Microsoft Azure Cloud Starts Supporting Linux (Hybrid Cloud)

Microsoft Azure Cloud Starts Supporting Linux (Hybrid Cloud)

If you love both Microsoft and Linux parallely then we have a great news for you and that is Microsoft is now offering Linux-based operating systems on its Windows Azure cloud service. The software giant has announced the release of a new preview version of the platform which will add Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities to it. As well as Windows Server 2008 and the release candidate of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft will be supporting openSUSE 12.1, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Ubuntu 12.04 and CentOS 6.2 on the Hyper-V virtual machines that power Azure.

Some of the Highlights:- 

• Windows Azure Virtual Machines— Virtual Machines give you application mobility, allowing you to move your virtual hard disks (VHDs) back and forth between on-premises and the cloud.   Migrate existing workloads such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft SharePoint to the cloud, bring your own customized Windows Server or Linux images, or select from a gallery.    As a common virtualization file format, VHD has been adopted by hundreds of vendors and is a freely available specification covered under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.
• Windows Azure Virtual Network— Virtual Network lets you provision and manage virtual private networks (VPNs) in Windows Azure as well as securely extend on-premises networks into the cloud.  It provides control over network topology, including configuration of IP addresses, routing tables and security policies and uses the industry-standard IPSEC protocol to provide a secure connection between your corporate VPN gateway and Windows Azure. 
• Windows Azure Web Sites —Build web sites and applications with this highly elastic solution supporting .NET, Node.js, and PHP while using common deployment techniques like Git and FTP.  Windows Azure Web Sites will also allow easy deployment of open source applications like WordPress, Joomla!, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, and Drupal to the cloud with a few clicks. 
• New tools, language support, and SDK—Windows Azure SDK June 2012 includes new developer capabilities for writing code against the latest service improvements with updated support for Java, PHP, and .NET, and the addition of Python as a supported language on Windows Azure.  Additionally, the SDK now provides 100% command line support for both Windows and Mac.
• Availability in New Countries— Availability of Windows Azure is being expanded to customers in 48 new countries, including Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, and Ukraine.  Roll-out will be complete later this month, making Windows Azure one of the most widely available cloud platforms in the industry with offerings in 89 countries and in 19 local currencies.  

These new capabilities simplify building and bringing applications of all kinds to the cloud and enable flexibility in the following areas:

• Increased datacenter capacity through secure VPN connections to the cloud
• Easy operations and management from an improved Windows Azure Management Portal, with powerful operational capabilities for deploying and managing your cloud applications – with similar management support from the command line
• Cloud scale for building websites with ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js
• Support for additional Operating Systems and OSS language libraries for building cloud applications
• Scale on demand by migrating existing applications to the cloud using portable, industry standard VHDs -- delivering global scale with maximum control
• Secure connectivity between cloud and on-premises applications
• Ability to develop, test and configure new applications in the cloud, and then deploy on-premises for production

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Cloud Computing: Managing Risk and Compliance in the Cloud

Cloud computing represents today's big innovation trend in the information technology (IT) space. Because it allows enterprises to deploy quickly, move swiftly, and share resources, cloud computing is rapidly replacing conventional in-house facilities at enterprises of all sizes.

Unfortunately, in their eagerness to adopt cloud platforms and applications, enterprises are neglecting to recognize and address the compliance and security risks that come with implementation. Often the ease of getting a business into the cloud - a credit card and a few keystrokes is all that is required - provides a false sense of security.

However, shortcomings in the cloud providers' security strategy can trickle down to the businesses that leverage their services. In this context, damages can range from pure power outages impacting business performance, data loss, unauthorized disclosure, data destruction, copyright infringement, to brand reputational loss.

Risk in the Cloud
For enterprises planning to transition their IT environment to the cloud, it is imperative to be cognizant of issues such as loss of control and lack of transparency, which are often overlooked. Cloud providers may have service level agreements in place, but security provisions, the physical location of data, and other vital details may not be well defined. This leaves enterprises in a bind, as they must also meet contractual agreements and regulatory requirements for securing data and comply with countless breach notification and data protection laws.

