Today, we are making some changes to the way we publish our compatibility matrix documents for our SC Series (Compellent), PS Series (EqualLogic) and FS Series storage array products. To date, we have maintained separate compatibility documents for Compellent and EqualLogic based solutions. FS8600 (Compellent focused) and FS7xx0 products (EqualLogic focused) were included in the document based on those two platforms as appropriate.

Starting today, we are consolidated the individual compatibility information into a single, new deliverable we will be calling the Dell Storage Compatibility Matrix (DSCM). It still contains all of the great information about what Dell has validated for each storage platform that you are used to seeing, but in a more concise format.

Why are we doing this? Well, there are several reasons. First, it obviously reduces the number of documents you have to keep up with as well as reducing the amount of documents we have to maintain J. Beyond that, it allows us to have a consolidated platform to support the addition of future information that may apply to both platforms. Over time, we will be tweaking the layout to ensure that the information you need is accurate and clearly presented.

The DSCM will be organized very similarly to the previous documents with major sections including:

• Dell Storage Support Policy Statement
• Block Storage Platform Switches
  • Fibre Channel Switches
  • Ethernet Switches
  • Host Connectivity
    • Fibre Channel HBAs
    • Fibre Channel over Ethernet CNAs
    • iSCSI HBAs & CNAs (Hardware iSCSI Initiators)
    • iSCSI Network Adapters & Software iSCSI Initiators
    • Fluid File System
      • Switches
      • Enterprise Manager
  • Secure Key Management Systems (*NEW*)

New updates to the DSCM will be made on an approximately monthly cadence. Each month, new hardware and errors & omissions will be added as we complete our validation efforts for each platform. This means that some months, we may see only PS Series updates, and others we may see only SC Series updates…or both. So, save the new DSCM landing page in Dell TechCenter by making it a “favorite”. This way, you will get notified when we make updates to the DSCM document.

The direct link to the DSCM is here:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/w/wiki/6935.dell-storage-compatibility-matrix.aspx

“Legacy” compatibility matrix pages on Dell TechCenter will automatically redirect you to the new DSCM, so you will be able to get the latest updates using your existing shortcuts, but you should save the direct link (above) to ensure that you always have the latest version.

Please feel free to leave comments on the page linked above and let me know what you think. We are always looking for good ideas and want to ensure that the information provided is useful to you in your SAN planning efforts.

Big Data:
Cloudera: Capacity Planning with Big Data and Cloudera Manager
Capacity planning has long been a critical component of successful implementations for production systems. Today, Big Data calls for a particularly deep understanding of capacity management – because resource utilization explodes as business users, analysts, and data scientists jump onboard to analyze and use newly found data. The resource impact can escalate very quickly, causing poor loading and or response times. The result is throwing more hardware at the issue without any understanding of what impact the new hardware will have on the current issue. Better yet, be proactive and know about the problem before the problem even occurs! Read more.

Datadog: Understand how code changes impact system performance with Bitbucket and Datadog
Have you ever had a bad code commit deployed that caused performance issues on a live system? How long did it take to track down the source of the issue? Determining whether a code change is at the root of a performance problem can be a time-consuming task at the worst of moments. Read more.

DevOps:
Datadog: Monitor Docker with Datadog
Docker is an emerging platform to build and deploy software using lightweight, pared-down virtual machines known as containers. By delivering easy-to-provision recipes for developers and bit-for-bit compatibility between environments, Docker is a popular solution to solve continuous delivery in modern infrastructure. Like virtual machines before them, containers require a new monitoring approach. Luckily, if you are a Datadog user, you can now take advantage of our newest integration. Read more.

Datadog: Docker-ize Datadog with agent containers
Many of you who are using Docker are embracing the Docker way and taking a container-only approach. As we release our new Docker integration, we don’t want to force you to break from a container-only strategy because of the traditional Datadog agent architecture. Instead, we’ve also embraced the Docker way and we’re pleased to announce a Docker-ized Datadog agent deployed in a container. Read more.

Docker: It's here: Docker 1.0
On March 20, 2013, we released the first version of Docker. After 15 months, 8,741 commits from more than 460 contributors, 2.75 million downloads, over 14,000 “Dockerized” apps, and feedback from 10s of 1000s of users about their experience with Docker, from a single container on a laptop to 1000s in production in the cloud … we’re excited to announce that it’s here: Docker 1.0. Read more.

OpenStack:
Aaron Rosen: Quick guide to creating a OpenStack bootable image
Usually every time I go to install a VM from scratch I end up having to google around for the exact commands I need… so I figured I’d do a quick post on how to install your own image that’s boot-able via OpenStack. Read more.

Cloudwatt: Introducing Flame: automatic Heat template generation
In this blog-post I will talk about Flame, a tool that generates HOT Heat template from already existing infrastructure. Currently this project is developed by Thomas Herve (Heat core developer) and myself and provides support for Nova (key pairs and servers), Cinder (volumes) and Neutron (router, networks, subnets, security groups and floating IPs) resources. Read more.

Cody Bunch: OpenStack LumberJack – Part 1 rsyslog
Logging for OpenStack has come quite a ways. What I’m going to attempt to do over a few posts, is recreate and expand a bit on what was discussed at this last OpenStack Summit with regard to Log Management and Mining in OpenStack. For now, that means installing rsyslogd and setting it up to accept remote connections. Read more.

