CohesiveFT Elastic Server

Mind the Gap, Next Stop the Cabinet Office

2012-02-20T04:00:00.000-06:00

CohesiveFT is part of the UK Government Procurement Service’s innovative approach to IT procurement - G-Cloud CloudStore. What does this mean? We’re excited for the opportunity to
offer our products and services to the UK public sector.

CohesiveFT has been awarded the Framework Agreement for inclusion in the G-Cloud’s CloudStore. Meaning our Cloud Container products and services for migration, networking, and orchestration are available on ‘CloudStore,’ an e-marketplace where public sector organizations can procure services to leverage the “IT equivalent of a Boris Bike.” More information on the Boris Bike for you non-Londoners.

In December, Francis Maude, Minister for the UK Cabinet Office likened Cloud Computing to a Boris Bike “pay for what you need when you need it, and forget about costly on-going maintenance that you can live without”. A nice simple analogy and a goal which the Government hopes will result in better IP procurement process and better value for the UK Tax payer. By allowing the UK Government to engage more with SME tech suppliers, buyers will benefit from greater flexibility and better price options than the bigger boys

We are eagerly awaiting the reaction to the CloudStore from the public sector IT buyers. Less than half of the bidders in the G-Cloud process where successful and none offer the unique combination of image automation, topology automation and network virtualization that help organizations consume cloud services in a secure controlled manner.

One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is increased agility and with that comes the ability to fail fast and fail small. Could the CloudStore be beginning of the end of the huge failures in Government IT? Or is that just wishful thinking....

White Paper: Disaster Readiness and Recovery Best Practices

2012-02-16T11:59:00.001-06:00

Now, for the first time, cloud computing offers a cost effective disaster management option. What CohesiveFT calls, Disaster Readiness is a cloud-based solution for staging a remote facility ready in the case of a disaster. This low cost repository is then operated on stand-by mode, and can even be configured with miniaturized clones of the server topologies running in your production datacenter. Instead of big iron running on idle, you can stage your digital assets, and run the smallest possible topology of virtual servers for each of your priority work loads. Each repository and topology packaged into a virtual Cloud Container similar the the idea of shipping containers filled with server racks.

The process involves five steps to reach Disaster Readiness, and another 3 steps to have a working Disaster Recovery facility operational. The steps are:

Step 1: Choose Your Cloud

Select a public cloud(s) to meet your scaling, geographic, technology, and vendor diversification needs.

Step 2: Build a Secure Environment You Control

Create a controllable and secure virtual overlay network on top of the cloud provider's physical network.

Step 3: Test Scaling and Failure Modes

Even before any IP or data is moved to the cloud, you have reduced your application's recovery time objective (RTO).

Step 4: Migrate Your Application Repository

Deploying copies of the digital assets needed for recovery.

Step 5: Commence Data Synchronization

Implement a the simplest workable method for synchronizing production data to the repository.

Disaster Readiness Accomplished!

You have narrowed your RTO by staging what you need to bring up the application in the cloud providers' facilities. And, you have establish a process for moving data to the cloud facility, which means your RPO is a a much more known and fixed down-time risk. Hold here until disaster strikes or to further tighten the recovery window, continue:

Step 6: Define & Deploy the Application Topology

Decide on an aspirational topology and deploying a scaled down version of your production systems.

Step 7: Process Live Data

Run select transactions through the Disaster Recovery facility as an extension of production.

Step 8: Conduct Periodic Disaster Drills

At this step the Disaster Recovery facility is fully operational, now your attention can turn to preparedness.

Read the WhitePaper to learn more about Disaster Readiness and Recovery made simpler and cost effective via IaaS cloud computing.

White Paper: NATO-G8 Summit - IT Readiness ALERT

2012-02-09T12:16:00.001-06:00

As part of the Chicago IT community, CohesiveFT is especially tuned to the discussions and planning for the NATO-G8 Summit which will be held May 19th and 20th. Protesting, demonstrations, and marches are part of Chicago's springtime. However, post 9/11, we must be concerned that terrorists will infiltrate and use peaceful activities as cover for much more sinister plots. At the national, state, and city level extensive preparedness measures are already being put in place, and counter measures are being taken to foil the exploratory attacks now being made on critical digital infrastructure.

Now, for the first time, cloud computing offers a cost effective disaster management option. What CohesiveFT calls, Disaster Readiness is a cloud-based solution employing miniaturized clones of the servers running in your production datacenter. Instead of big iron running on idle, you can run the smallest possible topology of virtual servers for each of your priority work loads. Each topology packaged into a virtual Cloud Container similar the the idea of shipping containers filled with server racks. Each Cloud Container secures an exact replica of a server topology running in production. Each one is scaled down and running on inexpensive virtual machines in an IaaS hybrid cloud.

By exploiting the 'pay only for what you use' cloud model, your miniaturized clone data center is a manageable operating expense not a major capital expenditure. Disaster Readiness the right DR insurance plan for IT outages localized to a city's IT infrastructure, where multiple companies are effected concurrently.

It is not too late to be prepared for the NATO-G8 Summit. Protect your high priority and at-risk IT resources by implementing a Disaster Readiness strategy to fit your unique needs. Do-it-yourself, or like so many other enterprise IT shops, use CohesiveFT's Cloud Container products and services. CohesiveFT provides actionable IT contingency solutions for minor to catastrophic IT continuity risk.

The Cloud Container product set makes it possible to extend your data center into one or more IaaS provider's clouds while retaining complete securely & control. Security & control accomplished by literally extending your enterprise firewall to enclose, isolate, and control each of the servers running in the public cloud, and all of the data in motion as well as when at rest.

Read the white paper,or for more information contact CohesiveFT's disaster readiness task force by emailing DRTaskForce@CohesiveFT.com.

Building a Smart Elastic Server

2011-10-12T10:35:00.005-05:00

Today we opened up public beta access to our newest Elastic Server factory site, Smart.ElasticServer, that exclusively serves the IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise (IBM SCE) environment. The timing couldn't be better as it coincides with IBM's SCE announcement activities at their Innovation Centers around the globe. Many of the IBM Business Partner success stories being told are a result of the use of CohesiveFT products and services like the Smart.ElasticServer site.

Smart.ElasticServer.com is an IBM SCE-tuned implementation of our ElasticServer.com factory that has been providing multi-cloud image assembly automation since 2008. Our partnership with IBM is focused on providing enterprise application migration to the SCE. So aside from bringing the style sheet inline with Big Blue's color palette, we have tailored this factory site to allow virtual server import features and functions not currently available on IBM SCE. It allows IBM customers to start their application migration paths from datacenter to cloud, cloud segment to cloud segment, or cloud to cloud.

SmartImport
IBM SCE users can import Linux-based Smart Elastic Servers to their account in SCE using the Smart.ElasticServer factory. Imported Elastic Servers can either be built from scratch or using imported VMware images provided by the user. Users log into Smart.ElasticServer.com and link their Smart.ElasticServer account with their IBM SCE account. This association allows SCE customers to use "SmartImport" capabilities. IBM is enabling its SCE customers access to the Smart.ElasticServer image factory as part of the SCE public beta program. For more information visit Smart.ElasticServer.com or contact CohesiveFT.

Download our SmartImport PDF and start moving virtual workloads to IBM SCE today.

Slick.

Meet cft_smartcloud Ruby gem...

2011-07-25T15:20:00.005-05:00

More and more of the CohesiveFT solution set is up and running in the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise on a daily basis. Our image automation folks, dyed in the wool Ruby-ists, came up with this Ruby language binding for the SmartCloud REST API.

For those of you who are object-oriented types, Ruby fans, SmartCloud users, or the curious - it is a neat interactive experience. It follows the naming convention of the REST API pretty faithfully but adds the "display_*" methods as convenience function to the "describe_*" calls.

