Doug Theis - Leave your comfort zone.

IT Strategy — Comments Off
27
Nov 13

Rich Miller – Facebook Ops: Each Staffer Manages 20,000 Servers

SAN ANTONIO – Facebook has been an industry leader in building its Internet infrastructure for scalability. That includes the scalability of the people that work in the company’s data centers.

Each Facebook data center operations staffer can manage at least 20,000 servers, and for some admins the number can be as high as 26,000 systems, according to Delfina Eberly, Director of Data Center Operations at Facebook. Eberly was the keynote speaker Tuesday morning at the 7×24 Exchange 2013 Fall Conference, speaking on “Operations at Scale.”

Facebook’s performance appears to break new ground in the server-to-admin ratio, which has rarely exceeded 10,000 to 1 (see High Scalability for more). The company’s success affirms the potential of using an integrated approach in which the operations team works closely with other teams in IT and facilities.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article by Rich Miller

IT Strategy — Comments Off
26
Nov 13

CIO.com – Data Centers Play Fast and Loose with Reliability Credentials

IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau) — How reliable is your data center service provider? Perhaps not as reliable as you think.

The Uptime Institute says some data centers are playing fast and loose with its “tiering” system for rating data center reliability, making false claims or at best being economical with the truth about how resilient their facilities are.

The upshot, the Institute says, is that some companies may be running important applications in data centers that are more susceptible to failure than is advertised, and they may get a rude awakening the next time a hurricane strikes or a transformer blows out in the local power grid.

“At a time when more enterprises are moving at scale to an outsourcing option, the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Julian Kudritzki, Uptime Institute’s chief operating officer, who along with a few data center operators is trying to raise awareness of the issue.

The Institute’s tiering system is only one way of indicating data center resiliency, but it has become well known in the industry. It gives four tiers of certification, with Tier III the most common type awarded. A Tier III data center has multiple delivery paths for power and cooling, and redundant critical components, so that downtime is minimized and maintenance can be performed without taking the computing services offline.

More of the CIO.com article by James Niccolai

IT Strategy / Uncategorized — Comments Off
25
Nov 13

Baseline – Data Breaches May Be Worse Than Reported

Despite the growing awareness of cyber-attacks and the increasingly sophisticated tools and technologies available to combat data breaches, the problem is getting worse. What’s more, organizations face steep challenges in dealing with cyber-attacks, and many are underreporting incidents, according to a recently released research report from ThreatTrack. The company polled 200 security professionals in U.S. enterprises and found that 57 percent had experienced a data breach that they did not disclose. Moreover, 72 percent said that addressing malware is equally or more difficult this year than it was last year. Part of the problem is that the nature of data breaches is growing more diverse and affecting firms on a wider scale. As a result, enterprises are struggling to keep up.

More of the Baseline article and slideshow by Samuel Greengard

IT Strategy — Comments Off
22
Nov 13

Baseline – Why IT Pros Think They’re Better Than the Boss

Who’s in charge? That’s a good question in IT departments, as a recent survey from TEKsystems reveals that a majority of tech professionals feel they can do a better job than their bosses. Specifically, they think they’re more creative, intelligent and reliable, among other qualities. Fortunately, this doesn’t necessarily lead to acrimony within the office. Actually, findings show that an overwhelming majority of IT pros enjoy a good relationship with their managers. It’s important, however, for managers to understand which qualities help them achieve positive responses and respect, and which are considered signs of weaknesses.

Cloud Computing Journal – “Continuous” Does Not Equal Real Time

Continuous monitoring is enough for compliance, but ISN’T enough for securing data

Every 4,000 miles or so I bring my car into have the oil changed, the brakes checked and tires rotated. Why? Because I know if I leave it to chance, at some point down the road something much more devastating will affect the car. Many of us follow this simple preventive best practice.

Then why is it major corporations and modest enterprises alike wait until their security is breached to address growing concerns of data theft, private information leakage or worse? Many of these companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in various security initiatives (especially those bound by a regulatory compliance agency), but still succumb to breaches that cost on average 3.8 million dollars (Ponemon Institute figure) per occurrence to address.

Two instances dropped into my in box this week, a medical center in Long Beach, California and a Medicaid office in New York State both experienced similar types of breaches that, in my opinion, were completely preventable.

It boils down to continuous monitoring…and that practice doesn’t go far enough.

More of the Cloud Computing Journal article

IT Strategy — Comments Off
20
Nov 13

CIO.com – The Keys to Keeping Mobile Simple

Summary: As mobility moves into the enterprise mainstream, simplicity is key, but it is hard than it appears. Successful enterprises will build on platforms that make life simpler for everyone in the mobile value chain.

As we look forward to 2014, the biggest challenge facing most organizations worldwide in adopting mobile is that, according to various surveys including SAP’s own, fully 70-80 percent of all enterprises are investing tactically in mobile while about 20 percent have taken the step to look at mobile as a strategic investment.