Mark McLoughlin: An Ideal OpenStack Developer
In a recent update Jonathan gave to the Board of Directors, we described how OpenStack has had 2,130 contributors to date and 466 of those are active on a monthly basis. That’s an incredible statistic. There’s no doubt OpenStack has managed to attract an unusual number of contributors and, for such a complex project, made it relatively easy for them to contribute. The question then is how to improve the overall quality of our large number of contributors. In order to do that, we need to be able to set expectations. What do we expect and value from our contributors? Read more.

Matt Farina: State of Application Developer Experience with OpenStack
When I first started writing applications that ran in OpenStack clouds or worked against the APIs the experience was painful. To figure out what I could do with the APIs I ended up in the source code for OpenStack or asking those who were in the source or knew the system better. If I'd been using a different, maybe more popular, cloud I could have quickly found my answer in the documentation. As a user I longed for something better. Fast forward to today. OpenStack has come a long way in many regards. Yet, I still find myself poking around in the code and the community to figure out how some things work. Just last week I learned about two undocumented REST API calls that I would be using if I'd known about them. This isn't to say that the documentation team is somehow lacking. There is a lot of documentation and they have a real desire to provide useful documentation. I appreciate their work and drive to get us to something better. Making things better just takes more than a documentation team.Read more.

Mirantis: OpenStack in the gap between PaaS and IaaS
To unpack the problem, let’s work in the other direction: what do developers need to solve to make their apps work and thrive in the IaaS environment? Bridging that gap means that OpenStack needs to offer abstractions that solve real developer problems in a way that makes sense to a developer. To that end, OpenStack has several projects that can provide an opportunity for PaaS developers to help create an environment in which they can flourish. Read more.

Opensource.com: Exploring OpenStack cloud case studies
During the course of the last twelve months, the OpenStack community has advanced as more users of the leading open source cloud technology have been reporting their progress with the help of their partners towards making a meaningful impact on their business goals and objectives. We've also learned how these progressive technology users are pioneering changes in their own organizations—enabling them to become more competitive in the global networked economy.Read more.

Opensource.com: What Docker 1.0 means for OpenStack
At the sold-out DockerCon on Monday and Tuesday of this week, there were plenty of big announcements. But the biggest of which was Docker going 1.0. Whether or not it now meets every need for production workloads is a hotly-debated topic, but there's no doubt that this milestone is an important step in getting Docker into the datacenter. Read more.

Rob Hirschfeld: Understanding OpenStack Designated Code Sections – Three critical questions
After nearly a year of discussion, the OpenStack board launched the DefCore process with 10 principles that set us on path towards a validated interoperability standard. We created the concept of “designated sections” to address concerns that using API tests to determine core would undermine commercial and community investment in a working, shared upstream implementation. Read more.

The OpenStack Blog: Open Mic Spotlight: Mark Vanderwiel
An interview with Mark Vanderwiel, currently working on the OpenStack Chef cookbooks in StackForge as a core contributor. Read more.

Thierry Carez: Analysis of April 2014 TC election
Some people asked me to analyze the results of the recent TC election in the same way I ran the analysis for the previous one. I finally found the time to do it, here are the results. Read more.

What are containers?

LXC (LinuX Containers) provide an isolated operating system environment with its own file system, network, process and block I/O space. A favorite way to describe containers is that they are like “chroot on steroids”, since they provide the file system isolation that chroot jails provide but they go beyond that by also providing an IP address, a separate process domain, user ids and dedicated access to the host’s physical resources (i.e. memory, CPU) which chroot jails do not provide.

There are two Linux kernel features that make LXC containers possible:

1. Namespaces: It isolates an application’s view of the operating system so that it thinks it has its own isolated instance of a global resource. There are several types of namespaces: process (pid), networking (net), inter-process communication (ipc), file system (mnt), hostname (uts) and user IDs (user).
2. Control Groups: Also known as cgroups, it provides task grouping and controls and isolates container access to physical resources such as memory, CPU and disk I/O.

The kernel in Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS has built-in support for namespaces and cgroups so you can readily deploy LXC containers on day one.

What can I do with containers?

One of the main advantages of containers is process and system isolation, which is ideal for developers who need to experiment by installing test libraries or binaries and for system administrators who want to run applications in an isolated environment for management or security purposes.

In Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS, you can deploy containers that run other Linux distributions such as RHEL and CentOS, so containers can also be used if you need quick access to an alternate Linux distribution than what’s running on your host.

How do containers compare to virtual machines?

Another widely-used term to describe LXC containers is “lightweight virtualization”. Containers are similar to virtual machines (VMs) because they provide isolated computing environments all running independently on the same host. However, containers have very low overhead because you are not installing a separate operating system for the container and you do not need a hypervisor running on the host along with its overhead.

Figure 1 shows how VMs compare to containers. As you can see, containers do not have the same overhead as VMs and are thus faster to deploy, take up less resources and can achieve performance levels near those of the host they run on. Table 1 lists a comparison of some important metrics between VMs and containers.

Containers are not going to replace virtual machines any time soon (or ever) but there are many use cases where the speed and flexibility of containers are better suited than virtual machines.