My favorite is: smartcloud "display_instances(:order => 'Location')"

Check out the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/cohesiveft#p/u/0/-WdSHP2iwDM

If you have Ruby and the gems system installed, it should work using "gem install cft_smartcloud" and then "smartcloud help" from your command line.

Enjoy!

*on a Debian/Ubuntu variant you might need to say "PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin" or call "/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/smartcloud"

Open letter to Microsoft Partners (sort of): Don't retrain today.

2011-07-13T15:48:00.012-05:00

OK. I hate open letters. I hate the faux header, footer, salutation, etc..

But, if I were of the wont to create such a thing, this is the closest I have come. I saw a tweet which pointed me to this article headlined:

Microsoft's Ballmer: 'Come on in, the cloud's lovely - just don't forget to retrain'

THIS MAKES ME CRAZY!
This is how Cloud Computing can fail in the enterprise (which is where Microsoft lives these days, they are not a darling of the Web 2.0 crowd).

I run into this "meme" plenty enough in the cloud circles - so it isn't Steve Ballmer alone.

And it isn't his fault I am limit up on this concept, but the message of "Hi, we are new, we are different, and in order to use us you have to re-architect, re-configure, re-learn everything!" is a pretty rotten message AND IT IS NOT TRUE!

One of the things that is so great about cloud is that super smart people have spent hundreds of millions of $$$ (billions?) at this point (thanks AWS, IBM, et. al.) so that I can un-learn a lot of things.

That is much better then re-training. I would love to have more things to forget. But so far I am happy forgetting how to manage datacenter hardware for one big category of cost savings.

Another great thing about cloud is that it runs x86 workloads. And you know what? My enterprise is full of those darn x86 workloads. And to make it even better, those x86 workloads don't need to be infinitely scalable, they don't need to run as formalized SaaS, they don't need to run as PaaS. They are "POA" - plain old applications. And I just need them to run somewhere. Hey - cloud is somewhere. Can't I use that?

Back to "plain old apps". If I have to re-learn, re-train on everything what is the point? First of all, why would I re-learn, retrain to use MSFT technologies in the cloud? If I am going to re-learn, re-train why don't I learn Linux, or the Oracle stack, or SalesForce and Force.com, or Google AppEngine for that matter.

However, if I just want my x86 Windows workloads to run - do I have to re-train to use the cloud? If I am a Microsoft Partner do I really need to re-learn and re-train just to move my products or services to the cloud? Blechh.

Questions:
1) Can't I just move my Windows servers in some relatively easy way shape or form to "the cloud" and get going?

2) Do I have to boil the ocean and move whole datacenters at a time?

3) Can't I get value and ROI on my investment one business application at a time, with only incremental training activities (say maybe way less training investment then understanding migrating from Windows Server 2008 R1 SP2 to Windows Server 2008 R2)?

Answers:
1) YES
2) NO
3) YES

if the cloud you use is the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise or Amazon EC2 (along with others).

This is what is so confounding about the re-learn, re-train, re-do everything mantra. Amazon EC2 runs Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 quite nicely. IBM SmartCloud runs Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 quite nicely.

So let's recap.

- I have zillion dollar data centers with more guards, guns, gas (halon), glass and metal than I can imagine, run by dedicated teams monitoring 24x7 at the hardware and virtual infrastructure layer.

- I have a web portal that allows me to, oh gosh, "START" and "STOP" and "REBOOT" Windows Servers. Degree of difficulty about that of learning how to check out books at your library.

- I have cheap and cheerful ways of connecting those cloud images to my data center as if they were just another LAN, using common industry equipment that my network admins use every day.

- At this point, (without learning anything about the almost immediate ROI I get out of quite simple yet powerful offerings from the likes of CohesiveFT, RightScale or Enstratus), I have Windows Servers up and running in the cloud but behaving as if "on my network", ready to use whatever automation, monitoring, naming, identity, authentication that I use in my datacenter today.

Where was the re-learning in that?

Re-learning, Re-training, Re-Doing means RE-SPENDING!!!
Do
not
do
that.

Are there things to learn? Of course there are. Cloud automation solutions for image automation, topology automation, network virtualization, backup, recovery, IDS, etc. are all available at TOPOLOGY PRICING not enterprise pricing.

This is super. Migrate. Evolve. Learn (not re-learn). Get quick ROI on simple, clear and immediate wins. Scale as appropriate over the next decade.

You are in the midst of the largest IT migration since the Y2k, but there is no forced end date.

From early 2007 to today, cloud quality and reliability has skyrocketed, prices have dropped, vendors have shaken out, investment has grown, 10s of thousands of successes have been had. This path and pace will continue and you get to decide what to move, and when.

The hoopla of "Infrastructure as a Service" (the part of Cloud CohesiveFT focuses on) is deserved:

- improved time to market
- improved automation
- ROI at the application level
- incremental value
- etc..

But at the end of the day these are x86 computers that we collectively install software on and run. Broadly the same, whilst rewardingly different in subtle, incremental ways.

Please try to learn that first.

(Cheers - Pat K)

VPN-Cubed® vpcPLUS Available Today

2011-03-15T09:45:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note, we don't want to steal any of our partner's thunder.

The long awaited update to Amazon Web Services™ Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) beta is finally here. The update opens up the once closed and limited VPC offering to include such features as public access to VPC deployments, control of network ACLs, use of Elastic IPs inside VPC deployments, and controllable connections to S3. All these things make the VPC offering more valuable to users looking to do more with the offering than was previously possible. We applaud AWS for moving forward to offer their customers more connectivity options at the virtualization layer (see Welcome to the User-Cloud Part 1 and Part 2).

As an innovator in the cloud network and connectivity market we have collaborated with many cloud providers on how best to provide networking options to their users. Through our partnership with AWS, we have developed a unique Edition of our VPN-Cubed Virtual Networking Product specifically designed for use with the new VPC offering. We call it VPN-Cubed vpcPLUS. VPN-Cubed vpcPLUS was developed to address the lingering issue that public clouds are 3rd party controlled environments. No matter how many control and security features cloud providers make available to their user base, the virtual workloads are still running in 3rd party network environments (to which the customer has no insight, visibility or control). Since its launch in 2008 VPN-Cubed has been providing our enterprise customers with unmatched cloud networking security and control. By working with AWS to create our vpcPLUS Edition, enterprise users can migrate to the cloud with confidence and control. Check out our VPN-Cubed vpcPLUS page for more information on the use-cases or contact sales to move forward with your vpcPLUS deployment.

teamwork.

Good for the goose? Apparently not the gander.

2011-02-15T12:45:00.002-06:00

I think the following is true; although I hope it is not true long run.

If I am using VMware vSphere I use a programmatic API for integration; the vSphere SDK.

If I am a vCloud customer, I use a programmatic API for integration; the vCloud API.*

Why so different? One thing that has been posted on the API forum at VMware Communities says, "we have built them for different uses and contracts."

As a user of cloud infrastructure - whether public or private - why would that matter to the provider of the virtual infra software? Why does VMware think I am so different when I am a customer of my internal IT department than if a customer of a vCloud provider?

One simple answer would be, "we created vCloud concepts after the core ESX stuff - and haven't integrated the code or the concepts yet, but yeah, kind of 'blech' that we haven't yet". I would be good with that, software is hard, and time and constraints are always a killer.

But the answer above doesn't say that, it says as an enterprise IT user of private cloud I have dramatically different needs than an enterprise user of a public cloud.

