Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Article | July 13, 2023
Every business or organization has spent a lot of time and energy building its network infrastructure. The right resources have taken countless hours to establish, ensuring that their network offers connectivity, operation, management, and communication. Their complex hardware, software, service architecture, and strategies are all working for optimum and dependable use.
Setting up a security strategy for your network requires ongoing, consistent work. Therefore, the first step in implementing a security technique is to do so. The underlying architecture of your network should consider a range of implementation, upkeep, and continuous active procedures.
Network infrastructure security requires a comprehensive strategy that includes best practices and continuing procedures to guarantee that the underlying infrastructure is always safe. A company's choice of security measures is determined by:
Appropriate legal requirements
Rules unique to the industry
The specific network and security needs
Security for network infrastructure has numerous significant advantages. For example, a business or institution can cut expenses, boost output, secure internal communications, and guarantee the security of sensitive data.
Hardware, software, and services are vital, but they could all have flaws that unintentional or intentional acts could take advantage of. Security for network infrastructure is intended to provide sophisticated, comprehensive resources for defense against internal and external threats. Infrastructures are susceptible to assaults like denial-of-service, ransomware, spam, and illegal access.
Implementing and maintaining a workable security plan for your network architecture can be challenging and time-consuming. Experts can help with this crucial and continuous process. A robust infrastructure lowers operational costs, boosts output, and protects sensitive data from hackers. While no security measure will be able to prevent all attack attempts, network infrastructure security can help you lessen the effects of a cyberattack and guarantee that your business is back up and running as soon as feasible.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Article | October 10, 2023
The year of the pandemic – that is how many of us will remember 2020 for generations to come. Challenging circumstances brought by the sudden and devastating spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) has made us witness the world making quick changes to remote working, businesses struggling to survive, the distress of social distancing rules, the emotional rollercoaster for people isolating, an overall crisis for health systems and the economy of countries, no matter where you were in the world.
When reflecting on what it has meant so far, however, we must realise that it’s not all doom and gloom. As Albert Einstein once said, “in the midst of every crisis lied a great opportunity”. The crisis has prompted companies to reinvent and accelerate digital plans, to adopt new technologies and sales models in order to adapt and survive – and for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to step up to support businesses and employees in every way possible.
On the other hand, let’s also not forget what the changes have meant for the health of our ecosystems. With industries across varied sectors forced to work remotely and shut down operations, the changes have led to benefits for the environment – and we could argue that such break was something that our planet was desperately in need of.
Even now, as we start to see our way out of this situation, it’s hard to believe how it all happened. For most countries, it was a similar case: we were hearing news about a new virus spreading in China; and before we knew more about it, the virus arrived in our own territories. It seemed unlikely, and yet, a few days later, the virus was quickly spreading, and lockdown restrictions came into effect for almost every nation in the globe. Millions of workers around the world had to leave the office and make a quick switch to remote working, without much notice at all.
In the initial stages of lockdown, MSPs had to work around the clock to help customers that weren’t ready for flexible working, to enable people to work from home. As every other industry and business type, MSPs also encountered challenges. Not being able to help a client on-site can sometimes significantly affect the speed of project delivery. So, adjustments had to be made, wherever possible, to deliver services remotely, as quickly and seamlessly as possible.
“We are all in this together” is a phrase that became widespread in the UK. IT professionals, like many other sectors, had to support each other, and they have been working together as a community, to assist clients, businesses, and the wider public, since working from home was suddenly imposed for the vast majority. In the technology space, there is a lot of knowledge to share and to work with, which has led to many tech leaders and companies offering free advice, webinars and other tools to help with the struggles that have risen in the midst of the pandemic.
Shifting priorities based on customer needs
In the initial stages of the pandemic, MSPs played a critical role providing small and medium sized businesses with the tools and the IT infrastructure to keep their business running. Enabling office-based workers to continue their work from home was only the first step, however.
The sudden shift to remote working has required new tools and exposed new security vulnerabilities. All around the world, we saw an increasing number of cyber-attacks and threats taking place. Remote working means many people were using personal computers for work and business purposes, and so, products that are designed to keep personal computers protected became essential.
MSPs have also focused on increasing security measures for protecting password and identities for customers. Passwords on their own are not secure enough and can be easily compromised, so it has been a case of quickly deploying password management and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), also known as two-factor authentication (2FA). MFA immediately increases security and ensures that clients’ accounts are significantly less likely to be compromised. In a few simple steps, IT providers can deploy MFA to help protect an organisation against breaches due to lost or stolen credentials.
Beyond helping employees to work from home securely, MSPs have assisted companies in implementing cloud-based applications, and managing access and restrictions to certain applications, especially for furloughed staff.