Whether organizations plan to use public clouds, which promise an even higher return on investment, or private clouds, better security and compliance is needed. To address this challenge, organizations should institute policies and controls that match their pre-cloud requirements. At the end, why would you apply less stringent requirements to a third-party IT environment than your own - especially if it potentially impacts your business performance and valuation?

Recent cyber-attacks and associated data breaches of Google and Epsilon (a marketing services firm) are prime examples of why companies need to think about an advanced risk and compliance plan that includes their third-party managed cloud environment.

To protect your business, you should insist that your cloud service provider provides visibility into security processes and controls to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.

Best Practices for Cloud Risk Management
According to Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), main inhibitors to the adoption of cloud computing in large organizations are consistent and standardized frameworks, open standards, interfaces that address security controls, and easy-to-implement processes to provide assurances on levels of Governance, Risk, and Compliance and security in cloud environments.

According to a report by Forrester Research (Compliance with Clouds: Caveat Emptor, August 2010) organizations should not wait for the cloud industry to step up its support for regulatory compliance, but instead security professionals should look beyond their cloud providers for compensating controls to aid cloud sourcing.

This view is obviously shared by IT and security leaders, who responded to the 2011 Global State of Information Security Survey of PricewaterhouseCoopers, CIO Magazine, and CSO Magazine, as they identified compliance (34%) and regulatory compliance (33%) among the top five business issues that will drive information security spending in their organization in 2011.

As cloud computing is still an emerging technology space, advice on how to address cloud risk management is limited. What best practices should organizations follow? Probably the best bet are the guidelines developed by the Cloud Security Alliance, a non-profit organization formed to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing.

The CSA defines three distinct stages of a cloud adoption life cycle, starting with cloud risk readiness assessment, cloud risk operations monitoring, and finally leading to cloud audits (an area that still requires further standardization).

Cloud Risk Readiness
When you transition your IT infrastructure to a cloud environment you have to find ways to determine how to trust your cloud provider with your sensitive data. Practically speaking, you need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors.

To quickly evaluate your tolerance for moving asset to various cloud computing models (e.g., public cloud, private cloud, community cloud, or hybrid cloud) you should apply the followings steps:

1. Identify the assets for the cloud deployment (e.g., data, applications, functions, processes)
2. Evaluate the assets as it relates to criticality to the business and answer questions such as:
   
   • What impact would the business face if the asset became public information?
   • What impact would the business face if the asset would be accessed by the cloud service provider?
   • What impact would the business face if the application would be attacked or corrupted by an outsider?
   • What impact would the business face if the stored data were unexpectedly modified?
   • What impact would the business face if the asset were unavailable for a period of time?
3. Map the asset to the potential cloud deployment model
4. Evaluate potential cloud service models and providers and answer questions such as:
   
   • Does the cloud service provider meet current standards for security (e.g., assessment of threat and vulnerability management capabilities, continuous monitoring, business continuity plan)
   • Is the cloud service provider compliant with applicable regulations and can it pass a regulatory audit?
   • Can the cloud service provider generate dynamic and detailed compliance reports that can be used by the provider, auditors, as well as your internal resources?

Considering that many organizations deal with a heterogeneous cloud eco-system, comprised of infrastructure service providers, cloud software providers (e.g., cloud management, data, compute, file storage, and virtualization), platform services (e.g., business intelligence, integration, development and testing, as well as database), it is often challenging to gather the above mentioned information in a manual fashion. Thus, automation of the vendor risk assessment might be a viable option, especially if the same software tool can be leveraged for the other stages of the cloud adoption life cycle.

In addition, it's important to select a software tool that provides compliance controls assessment frameworks and content from regulations such as PCI DSS 2.0, FISMA 2010, SOX, NIST, ISO, CSA, SANS and BITS, threat controls content from CSA, as well as cloud risk dashboards and reports.

Cloud Risk Operations

A portion of the cost savings obtained by moving to the cloud should be invested into increasing the scrutiny of the security qualifications of an organization's cloud service provider, particularly as it relates to security controls, and ongoing detailed assessments and audits to ensure continuous compliance.