Maybe the confusion is "who is the customer"? I think it could be that VMware doesn't recognize enterprises as "multi-tenant" environments, basically the same as if it was a vCloud provider. Their customer is the virtual infra provider, whether the enterprise IT Operations Manager or the MSP/Co-lo/Hosting provider Operations Manager. In the former case, users of virtual infra are invisible to VMware, with an orientation that internal, centralized IT still gets to be in charge of everything. In the latter, they have to provide capabilities to me the vCloud provider's customer, otherwise the vCloud won't get used.

I wrote about this in "Welcome to the User-Cloud" - where I raised the issue of the need for separation of concerns between the needs of the virtual infra provider and the virtual infra user.

So, in short summary, I am not being critical. I really am wondering why such a difference is perceived and expressed in the VMware product lines? Would love to hear what others think.

(* The fact that there may not be a vCloud provider that has fully implemented the vCloud 1.0 API yet is a different issue, and one for another day. If anyone knows of a vCloud provider with full 1.0 API support please give me a tweet @pjktech and I will correct/update here.)

- Pat K

Oh Hello VPN-Cubed 2.0

2010-11-17T13:00:00.001-06:00

VPN-Cubed 2.0 has arrived. Why 2.0? This release is a direct result of over two years of interaction with our customers understanding the specific requirements of use-cases from various industry verticals and geographies. VPN-Cubed 2.0 represents a major step forward adding functionality like the new Manager Firewall and API compatibility (more on those later).

As Pat outlined in his User Cloud posts (Part 1 | Part 2), cloud computing (of course I'm talking IaaS), is a multi-layer environment with distinct separation of concerns between the physical providers, virtual providers, and the cloud users. VPN-Cubed focuses on the cloud user or cloud tenant. The model for traditional network devices is the big metal boxes we have worked with all these years. On the flip side, virtual networking, driven by the needs of enterprise application topologies, is a new use-case and implementing it takes some real lateral thinking. Virtual networks can be anywhere, anytime and they provide critical control functions for enterprises in the increasingly agile and often anonymous world of virtual/cloud infrastructure. VPN-Cubed 2.0 is the enterprise-ready networking solution for the User Cloud.

What's new in 2.0?
Below are some of the user experience improvements in this release. We have also updated the IPsec subsystem in the Datacenter Connect Editions.

Manager Firewall

We have added firewall capabilities at the Manager level to control traffic into and out of the VPN-Cubed Overlay Network. This adds an additional layer of security and control to your cloud deployments. The Manager Firewall is controlled via the Manager UI using IPTables syntax.

Manager API

The API provides programmatic access to the Manager and the overlay network. Configuration steps previously done via the Manager UI can now be performed via the command line or by script. See the Scriptable Overlay Networks post for more information on how the API can work with Context-Cubed.

The API tool can be downloaded (ZIP | TAR) on the VPN-Cubed Edition pages along with documentation (Cloud Only | Datacenter Connect).

Increased Access to Logs

Links to the logs is now provided via the UI making it easier for users to perform required monitoring and maintenance.

External Ping

Datacenter Connect Editions now come with an External Ping capability for configurations where a nearly permanent IPsec tunnel is required. The External Ping function sets up a continuous ping from the Manager to a destination behind the datacenter-based extranet device. The ping serves to keep the tunnel up by continually sending tunnel traffic.

Topology Naming

Many of our customers have complex deployments with multiple Managers and multiple overlay networks. Topology naming allows alpha numeric naming of individual topologies and Managers displayed on the Manager UI.

All new features are explained in the updated configuration documentation available for download in each Edition's launch instructions section on the website. Visit the VPN-Cubed homepage to see which Edition is right for your use-case.

Welcome to the User-Cloud (Part 2)

2010-11-05T10:00:00.004-05:00

Disclaimer: I am talking about IaaS when I use the term "cloud" in this post.

A quick recap from Part 1 where I was outlining what I see as:

The new "separation of concerns"

If you think about it, when you are using a public cloud like Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the team of people running the physical infrastructure have no direct interaction with your application topology; and you don't want them to.

The teams of people running your virtual infrastructure at AWS have ALMOST no interaction with your application topology; and you don't want them to. They see your topology from “below”, they see a clump of x86 VM workloads, and have no knowledge of the semantics of your application topology, and in fact shouldn't.

You, in the user-cloud, know the semantics of your application, you know how it scales, you know where it came from, where it is going, and whether it can migrate from region to region or country to country. And to date you have used either your own self-developed knowledge of EC2, private Eucalyptus, Terremark, etc.., or you used Rightscale or CohesiveFT, or one of the other tooling sets that fit in the category Gartner calls “Cloud Management Platform”.

But this gives rise to the question....

Where should my virtual infrastructure and its providers fit in?

We know that a Public Cloud as my underlying physical infra provider cannot take any specific knowledgeful action on my applications, nor do I want them to. It is the same with Public Cloud companies in the role as my virtual infrastructure provider, other than a nominal number of very narrow geographic recovery actions.

What about in my Private Cloud? Today the Private Cloud (agile virtual infrastructures running in my own datacenters or co-lo centers) is often mimicking existing centralized IT behaviors. In this model, a line of business (LOB) or application owner has to go “hat in hand” to centralized IT to make deployments happen.

I would argue this is an evolutionary artifact which will succumb in the face of Enterprise IT successfully evolving into comprehensive virtual infra providers. Imagine if you will, the “private cloud pixies” come overnight and magically transform all of your available x86 hardware stock into one global, integrated/federated, api-driven, virtualized fabric. All of a sudden you would realize how the "frozen chunks of metal" in your physical layer (servers, storage arrays, routers, switches, etc.) had come to define the structure of your business, your control mechanisms, and your attempts at knowledgeful centralization of the application layers. As these devices become only a conveyance for virtualized compute, virtualized storage and virtualized networking – instantly the application layer accelerates to a speed and fluidity that provides poor grasp for IT staff and even less tractable control for an ISV infrastructure that perceives reality from below.

Application owners, managing from “above” know their application, its topology and are best able to deploy it to some set of described resources. These described resources (available VM slots at the simplest) probably are detailed with respect to computer power, memory availability, geography if not legal jurisdiction, storage availability, LAN speed, network edge speed, etc..

The IT operations team (which could report to centralized IT or the LOB) which knows the application best, is best positioned to bring agility and satisfaction to the application owners.

This is the next battleground for the hearts and minds of the buyers of virtual infrastructure in the enterprise. On one hand, public cloud vendors viscerally perceive the new separation of concerns. They do not want their physical infra or virtual infra staff concerned with the discrete details of any one customer's application workload.

Yet, the private cloud vendors and the incumbent virtual infrastructure providers (centralized Enterprise IT) are aligned in wanting to manage the application topology (and accordingly the Line of Business) from the middle as it were. For the IT team running the virtual infrastructure – they are avoiding “giving up” of something they fear to give up. For the virtual infra ISV, they avoid having to find and negotiate with a new buyer. They avoid having to engineer products from the top, that can integrate with their products from the middle.

This picture shows the current trend. Virtual infra providers bringing to market feature sets from the middle (as pictured vDog, vCat and vMagic) putatively to meet the needs of the user-cloud, the cloud tenants.

I don't like this approach. Perhaps, in a self serving sense, I am against this because it means more competition for CFT and others in the Gartner-dubbed "Cloud Management Platform space". But it is more than that. It is a violation of the new and powerful separation of concerns which is playing out quite nicely in AWS / Public Cloud space today and should have its chance in the private cloud space as well.

I am not against the virtual infra ISVs coming up with products for the user-cloud. I am happy for them to deliver a line of “u” products (user-cloud products); uDog, uCat and uMagic that use the public, published APIs of their “v” product counterparts.

