Archive for February, 2008

http://drowland.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/hp-dl380-g5-pci-mappings-for-vmware-esx/

I’m installing VMware ESX 3.5.0 on 12 DL380 G5’s. I’m using the two integrated Broadcom nics and I’ve installed two additional nics. Both additional nics are Intel Dual Port Pro 1000s. My issue came in that It was hard to tell which nic was which from within VMware. It was easy enough to tell that the onboard nics were 3:0:0 and 5:0:0, but for the Intels, it was more difficult. And I could see an even bigger problem if I needed to additional nics into this server later as the mappings would get all messed up.

Check out this post, it’s talking about identifying the network cards in VMWare. It’s a good article, check it out.

http://www.sundayherald.com/business/businessnews/display.var.2050526.0.0.php

AT THE ABN Amro head office in Zuidas - Amsterdam’s futuristic new business hub on the southern outskirts - lights burn long into the night. The area was planned in the 1990s around this monument to Dutch financial power. That centrepiece has now fallen. The building is now field headquarters to a Scottish-led invasion force.

Right now the ABN building is occupied by Mark Fisher, previously the Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) back-office wizard, picked by RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin as interim chairman of the ABN holding group on November 1 last year. He and RBS’s crack integration team now occupy the plushest offices.

Eventually the building will be be inherited by Fortis, the Benelux lender which, along with RBS and the Spanish Banco Santander, formed the hostile consortium that bought ABN Amro for £49 billion last October. The biggest bank deal in history - and arguably the worst-timed - it trumped a friendlier £43.7bn bid by RBS’s UK rival Barclays.

In the midst of the worst financial turmoil seen for a generation, Fisher and co are awaiting permission from the Dutch central bank to divide the spoils of the Dutch giant in pursuit of a promised £1.2bn of cost savings.

Check out this article which is talking about the ongoing merger of the ABN Amro group into the consortium banks, it will be interesting to see what announcements are made this year.

Will the integration include integrating the business lines, the IT infrastructure not to mention the business processes etc?

http://www.nemertes.com/press_releases/press_release_server_virtualization_requires_shift_security_thinking

New York, NY – Feb. 12, 2008 – Rapid adoption of server virtualization is forcing companies to think about the security implications of virtualization.

Most IT departments currently secure physical and virtual servers the same way. Unfortunately, consolidating servers into a pool of virtual machines interconnected by virtual networks invalidates many of the assumptions that underlie current data center security techniques. While the focus has been on the security of the hypervisor, the real risks may lie elsewhere.

“As server virtualization has gained acceptance in corporate data centers, security has gone from an afterthought to a serious concern,” says Andreas M. Antonopoulos, senior vice president of Nemertes Research. Much of the focus has been on the technologies of virtualization rather than the operational, organization and economic benefits the technologies offer companies. For server virtualization to deliver its benefits as securely as possible, companies need to conduct a more rigorous analysis of the risks associated with it. “Part of the uncertainly arises because most companies do not have a good understanding of the real risks surrounding virtualization, “says Antonopoulos.

Check out this interesting article talking about how this research on the need to think about security when investigating deploying a virtualization project. It’s not just the security aspect from a technical standpoint, it’s the compliance (the concept of Chinese Walls). The ability to separate instances by networks, as well as application/user groups and business lines.  We can virtualize the server infrastructure tomorrow, but how do we deal with HR? With Compliance or front office, we can technically host common infrastructure on the ESX estate, but what if HR say no we want an isolated network, an isolated infrastructure?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142385-c,macos/article.html

The bug fixes kept coming Monday, as Apple shipped critical security updates for its Mac OS X operating system.

The latest security updates fix a 11 of bugs in the Mac Operating system, including eight bugs in the recently released Mac OS X 10.5, known as “Leopard.” Apple released the security fixes in conjunction with an 10.5.2 update to Leopard, which includes dozens of other updates.

Some of the security flaws are extremely serious, and could be exploited by hackers to run unauthorized software on a victim’s computer, although Apple did not report any incidents of this occurring.

The patches include fixes for Safari, Mail, Launch Services, the Mac OS Directory Services, Open Directory and Parental Controls. There are also patches for several Unix components that ship with Apple’s software, including a recently patched flaw in the Samba file-and-print software.

I’ve just completed a software update on both the mac’s we’ve got, the latest security fixes have been released. When it’s convenient, it’s time to update your mac to protect the system and keep your mac up to date.

http://www.p2vbackup.com/index.asp

I will here describe whole process of implementation of virtual servers into your current network infrastructure. With virtualization you will get virtual failover servers and you will have fresh replica of all of your important data, so in case main servers failure you will have fast disaster recovery plan that just works. Of course you can have clusters in your network infrastructure but what is the cost of managing clusters and paying licenses for that expensive kind on in stable software.

here are always savings into hardware and power consumption, imagine now you need to have one physical for every server you own if you want to have good disaster recovery plan, with this you can have dozen of backups on the same server and you will run only backup that is needed in case of the disaster.

Check out this great post about implementing virtualization in your business. It also covers disaster recovery or fail-over. Two great topics of interest in the infrastructure world, and it’s always good to see what people are writing about, what ideas they have in deploying the technology.