The tactical nature of investment is understandable as the technology provides, market adoption and end user expectations are moving at a much faster pace than a typical IT organization’s resources allow.

That’s where the theme of simplicity begins, because if you interview all the people involved in mobile adoption at the tactical level, you will find that end user adoption skyrockets when mobile apps are easy to find and provision, when developers can innovate and distribute their creations in a simple way, and when the sheer act of supporting end users is made simple, either through automation or self-support.

More of the CIO.com article

IT Strategy — Comments Off
19
Nov 13

CIO.com – How Load Balancing Is Playing a Bigger Role in Tech Transitions

Load balancing isn’t just for websites that expect surges in traffic any more. Companies of all sizes, and in all verticals, find load balancing an effective way to address disaster recovery, scalability, failover and application virtualization needs.

CIO — Load balancing technology, which took off in 1990s with the rise of the Internet, continues to find behind-the-scenes work in the enterprise — including a supporting role in the current mobile boom.

Take the case of Richard Fleischman & Associates, an IT consulting firm that uses load balancing products from Kemp Technologies in its disaster recovery (DR) line of business. RFA’s financial services industry clients include hedge funds and broker-dealers, and financial industry regulations require a disaster recovery plan. (New York City customers can cut over to RFA’s Purchase, N.Y. disaster recovery center or the company’s Boston center.)

Stevens Demorcy, senior systems engineer at RFA, says Kemp Technologies provided a solution to a tricky DR issue: Making customers’ iPhones, Android and Windows smartphones quickly available in the event of a disaster. In the last few years, many customers had migrated from BlackBerry and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to smartphones that use Microsoft’s ActiveSync mobile data synchronization technology. (ActiveSync is a Microsoft Exchange Server feature that lets users access email, calendar and contacts on mobile devices.) During Superstorm Sandy, many clients had to go to DR and wait hours for DNS updates to propagate and reach their devices.

More of the CIO.com article

IT Strategy — Comments Off
18
Nov 13

James Hamilton – Solar at Scale: How Big is a Solar Array of 9MW Average Output?

I frequently get asked “why not just put solar panels on data center roofs and run them on that.” The short answer is datacenter roofs are just way too small. In a previous article (I Love Solar But…) I did a quick back of envelope calculation and, assuming a conventional single floor build with current power densities, each square foot of datacenter space would require roughly 362 sq ft of solar panels. The roof would only contribute roughly 1% of the facility requirements. Quite possibly still worth doing but there is simply no way a roof top array is going to power an entire datacenter.

There are other issues with roof top arrays, the two biggest of which are weight and strong wind protection. A roof requires significant re-enforcement to support the weight of an array and the array needs to be strongly secured against strong winds. But both of these issues are fairly simple engineering problems and very solvable. The key problem with powering datacenters with solar is insufficient solar array power density. If we were to believe the data center lighting manufacturers estimates (Lighting is the Unsung Hero in Data Center Energy Efficiency), a roof top array wouldn’t be able to fully power the facility lighting system. Most modern data centers have moved to more efficient lighting systems but the difficult fact remains: a roof top array will not supply even 1% of the overall facility draw.

Data Center Knowledge – Five Steps to Preparing Your Data Center for VDI

Virtualization, at least at the server level, has been in use for some time. Since, the concept has expanded to user, application, network, security, storage, and, of course, desktop virtualization (VDI). This new approach took the market by storm, and many thought it was the direct answer to many of their enterprise’s desktop problems. Initially, there were some challenges – serious challenges. Data centers never really understood the requirements that initial VDI technologies really required. So, during the onset of the VDI push, there were some very flawed VDI deployments.

Now, the maturity is certainly here. Many companies understand the direct fit for VDI. Labs, kiosks, call centers, educational institutions and healthcare are all finding powerful users for VDI. Of course, as with any technological deployment – each organization is unique and will have its own set of business requirements. The requirements can depend on the type of organization, vertical, how the user interacts with his or her desktop, and much more. Still there are five key steps that should always be followed when creating a truly powerful VDI solution.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article

IT Strategy — Comments Off
13
Nov 13

InformationWeek – PCI Council Strengthens Security Standard

The PCI Security Standards Council Thursday released updated requirements for organizations that handle data on holders of credit cards and thus must comply with the council’s data security standard, known as PCI DSS.

The changes, first introduced in draft form in August, were then discussed during public PCI community meetings, before becoming formalized in PCI DSS version 3, which details information security policies and procedures for businesses that collect or process cardholder data. Also Thursday, the council released the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) version 3, which covers vendors of payment industry software.

Both standards will take effect January 1, although businesses will have until the end of 2014 to comply. “The older version, 2.0 will be ‘sunsetted’ for one year, so … you have some time to see what the changes are,” said Bob Russo, general manager of the PCI Council, speaking by phone. “But please don’t wait until the end of next year.”

What’s new? “The 3.0 version of this standard is probably more of a natural evolution than a revolution,” said Rodolphe Simonetti, managing director of Verizon’s Payment Card Industry Services, in a phone interview.

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.