What are examples of good "vDogs" or "uDog" counterparts? For one I would say Amazon's SimpleDB. It is a platform service provided from the middle, owned, operated and controlled from the middle - and can be used by application creators to create their own user-cloud applications which they can control. From the same vendor comes a good "uDog", Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service). It is provided at the user-cloud level and it is managed and controlled by the application owner. Another good "vDog" is Amazon VPC (virtual private cloud). Again, it is owned and operated in the midldle, powerful, yet comes with lessened customer control just like its database counterpart. Amazon's ecosystem provides the corresponding "uDog", CohesiveFT's VPN-Cubed; owned, operated, and controlled in the user-cloud level. As I said in my previous post, horses for courses (vHorses?). I won''t point out bad vDogs and vCats here - but they are out there and I recommend thinking through their usage and their violation of the operational planes of control public and private cloud is now affording us.

When we give the cloud application owners control from above, and virtual infrastructure providers stick to managing at the workload level from below, I believe it encourages innovation in enterprise IT organization, innovation in features and functions for managing application topologies, and better interoperability and integration between cloud vendors; whether from the virtual infra or user-cloud perspective.

If we take advantage of the new separation of concerns being afforded us by the emergence of three distinct planes of operational control; physical, virtual and user, then I think we have a chance of maximizing enterprise agility and ROI as they engage in the world of public, private and hybrid cloud infrastructures.

If you are looking for me, you will find me with the rest of the CFT team, in the user-cloud.

Welcome to the User-Cloud (Part 1)

2010-11-02T15:00:00.006-05:00

Disclaimer: I am talking about IaaS when I use the term "cloud" in this post.

Welcome to the world of cloud tenancy – where we (we being people who use the cloud as opposed to people who provide the cloud) are shared tenants of increasingly powerful virtual, agile, api-driven and anonymous compute and storage mechanisms. This is an area where I continue to see confusion in how people look at the world of IaaS (hereafter called “cloud” in this post). In the picture below is CohesiveFT's (CFT) simple model of the market structure where we have the physical layer (been around for ever), the virtual infrastructure layer (been around in growing forms for 10+ years, dominated by VMware), and the user-cloud or cloud-tenant layer (relatively new). By user-cloud, I don't mean the end user of the application, rather the person or team responsible for the application topology being run on the cloud.

The new "separation of concerns"

If you think about it, when you are using AWS – the team of people running the physical infrastructure have no direct interaction with your application topology; and you don't want them to.

The teams of people running your virtual infrastructure at AWS have ALMOST no interaction with your application topology; and you don't want them to. The virtual infra provider team might be making snapshots of your VM's and Storage as part of their cloud service. They might do some sort of LAN-based server motion where they move your VM's 10 to 50 feet from Server A to Server B, if it appears Server A is about to fail. Other than that – you don't want their involvement – what could they do? They see your topology from “below”, they see a clump of x86 VM workloads, and have no knowledge of the semantics of your application topology, and in fact shouldn't.

I believe this is an industry wide trend, and basically creates a new “separation of concerns” in how IT functionality is provided both by vendors and IT staffs, and how IT functionality is consumed. The Enterprise IT environment has vacillated for decades between centralize, decentralize, centralize, etc.. This new separation of concerns allows for the gradual evolution of a hybrid IT organization where there is a logical, and purposeful bit of both models.

There are now three distinct control planes; physical, virtual, and customer/user.

Physical infra is a centralized activity, at the very least at the geographic level.

Virtual infra will be centralized at the virtual infra layer, with the newer versions of virtual infrastructure software offering some interesting geographical federation capabilities. It is possible one might be running both VMware and Xen virtual infrastructure globally, and those virtual infra's will likely be in the control of either one IT group, or one IT group per vendor solution.

Application topologies ideally run “when” (in time) and “where” (in geography) they are most useful to a business. This means detailed knowledge of the wants, needs, beliefs, and fears of the consuming business units. If this is a global customer database without a predominant business unit owner – then that application topology itself might be managed by a centralized “common applications” team.

If it is a cornerstone application for a company's Swiss Private Client group – then I am guessing it will be managed by a business line oriented IT group in Switzerland, likely to be running on a piece of Swiss-domiciled virtual infrastructure.

They key here is to realize that there are distinct products/vendors for each layer of your cloud infrastructure, and there are distinct buyers/users for each layer of your cloud infrastructure.

To me this sets up nicely to fit into the UK idiom of “horse for courses”.

*However, in part two of this topic I will address the problematic nature of the new separation of concerns. The gist of the issue is there is a temptation in the “enterprise cloud” or “private cloud” to violate them, not recognizing that there are now consumers of each level's vendor offerings, as well as a desire of course by vendors to be the single source of all cloud computing capabilities for an enterprise (not necessarily a bad thing) by providing one monolithic product that serves all levels (a bad thing).

(pat k)

Let's build a smarter cloud.

2010-10-21T12:00:00.001-05:00

We're working on it!

VPN-Cubed is now available on the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on IBM Cloud. Wow that's a mouthful. Launch your secure and controlled virtual overlay network on the IBM cloud.

Check out the developerWorks VPN-Cubed article for more information.

VPN-Cubed Images are available in both the RTP and EHN Data centers. Follow the steps below to launch and configure your VPN-Cubed Overlay Network in the IBM Cloud.

Download the VPN Cubed Datacenter Connect IBM Launch and Configuration Instructions.

Launch the CFT VPN-Cubed Datacenter Connect Trial V0.6.4 in either RTP or EHN Datacenters.

Configure the Manager and setup an IPsec tunnel your cloud deployment.

Plug some of your other IBM Cloud-based servers into the virtual network.

Currently only our Free Trial Edition is available as a self service solution (but not for long). If you are interested in Lite, SME or Enterprise Editions contact us and we can provide image access on an individual account basis.

Smart.

Virtual Networks - they're scriptable!

2010-09-23T10:55:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer: I am talking about Infrastructure as a Service when I use the word "cloud" below.

I love Cloud Networking infrastructure. And by that I mean Virtual Networks I can create within a public cloud, across public clouds, and across public clouds and multiple private infrastructures (whether private cloud or traditional data center infrastructure).

I am not talking about the way down there - way below me - the massive grunting beasts of the data center the Cisco or Juniper Model Number whatever. They provide me egress and ingress at the most fundamental level but as long as my packets flow - that's all I need from them.

I am not talking about the fair bit below me - for the most part out of my scope of concern as well - the humming, hypervisor-centric accelerator, the "v" switch or its metal equivalent, the device that the virtual infrastructure provider uses to make all those hypervisors able to talk to each other. Its job is to network together hypervisors and be the first line of transport for all those virtual ethernet adaptors stuck inside all of our/my Virtual Machines. This is the guy that potentially collaborates with my virtual infrastructure providers (my IT department, Amazon, others) to, despite all my best efforts, systematically destroy the concept of device "MAC" address, leaving me prone to wonder how I could have used something now so ephemeral as a permanent identity all these years.

I am talking about my life as a "cloud tenant". Whether a private fabric or cloud, or a public fabric or cloud, I am a tenant. I use all of that "goop" below me in indirect ways and there is a completely new separation of concerns between the three layers (physical provider, virtual provider, and cloud tenant) and those things which we each Enable, Allow and Control.

So with that as the precursor here is a network I am constantly setting up and tearing down. We use it for a variety of demonstrations of our cloud automation capabilities. It has these properties:

- A 172.31.1.0/24 subnet overlaying Amazon West and Amazon East with redundant VPN-Cubed (VPN3) managers running in the primary segment (West). It is an application network running an N tier, clustered java application running on a clustered MySQL setup.
- A 192.168.1.0 network running as a floating "office network" in the EC2 cloud capable of running Windows and Linux remote desktops. This has an IPsec connection to the main application network and back to CohesiveFT's offices.
- A 192.168.3.0/24 network at CohesiveFT Chicago accessible to and from the other parts of the cloud network.