Figure 1: Virtualization vs. Containers

Table 1: Comparison between virtual machines and containers

Show me how to deploy a container, access it and remove it

For a hands-on example of how to deploy and use containers in Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS, read this Dell TechCenter article.

Dell User Forum is next week in sunny Miami Florida, June 24-26 (register at www.delluserforum.com)

At Dell user Forum, you can test drive new features with the experts in the hands-on labs, learn about the future of the datacenter in keynotes, and get technical with our engineers in the breakout sessions. From storage to networking, servers to datacenter, there is something for every professional technologist. Check out the videos to hear firsthand what you can do and learn at the event.

Gene Chesser delves into storage:

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Chad Fenner talks servers:

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Gina Rosenthal gives the skinny on data protection:

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Rod Mercado covers networking:

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Register today at www.delluserforum.com

After much work and validation by LSI, Red Hat and Dell, a Linux driver is now available on support.dell.com for the VRTX Shared PERC 8. This driver supports the single-controller Entry Shared Mode (ESM) configuration. Work is in progress to support the dual-controller High Availability Shared PERC configuration on Linux. Stay tuned!

The driver has been available in the upstream Linux kernel since kernel version 3.15. However, it is now available on support.dell.com for RHEL 6.5 and SLES 11 SP3.

RHEL 6.5 driver: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=MT3C1

SLES 11 SP3 driver: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=CM5GH

In this interview series we will introduce IT Professionals selected for this year’s Dell TechCenter (DTC) Rockstar Program. This program recognizes independent experts, Dell customers and employees for their significant positive impact on Dell TechCenter, blogs and social media when discussing Dell. You can find a list of all our Rockstars here. Our twelfth interviewee is Dustin Hedges from Paypal.

Dell TechCenter: What is your domain of expertise?

Dustin Hedges: My primary focus is Enterprise Client Management. More specifically, I specialize in OS Deployments, BitLocker, Driver Management and I am a heavy PowerShell user.

Q: What are the most exciting trends in your area? 

A: The recent announcement of the Surface Pro 3 is quite exciting. In addition to new units, Dell's recent announcements of the Dell Enterprise Client PowerShell Provider and Driver CAB Catalog are great advancements for IT pros like myself. 

Q: Can you point us to resources you find particularly valuable?

The Enterprise Client section of Dell TechCenter is one of my most frequently used resources since I run primarily a Dell shop. I also follow a number of people on Twitter and blogs to help me stay up on current trends. Here is a list of a few:

Twitter:

@jasonsandys

@concentrateddon

@jsnover

@rodtrent

@NickolajA

Blogs:

http://gregramsey.net

http://myitforum.com

http://configmgrftw.com

http://powershell.org

http://deploymentresearch.com

Q: How do you engage with the IT community?

A: I am an active member on the Dell TechCenter forums providing content and (where I can) helping those who post in the Enterprise Client forums. In addition, I post content to myitforum.com and my blog (http://deploymentramblings.wordpress.com). You can follow me on Twitter @dhedges01 and converse with me there as well.

Q: What are the most cutting edge Dell products – and why? 

A: Dell is always coming up with something new. For the Enterprise Client space I am really enjoying two of their more recent products, the Latitude E7240/E7440 and the Precision M3800. The E7000 series are true business-class Ultrabooks complete with docking capabilities, optional touch displays, great battery life and performance. Our users love them. The M3800 is a “developer class” laptop with a gorgeous touch-screen display, plenty of power and memory.

Q: Dustin, thank you so much!

This blog was written by Charles Rose, Linux Engineering

When using virtual console with Dell iDRAC on PowerEdge 12G servers and RHEL 7, you could experience some problems with keyboard / mouse functionality. For instance, during OS install, you can view the installer's Language/Country selection screen, but be unable to make a selection. Similarly, post-install the keyboard / mouse might appear to work for a few seconds and then stop.

There was a problem with auto suspend of USB devices that has been addressed in a newer iDRAC7 firmware release. Firmware versions 1.51.51 and later contain a fix for this behavior. With the newer firmware, the keyboard / mouse should work as expected and you should be able to perform a GUI install of RHEL 7.

Just over a year sounds like a long time for migration, but it’s really not. Your business’s future requires that you start planning for the Windows Server 2012 R2 migration sooner rather than later so you can rest assured that the security and reliability you have enjoyed with Windows Server 2003 continues. After July 14, 2015, Microsoft will no longer develop or release updates to the software which could affect compliance. Many industries like banking, healthcare and governmental agencies (among others) must comply with a host of requirements that technology enables. Without the most updated editions, you could put your business at risk. If that isn’t bad enough, not having the most updated patches can also leave your virtual and physical instances of Windows Server 2003 vulnerable. Check out the differences between Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2012 R2 here.

You can buy Windows Server 2012 R2 from most any technology partner, so why should you choose Dell? The list is long, but essentially, Dell collaborates with Microsoft in a variety of ways to ensure that our 12^th generation servers are certified and integration seamless, not to mention that we are the single point of contact for hardware, software and consulting services. These migration services offer skilled solution architects, automated tool analyses, best of breed partners and unique intellectual property; not to mention peace of mind. Not only that, but we can do a complimentary white board session to help conceive a migration strategy.  A year is not very far away, and right now you can get up to $250 off with this special offer

Read more answers to the FAQs of the Windows 2012 Recycle Bin and Recovery Manager for AD here 

A day in the life of a database admin made easy with Dell Acceleration Appliances for Databases 

A typical database owner always feels that there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Each day is Groundhog Day with many meetings, on-call escalations and struggles to meet ever-shrinking SLAs. If we break down the daily tasks in the life of a database administrator (DBA), it can be slotted into four major buckets – maintenance, management, availability and performance tuning.  A closer look will show that the first three are something that a DBA can control and handle. But the fourth one, performance tuning, is the most challenging, and a task that never goes away.