In this context, organizations should consider leveraging monitoring services or security risk management software that achieves:

• Continuous compliance monitoring
• Segregation and virtualization provisioning management
• Automation of CIS benchmarks and secure configuration management integrations with security tools such as VMware vShield, McAfee ePO, and NetIQ SCM
• Threat management with automated data feeds from zero-day vendors such as VeriSign and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), as well as virtualized vulnerability integrations with companies such as eEye Retina and Tenable Nessus

Automated technology, which allows a risk-based approach and continuous monitoring for compliance, would be suitable for enterprises seeking to protect and manage their data in the cloud.

Cloud Risk Audit
This stage of the cloud adoption life cycle has not been very well defined yet and therefore requires further standardization driven by an increase in cloud deployments.

Nonetheless, when evaluating cloud service providers, organizations should ensure that they perform automated regulatory health checks and provide transparency in their infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and software (SaaS) environments.

Practical Tips in Selecting the Right Cloud Risk Management Tool
When assessing Cloud Risk Management services or software, organizations should apply the following selection criteria:

• Choose a vendor that offers an all-encompassing solution, meaning providing methodologies, frameworks, tools, and best practices to properly assess and manage your organization's cloud initiatives across all three stages of your cloud adoption life cycle. The solution should cover Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), as well as Security in the form of threat and vulnerability management capabilities.
• Choose an automated technology with an open architecture, since many organizations have invested heavily in security tools. This will allow data to be fed from the existing tools into the Cloud Risk Management tool and provide an aggregated view into both IT and business compliance and risk.
• Make sure you work with a vendor that offers a solution that is content rich and includes many of the regulations (PCI, FISMA, SOX, etc.), frameworks, and standards that are applicable to your organization.
• Seek out a vendor or service provider that can add value by offering innovative technology that goes beyond the traditional view of GRC. Namely, ensure that beyond governance and compliance, the areas of security (e.g., threat and vulnerability) and risk (e.g., enterprise risk management) are well covered, as it ensures higher return on investment.
• Since you measure the success of a technology implementation by the time it takes to achieve value from its investment, it's crucial to engage with a vendor that offers the most efficient time-to-value. From a deployment perspective, this means that an on-site implementation should not exceed 90 days and as a managed service client, you should be up and running within 30 days.

Summary
There is no doubt that cloud computing will continue growing and, as it does, continue to get safer. But data breaches at some of the largest enterprises highlight the fact that there are still many risks associated with cloud adoption. Constantly changing government regulations are making it more difficult to keep compliant during the audit process as well. While it's exciting to be at the frontline when it comes to embracing a new technology that is poised to change the way we conduct business, we must remember that these technologies almost always come with new risks that have not yet been fully addressed.

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Google Vs. Microsoft (For Cloud)

Google has locked horns with Microsoft in a high-stakes showdown to dominate what could be the next great mother lode of Internet-derived profits. Each is seeking to attract businesses to lease its hosted versions of essential communications and office programs, instead of maintaining these basic tools in house. It's an emerging form of digital office outsourcing — often referred to as cloud computing — one which Microsoft's outspoken CEO, Steve Ballmer, has vowed to own. "At Microsoft, for the cloud, we're all in," Ballmer told an auditorium full of University of Washington computer science students last spring. "It's just a great time to be all-in and really drive the next generation of technology advances." The software giant recently released a near-final test version of Office 365, a hybrid of its ubiquitous productivity software suite. Tuned for the Internet, Office 365 extends the slow-but-steady advances the company has been making since 2002 in delivering business programs over the Web, much as a utility delivers water or electricity. But now that's being challenged again by search-advertising company Google. At its recent Google I/O developer conference, Google made a move to steal some of Ballmer's thunder. There, Google unveiled Chromebooks, stripped-down computers optimized to run its hosted messaging, calendaring and collaboration tools. "Chromebooks is actually a huge leap forward for cloud computing," says Dave Girouard, Google's president of enterprise. "We're excited about putting more pieces of the puzzle together. Our aim is to be No.1 in cloud computing." Delivering software over the Internet is nothing new. Cloud computing occurs when an individual accesses services housed on a third-party server rather than a local PC. Consumers use cloud computing with free Web mail services and popular social-networking sites. The race among Amazon, Google and Apple to popularize cloud-based storage of your music collection is yet another example. And Salesforce.com and NetSuite have long supplied businesses with specialized customer relationship management and bookkeeping programs as hosted services. Yet, a confluence of developments has buoyed the big pushes by Microsoft and Google to extend cloud computing to basic workplace tools: e-mail, messaging, calendaring, word processing, spreadsheets, slide presentations and file sharing. Many companies that hunkered down during the recession are eager to refresh aging systems. Security has become a major pain, and everything is getting more complex as mobile-device use rises. And capital spending budgets are as tight as ever. A desire to become more efficient and reduce long-term costs was identified as an influential factor by 60% of information technology buyers from government agencies recently surveyed by CompTIA, a non-profit association for IT pros. For the tech companies wrestling for the future of office software, the stakes are high. Tech researcher Gartner forecasts that global spending on e-mail, collaboration and cloud-based applications will more than double to $20.7 billion by 2014, up from $9.8 billion this year. 