Here is a high level picture:

I designed this network using our VPN3 2.0 (release candidate 3) AMIs at EC2. This next release which includes a command line API, overlay firewall, 64 bit support and more, is definitely our best yet. To see the network creation process check out our configuration video.

Once I designed my network, I took snapshot files from each of the VPN3 Managers. These snapshots contain network configuration and credentials information. I save those in a secure location for use to then re-inflate the networks.

Armed with these snapshots I can then use our Context3 Cluster Launch tools to process an XML definition of the instances needed. It looks like this (this is a very simple cluster launch file):


<ec2-cluster>
<cluster-settings>
<defaults>
<ami-type>m1.small</ami-type>
<ami-security>vpncubed-mgrA</ami-security>
<ami-security>started-by-pk</ami-security>
<ami-availability-zone>us-east-1c</ami-availability-zone>
<ec2-endpoint>us-east-1.ec2.amazonaws.com</ec2-endpoint>
</defaults>
</cluster-settings>
<instance-groups>
<group id="1" name="VPN-Cubed xCloudMotion">
<instance-post-launch-delay>1</instance-post-launch-delay>
<group-post-launch-delay>1</group-post-launch-delay>
<instance name="Motion VPN-Cubed Manager 1 - East">
 <ami-id>ami-ce9366a7</ami-id>
 <elastic-ip>1xx.1xx.2xx.xx</elastic-ip>
 <ami-type>m1.small</ami-type>
</instance>
<instance name="Motion VPN-Cubed Manager 2 - East">
 <ami-id>ami-ce9366a7</ami-id>
 <elastic-ip>1xx.1xx.2xx.xx</elastic-ip>
 <ami-type>m1.small</ami-type>
</instance>
<instance name="Motion VPN-Cubed Manager 3 - West">
 <ami-id>ami-60e0b125</ami-id>
 <ec2-endpoint>us-west-1.ec2.amazonaws.com</ec2-endpoint>
 <ami-availability-zone>us-west-1a</ami-availability-zone>
 <elastic-ip>1xx.xx.xx.xx</elastic-ip>
 <ami-type>m1.small</ami-type>
</instance>
<instance name="DemoOffice VPN-Cubed Manager 1 - East">
 <ami-id>ami-ce9366a7</ami-id>
 <ami-availability-zone>us-east-1d</ami-availability-zone>
 <elastic-ip>1xx.xx.2xx.xxx</elastic-ip>
 <ami-type>m1.small</ami-type>
</instance>
</group>
</instance-groups>
</ec2-cluster>

As this definition is processed I get some important information for use in subsequent commands like the instance id which is used is the initial default API password for the individual VPN3 managers.

I then can remake and peer my network connections by uploading the proper snapshot to the new manager at the appropriate Elastic IP. Armed with the API (vpncubed.rb), the instance ids of the newly launched instances, the EIP's assigned to the newly launched instances, and the pre-saved snapshot files from my design phase.



vpncubed.rb -K api -S $mgr1_id -H $mgr1_ip import_snapshot --snapshot $mgr1_snapshot

vpncubed.rb -K api -S $mgr2_id -H $mgr2_ip import_snapshot --snapshot $mgr2_snapshot

vpncubed.rb -K api -S $mgr3_id -H $mgr3_ip import_snapshot --snapshot $mgr3_snapshot

vpncubed.rb -K api -S $mgr4_id -H $mgr4_ip import_snapshot --snapshot $mgr4_snapshot

A few minutes later - it is all up and running again. It is ready for using Context3 to deploy the N-tier clustered application and my floating remote office infrastructure in a matter of minutes.

Without any re-work other than the definition of the network in cubesetup.xml I can move my topologies easily between availability zones and these two regions, and with a modicum of additional network design I can jump things to EC2 EU, EC2 APAC or other public and private clouds. And the fun of it is - it's scriptable and reproducible at will.

If you want to try out "import_snapshot" or other fun scriptable cloud network calls such as setup_ipsec, get_ipsec_local_address, set_ipsec_local_address, create_ipsec_endpoint, create_remote_subnet and more email us at "vpn3beta (at) cohesiveft.com".

(pat k)

VPN-Cubed brings Virtual Private Clouds to Flexiant

2010-06-23T04:00:00.003-05:00

Have you tried Flexiant? If you haven't heard of this group from Livingston, it's about time they pop up on your radar. Their cloud products - Flexiscale the public cloud and Extility the licensed cloud infrastructure platform offer a nice management console and a robust API. Add in a little VPN-Cubed and the offerings can stand up with the biggest hitters in the game. Self-service Editions of both VPN-Cubed Cloud Only and VPN-Cubed Datacenter Connect are immediately available for use on Flexiscale as public server images. Additionally Extility licensees have access to VPN-Cubed for their networking needs as well as the needs of their cloud customers.

The VPN-Cubed appliances can be used to make simple "VPC" style networks like Amazon VPC, but which can run in any cloud without being tied to EC2 specific approaches. They can be used to run key business computing topologies that have been moved to a cloud, but need secure access to the corporate datacenter. They can be used to provision development infrastructure on the fly - allowing "N" identical copies of virtual servers to be run simultaneously - identical down to its IP address. A growing number of organizations are using sophisticated, multi-cloud, multi-datacenter meshes of VPN-Cubed Managers to create global, cloud networks and sometimes even "cloud WANs". Want to learn more? Talk to some of my buddies.

VPN-Cubed is the foundation of our "secure cloud container" solutions, enabling innovative techniques like xCloudMotion(tm), an implementation of stateless server motion which allows application topologies to move between clouds, and cross continents and oceans in minutes. This is comparable to the "OTV" capabilities recently announced by Cisco for long distance VMotion the exception being it doesn't require any specific hardware, it doesn't require service or cloud provider investment or involvement, it doesn't require the same virtual infrastructure, doesn't require the same type of UNDERLYING PHYSICAL SERVER CPU (how is that for virtualized), and certainly doesn't need 10gig Ethernet via leased lines, rather it runs on the consumer Internet.

Interested in learning more about xCloudMotion or scheduling a F2F with the us and the Felxiant team? We're in London for the Cloud Computing World Forum June 28th to July 1st. We will be at the conference, CloudCamp London, and hosting a Skills Matter Event on xCloudMotion. Drop us a line or stop by, maybe we can grab a soccer/football game and a pint.

Bradley.

The Asia Expansion is at Hand

2010-04-30T07:08:00.023-05:00

The sun never sets on the AWS empire - but where they go, so do we. Yesterday Amazon Web Services announced the launch of its first Asia Pacific Region in Singapore. This is major news as Asia has been a growing force in the global economy. Over the last five decades poverty rates have fallen, life expectancy has risen, and the quality of life has been improving throughout Asia and the Pacific. Now with the help of AWS and CohesiveFT the quality of cloud computing is also on the rise. What does this mean? More Regions give a larger group of users more choices when starting their migration to agile infrastructure. Products and Services from CohesiveFT help users all over the globe leverage real business value from the cloud.

Elastic Server
Starting today Community and Professional Edition users can Configure, Build, Deploy, Launch, and Manage custom servers in the shiny new EC2 Asia Pacific Region.It's as easy as clicking a radio button on the Elastic Server Configuration Page. Start building out your private Asia cloud deployment or add to the sparsely populated (not for long) Asia public AMI catalog with easy to assemble Elastic Servers today.

VPN-Cubed
VPN-Cubed is also immediately available in the Asia Pacific Region. Users can launch an overlay network in the new region, connect it to another AWS Region or separate cloud (see Terremark and GoGrid - more coming very soon!), and connect it to their data center via a secure, controlled, and encrypted tunnel. VPN-Cubed is your global virtual network solution. AMIs are available now but please contact us for more information as we wait for our DevPay updates to be approved by AWS.