Performance tuning requires agility to react to any problems in a production environment. This is about troubleshooting and diagnosing application response time issues in a complex business environment—an issue the DBA often gets stuck with. Performance tuning can be slotted into two buckets:  application tuning and hardware tuning. But tuning auto-generated business queries is next to impossible. Often the standard hardware, especially the storage, is not able to cope up with the increasing demand placed upon it. 

In most organizations, the storage team is layered way beyond a typical database team’s reach. A typical request to troubleshoot storage problems always gets the same answer – everything on the storage side is okay! But is everything really okay? Then why are the application and business teams unhappy? DBAs often dream of having fast performing storage that they can implement and manage without having to sift through organizational complexities.

Dear DBA, the wait is over. Meet Dell Acceleration Appliances for Databases, an easy to deploy, pre-integrated solution that enables you to quickly and cost-effectively boost database performance. The Dell Acceleration Appliances for Databasescombines Dell PowerEdge servers with innovative flash storage technology from Fusion IO to significantly improve database performance, latency and throughput, independent of installed database infrastructure including server, storage and network devices. This storage appliance can be managed through the already familiar Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Key Features

• Over 1Million raw IOPs
• About 500 micro second latency
• Up to 12TB fast PCIe usable storage decoupled from traditional SAN 
• About 27 times faster than traditional storage with rotary disks
• Agnostic to OS and database infrastructure
• Stand alone and high availability options
• Oracle hardware certification list (HCL) certified ION software, 
• Choice of fiber channel, iSCSI and Infiniband (coming soon) networking 
• Front line Dell support makes it even easier to integrate into any corporate IT data centers.

The Dell Acceleration Appliances for Databases gives you raw performance without the typical complexity and organizational layers, allowing you to quickly, reliably and cost-effectively respond to business needs, putting the four challenges of maintenance, management, availability and performance tuning back under your control.

What an information-packed first day at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit in National Harbor, MD!

It was the kind of productive conference that was worth being inside even though outside was a sunny 80 plus degree day. And believe me, being based in Seattle, sunny days haven’t been abundant.

The day started off with some of Gartner’s heavy hitters:  Senior analysts John Girard, Andrew Walls and Paul Proctor, who set the tone for the rest of the day’s discussions. John challenged the crowd in understanding why most enterprises don’t seem to stay current on their systems at a time when security vulnerabilities are more frequent than ever.  Andrew stated that adding more end point controls have increased employee dissatisfaction, while Paul informed the attendees that taking the traditional approach to addressing security is only going too exasperate the problem. He emphasized that seeing the world through the eyes of the business executive by understanding the business itself enables IT to be more proactive in addressing security issues.

The Summit is well attended and covered a variety of topics related to security and risk management.  I greatly enjoyed the first day. Here are some of the highlights.

The summit theme of “Digital Security” was constant throughout the sessions with emphasis on expansion to digital assets. In particular, securing the data and the access to it enables security to become part of the business priority instead of an afterthought. Planned security investments must include mobile and cloud.  Gartner analysts Ray Wagner and Earl Perkins identified software- defined security, app isolation and people-centric security as three of the current Digital security trends.

Application security put apps in a protective environment even though it has had trouble evolving with the changes in the computer industry.  App access control is a trend that should continue in the relative short-to-medium term. However, enterprises are finding it difficult to implement app access control that truly protects authorized access to specific data on the corporate resources.

One of the best sessions I attended was a round table discussion of a cross section of industries that included health care, manufacturing, education, and government, among others. The participants discussed the challenges they face trying to implement a BYOD strategy that takes advantage of cost savings while protecting the corporate assets.  In fact, it was stated that the cost savings of BYOD doesn’t really exist. The point was made that any savings in transferring the cost of the devices is offset by the increased cost of the infrastructure, software and solutions they had to implement to secure the use of these untrusted devices. The consensus was that there isn’t a cure all for enabling the use of personal devices.  Since this was a user roundtable I wasn’t able to mention how Dell Secure Mobile Access can address their BYOD challenges securely and cost effectively. 

But my favorite session of the day involved a panel discussion of Gartner analysts Greg Young, Joseph Feiman, and Neil McDonald. Their question they debated was “what is the best way to protect from advanced threats; network security versus endpoint versus application?” This lively discussion among the analysts was an effective alternative to convey information to a group looking for guidance in prioritizing their IT budgets.  Do you protect the perimeter? The end-point? Or the last point of defense—applications .  Nearing the end of the session, one member of the audience said it best, “We need to evaluate your current security situation and allocate it across all the areas.”

This is just a taste of the information provided on the first day. I am looking forward to what the second day at the Gartner Security & Risk Management conference holds. Stay tuned!

Join my colleagues and the team of experts at Dell Security Booth 601and Dell SecureWorks 501for demos and discussion on the show floor.

