in the NetApp tab (see 1st picture) there is an option to ‘Set Recommended Values’

Finally you can also set guest timeout settings, under the Tools option there is a download link for the .iso for Windows and Linux guests.  For some reason in my environment I couldn’t download the ISO from this page – if you have the same issue you can find it in the Program Files\NetApp\Virtual Storage Console\webapps\public folder.

Once you load the ISO in the VM, double clicking on the CD drive will ask you if you want to add the info in the windows_gos_timeout.reg file to the registry.

While I only have NFS mounted storage, you can also use the VSC to check things like:

• Storage adapter timeout settings
• Multipathing settings
• Collecting diag info from fibre channel switches (or ESX hosts/NetApp controllers)

Also remember to check NetApp TR-3749 for best practices with NetApp and VMware vSphere.

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.

———————————————-

As companies look for new ways to squeeze costs out of their technology budgets, some are deciding that the next PC they purchase need not be a PC at all.

Instead, they are rolling out virtual desktops–a set-up consisting of a screen, keyboard and small connector box that ties into a powerful server in the computer room that has all the software, storage and processing capabilities that each desktop user needs.

Maryland Auto Insurance Fund, an insurance company in Annapolis, Md., says it plans to replace at least two-thirds of its 600 user desktops within 18 months with virtual PCs.

Cindy Warkentin, the company’s chief information officer, estimates that the move will save costs by allowing the company to replace fewer PCs every year.

Read the full article

https://now.netapp.com/Knowledgebase/solutionarea.asp?id=kb47221

FCoE combines two leading technologies, the Fibre Channel protocol and an enhanced 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical transport, to provide you with more options for SAN connectivity and networking. To simplify administration and protect your SAN investments, FCoE allows you to use the same tools and techniques you use today managing your FC network and storage. The FCoE network infrastructure offers connectivity to either native NetApp FCoE systems and/or NetApp Fibre Channel storage systems. This allows you to migrate to a unified Ethernet infrastructure while preserving investments you already made in FC storage. FCoE is a logical progression of NetApp’s unified storage approach to offering concurrent support for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NAS data access in its enterprise systems. It provides an evolutionary path for Fibre Channel SAN customers to migrate to Ethernet over time.

As an active participant in the development and marketing of the Fibre Channel over Ethernet standard, NetApp is the first to offer storage systems with native support for FCoE. We deliver fully tested and qualified solutions with leading partners in a robust and growing ecosystem.

To learn more about how our FCoE solutions can help you consolidate I/O and reduce costs, read Top Reasons to Choose NetApp for FCoE SAN Solution and Fabric Convergence with FCoE and Lossless Ethernet or view our NetApp play-by-play demonstrating the benefits of I/O convergence with FCoE.

orginal article: http://www.netapp.com/us/products/protocols/fcoe/

Computerworld called virtual I/O “one of the five virtualization trends to watch.” 

Here are 3 reasons why virtual I/O is catching on now… and why it is especially critical with vSphere and the new Nehalem processors:

1) vSphere and Nehalem deliver 3X more I/O potential

With vSphere and Intel’s new Nehalem processor, you get 3X the I/O capacity of previous generation technologies. At VMworld, Xsigo proved this, running over 20Gbps continuous I/O traffic from a single 1U high server over a single cable.

To get the most from these technologies, you need I/O that is guaranteed not to be a bottleneck. Only virtual I/O lets you dynamically share bandwidth across multiple I/O requirements. And only Xsigo delivers the 20Gb bandwidth you need to capitalize on today’s server potential to run more VMs in less space and on less power.

2) vSphere requires more I/O connections

vSphere adds new fault tolerance capabilities that can boost availability. But it will require more network connections and more I/O bandwidth to accomplish this. Virtual I/O lets you configure additional network connections on demand, without re-cabling servers and without adding cost.

3) Cloud computing requires greater I/O flexibility

vSphere provides the platform for the cloud. But only if servers can be dynamically connected to the required network and storage resources. Virtual I/O gives you that flexibility by eliminating the constraints of traditional cards and cables.

Virtual I/O powered this year’s VMworld. Find out why in this video:

In the meantime, EMC , the storage giant has been gobbling up various manufacturers like VmWARE and Data Domain in an effort to continue to maintain its position in the storage wars against big guns IBM and HDS, while also fighting Netapp’s momentum in recent years. (Note:  Netapp has been an Applied Communications solution for over a decade).

So, while all these big giants beat their chests and battle each other to rule the I.T. world, who’s actually innovating?  Applied Communciations has found some refreshing manufacturers out there who are producing some pretty cool solutions. We think they may actually make your job easier and save your company some money.  Check them out:

Xsigo is a virtual i/o appliance that can save money on switch ports, server hbas, power and I.T. resources  www.xsigo.com.

Palo Alto is the next generation firewall protecting at the application level and bypassing the traditional firewall rule method of blocking at the port.  In addition, Palo Alto gives you visibility into who is going where and what vulnerabilities are out there on your network.  www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Infoblox pioneered the development of core network services appliances that deliver domain name resolution (DNS), IP address assignment and management (DHCP/IPAM), authentication and authorization (RADIUS), configuration (TFTP/HTTP), and network time (NTP). Infoblox solutions control and automate the core services that drive all networks and applications.
www.infoblox.com

SonicWall Network Security Appliance E-7500
SonicWall’s Network Security Appliance (NSA) E-7500 was designed to protect against a vast spectrum of network attacks using a parallel performance 16-core architecture for high-speed threat protection. The NSA E7500 provides administrators with a set of customizable Application Firewall tools for precise control and inspection of network traffic, along with intrusion prevention, antivirus and antispyware and high-speed VPN technologies. “We currently use SonicWall. We’re looking at their newer products and are trying to determine how they fit into our infrastructure. We like their Web-based configurations; they’re easy to troubleshoot,” said Kris Jensen, director of infrastructure for Panattoni Technology Group, a commercial real estate development company in Sacramento, Calif.

See the full article here.

 CommVault Simpana 8.0
CommVault’s Simpana 8.0, the latest version of its data management and protection software suite, offers the full gamut of data lifecycle management, including backup and recovery, application integration, replication management, hardware snapshots, storage resource management and federated content search, all with a simple Web-based interface.

See the full article here.