APAC

Terremark vCloud Express: Lucky Number 3

2010-03-22T10:00:00.001-05:00

March has finally arrived. As Chicagoans, this month is reserved for two things: thawing our bodies out from the long winter and a green river. OK so St. Patty's Day was last week, but we're still riding high off the of the Irish. Today we are announcing the availability of VPN-Cubed at Terremark vCloud Express! Terremark cloud users can now harness the extra level of security and control in the cloud with the VPN-Cubed Overlay Network. Starting to feel the luck of the Irish yourself aren't ya? Take a seat, grab a Guinness and start extracting real business value from the clouds.

Both the VPN-Cubed IPsec Free Edition and SSL Free Edition are available today for your cloud control pleasure. We are also prepared to provide custom licenses if your needs are a little more robust than our dev/test editions can accommodate. Contact us to discuss licensing or subscription pricing - it's quick and painless.

The Linux VPN-Cubed for Terremark Server Templates are available in the drop down menu displayed above. Follow our Launch and Configuration Instructions (SSL | IPsec) to get your overlay network up and running in less than an hour. As always we are here to help if you hit any hurdles.

VPN-Cubed provides you with an overlay network in your vCloud Express environment that allows YOU control of addressing, topology, protocols, and encrypted communications for YOUR cloud-based deployments. When using public clouds like Terremark, your information assets are going into 3rd party controlled infrastructure. Yet Enterprise checks and balances require you to exhibit control over your computing infrastructure. VPN-Cubed gives you flexibility with control in the public cloud.

Your VPN-Cubed overlay network provides 4 key capabilities the cloud does not currently allow you to control:

static addressing for your cloud devices,

topology control by using VPN-Cubed managers as virtual switches, virtual bridges or virtual routers,

use of popular enterprise protocols like UDP Multicast for service discovery,

and lastly encrypted communications between all your devices.

To Arthur!

VPN-Cubed for GoGrid Available

2009-12-17T10:00:00.011-06:00

We are celebrating the belated anniversary of VPN-Cubed® with the release of VPN-Cubed SSL for GoGrid Free Edition and VPN-Cubed IPsec to GoGrid Free Edition. We could have gotten flowers and planned a nice dinner but that isn't our style. Instead we worked with our friends at GoGrid to get our popular EC2 self-service Free Editions available in the GoGrid Exchange. With your choice of either SSL Free Edition, IPsec Free Edition or a custom enterprise configuration, we strive to fit your mood and self image, regardless we have a VPN-Cubed solution for you.

VPN-Cubed provides an overlay network that allows YOU control of addressing, topology, protocols, and encrypted communications for YOUR devices deployed to virtual infrastructure or cloud computing centers. When using public clouds your corporate assets are going into 3rd party controlled infrastructure. Enterprise checks and balances require you to exhibit control over your computing infrastructure. VPN-Cubed gives you flexibility with control in 3rd party environments.

VPN-Cubed IPsec to GoGrid Free Edition

This self-service edition of VPN-Cubed allows users to create a controlled and secure overlay network in GoGrid and launch an IPsec tunnel between their data center and that GoGrid deployment. The free edition is available at no additional cost on top of the GoGrid usage fees. Follow our IPsec to GoGrid Configuration Instructions to launch and configure your GoGrid overlay network.

VPN-Cubed SSL to GoGrid Free Edition

This self-service edition of VPN-Cubed provides added confidence when deploying to the public cloud. Create a secure and encrypted overlay network to connect all your GoGrid servers adding confidence when moving compute capacity to 3rd party control. The SSL Free Edition like the IPsec Free Edition is available at no additional cost on top of the GoGrid usage fees. Follow our SSL for GoGrid Configuration Instructions to launch and configure your GoGrid overlay network.

Need VPN-Cubed for another cloud? The GoGrid and EC2 Editions are pre-configured images that are available as self-service product. VPN-Cubed can run on virtually any public cloud, open source private cloud, or virtual infrastructure. Contact us to get the benefits of a secure and controlled overlay network in your cloud today.

Year 2.

EC2 US-West Region Available Now

2009-12-07T10:00:00.008-06:00

You asked and we delivered (there might be a pattern here). We have been up late working hard to bring you the benefits of the new AWS EC2 US-West Region in both our product families. The Elastic Server Factory now allows you to assemble, deploy, and manage custom cloud servers in all three EC2 Regions (the US-East Northern Virginia Region, the US-West Northern California Region in the United States, and the EU Ireland Region in Europe). We also created VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 and SSL to EC2 Free Edition AMIs for the new region. Our dedication to you, our customers, runs deep. No sleep number, spring, nor radically 80's-style water bed will keep us from providing you with the best user experience possible.

VPN-Cubed Free Editions
US-West Region AMIs for both VPN-Cubed IPsec to Cloud Free Edition and VPN-Cubed SSL to Cloud Free Edition are available for launch. If you are currently a subscriber of a product code the US-West AMI will launch without additional subscription. If you have not previously subscribed to either Paid AMI via DevPay - Click one of the links above, follow the subscription instructions, and launch the appropriate US-West VPN-Cubed AMI (IPsec US-West AMI ID: ami-dd3f6e98, SSL US-West AMI ID: ami-d33f6e96). Please note the new US-West AMIs must be launched with different kernel and ramdisk IDs specified in the configuration instructions (SSL PDF & IPsec PDF).

Elastic Server
Assembling, deploying, and launching US-West Region Elastic Servers is a one click operation with the Elastic Server Factory. Yet another deployment option, YADO!

ElasticServer.com is a software factory that allows you to team source the design, assembly, deployment and management of your virtual servers in a way that makes them portable across multiple virtual and cloud infrastructures. Elastic Server allows you to capture, incorporate, share, and reuse everything you know about your servers at assembly time. It also provides enhanced governance, every server built has a unique ID and provenance which can be traced.

Have a software project/component and looking for a quick and painless way for your users to consume though many different deployment formats (EC2, VMware, KVM, Citrix, PXE, Parallels...)? Elastic Server allows you to market, message, and distribute your servers to your target audience through owned and controlled Elastic Server Sites. Interested in learning more? Contact us at marketing (at) cohesive.com.

Compute Regionally.

VPN-Cubed Now Available for vCloud Deployments

2009-09-30T11:00:00.001-05:00

Hey look!!

If you take a look at these screen shots you will see that I have 3 servers - one of them is sending multicast packets (server1) and two of them are receiving multicast (server2 and server3). Whoo!

Ok - “so what you say?” “I can see that they are on the same network. They are all on the same 172.31.1.x subnet. I can do that any day of the week!”

Well, now look again.

The screen shots show the “real” host names; terremark-vpn3-c1, rackspace-vpn3-c1, and ec2usa-vpn3-c1.

This is VPN-Cubed®, the x-cloud overlay network in action. You can spread an address space you define, assign static addresses to distinct servers, use protocols like UDP Multicast, control your topology by layering virtual switches/routers, connect to your datacenter using your existing IPsec connectivity, and more!

VPN-Cubed is essentially your x-cloud container that allows you to control your infrastructure in the clouds. Combine this with other CohesiveFT solutions and you have unparalleled ability to migrate and control your architecture in the clouds.

We love the emergence of the vCloud Express hosting partners that launched with VMware last week. And we are proud to announce the industry’s first connectivity solutions for vCloud.

We can provide you the secure connectivity solution that you control, that fits your specific needs:
vCloud-to-vCloud
vCloud-to-EC2
vCloud-to-Datacenter
vCloud-to-Cloud (Rackspace, ElasticHosts, Flexiscale, more...)