Last night Dell TechCenter co-sponsored the welcome event to the Dell User Forum in Miami. Attendees mingled with their peers and Dell in the relaxed atmosphere while enjoying a cover band and some tasty desserts. We took advantage of the opportunity to talk to a few customers and TechCenter Rockstars to see what they were looking forward to at #DUF14. 

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Richard Bailey

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Austin Downey

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Dell TechCenter Rockstar Tim Antonowicz

It may appear that tablet technology is old news but consider this, the first iPad was released on April 3rd, 2010.  That means that the tablet industry itself evolved in the time it took for this year’s High School graduates to complete their High School education, when they were in Jr. High the tablet industry was pretty much nonexistent.  Today tablet technology has become a social norm and a large yet still growing industry.  They have advanced in power and certainly in user adoption but organizations are struggling with end-users who want to leverage their tablet in the enterprise.  These devices which have traditionally been designed for consumers are having a difficult time finding a home in the enterprise.  What is it that is causing issues for organizations, here are a few common reasons I hear about today:

1. Tablets leverage OS technologies that IT does not have the tools to manage.  Tablets require mobile device management solutions in order to do any type of management or efficient security.  This results in more dollars and resources dedicated to support tablet platforms from IT organizations already strapped for cash.
2. Tablets lack features that allow it to easily integrate into peripherals we take for granted every day.  Ever tried to connect a flash drive to an iPad?  Do your end-users use flash drives on a day in day out basis to share and save data?  What about connecting these devices to a local printer or a projector, but there is an App for that right?  Well there may be but that also introduces more challenges and complexity that IT is looking to avoid.
3. Tablets have been designed for content consumption and not true content creation which is needed for worker productivity.  Angry birds is a blast but we need end-users to create presentations, write content, & manage spreadsheets, and to create and manipulate these type of applications end-users gravitate towards a keyboard and mouse.  Here is a scenario, ask a college student to write a 10 page term paper and offer a notebook and tablet to them to write it on, which one do you think they will choose?  Which device is truly easier to type on?

The Dell Venue 11 Pro is designed to help overcome these challenges IT organizations are facing today and also to help remove some of the barriers tablets have traditionally faced when looked at a possible enterprise deployments.  Here are some of the features the Venue 11 Pro brings to the table that helps to change the game for enterprise IT organizations.

1. Windows 8 offers the manageability options IT has come to expect from Windows notebooks and desktops while offering end-users the interactivity they have come to expect from their tablet.  You don’t need a mobile management solution for the Venue 11 Pro.  It runs a full OS and can be managed with tools organizations have already deployed to support Windows 7 environments, and with Windows 8 Pro you get support for networking and authentication that organizations have come to expect from their notebooks, desktops and now tablet devices.
2. The Venue 11 Prooffers a full size USB port built into the tablet for connection to peripherals, a mini-HDMI to tether to projectors and even an SD card reader built into the tablet.  These ancillary items we take for granted because it was never a question if they worked or note with our notebooks or desktops, but with tablets it’s been a challenge until now.
3. The Venue 11 Prooffers not only the consumption design of a tablet but also attachable keyboards and desktop docks to give you the productivity capability of a notebook or desktop.  By providing a platform with the option desktop dock IT can provide end-users with a not only a tablet experience but also a desktop experience all from the same dock, or a tablet and notebook experience with the attachable keyboard.

By addressing these needs the Dell Venue 11 is helping IT organizations overcome the challenges tablets posed for enterprise class deployments.  Is it perfect?  I don’t think technology deployments have ever been in the ‘perfect’ category and likely never will.  But by addressing these common challenges faced today, it does make tablet deployments a very viable option.

Day Two at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit Continues to Deliver a Wealth of Security Insights

The day kicked-off with an exciting and compelling key note speaker, retired General Keith Alexander. General Alexander, the former director of the NSA and served as the head of the U.S. Cyber Command, talked about cyber-attacks and information technology. He mentioned a number of interesting facts such as “cyber-crime has cost $445 billion,” “Top 10 in-demand jobs 2013 did not exist in 2004,” and “2.4 billion people use the internet daily.” His point was, things are changing so fast that people are preparing for jobs that don’t even exist yet. And cyber-security is one of those areas.

Another interesting session I attended included the FBI and ATF sharing mobile best practices in the federal government. The panel, consisting of the ATF division chief and the unit chief at the FBI, focused on their experiences securing the use of personal mobile devices. Discussion included one of the panelists taking a user perspective and mentioned that the fact is “you cannot compromise the user experience.” I couldn’t agree more!

This session also included was a good round of discussion surrounding the fact they really don’t see much difference in securing BYOD and company-owned devices. Additionally, there was a good talk about trading privacy for convenience which was quite interesting in light of earlier sessions. And when the ATF division chief made it clear that we need to accommodate the use of personal devices for work, it really got interesting. His point was, that it didn’t matter whether an employee had a company or personally owned device, people are interested in only carrying one and will utilize it for whatever purpose.

Not surprisingly, one thing that this summit is not short of is opinion. There were a number of sessions that highlighted top trends and predictions. Predictions related to the security market’s future, the top ten technologies for information security and describing the cyber landscape.

