Cloud Hosting

You did it: You managed to carefully shepherd your organization through the minefields of cloud computing. You selected a security-friendly provider, carefully planned your architecture and migration, and even implemented a nice set of cloud-specific security controls, with a mix of public and private clouds. Excellent job.

Then you were smashed by the freight train of reality as developers, administrators and even business units shattered your well-laid plans by, you know, actually using the darn cloud. Instances began spinning up left and right, quickly falling out of security and compliance because of old patch levels, improperly configured security groups, and all the little, tiny changes introduced by maintaining state through day-to-day usage.

We struggle to manage these issues with our traditional infrastructure, but at least in those circumstances we have a modicum of physical control. It isn't like business units are sneaking into the data center to add new 1U servers to the racks. But in the cloud? Assuming you set it up properly to actually leverage the advantages of cloud computing you will have new servers and applications

Managing basic operations under these conditions is extremely challenging -- outside of security -- especially when you dig into the technical issues of managing your entire infrastructure through network connections and APIs. For example, one friend once had to launch disaster recovery plans because an administrator accidentally used the wrong command line. Instead of shutting down three key servers on Amazon Web Services, he "terminated" them. If you don't know, terminate on AWS means immediately stop this server and erase all associated storage irrecoverably.

Companies like RightScale Inc. and enStratus Networks Inc. insert a proxy in front of the management plane to provide greater compatibility, control and policy-based management across heterogeneous cloud deployments.

However, a new breed of tools and services is emerging to help with the complexities of managing cloud infrastructures. Companies like RightScale Inc. and enStratus Networks Inc. insert a proxy in front of the management plane to provide greater compatibility, control and policy-based management across heterogeneous cloud deployments.

Although the primary goal of these cloud management platforms is operations, when you get down to it, a large percentage of security is really just operations. Keeping systems patched, positioning instances in the right parts of the network, controlling which administrators can manage which resources are all critical security functions that don't necessarily need to be part of security.

Let's look a little deeper into how these tools work (although keep in mind different vendors have different implementations and this is a broad generality). Normally we manage cloud through a mix of direct API calls, command line tools or Web interfaces. Administrators (and users) have access to all or some of these resources across different cloud platforms, which requires some complex entitlement and user management. Also, even when you can restrict their activities, it's either so granular as to be incredibly complex or so broad that it's worthless.

Plus, there are other, extensive operational functions like patching that must be managed with a patchwork of tools.

Cloud management platforms are usually a proxy between the users and the cloud management plane. The proxy has access to the entire cloud infrastructure, and users run through the proxy instead of making direct API calls. They don't even have access rights to the cloud's management plane.

Read more:
Cloud management platforms key for cloud security

Dell has developed a line of servers based on designs the company is using in an upcoming 10-petaflop supercomputer called Stampede, which will be fully deployed at the University of Texas, Austin, starting next year.

The PowerEdge C8000 servers are built with standard Intel x86 CPUs and can be equipped with graphics processors or additional storage to improve performance on database tasks, high-performance computing operations and cloud workloads.

Users will be able to mix and match graphics processors, storage, memory and other elements inside the servers, said Armando Acosta, a product manager at Dell.

For its part, the Stampede supercomputer includes thousands of C8000 servers with a total of 272TB of memory and 14 petabytes of storage. Dell and the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas worked together on Stampede. The design for the C8000 servers blossomed as the supercomputer came to fruition, Acosta said.

The supercomputer will use eight-core Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors and co-processors code-named Knights Corner, which Dell said will speed up scientific and math calculations.

As for the new servers, the basic C8220 chassis can have up to eight blade servers; each server can contain two CPUs with up to 16 processing cores, two internal hard drives and additional storage and networking options. For instance, the servers can be hooked up to the new C8000XD storage box for expandable hard drive or SSD options.

The C8220X, a more advanced model in the new lineup, has more RAM and storage and can be equipped with graphics processors. All of the servers are designed for use in highly parallel computing environments, Acosta said.

Pricing starts at $35,000 for the C8220, $42,000 for the C8220X and about $25,000 for the C8000XD storage box.

This version of this story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an article that appeared earlier on Computerworld.com.

Read more about hardware in Computerworld's Hardware Topic Center.

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Dell supercomputer effort spawns new line of servers

The new dream in computing is keeping all of your files in the cloud, on remote servers that you can access from anywhere at any time. Apples cloud-based syncing and storage service, iCloud, debuted in June 2011. Still, only since the release of OS X Mountain Lion that enough applications have started to support iCloud document syncing for this feature to be useful. Working with iCloud is fairly simple, but you need to know the ground rules if you plan to start storing your documents in the cloud.

If you dont have a free iCloud account, or if youre just starting out with it, this article will give you an overview of how to set up a new iCloud account. To store documents in the cloudno matter which application puts its files thereyou also need to activate the Documents & Data setting in the iCloud pane in System Preferences, as well as in the Settings of any iOS device you plan to use (to do so, selectSettings > iCloud). Once youve done this, any iCloud-compatible app can store files in iCloud.

For now, only a limited number of applications can store files in iCloud. By files, I mean documents that you create, not data that an application such as Calendar stores in the cloud. On the Mac, many of Apples apps do support iCloud, including Preview, TextEdit, the iWork 09 suite (Pages, Numbers, andKeynote), and GarageBand.

Third-party apps that store documents in the cloud include text editors such as iA Writer, Byword, and Smultron; the PDF editor PDFpen; the graphics editor Pixelmator; and some others. At this point, compatible programs can produce files in Microsoft Office formats, but Microsoft Office itself doesnt support iCloud.

Note that Apple lets onlyapps sold through the Mac App Store use iCloud to store documents. If your favorite productivity app is only sold directly by the developer, youre out of luck.

If youre using an application that can save documents in the cloud, doing so is fairly simple. Say youre using TextEdit. After youve created a new document, press Command-S, and make sure the Where menu shows iCloud. Name the file and click Save, and the document will be sent to the cloud.

Once youve saved a file to the cloud, you can access it from multiple devices. Say you have a desktop Mac and a laptop; you can save any files you need on the road in iCloud and access them from either computer as long as you use the same app.

To open files youve saved to iCloud, press Command-O in an iCloud-savvy application, then click on the iCloud button. Youll see something like this:

Note that in the above screenshot you see a folder. To create a folder, just drag one file on top of another, as you would with icons on an iPhone or iPad. Name the folder, and itll be saved on iCloud.

You may have a number of files on your Mac that youd like to put in the cloud; this is straightforward. Just open a file with an application that can put documents on iCloud, choose File > Move To, then choose iCloud from the Where menu. If you want to move a file from the cloud to your Mac, click on the Where menu and find the folder where you want to place the file. If the folder where you want to move the file isnt in the menu, choose Other from the bottom of the menu, and navigate to the location you want.

Link:
How to share documents with iCloud