It’s sort of hard to demonstrate a network - but give us a shout and we will take you on a tour of our x-cloud network. @reply / dm us at elasticserver, or contact us!

Zeus ZXTM + Elastic Server... We'll do the math.

2009-09-01T04:00:00.013-05:00

The crew over at Zeus Technology worked with us to create the Zeus ZXTM Elastic Server Site. The Elastic Server Site allows users to quickly assemble and deploy custom ZXTM virtual or cloud appliances. Zeus' ZXTM is a souped-up IP traffic manager that is both easy to use and highly customizable. Elastic Server gives you a quick an easy way to start intelligently managing your applications, streamlining operations and providing a seamless end-user experience with ZXTM. Login to Elastic Server -> Choose your components and Configure your server -> Build -> Take ZXTM for a spin.

Zeus ZXTM is available through the Zeus Elastic Server Site. The Zeus components conveniently include a development license (performance restrictions) and gets you up and running in no time. Upgrading to a full production license is as easy as contacting the Zeus Sales Team.

Once you've download or deployed your Zeus Elastic Server it's ready to roll. Just add your services like web servers, farms, caching etc. The Zeus TrafficScript can take care of anything the Zeus Crew didn't already incorporate into the ZXTM UI. Check out the Knowledge hub for example code, walkthroughs and FAQs.

Interested in doing the same for your software component or project? Sign up for a Personal Edition Account and you'll have all the tools necessary to provide your users with a quick and easy assembly and deployment solution - The Elastic Server Factory.

The Elastic Server factory allows any developer, SI, ISV, project, team, or enterprise to source their own component supply chain and create their own server design center in the form of Elastic Server Sites. From these Elastic Server sites you can market, message and distribute your own server products. Elastic server is a great way to consume software components but also a great platform for offering your components to the public for easy consumption.

If you have any questions or would like some help getting started please reach out to us via our support forums or contact us.

Cloud-Collector.

New VPN-Cubed Version and The Cloud Connectivity Market

2009-08-28T10:30:00.003-05:00

Just when you've stuffed yourself silly with cloud computing news, acronyms that start with V, and debates over nebulous semantics...we at CohesiveFT top you off right before the weekend. That's right, strap-in for a YACLA (Yet Another Cloud-Laden Announcement). We'll also address some industry news that came out this week.

First a Little About Us
Today we are releasing our VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Free Edition, a zero cost AMI available through Amazon DevPay. The VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Free Edition allows users to create a five-machine VPN-Cubed overlay network in EC2 and connect that overlay network to their datacenter using a secure IPsec VPN tunnel. The free edition is a limited version of our IPsec Enterprise Solution that gives you a powerful cloud connectivity solution at a retail on-demand price.

Remember, normally when you launch machines in the cloud you give up control over your addressing, your topology, your protocols, and communications to your deployments are done over the public internet. With VPN-Cubed you take control with static addressing for your EC2 devices using VPN-Cubed managers as virtual routers/switches, allowing use of popular enterprise protocols like UDP Multicast for service discovery, and encrypting all communications between your devices in EC2 and between your datacenter & EC2 - using your existing extranet device (Cisco ASA, Cisco Pix, Fortinet, Juniper, etc.).

The people we encounter looking to leverage cloud computing come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large enterprises with massive deployments, others are just looking to deploy a frontend and one database. Clearly one size doesn't fit all, so why should we only offer one IPsec-to-cloud solution? Our Free Edition is a direct response to our users looking for a less costly solution to join the movement to cloud security and control. Those users now have an excellent opportunity to start extending operations into the public cloud without a large initial cash outlay. (Rule 76: No excuses, cloud compute like a champion.)

Get Cubed Now
Start up your VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Manager at no additional fees beyond EC2 costs for compute usage and data transfer fees + a $0.30 monthly charge to cover Amazon's Monthly Transaction Fee. Visit the DevPay Free Edition product page, subscribe, and launch the AMI (US region AMI ID: ami-c9fe1ea0 or EU region AMI ID: ami-6c6a4118) in YOUR EC2 account. Setup your VPN-Cubed overlay network and IPsec tunnel by following our comprehensive Setup Instructions. Customer controlled secure cloud computing couldn't be easier. Like what you're seeing? Tell us about it at feedback(@)cohesiveft.com or tell others using #vpncubed or @elasticserver.

The Cloud Connectivity Market is Now Open
Cloud vendors, in this instance Amazon Web Services, have realized there is not going to be wholesale migration of data centers to clouds. The recent release of Amazon Web Service's Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) helps to move the conversation of security and control in the cloud forward. Having a major player join us in the ever evolving Cloud connectivity market is extremely exciting! There is no better validation of our original idea, VPN-Cubed, than a complementary offering from AWS. So in the spirit of friendly competition, we would like to explore some of the similarities and differences between our two offerings.

While the AWS VPC is somewhat similar in basic approach and feature set to our VPN-Cubed offering, Amazon's VPC beta does not target key areas of customer control and market interoperability (see our comparison matrix below).

What does it all mean?
Clearly, we will overlap in some segment of the market, but there is a major difference in our approaches. We are a software company and have created VPN-Cubed using software virtual appliances. AWS are raised-floor gurus, they use hardware expertise to provide connectivity solutions.

With out knowing much more about Amazon's implementation we won't make any assumptions about future capabilities and limitations. But it is safe to assume AWS VPC will emerge from beta with a broader feature set than it currently enjoys. Below is a "what's available today" comparison. Enjoy it.


Create a Virtual Private Cloud on AWS’s scalable infrastructure, and specify its private IP address range from any block you choose.
Divide your VPC’s private IP address range into one or more subnets in a manner convenient for managing applications and services you run in your VPC.
Bridge together your VPC and your IT infrastructure via an encrypted IPSEC connection.
Add AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, to your VPC.
Route traffic between your VPC and the Internet over the VPN connection so that it can be examined by your existing security and networking assets before heading to the public Internet.
Windows and Linux device support
Features available in all zones of EC2 US and EU today.
Features integrated to EC2 existing security lattice (EC2 Security groups)
Can use EC2 Elastic IP Addresses
Can ASSIGN SPECIFIC addresses to specific servers in my "VPC"
Private IP Address Range Shared across Mutiple Clouds and/or Virtual Infrastructures
Customer gateway address can be dynamic and behind a device performing NAT
Can use UDP multicast in my EC2 subnets and between EC2 Regions
Support to and between Multiple Clouds/Infrastructures and EC2 (Eucalyptus, vCloud, GoGrid, Mosso, Rackspace, ElasticHosts, Citrix, Parallels, KVM, and VMware)
Let other AWS accounts (Partners, ISVs) launch instances to talk to VPC owner's instances directly
Common abstraction model/interface across all clouds and virtual infrastructures

Again, kudos to the Amazon team for realizing and addressing the key adoption hurdles for cloud computing: security and control. We look forward to integrating our VPN-Cubed Manager into the VPC infrastructure and collaborating to bring the most comprehensive set of features to cloud bound customers.

two is a crowd.

Jaunty Jackalope and Debian Lenny Join the Party!

2009-07-15T11:00:00.013-05:00

Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope and Debian's Lenny Linux-based operating systems are now available for inclusion in your Elastic Servers! If you read this blog with any regularity, a common thread you might notice is the constant addition of components, virtual formats, cloud formats, and operating systems to the configuration and deployment options we make available to our Elastic Server users. Visit the Elastic Server factory and build a couple Jackalope or Lenny servers today.

Ok enough promo... What does the Elastic Server and its many server configuration and deployment options really mean to you?