The end of the day was capped off with vendors hosting hospitality suites for the attendees. One of the sponsors even raffled off a new Harley motorcycle. As you can probably guess, I didn’t win.

In any event, day two was filled with worthwhile information and provided even more opportunities for networking. Once again, with day two, the Gartner Security Summit proved to flowing with useful information. Can’t wait to see what day three has in store.

Do come by our Dell Security booth 601 and Dell SecureWorks booth 501 today and ask our experts any questions you could have on Dell’s network security, email security, secure mobile access and identity and access management. Visit us for a live demo online: http://www.livedemo.sonicwall.com/.

Dell TechCenter hosted a tweetup, sponsored by Samsung, at the Dell User Forum in Miami last night. The Dell TechCenter Rockstars were on hand and we met several new people thanks to the event.

Austin, previously seen in our Welcome Night interviews, was in attendance and we did a follow up to get his opinion of the User Forum; he may just become a future DTC Rockstar.

DTC Rockstar Brian Vienneau (pictured below) and Katie Burnside from Dell Software offered their takes on DUF14 as well.  

We would like to thank Samsung for sponsoring the event, which was a huge success.

The video interviews are viewable below:

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Austin Downey

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DTC Rockstar Brian Vienneau 

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Katie Burnside - Dell Software

Sponsored by 

At last week’s Gartner Security & Risk Summit here in Washington, DC, we continue to see the same story from analysts that we’ve been hearing for some time – companies are still struggling with security as their infrastructure and workforce become more complex. Nothing new here. But now, we’re starting to see a common conversation thread around the need to turn security measures into a more agile, productive business, in other words, take security out of its role as roadblock and into a new role around enabler. It can be a new and awkward place to security to be but organizations are learning it can be their secret weapon as they turn their focus on controlling access to a moving target of applications and data, and provide access to everything from everywhere, without sacrificing security.

Interestingly, this is when companies seek out an identity and access management solution. Ensuring that employees, partners, contractors and others have appropriate access while eliminating the risk of users having more access than they need to do their jobs is a critical piece of any corporate security program. Users with too much access can become internal threats – something all too familiar in today’s security landscape. While improving security, the right solution also boosts business agility by enabling the organization to assign permissions faster – to the right people – increasing productivity and achieving compliance faster, and with less cost and effort.

A prime example of this dynamic happening on a global level, is the recent deployment of Dell One Identity Manager within Dell itself. On Monday, we issued a press release that looked at how and why Dell and Canadian healthcare provider Trillium Health Partners chose our Dell One Identity Manager to address these critical, evolving issues. For Dell, deployment of our own Identity Manager solution increased compliance and operational efficiency across our own global network. We can now rely on a global, intelligence-driven IAM platform that ties identities, permissions and roles to business users. It’s also helped us save time by improving self-service and workflow, placing important tasks, approvals, and reports in the hands of line-of-business personnel rather than IT. Read more about this deployment here.

For Trillium Health Partners, a leading Canadian hospital, choosing Identity Manager is part of the company’s journey to address access challenges. According to Iain Paterson, Information Security Officer, “it’s always been difficult to efficiently manage and provide appropriate privileges for our complex and diverse user base, but, with Dell One Identity Manager, we’ve transformed business processes while addressing this core problem. We’ve reduced our risk profile and improved the IT/business relationship with faster provisioning of users, simplified roles and privileges, and attestation, and we intend to leverage even more of Dell One Identity Manager’s functionality as we continue on our security journey.”

With the new threat landscape and governance needs, IAM will continue to change. With this inevitable change, we’ll continue to add new capabilities to our Identity Manager solution so customers like Dell and Trillium Health Partners can stay secure and, more importantly, keep their businesses agile, productive and ahead of the next threat.

In this interview series we will introduce IT Professionals selected for this year’s Dell TechCenter (DTC) Rockstar Program. This program recognizes independent experts, Dell customers and employees for their significant positive impact on Dell TechCenter, blogs and social media when discussing Dell. You can find a list of all our Rockstars here. Our thirteenth interview is Marian Newsome. 

Dell TechCenter: Can you please explain to folks who are not experts in your area: What is your domain of expertise?

Marian Newsome: I’m the Social Media and Community Manager for Dell Data Protection.  I work with the Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software teams to manage our social media strategy for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + and of course, the Data Protection Community on the Dell TechCenter.  From producing engaging content, tweeting fans as @DellDP and working with three product teams to support product launches, my days are filled with all things social for our technical savvy audiences. 

Q: What are the most exciting trends in your area?

A: I’m excited to see how through integration we are providing customers with end-to-end solutions leveraging Dell’s software and hardware solutions.  Our customers are seeing great results as we continue to raise awareness that we aren’t just hardware and services anymore.  Whether it’s bundling AppAssure with the VRTX, deploying our DR/DL appliances or the updates to NetVault, our customers are seeing great results.  

Q: Can you point us to resources you find particularly valuable?

A: I find reading blogs to be the most valuable resource for me.  Hearing other’s people’s views and use cases for the technology allow me to get actionable takeaways and new insights about technology.  Tweetchats and Dell TechCenter Tech Talks are my favorites because I prefer real-time Q&A.

Q: How do you engage with the IT community?

A: Social Media- I engage via Twitter, blog posts, forums, G+ hangouts for #BackupU, communities and live events.   

