OVERVIEW
The virtualization of physical computers has become the backbone of public and private cloud computing from desktops to data centers, enabling organizations to optimize hardware utilization, enhance security, support multi-tenancy and more. These environments are complex and ephemeral, creating requirements and challenges beyond the capability of traditional monitoring tools that were originally designed for static physical environments. But modern solutions exist, and can bring your virtual environment to new levels of efficiency, performance and scale.
This guide explains the pervasiveness of virtualized environments in modern data centers, the demand these environments create for more robust monitoring and analytics solutions, and the keys to getting the most out of virtualization deployments.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
· History and Expansion of Virtualized Environments
· Monitoring Virtual Environments
· Approaches to Monitoring
· Why Effective Virtualization Monitoring Matters
· A Unified Approach to Monitoring Virtualized Environments
· 5 Key Capabilities for Virtualization Monitoring
o Real-Time Awareness
o Rapid Root-Cause Analytics
o End-to-End Visibility
o Complete Flexibility
o Hypervisor Agnosticism
· Evaluating a Monitoring Solution
o Unified View
o Scalability
o CMDB Support
o Converged Infrastructure
o Licensing
· Zenoss for Virtualization Monitoring
A2U, an IGEL Platinum Partner, recently experienced a situation where one of its large, regional healthcare clients was hit by a cyberattack. “Essentially, malware entered the client’s network via a computer and began replicating like wildfire,” recalls A2U Vice President of Sales, Robert Hammond.
During the cyberattack, a few hundred of the hospital’s PCs were affected. Among those were 30 endpoints within the finance department that the healthcare organization deemed mission critical due to the volume of daily transactions between patients, insurance companies, and state and county agencies for services rendered. “It was very painful from a business standpoint not to be able to conduct billing and receiving, not to mention payroll,” said Hammond.
Prior to this particular incident, A2U had received demo units of the IGEL UD Pocket, a revolutionary micro thin client that can transform x86-compatible PCs and laptops into IGEL OS-powered desktops.
“We had been having a discussion with this client about re-imaging their PCs, but their primary concern was maintaining the integrity of the data that was already on the hardware,” continued Hammond. “HIPAA and other regulations meant that they needed to preserve the data and keep it secure, and we thought that the IGEL UD Pocket could be the answer to this problem. We didn’t see why it wouldn’t work, but we needed to test our theory.”
When the malware attack hit, that opportunity came sooner, rather than later for A2U. “We plugged the UD Pocket into one of the affected machines and were able to bypass the local hard drive, installing the Linux-based IGEL OS on the system without impacting existing data,” said Hammond. “It was like we had created a ‘Linux bubble’ that protected the machine, yet created an environment that allowed end users to quickly return to productivity.”
Working with the hospital’s IT team, it only took a few hours for A2U to get the entire finance department back online. “They were able to start billing the very next day,” added Hammond.
IT Infrastructure needs are constantly fluctuating in a world where powerful emerging software applications such as artificial intelligence can create, transform, and remodel markets in a few months or even weeks. While the public cloud is a flexible solution, it doesn’t solve every data center need—especially when businesses need to physically control their data on premises. This leads to overspend— purchasing servers and equipment to meet peak demand at all times. The result? Expensive equipment sitting idle during non-peak times. For years, companies have wrestled with overspend and underutilization of equipment, but now businesses can reduce cap-ex and rein in operational expenditures for underused hardware with software-defined composable infrastructure. With a true composable infrastructure solution, businesses realize optimal performance of IT resources while improving business agility. In addition, composable infrastructure allows organizations to take better advantage of the most data-intensive applications on existing hardware while preparing for future, disaggregated growth.
Download this report to see how composable infrastructure helps you deploy faster, effectively utilize existing hardware, rein in capital expenses, and more.
Make the Move: Linux Remote Desktops Made Easy
Securely run Linux applications and desktops from the cloud or your data center.
Download this guide and learn...
There’s little doubt we’re in the midst of a change in the way we operationalize and manage our end users’ workspaces. On the one hand, IT leaders are looking to gain the same efficiencies and benefits realized with cloud and next-generation virtual-server workloads. And on the other hand, users are driving the requirements for anytime, anywhere and any device access to the applications needed to do their jobs. To provide the next-generation workspaces that users require, enterprises are adopting a variety of technologies such as virtual-desktop infrastructure (VDI), published applications and layered applications. At the same time, those technologies are creating new and challenging problems for those looking to gain the full benefits of next-generation end-user workspaces.
Before racing into any particular desktop transformation delivery approach it’s important to define appropriate goals and adopt a methodology for both near- and long-term success. One of the most common planning pitfalls we’ve seen in our history supporting the transformation of more than 6 million desktops is that organizations tend to put too much emphasis on the technical delivery and resource allocation aspects of the platform, and too little time considering the needs of users. How to meet user expectations and deliver a user experience that fosters success is often overlooked.
To prevent that problem and achieve near-term success as well as sustainable long-term value from a next-generation desktop transformation approach, planning must also include defining a methodology that should include the following three things:
• Develop a baseline of “normal” performance for current end user computing delivery• Set goals for functionality and defined measurements supporting user experience• Continually monitor the environment to ensure users are satisfied and the environment is operating efficiently
This white paper will show why the user experience is difficult to predict, why it’s essential to planning, and why factoring in the user experience—along with resource allocation—is key to creating and delivering the promise of a next-generation workspace that is scalable and will produce both near-and long-term value.
So it turns out that data doesn’t protect itself. And despite providing what might be the most secure and reliable compute platform the Universe has ever seen, Amazon Web Services (AWS) can’t guarantee that you’ll never lose data either. To understand why that is, you’ll need to face your worst nightmares while visualizing all the horrifying things that can go wrong, and then boldly adopt some best‑practice solutions as you map out a plan to protect yourself.
Read this ultimate guide to AWS data backup and learn about the threats facing your data and what happens when things go wrong, how to take risk head on and build an AWS data backup and recovery plan, and the 10 cloud data points you must remember for a winning strategy.
Mobile applications are a rapidly growing attack surface. With a variety of tools and techniques available to threat actors, mobile application developers need to build a reliable security framework to address the most common security vulnerabilities. In this report, Guardsquare analyzed OWASP’s “Top 10” mobile security risks and mapped them to RASP and code hardening best practices.
The report also examines the Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (MASVS), also produced by OWASP, which details additional risks and resilience guidelines that complement the “Top 10.”
Key insights:● A developer-centric overview of OWASP’s “Top 10” & MASVS● How resilience layer controls can prevent reverse engineering and tampering● Security technique that protect against the OWASP’s “Top 10” mobile vulnerabilities● How to build a layered security approach
Download the full report to learn how you can leverage RASP and code hardening to defend your Android and iOS apps against the most common mobile app security threats.
How Backup Breaks Hyperconvergence
Backup creates several separate architectures outside of the HCI architecture. Each of these architectures need independent management. First, the backup process will often require a dedicated backup server. That server will run on a stand-alone system and then connect to the HCI solution to perform a backup. Second, the dedicated backup server will almost always have its own storage system to store data backed up from the HCI. Third, there are some features, like instant recovery and off-site replication, that require production quality storage to function effectively.The answer for IT is to find a backup solution that fully integrates with the HCI solution, eliminating the need to create these additional silos.