Cloud savings 
Now cloud computing is getting a second look by often-conservative IT buyers because Internet connectivity has become ubiquitous, and data storage, dirt cheap, says Wes Miller, industry analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft. "But the real reason people are flocking to it has to do with saving money, whether directly or indirectly." In many cases, the first basic tool companies look to outsource is e-mail. Shane Ochotny, tech architect at Tampa General Hospital, had four technicians working full time maintaining e-mail for 7,000 employees, including 1,000 physicians, spread through the hospital, a clinic and separate administrative offices. After testing several hosted e-mail services, including Google's Gmail, Ochotny chose to outsource e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing to Microsoft; the software giant first began offering hosted e-mail in 2002, and it added other services in 2005 and 2008. That freed four technicians to create a customized program that provides instant e-mail access to new workers. Next up for the hospital's techs: developing a way to integrate video conferencing with instant messaging and voice over Internet. While some analysts worry that cloud outsourcing will ultimately cut employment, Tampa General's experience is likely more the norm. "Moving stuff that isn't central to the business into the cloud frees up IT people to work on systems that are central," says Rob Helm, analyst at Directions on Microsoft. The hospital is one of the early testers of Office 365, which features a lightweight version of Office that can be accessed by workers from any device with an Internet browser. Ochotny is prepping a test to see if Microsoft's approach to cloud computing — which continues to require traditional desktop PC software in combination with new hosted services — can be tweaked to let doctors and nurses instant message each other on their iPhones, as well as BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 smartphones. "Since we spend less time on maintenance, we can focus on innovation and better use of existing tools," says Ochotny. Microsoft's huge advantage over Google: "The sheer number of companies of literally every size for whom Office is the de facto productivity suite," says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "After years of fumbling with its online strategy, Microsoft now has a viable plan with Office 365 to entice enterprises to dip a toe in." 


