Cloud security is the protection of data, applications, and infrastructures involved in cloud computing. Just like on-prem IT security, cloud security still has concerns like unauthorized data leaks, weak access controls, susceptibility to attacks, and threats to availability.
Natural disasters such as hurricane’s, earthquakes, and fire can put a school district’s data out of reach. These are obvious reasons to have a solid disaster recovery strategy in place. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy that hit the East Coast (NJ, NYC, and Long Island), there were several school districts that were unable to gain access to their systems for days or weeks after the storm had passed. This made it impossible to generate transcripts, pay bills, and in some cases, process payroll.
The IT job market has always shifted as technologies advanced, but cloud computing has pushed changes in the market to speeds never seen before. The job market for cloud architects changes as rapidly as the technology itself. At AWS Re:Invent 2018 last week, AWS announced 30+ new significant services alone. Then there is Microsoft, Google, and all the smaller players to keep track of.
The first question you may be asking is, “Why should I be considering third party maintenance over OEM maintenance contracts?” The short answer: MONEY
Most buyers who utilize third party maintenance services save up to 50 percent or more over three years, in most cases. In reality though, it isn’t just about the money you could save, excellent service is also an important trait, third party technicians come just as qualified as manufacturer technicians. Third party maintenance requires careful vetting, but in the end, it can be more than worth it.
Containers and microservices are becoming a very popular option for deploying applications. There are many benefits of containers, faster deployments, reproducibility of environments, cost optimizations, isolation, and flexibility in general.
There is one glaring problem that is seen right after initial deployment, monitoring and troubleshooting is exponentially more complex when it comes to containers. Containers are designed to run programs in an isolated context, and that means that they tend to be opaque environments. Because of this, the same visibility tools we’ve all been using for years are now failing to perform as expected. Now, you suddenly realize you are flying blind.
This months podcast features host Larry Bianculli speaking with Joe Goldberg, Cloud Practice Manager, at CCSI, on containers. What are containers, how do they benefit your organization, and where to begin.
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a practice that combines software development skills and IT operations into a single job function. Automation and continuous integration and delivery are used to reach the goal of improving highly dynamic systems. The concept originated with Google in the early 2000s and was documented in a book with the same name, Site Reliability Engineering (a must read). SRE shares many governing concepts with DevOps—both domains rely on a culture of sharing, metrics and automation. SRE can be thought of as an extreme implementation of DevOps. The role of the SRE is common in cloud first enterprises and gaining momentum in traditional IT teams. Part systems administrator, part second tier support and part developer, SREs require a personality that is by nature inquisitive, always acquiring new skills, asking questions, and solving problems by embracing new tools and automation.
Microsoft’s had significant difficulties recovering from its most severe Azure outage in years. On September 4, 2018 there was a weather related power spike at Microsoft’s Azure South Central U.S. region in San Antonio. That surge hit crippled their HVAC system. The subsequent rising temperatures triggered automatic hardware shutdowns. More than 30 cloud services, as well as the Azure status page were taken out in the process.
Businesses report the key advantages of moving workloads to the Cloud are flexibility, agility, easy access to information, and cost savings. Clearly they are taking use of these advantages, as seen in the 2018 State of the Cloud Survey performed by RightScale, they found that 96% of respondents now use the public, private, hybrid, or…
Often when speaking to people about the cloud, their first reaction is that it isn’t safe and they won’t use it. Odds are that they, and most everyone else who owns an Internet connected device, is already using the cloud.
Let’s take a step back and define the cloud. In essence, it’s just a network of servers — which are large, super-powerful computers. Anything that’s referred to as “cloud-based” or “in the cloud” means it primarily lives online, instead of on something physical in your possession like a CD or your computer’s hard drive.
A good rule of thumb for determining whether something is “cloud-based” is asking yourself the following question: Can I easily log into this service from another device, like my phone or a different computer? If the answer is yes, then the service is probably based in the cloud.