Embracing opportunities in the post-pandemic landscape
The spread of Covid-19 has made remote working the new norm, but how likely is this to become a permanent thing? Many employers and workers have started to believe that working from home will become more and more common for employees, even after the threat of the virus is gone. It’s difficult to know what the final picture will be, but it’s remains a fact that, as offices gradually re-open after lockdown, employers are increasingly looking at new ways of flexible working.
Many organisations that have been forced to work from home have been functioning remotely with little to no issue, so it stands to reason that the future of work will become more flexible. Video-calls, online training sessions, webinars, online meetings, it all sounds too familiar now, doesn’t it?
Remote working was already popular, though for a long time it wasn’t much more than a much-appreciated working benefit offered by employers, as part of the ‘job perks’ package. The pandemic only accelerated the need for remote working capabilities, and now telecommuting seems to be taking over as the new norm.
The IT landscape has mutated, and quite possibly it has changed for good. Technology leaders will have to continue to listen to the evolving needs and demands of the users and the markets in which they operate. For MSPs, it means the crisis is bringing opportunities to provide value to clients seeking support for enhanced mobility and flexible working. Now that work-from-home setups are in place, there’s room for improving remote access solutions and security measures.
Cloud migrations, which are expected to increase after the pandemic, present an opportunity for remote employees to improve collaboration and business resiliency. There will be a push towards more robust cloud-based solutions, and these migrations are likely to become one of the top opportunities for the months to come to drive revenue for MSPs, as well as VoIP solutions, business continuity and hardware sales.
The pandemic seems to have accelerated the demand for cloud services and security solutions. MSPs will play an important role in finding the best solutions for every business type, to enable them to work more flexibly and effectively. IT providers will be increasingly tasked with the job of securing devices and protecting employees as they work remotely, especially for SMBs.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Windows Systems and Network
Article | July 11, 2023
The cloud has dispelled many myths and self-made barriers during the past ten years. The utilization of cloud infrastructure keeps proving the innovators right. The cloud has experienced tremendous adoption, leading to the development of our most pervasive - and disorderly - IT infrastructure systems. This move calls for a new level of infrastructure orchestration to manage the complexity of changing hybrid systems.
There are many challenges involved in moving from an on-premises-only architecture to a cloud environment. IT operations teams must manage a considerably more complex overall environment due to this hybrid IT approach. Because of the variable nature of the cloud, IT directors have discovered fast that what worked to manage on-premises infrastructures may not always be applicable.
Utilize Infrastructure as Code Tools to Provide Cloud Infrastructure as a Service
IT has traditionally managed infrastructure orchestration and automation for business tools and platforms. Service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAPs) let non-IT workers turn on and off cloud infrastructure while IT maintains control. End-users are empowered with automated workflows that spin up infrastructure on-demand instead of opening a ticket for every request and waiting on the helpdesk or cloud service team. Automation benefits both end-users and ITOps. Users gain speed, and IT decides which cloud provider and how much cloud infrastructure is used.
Give End Users Access to Code, Low Code, or No Code
Modern SOAP lets citizen automators access workflow automation by preference or competence. SOAPs allow end-users to utilize code or no-code, depending on their preference. SOAPs let end-users access automation through Microsoft Teams, Slack, and ServiceNow. Developers and technical team members can access the platform's scripts and code.
As enterprises outgrow their legacy systems, infrastructure orchestration solutions become essential. Using a service orchestration and automation platform is one way to manage complicated infrastructures. SOAPs are built for hybrid IT environments and will help organizations master multi-cloud and on-premises tools.
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IT Systems Management
Article | July 6, 2022
IT and data center administrators are under pressure to foster quicker innovation. For workers and customers to have access to digital experiences, more devices must be deployed, and larger enterprise-to-edge networks must be managed. The security of distributed networks has suffered as a result of this rapid growth, though.
Some colocation providers can install custom locks for your cabinet if necessary due to the varying compliance standards and security needs for distinct applications. However, physical security measures are still of utmost importance because theft and social engineering can affect hardware as well as data.
Risk Companies Face
Remote IT work continue on the long run
Attacking users is the easiest way into networks
IT may be deploying devices with weak controls
When determining whether rack-level security is required, there are essentially two critical criteria to take into account. The first is the level of sensitivity of the data stored, and the second is the importance of the equipment in a particular rack to the facility's continuing functioning. Due to the nature of the data being handled and kept, some processes will always have a higher risk profile than others.
Conclusion
Data centers must rely on a physically secure perimeter that can be trusted. Clients, in particular, require unwavering assurance that security can be put in place to limit user access and guarantee that safety regulations are followed. Rack-level security locks that ensure physical access limitations are crucial to maintaining data center space security. Compared to their mechanical predecessors, electronic rack locks or "smart locks" offer a much more comprehensive range of feature-rich capabilities.
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