Tekexpertise Blog

Virtualization is a very valuable technique for small and medium sized business to better control IT costs and to increase IT’s reliability. Virtualization encapsulates software that would normally run on a single physical piece of hardware and creates an image of it that separates the underlying hardware from the physical system underneath. This allows for multiple sets of systems to run on the same physical hardware as if each was running on its own hardware.

There are many benefits to virtualization. This entry concentrates on three:  consolidation of physical systems reducing hardware costs; the quick building of test environments; and, enabling a cost-effective backup and recovery strategy.

Hardware purchased today is for the most part far more capable than that bought even two years ago. The central processors are much faster and built for multiple systems; memory is cheaper; and, disk subsystems have substantial increases in capacity and access speed. All of these improvements make consolidation compelling. If an organization can consolidate two or more older physical devices into one which runs two, three or even more systems on a single device, substantial savings can be realized.

With regards to testing, in the past, organizations would have to invest in multiple sets of hardware in order to test new software, bug fixes, etc. With virtualization, it is possible to create these environments quickly to test various scenarios. It is then easy to restore the state of the system after the test to the original state allowing for effective tuning or debugging.

Another major benefit for virtualization is creating more effective backup and recovery capability. Virtual snapshots can be taken of the total system, the software, running programs and the associated data. These snapshots can be easily redeployed in the case of hardware failure even to a dissimilar piece of hardware. The same technique can be used as well to load balance systems if multiple physical systems are available.

Virtualization software is available from several vendors, the most prominent being VMWare and Microsoft. Virtualization now a standard component of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, and a free version of VMWare is available as well. The more sophisticated features require the purchase of additional software components, but the free versions are a good place to start to understand the benefits and power of virtualization.

If you would like to discuss this topic in more depth, please send an email to ed.mchugh@tekexpertise.com.

This blog discusses protecting organizations from the dangers posed by spam and malware by using a three-tiered approach. The outer tier is in the cloud (the Internet), the second is at the perimeter of the network and the third is on the devices within the network.

For the first tier, a cloud-based filtering service examines incoming email and quarantines those items suspected to be spam or other malware and then delivers the remaining email. These services allow fine-tuning of the filters and delivery of email improperly quarantined.

If you have an internal email server, the filtering service acts as the front door that delivers email it deems to be non-suspicious to your email server. While there are products that scan email after it enters the network, they use your internal bandwidth, slow down your email server and use its disk space. If you are using hosted email in the cloud, you need to ensure that the hosting service is providing robust filtering as part of its offering.

The next tier is at the perimeter of the network via the firewall and/or security appliances. All firewalls stop simple attacks such as access attempts into your network. More sophisticated firewalls attempt to stop known malware from penetrating into or leaving your network. Similarly, security appliances can augment your firewall to provide protection by looking for known malware and controlling access from systems within your network to suspect sites or from sites your policies prohibit.

The last tier is at the device level: servers, desktops, and laptops. Each of these needs to be protected by a capable anti-virus product and operating system controls. Despite all the protection afforded to you by the first two tiers, some malware can still infect your devices. Innocent web sites can be hijacked and not so innocent web sites can be accessed by users causing malware to be installed. There are also threats from USB storage devices and laptops that connect to the Internet at home or other places without strong protections.

Anti-virus software is available from a number of reliable vendors and needs to be installed on every device: servers, desktops and laptops. Also, Microsoft Windows 7 offers a level of operating system protections much greater than Windows XP and this level of protection is a key reason to upgrade.

If you would like to discuss this topic in more depth, please send an email to ed.mchugh@tekexpertise.com.