Google’s cloud 
Google's strategy is 100% cloud-based. Basic versions of Gmail and its office productivity suite, Google Apps, are free to consumers; businesses pay a monthly per-user fee for commercial versions. It all runs through a Web browser on servers owned and maintained by Google. This arrangement works especially well for businesses looking to extend Internet communications and file sharing to managers in far-flung operations or to workers on the factory floor or out in the field. Jason's Deli, a Beaumont, Texas-based restaurant chain, uses Google Docs to schedule meetings, share reports and plan events among managers working in 230 eateries, five corporate offices and two food distribution hubs. "Our use cases are wide and varied," says Kevin Verde, chief information officer of Jason's Deli. "We currently have 10,000 documents that our users are collaborating on using Google Docs." When Google approached Jason's Deli about testing Chromebooks, Verde says, he was skeptical that a device built solely to access a Web browser, and which could not store files nor run applications as a tablet or laptop PC could, would prove useful. But he distributed test models to sales reps who spend all day pitching catering services to schools, churches and local businesses. He was pleasantly surprised. Using Chromebooks, the reps could tap into spreadsheets and monitor successful sales campaigns in other regions. They could access customer relationship management programs hosted by Salesforce.com. Verde is now a Chromebook fan. "The administration side of the Chromebook is almost effortless, and that is a big deal for corporate IT," he says. But can Google make any meaningful encroachment on Microsoft's turf? Chromebook, while intriguing, is going head-to-head against tablets and netbooks, priced roughly the same. "The competitive landscape has been complicated by the emergence of tablets, particularly the iPad," analyst King says. "Though tablets essentially offer the same browser-centric experience Google is promoting, they also enhance the user experience via a wide variety of apps." Google remains undaunted. In an effort to entice Microsoft Office fans to give Google Docs a whirl, the search giant in March 2010 reportedly spent $25 million to acquire start-up DocVerse, launched by two former Microsoft engineers. DocVerse subsequently came out in February as Google Connect, a free browser plug-in that lets users access Microsoft Office files using Google Apps. "It really knocks down some of the last reasons people have for not wanting to use Google," says Girouard. "This makes it easier." Microsoft swiftly counterpunched., with officials lambasting Google Connect in the tech media for ruining the formatting of complicated Office docs. Lately, they've been spinning Connect as a concession that Office cannot be displaced. "Google was trying to shoehorn a consumer offering, Google Apps, into an enterprise value proposition, by telling customers, 'You don't need Office anymore,'" says Tim O'Brien, general manager of Microsoft's platform strategy. "That strategy failed. So now they've changed tack and are telling customers, 'We don't think Office is going anywhere soon, so let us show you how our product can work alongside of it.'" Maybe, but Microsoft can't get complacent, analysts say. Google claims more than 30 million "active users" of Google Apps at some 3million businesses, with more than 3,000 new sign-ups every day. That includes midsize companies, such as Virgin America and National Geographic, and a few large ones, such as Jaguar Land Rover, Motorola andInterContinental Hotels. "Google is a serious wannabe contender," says King. "The search giant has to be taken seriously if only because it has deep pockets and a strong will."

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Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2012 [Download Now]

Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2012 With Complete Virtualization, Cloud Services, Improved Scalability & Performance [Download Now]

In March this year software giant Microsoft has announced the availability of Windows Server 8, later in April it has been renamed to Windows Server 2012. Windows Server powers many of the worlds' largest datacenters, enables small businesses around the world, and delivers value to organizations of all sizes in between. Windows Server 2012 redefines the server category, delivering hundreds of new features and enhancements spanning virtualization, networking, storage, user experience, cloud computing, automation, and more. Simply put, Windows Server 2012 helps you transform your IT operations to reduce costs and deliver a whole new level of business value. With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft delivers a server platform built on our experience of building and operating many of the world's largest cloud-based services and datacenter. Whether you are setting-up a single server for your small business or architecting a major new datacenter environment, Windows Server 2012 will help you cloud-optimize your IT so you can fully meet your organization's unique needs. 

Features at a Glance:- 

Beyond Virtualization:- Offers a dynamic, multitenant infrastructure to help you scale and secure workloads and build a private cloud. Windows Server 2012 can help you provide:

• Complete Virtualization Platform- A fully-isolated, multitenant environment with tools that can help guarantee service level agreements, enable usage-based chargeback, and support self-service delivery.
• Improved Scalability and Performance- A high-density, scalable environment that you can modify to perform at an optimum level based on your needs.
• Connecting to Cloud Services- A common identity and management framework to enable highly secure and reliable cross-premises connectivity.

The Power of Many Servers, the Simplicity of One:- Delivers a highly available and easy to manage cloud-optimized platform. Windows Server 2012 can help you provide:

• Flexible Storage- Diverse storage choices that can help you achieve high performance, availability, and storage resource efficiency through virtualization and storage conservation.
• Continuous Availability- New and improved features that provide cost-effective, highly available services with protection against a wide range of failure scenarios.
• Management Efficiency- Automation of a broad set of management tasks and simplified deployment of workloads as you move toward full, lights-out automation.

Every App, Any Cloud:- Offers a cloud-optimized server platform that gives you the flexibility to build and deploy applications and websites on-premises, in the cloud, or across both. Windows Server 2012 can help you deliver:

• Flexibility to Build On-Premises and in the Cloud- A consistent set of tools and frameworks that enables developers to build symmetrical or hybrid applications across the datacenter and the cloud.
• A Scalable and Elastic Infrastructure- New features to help you increase website density and efficiency, plus frameworks, services, and tools to increase the scalability and elasticity of modern applications.
• An Open Web and App Development Environment- An open platform that enables mission-critical applications and provides enhanced support for open standards, open-source applications, and various development languages.

