The very nature of virtualization makes it unique in that it adds a barrier between the traditional hardware and operating system layers. By very definition, virtualization creates an operating environment on the host hardware that allows for complete customization and allocation of resources, regardless of which operating system is installed. It is not uncommon to have several different operating systems reside side by side. In fact, recently even Microsoft opened their proprietary Azure cloud platform to support Linux builds.
cloud apps
What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
When it comes to writing applications based on APIs, such as AWS or VMware, there is a lot of confusion around whether there is more benefit to build them directly with the API or develop them separately. There is supporting arguments from both sides, so what should organizations looking at cloud know before creating applications? Continue reading
Greetings, programs!
The other day I was asked about application whitelisting as a way to deal with endpoint issues in virtual and cloud environments. I never really thought about it in this space, as usually application whitelisting was a technique used to control rogue users who like to install anything and everything on their desktops and laptops. So how does this practice affect virtual and cloud environments, and more importantly, does it make sense? Continue reading
Well, all the jokes can’t be good. You’ve got to expect that once in a while.
Organizations are busy working on creating cloud migration paths for their current applications and data stores, assuming that these systems can easily be ported. What is often overlooked is that most applications weren’t created with the cloud in mind, so expecting them to scale to cloud environments isn’t realistic. Unless you have the team to rewrite these applications for running in virtualized or cloud environments, the movement to a cloud model will need to be done in several steps up a steep learning curve. Continue reading
It Might Help to Beef up Security Around The W.O.P.R.
It’s Thursday, and keeping up with this week’s theme, we are climbing further up the service model stack and looking at Software as a Service. I’ve already covered some of the key security issues with using a cloud service, but SaaS is a little bit different. So grab a coffee, and learn about the favorite service of organizations which also happens to be one of the favorite models for hackers. Continue reading
Normality? We can talk about normality until the cows come home.
Continuing from Monday’s post, today we look into Platform as a Service, or PaaS. This is one of the lesser known service models as it is sometimes hard to picture the difference between PaaS and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The key difference is really the type of users that typically work on creating the environment within PaaS, this is truly the developer’s domain. Continue reading
It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.
It’s Tuesday, which means another instalment of Technology Tuesday. This week, we look at ASG and their CloudFactory offering. CloudFactory can be thought of as a way to automate all things cloud including services (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS), different platform types (VMware, Azure) and provisioning multi-vendor environments.
Quite simply, CloudFactory makes it easy for organizations to offer cloud services without a lot of the back-end operations normally required to support this type of service. But there’s more to this than you might think. Continue reading
Tinder Stratus 