Q: What are the most cutting edge Dell products – and why?

A: As a recovering Information Security geek, my choice is Secure Work’s Advanced Endpoint Threat Detection service. The proprietary CTU Endpoint Intelligence technology reduces  the time that InfoSec teams have to identify, respond and remediate infrastructure attacks. Protecting customers information throughout its lifecycle is critical to enabling new technologies socially.  Secure Work’s service strengthens an organizations defense-in-depth security posture.  And of course, once the threat has been evaluated, you may find the need for a reliable backup solution to restore the data’s integrity.  Maybe I’m not so recovered after all.

Dell TechCenter:  Marian, thank you so much!

Protected, Productive and Proactive – the Three P’s of Firewall Management & Reporting

As corporate networks grow in size, so do their needs for cybersecurity. Today’s threats are more sophisticated than ever and network security administrators feel they have targets on both sides of their shirts. They spend their days defending against outsider security breaches as well as guarding against unauthorized insider violations. Add to that the need to meet compliance regulations, and administrators find themselves unable to manage firewall security policies manually without engendering an unacceptably high risk and cost. A major retail chain would have thousands of firewalls protecting a single internal network. How would a system administrator productively and proactively protect the security needs of a house with so many doors?

To solve this problem, administrators have turned to firewall management and reporting applications to manage the complexity of their firewalls and report on the thousands of security violations that occur daily.  Only true Global Management Systems allow this easy and effective management, and Dell SonicWALL’s Global Management System is an industry-leading example of such an application. It enables administrators to be productive and proactive by ensuring the protection a firewall provides against threats from within and without.  To better visualize these areas, let’s dive into each with helpful graphics.

PROTECTED

In near-realtime, the Global Management System (GMS) provides visualizations and statistical analysis of the historical threats detected and blocked by Dell SonicWALL next-generation firewalls.  Intrusions, viruses, spyware, attacks, phishing, denial-of-service, zero-day exploits, SQL-injections, cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, trojans, keyloggers, and all types of cybersecurity events are logged by our firewalls. The firewalls employ Dell SonicWALL’s threat database as their defense using 15+ million threat signatures. The Dell SonicWALL GRID Network updates this database continuously by collecting threats 24x7 from our 1+ million firewalls and in turn, updates the firewalls continually with new signatures, so that every one of our customers is protected within hours after each new threat is discovered.  

GMS can render every on-screen visualization of threat data as a softcopy report. Administrators can customize reports to filter and sort on any combination of firewalls, timeframes, threats, users, IP addresses, geographies or other parameter that is logged by the firewall. This flexibility allows virtually any variety of report at any level of detail desired by the administrator. These reports prove the efficacy of protection, allowing administrators to determine the nature of a threat, track the activities of a user, or prove the security compliance of the network. Administrators also use the data in these reports to refine the firewall security policies to strike the perfect balance between security and access. Finally, administrators can schedule these custom reports to run and to be emailed automatically to interested parties.

PRODUCTIVE

Dell’s Global Management System enables administrators to configure, deploy and monitor security policies for multiple firewalls from a single login window. For networks with tens, hundreds, or thousands of firewalls, GMS enables ten/hundred/thousand-fold increases in productivity by reducing the number of repetitive administrative actions required by the customer.  This could save hours of work in updating and maintaining an environment to keep it secure, allowing the company to spend its resources on innovative, revenue-driving efforts. 

GMS also assures productivity and protection by tracking the internal usage of disallowed web applications, time-wasting websites, and unauthorized data transfers. GMS has a reporting facility that calculates the data usage costs for Internet access, allowing the administrator to optimally manage and save on the bandwidth usage on a website-by-website, application-by-application basis.  

PROACTIVE

GMS enables administrators to efficiently manage the performance of their firewalls through its rich on-screen dashboards and powerful policy management features. Administrators can “see” proof of the protection that the firewalls are providing while assuring themselves that internal users are maximizing their productivity and not wasting bandwidth. And GMS boosts the administrator’s policy management productivity for thousands of firewalls at a time, providing them with the same easy-to-use interface they use when managing a single firewall.

So now could you imagine yourself as a system administrator of thousands of firewalls?  Perhaps you can now that you’re armed with the three fundamental factors required for firewall management in today’s complex environments, only possible with an application like the Dell Global Management System.  To find out more visit us at http://www.sonicwall.com/us/en/products/GMS-Application.html or contact us at http://www.sonicwall.com/us/en/how-to-buy.html

Online Relationship Site Trusts Dell Software to Match 20 Million Profiles

In all the years I’ve been working around databases, I’ve never heard anybody say that data replication or information availability put them in the mood for romance. That’s because not many things in IT are romantic, of course, but thanks to our recent customer success with global online relationship site eHarmony, at least they’re moving in the right direction.

eHarmony has implemented SharePlex replication and data integration software to keep its secondary database current within seconds of the production customer database. I’ll explain why that’s important and why eHarmony has entrusted replication of the data on its 20-million-plus users to SharePlex.

The role of the secondary database

Like most organizations that deal in big data, eHarmony has an entire team constantly running database-intensive analysis and reporting tasks. The company conducts ongoing research on its data to personalize services for customers, inform its business decisions and keep its matching model current. If researchers did their work on the main production database, they would slow down the user experience for online customers, so instead eHarmony replicates to a secondary database that is inaccessible to users.