Modern Workstyle, Enabled:- Provides users with flexible access to data and applications while simplifying management and maintaining security, control, and compliance. Windows Server 2012 can help you offer:

• Access to Applications and Data from Virtually Anywhere, Any Device- Seamless, on-demand access to virtualized work environments from virtually anywhere.
• A Full Windows Experience Anywhere- A personalized and rich user experience from virtually any device that adapts to different network conditions quickly and responsively.
• Enhanced Data Security and Compliance- Granular access to data and corporate resources based on strong identity, data classification, and centralized policy administration and auditing.

To Download Windows Server 2012 (Both iso & VHD) Click Here

-Source (Microsoft) 

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Red Hat Inc Announced The General Availability Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5

Red Hat Inc Announced The General Availability Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 

The RHEL 6x series get another important update as Red Hat Inc, the world's leading provider of open source solutions announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. According to the official press release of Red Hat -RHEL 6.5 expands Red Hat’s vision of providing an enterprise platform that has the stability to free IT to take on major infrastructure challenges and the flexibility to handle future requirements, with an extensive partner and support ecosystem. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 is mainly designed for those who build and manage large, complex IT projects, especially enterprises that require an open hybrid cloud. From security and networking to virtualization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the capabilities needed to manage these environments, such as tools that aid in quickly tuning the system to run SAP applications based on published best practices from SAP.“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the innovation expected from the industry’s leading enterprise Linux operating system while also delivering a mature platform for business operations, be it standardizing operating environments or supporting critical applications. The newest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 forms the building blocks of the entire Red Hat portfolio, including OpenShift and OpenStack, making it a perfect foundation for enterprises looking to explore the open hybrid cloud.”-said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager of Red Hat Inc. Now lets take a closer look to the main highlights of RHEL 6.5 : 

Securing the Next-Generation Enterprise

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 continues the push for integrated security functionality that combines ease-of-use and up-to-date security standards into the platform. The addition of a centralized certificate trust store enables standardized certificate access for security services. Also included are tools that meet leading security standards, including OpenSCAP 2.1, which implements the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) 1.2 standard. With these additions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides a secure platform upon which to build mission-critical services and applications.

Networking – When Every (Micro)Second Matters

In the financial services and trading-related industries, application latency is measured in microseconds, not seconds. Now, the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 fully supports sub-microsecond clock accuracy over the local area network (LAN) using the Precision Time Protocol (PTP). Precision time synchronization is a key enabler for delivering better performance for high-speed, low latency applications. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 can now be used to track time on trading transactions, improving time stamp accuracy on archived data or precisely synchronizing time locally or globally. Thanks to other networking enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, system administrators now have a more comprehensive view of network activity. These new capabilities enable sysadmins to inspect IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) data to list multicast router ports, multicast groups with active subscribers and their associated interfaces, all of which are important to many modern networking scenarios, including streaming media.

Virtualization Enhancements

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 continues Red Hat’s commitment to improving the overall virtualization experience and includes several improvements that make it a compelling choice for running in virtualized environments. Sysadmins can now dynamically enable or disable virtual processors (vCPUs) in active guests, making it an ideal choice for elastic workloads. The handling of memory intensive applications as Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests has also been improved, with configurations supported for up to 4TB of memory on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. The KVM hypervisor also integrates with GlusterFS volumes to provide direct access to the distributed storage platform, improving performance when accessing Red Hat Storage or GlusterFS volumes. Finally, guest drivers have been updated to improve performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 running as a guest on supported third-party hypervisors.

Evolving Ease-of-Use, Storage, and More

As application deployment options grow, portability becomes increasingly important. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 enables customers to deploy application images in containers created using Docker in their environment of choice: physical, virtual, or cloud. Docker is an open source project to package and run lightweight, self-sufficient containers; containers save developers time by eliminating integration and infrastructure design tasks. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 stays current with the advancements in Solid-State Drive (SSD) controller interface, introducing support for NVM Express (NVMe)-based SSDs. The NVMe specification aims to standardize the interface for PCIe-based SSDs and its inclusion in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 positions the platform to support an expanding range of future NVMe-based devices.