For Virtualization Guys
When the marketing wave of virtualization hit a few years ago, some pretty clever guys in the space coined the term P2V or "Physical-to-Virtual." It was the practice of taking an existing physical server and migrating or converting of all the data on a hard-drive (operating system, data, application programs, etc.) to a virtual machine guest hosted on a virtualization platform. An entire niche market popped up in the virtualization industry with large and small players pushing their products and services around P2V.

What did this really accomplish? IT managers who were instructed to virtualize the datacenter, because an executive sat through a sexy presentation out west, could virtualize with minor impact on their current operational practices. These projects did little to help realize the benefits of server virtualization (increase server optimization, lower number of physical servers, reduce hardware maintenance costs, and increase the space utilization efficiency in your data center). The P2V'd servers still had all the bloatware (technical term) from the physical servers, there was some impact on increasing overall server optimization, but little to no impact on organizational agility.

The benefits of server virtualization are amplified considerably when virtual servers are created from scratch only including the components needed to run one specific app. We have called this Z2V or 'Zero-to-Virtual' or building a virtual server from scratch (with no intervening physical server). So you are a proponent of P2V? Great! But what about when you have no more physical servers to virtualize anyway? Z2V'd servers also give the added benefits of preventing one application from having an impact on another application when upgrades or changes are made. With Z2V development of a standard virtual server build that can be easily duplicated with speed and quality is a snap. The Elastic Server factory is the place to select a custom bill-of-materials, assemble, deploy, and track your shiny new Z2V server.

For the Cloud Guys
The cloud is the new black... And when I say cloud computing I mean Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Everyone wants to be able to tell their neighbors they have some server up in the cloud, well maybe not everyone. Regardless of how tech savvy your neighbors are, the cloud is available today and offers many tasty benefits. So what's next? You want to get a Ruby on Rails server up at Amazon's EC2 so you can start building out and testing your app? You can do one of three things:

Start with a base OS Amazon Machine Image (AMI), launch it at EC2 and start compiling and installing your components and libs. If you're good this will only take an hour or two, if not... set aside a weekend.

Wade through Amazon's "organizationally and metaphorically challenged" catalog of user submitted Public AMIs until you find a preconfigured template that's close enough to what you wanted. BTW the Ruby on Rails AMIs available are either chock-full of multiple flavors of components (DBs, webservers, gems, etc.) or are run on old OSs (Ubuntu 7.04 and FC8). A classic Goldilocks dilemma begins.

Use the Elastic Server Factory to build and deploy your custom Ruby on Rails Elastic Server in minutes. Select components from grouped categories (Rails version, Web Container, DB, and Gems), choose an operating system, an EC2 size, name your server and click build. The Factory takes your bill-of-materials and assembles your server to your specs on-demand. When it's finished assembling it can upload the completed AMI to your EC2 account for use immediately! Why use static when you can customize your server to your needs?

Aaannnd Scene.

Cloud Computing Webinar June 30th

2009-06-26T07:19:00.008-05:00

On Tuesday June 30th, Simone Brunozzi of Amazon Web Services, Michael Crandell and Edward Goldberg of RightScale, and our own Patrick Kerpan will be presenting the live webinar How to Create Secure Test and Dev Environments on the Cloud. Unlike other vapor-ware presentations that seem to be the norm in the extremely crowded cloud computing space. This webinar will cover products and practices that are being used by our customers now and are available today. Tired of hand waving and and promises of future release dates? It's time to get real. If you are interested we can show you enterprise-ready solutions that are in use today.

Invitation to Attend
Join Amazon Web Services, CohesiveFT and RightScale to go beyond talking about the cloud and learn step-by-step what you need to do to get on the cloud today. We'll show you how you can operate your entire application testing infrastructure in the cloud to save time and money – enabling you to test more extensively and quickly hand off projects from development to operations.

Attend this webinar to discover how you can:

Create an agile approach to rapid prototyping in the cloud
Create a test and development environment to easily test your applications – configured exactly as they will run live
Deploy your first project on the cloud – quickly
Build a secure VPN environment to and from the cloud

We'll start the webinar with an overview of the cloud and then will walk you through a demo to show how fast and easy it is to create a secure test and development environment on the cloud. We'll also share examples of companies that are successfully using the cloud today.

Be there.

**Update**
If you missed the live webinar, you can download a version from RightScale's webinar archive.

The Difference Between Like and Love

2009-06-18T12:17:00.000-05:00

We see it all the time on ElasticServer.com. Take a look at our QuickTip Videos to learn how the Elastic Server Factory can make you react to custom virtual or cloud servers the same way you would to your favorite sports team or celebutant.

Cheers.

VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Announced

2009-06-03T11:00:00.007-05:00

WARNING CAPITAL LETTERS AHEAD!

CohesiveFT has always been about YOU our customer. All of our products and services have been built with one word in mind YOU. It's YOUR software stack, YOUR data center, YOUR cloud computing project, who are we to tell you how to run your business? Our most recent product release, VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Edition, was brought to market with your interests in mind. We found that while many enterprises were extremely comfortable installing our VPN-Cubed Manager Virtual Appliances in their data centers, some were reluctant to install new software or didn't have the virtual infrastructure to support our VMs. To address this we have developed a new way for the enterprise to extend security and control to the cloud, VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 (Press Release).

VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 gives all the benefits of our VPN-Cubed cloud security and control but without the need for anything to be installed onsite, no software installations are needed. All that's required for setting up an IPsec connection with a VPN-Cubed overlay network inside of EC2 is just minimal firewall/router configuration. Start leveraging the cloud today with as little impact on YOUR home infrastructure as possible.

VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Edition is a version of the VPN-Cubed overlay network packaged to work between a data center using IPsec “extranet” connectivity and Amazon EC2. Your IPsec device connects to an IPsec gateway at Amazon running as a virtual appliance which routes to your VPN-Cubed subnet in EC2. Once your controlled and encrypted communication tunnel between YOUR data centers and Amazon's EC2 is established, our VPN-Cubed overlay network provides 5 key capabilities Amazon does not currently allow you to control:

static addressing for your EC2 devices,
topology control by using VPN-Cubed managers as virtual switches, virtual bridges or virtual routers,
use of popular enterprise protocols like UDP Multicast for service discovery,
encrypted communications between all your devices in EC2,
and lastly encrypted communications to EC2 using your existing extranet infrastructure.

Does My IPsec Device Work with VPN-Cubed?
While VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 does require interaction with us (it's not that bad, we're pretty cool people), we do offer a self service test. If you want determine if your IPsec device can connect with our VPN-Cubed gateways in Amazon's EC2, you can launch our VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Test Gateway zero cost AMI. Just visit the Paid AMI page and purchase (offered at no additional fees beyond EC2 costs for compute usage and data transfer fees + a $0.30 monthly charge to cover Amazon's Monthly Transaction Fee). Follow our Configuration Instructions

Sign up for an Amazon EC2 account on their registration page
Follow Amazon's getting started instructions to install the needed tools, in particular the Prerequisites, Setting up an Account and Setting up the Tools pages
Purchase the VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Test Gateway AMI. You will be charged to your Amazon account.
Once you have the ec2 commands working use the EC2 API Tools command line to build your security groups. We provide detailed "cut/paste" instructions in the Configuration PDF. Unfortunately ElasticFox and AWS Console can't handle some of the port settings.
Launch the AMI using, ElasticFox, AWS Management Console or the EC2 Command Line Tools (CMD Line Paid AMI Launch How To ) referencing the AMI ID ami-efc22486.
Launch the AMI and use the VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Test Gateway UI to test connectivity between the VPN-Cubed overlay network in EC2 and your IPsec device (Explained in the Configuration PDF above)

When you like what you see, contact us for the real thing!

IPsec-é it to me baby!