The biggest problem in replicating a database is managing it with reasonable costs. There’s a lot of work (see below) involved in finding, sending and verifying the changes in, say, a 20-terabyte production database that users are constantly updating, and that work takes time. The greater the lag, the more stale the data in the secondary instance becomes, so the replication software needs to work fast.

Remember: replication isn’t about backup, which you can get away with now and then throughout the day. Replication is continuous and runs in near-real time.

eHarmony switches to SharePlex

eHarmony was using Oracle Streams, a mechanism for sharing and propagating data among databases, for their secondary database, but they were unhappy with the lag time they saw. Worse yet, Oracle announced that Oracle Streams would not be supported beyond Oracle Database 12c. eHarmony saw the writing on the wall and looked for an alternative. They evaluated Oracle GoldenGate, a high-performance application for real-time data integration, but the software license was expensive and the consulting fees even more so.

Ultimately, eHarmony chose SharePlex, which satisfies their replication requirements at about one third the cost – both up-front and ongoing – of Oracle GoldenGate.

SharePlex – Under the hood

Why is SharePlex such a good match for eHarmony?

SharePlex replicates only the changes made to the source data, which is easier said than done. I’ll give you a look under the hood.

For reliability, SharePlex uses a series of processes to identify, send and verify changes between databases:

• Capture – Reads the redo logs or archive logs on the production database for recent changes, then writes the data to the capture queue.
• Read – Reads data from the capture queue, adds routing information and sends it to the next queue.
• Export – Reads data from the export queue, then sends it across the network to the secondary database.
• Import – Receives data at the secondary database and builds a post queue.
• Post – Reads the post queue, constructs SQL statements to apply or “post” the replicated changes to the secondary database.

This diagram depicts these processes, with replication from a production (source) database to secondary databases (target) in and/or out of the cloud:

For speed, SharePlex uses an asynchronous stream protocol with TCP/IP connections for Export and Import that are efficient for large data transfers and tight on communication bandwidth. Instead of working on a commit or refresh schedule like other replication products, SharePlex replicates changes as they occur, which avoids spikes in network performance.

This design results in minimal lag time between production and secondary databases, which is a huge priority for eHarmony.

Next steps

Once they had implemented SharePlex and seen how well it met their business needs, eHarmony evaluated and purchased Toad for Oracle, an environment its database developers use to analyze subscriber and operational data. Best of all, they worked with Dell Financial Services to spread out their investment in SharePlex and Toad over one year.

So, are data replication, information availability and everything else about IT romantic? Well, maybe not quite. But eHarmony still thinks it’s pretty cool that they can keep data on more than 20 million users synchronized across databases for one third the cost of Oracle Streams.

• Read the entire case study, “Online Matches Made in Heaven.”
• Want to look under the hood some more? See “How SharePlex Works” in the SharePlex for Oracle Administrator Guide.

If you’re an avid follower of the Dell TechCenter blogs, you already know that we offer a wide variety of products to solve your organization’s most pressing IAM, Security and IT management needs. What you may not know is that our products are once again being recognized for the excellence they offer to organizations like yours.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but within the identity and access management (IAM) and Windows management (WM) products, we have several products vying for the American Business Association (ABA) awards in a variety of categories. The ABA awards, also known as The Stevie® Awards are the world's premier business awards.  They were created in 2002 to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide.  In short order the Stevie has become one of the world's most coveted prizes.  

Many of Dell Software’s products have been nominated for this year’s award. Please vote for Dell Software in each of the categories below:

So, I’m going to make voting easy for you:

Our ask is simple. This is a voting award and we would appreciate your help. If you have experience with these products, or would just like to see Dell Software win an award, please follow the instructions above to cast your vote for the Dell Software product (or products) of your choice. I think I can speak for the teams here that work seemingly tirelessly to provide and support the best IAM and WM products on the planet when I say, “thank you. We appreciate it.”

Dell World User Forum takes place November 4 - 7, 2014 at the Austin Hilton and the Austin Convention Center.

Pre-register for #DellWorld (Nov 4-6) + #DellWorld User Forum (Nov 4-7) for the US$1595 early bird rate and receive an amazing Buy One, Get One Free offer to share with another technical wizard on your team. Score your BOGO by August 31, 2014. (Pre-registration is free; expect a confirmation email with full registration details.)

What do fast cars, great BBQ and music have to do with technology?

They all play a part in Dell World Week in Austin this year! Vrrroom – start your IT engines! The Formula One Circuit of the Americas hosts its final race just as we head into town for Dell World Week.

Austin, TX is our host again this year and the time promises to be productive and fun for all attending.

Love live music? Get ready for the Dell World Opening party on the stages at the park Tuesday evening. Great BBQ? You can’t beat the menus in this town.

Meet industry powerhouses, experts, Dell executives and your peers at Dell World User Forum in Austin, Texas.

Learn new ways to improve the art and science of IT with products across Dell, including KACE, SonicWALL, Data Protection and more to see how others are handling the day-to-day challenges you all face. We’ll ramp up traditionally popular learning activities with new, exciting programs, all to help you maximize your existing solutions and address today’s biggest IT challenges.

We’ll see you at #DellWorld and #DWUF 2014!

Pre-register now>>