Improvements have also been added to improve enterprise storage scalability within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. It is now possible to configure more than 255 LUNs connected to a single iSCSI target. In addition, control and recovery from SAN for iSCSI and Fibre Channel has been enhanced, and updates to the kexec/kdump mechanism now make it possible to create debug (dump) files on systems configured with very large memory (e.g. 6TB).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 makes it easier to track and manage subscription consumption across the enterprise, integrating subscription tracking into existing business workflow. Usability enhancements include support for remote access to Windows clients and servers that use a newer version of the RDP protocol, including Windows 7 and 8 desktops and Windows Server 2012. 

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Microsoft Unveils Office 365 With Cloud, Web Apps & Many More (Available For Download)

Microsoft Unveils Office 365 With Cloud, Web Apps & Many More (Available For Download)

The software giant Microsoft on Monday unveiled the next version of Microsoft Office which indeed is a dramatic departure from the software that millions of users have come to know, built for the cloud and for touch-based computing and packed with features that make it more social and, Microsoft hopes, more intuitive to use than past releases. With this version Microsoft is offering consumers the option of performing many chores through a Web browser, rather than installing programs on their personal computers. Users will still be able to buy and install Office 2013, as the new version is called, but Microsoft plans to offer incentives for people to opt for a Web-based subscription variant known as Office 365. 

"Your modern Office thinks cloud first," said CEO Steve Ballmer, at an event here Monday.

Office 2013 is designed to work on traditional PCs, tablets or hybrid devices that combine touchscreen capability on a clam-shell style laptop, Microsoft said. Hardware options include devices that use conventional PC-style chips from Intel Corp., or those running cellphone-style chips based on designs from ARM Holdings PLC, the company said.

Microsoft already offers Office 365 as a companion service to businesses, and the company has a little-discussed bare-bones online version of Office called Office Web Apps. But Microsoft says this is Office's biggest foray in the cloud. Microsoft said the overhaul is designed to respond to issues such as the desire for consumers to synchronize and preserve data files as they move among multiple mobile devices and PCs. Even for people who opt to buy rather than subscribe to the software, Microsoft said Office will automatically save and store files on SkyDrive—its online-file-storage service—letting users return to where they left off in documents.

Users who opt for the subscription service will receive an additional 20 gigabytes of SkyDrive storage capacity on top of the standard seven gigabytes given to new customers. They will have rights to future upgrades as well as to use Office on up to five computers or mobile devices. 

Customer & Technical Preview of the new Office 365 is available now to Download and test.

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta Arrives! Download Now And You Can Win $500

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 Arrived With Expanded Container Support, Performance Profiles, XFS As the Default Filesystem & Many More. 

We have just spent a less than a month time after the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 made available globally, yet again the American multinational software company, leading the world for open-source software has announced the availability of a first public beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7. Based on Fedora 19 and the upstream Linux 3.10 kernel, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will provide users with powerful new capabilities that streamline and automate installation and deployment, simplify management, and enhance ease-of-use, all while delivering the stability that enterprises have come to expect from Red Hat. This further solidifies Red Hat Enterprise Linux's place as the world's leading Linux platform and a standard for the enterprise of the future. Whether rolling out new applications, virtualizing environments or scaling the business with cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 delivers the keystone to IT success. The beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 adds value to new and existing IT projects across industries by adding key capabilities to improve critical but often cumbersome IT tasks like virtualization and storage while offering a clear pathway to the open hybrid cloud. In their official Red Hat Enterprise Linux YouTube channel, Red Hat posted a short video where you can hear what the team at Red Hat has to say about the next-generation of the world’s leading Linux platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta showcases hundreds of new features and enhancements, including: 

• Linux Containers - Enabling applications to be created and deployed in isolated environments with allocated resources and permissions.
• Performance Management – Using built in tools, you can optimize performance out-of-the-box.
• Physical and Hosted In-place Upgrades - In-place upgrades for common server deployment types are now supported. Additionally, virtual machine migration from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 host to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 host is possible, without virtual machine modification or downtime.
• File Systems – File systems continue to be a major focus of development and innovation.
  • XFS is now the default file system, supporting file systems up to 500TB
  • ext4 file systems are now supported to 50TB and include block sizes up to 1MB
  • btrfs file systems are now available to test
• Networking – Enhanced networking configuration and operation. Added support for some of the latest networking standards, including:
  • 40Gb Ethernet support
  • Improved channel bonding
  • TCP performance improvements
  • Low latency socket poll support
• Storage – Expanded support for enterprise level storage arrays. Improved scalable storage stack for deployments that are less disk intensive. Improved storage management for heterogeneous storage environments.
• Windows Interoperability – Bridge Windows™ and Linux infrastructure by integrating SAMBA 4.1 with existing Microsoft Active Directory domains. Or, deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux Identity Management in a parallel trust zone with Active Directory.
• Subsystem Management – Simplified configuration and administration with uniform management tools for networking, storage, file systems, performance, identities and security. Leveraging the OpenLMI framework, enables use of scripts and APIs to automate management.

To know deeply about the hot features and enhancement of RHEL 7 beta 1, click here. I am quite sure that, after going through with the above description, all of you are very much excited to grab this brand new beta of RHEL 7. Like the previous beta release, this time also The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta has been made available to Red Hat customers, partners, and members of the public. For further information and to access the beta click here. Last but not least, with this release Red Hat also calls for an very interesting competition, where you can participate & win $500 while telling Red Hat, what interests you most in RHEL 7 beta. So what are you waiting for, lets download RHEL 7 and explore it. 

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CloudCrack: An NVIDIA GPU-Accelerated Cryptanalysis Suite!

You must be aware of our previous posts such as – MOSCRACK and WPA Cracker. We now have another open source offering that is NOT a cracker, but a cryptanalysis suite that is written in CUDA – a parallel computing architecture.

CloudCrack is a GPU-enhanced cryptanalysis suite for cloud computing platforms such as the Amazon EC2 Cluster Compute cloud. It is a NVIDIA GPU-accelerated cryptanalysis suite written in CUDA, NVIDIA’s massively parallel concurrent programming language. CloudCrack contains custom CUDA multiprecision math libraries for storing a large target RSA modulus n in shared GPU memory, with each GPU core working as a parallel factoring process to break the target modulus.

CloudCrack is based upon a Pollard’s Rho factoring hybrid with an updated Brent cycle finder, and includes performance optimizations to the traditional Rho factoring method. The massively parallel design of the NVIDIA GPU architecture lends itself quite well to Pollard’s Rho, and the reduction sieve performance enhancements added with CloudCrack can reduce by several orders of magnitude the size of the keyspace required to search for a successful brute force attack against a large RSA target modulus n.

The only thing that will hurt us is that our small time home computers will not be able to support thisapplication. To run this open source software, you will need a Fermi capable GPU such as a GeForce GTS 450 or GTX 460 series, and a Linux-based NVIDIA CUDA (3.2 or better) development environment. RHEL 5.5 or Fedora 13 is preferred for maximum compatibility with future EC2 parameterized launch instances.  The most recent generation of consumer CUDA GPUs from NVIDIA contain hundreds of cores, each core of which can be utilized as a concurrent Rho factoringthread (the GTS 450 has 192 hardware cores; the GTX 460 has 336; and, the M2050/2060 Tesla series have 448 cores each). You ofcourse could rent them from Amazon, etc.

All this certainly sounds awesome and we are sure that there will be a spurt in cracking services. This software currently comes in two versions -

• REVA, which implements the Greatest Common Denominator (gcd) function on the GPU itself; currently there is a bug in the Montgomery math routines in the REVA gcd however.
• REVB includes reduction sieve performance enhancements but with the gcd function implemented on the host CPU, which requires about 25% of the PCIe bus bandwidth to shuffle targets from the GPU to the host CPU for the gcd test.

We can expect a REVC soon, which will include all of the performance enhancements inherent to the REVB fork, with a GPU-localized gcd like the architecture of REVA.

Download CloudCrack_REVA.tar.gz and CloudCrack_REVB.tar.gz or view the complete archivehere.

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