Monday, February 25th, 2013

Time	Event
1:41p	Windows Azure Cloud Crashed by Expired SSL Certificate Microsoft suffered a major outage for its Azure storage cloud and other online services after an SSL certificate expired. (Photo by BCP via Flickr). Microsoft has spent more than $15 billion building one of the largest global cloud computing infrastructures. An SSL certificate can be had for as little as $70 a year from a commercial certificate authority, or can be effectively free if you issue your own, as Microsoft does. So how did an expired SSL certificate crash the Windows Azure storage cloud computing platform Friday and Saturday? It’s an expensive question for Microsoft. “Given the scope of the outage, we will proactively provide credits to impacted customers in accordance with our SLA,” wrote Steven Martin, General Manager of Windows Azure Business & Operations, in a blog post. “The credit will be reflected on a subsequent invoice.” The global outage for encrypted storage traffic began Friday at 12:44 PM PST, and services were restored to 99% worldwide by 1:00 AM PST on Saturday. Full availability wasn’t restored until 8:00 PM PST Saturday, placing the outage duration at 12 hours for most users but as much as 24 hours of impact for some. Up to 52 different Microsoft services reported performance problems during the outage, including Xbox Live. “Windows Azure Storage experienced a worldwide outage impacting HTTPS traffic due to an expired SSL certificate,” Martin reported. “HTTP traffic was unaffected but the event impacted a number of Windows Azure services that are dependent on Storage.” This marks the second time in a year in which Microsoft has issued a service credit for problems associated with an SSL certificate. Last Feb. 29 a “Leap Year Bug” triggered a date-related bug with a security certificate. The incident left Azure customers unable to manage their applications for about 8 hours and knocked Azure-based services offline for some North American users. (Comment on this)
1:48p	Network News: Juniper Targets Mobile Services Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the network sector: Juniper enables mobile with new software and services.  On the heels of its SDN strategy announcement and Mobile World Congress this week, Juniper (JNPR) announced new software and services enabling mobile service providers to realize immediate benefits while laying the foundation to build software-defined networks (SDN). The company announced Junos Space Services Activation Director application, which enables service providers to provision thousands of seamless services, including multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) and Carrier Ethernet for mobile backhaul.  It was also announced that the Juniper Networks Mobile Control Gateway is now running as a virtualized function on the JunosV App Engine, providing signaling and control (SGSN/MME) functions to LTE, 3G and 2G radio access networks. ”With mobile traffic growth exploding, operators need a virtualized Mobile Packet Core for scaling capacity up and down to both increase service velocity and control costs,” said Dr. Ray Mota, managing partner, ACG Research. Ciena and Telefonica launch 100G network in Brazil.  Ciena (CIEN)  announced that its 100G solution, architected with WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors, has been deployed by Telefonica Vivo, in the first 100G active network in Brazil. The network includes 100G routes that connect the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Praia Grande, Brazil. “Demand for capacity will continue to grow because of the increasing number of connections to public and private networks, as well as the business and consumer demand for applications such as video and remote storage,” said Fabio Medina, vice president and general manager, Central and Latin America, Ciena. ”Addressing this challenge requires a network that is future-proof and that combines intelligence, scalability and high capacity – and that is where Ciena’s intelligent infrastructure comes into play. We are thrilled to support Telefonica Vivo in building the country’s first 100G network, which will allow Brazilians to enjoy advanced, high-speed applications and services.” Brocade selected by Redstone.  Brocade (BRCD) announced that UK managed service provider Redstone has selected Brocade to deploy a data center Ethernet fabric based on Brocade VCS Fabric technology, as a part of a major network upgrade. The Brocade VDX 6720 and 6730 Data Center Switches and VCS Fabric technology will be used across two data centers to provide a multitude of hosted cloud services on demand. ”Over the last few years, we have seen a huge increase in demand for hosted services,” commented Fraser Fisher, Managing Director at Redstone. ”Our portfolio of offerings traditionally focused around co-location services, but more recently our customers have been looking for more sophisticated cloud-based solutions as data volumes skyrocket. With customers looking to move core applications off-premise, and leverage the operational benefits of applications such as VDI and VoIP, the importance of a network that can keep pace with demand increases exponentially.” (Comment on this)
2:30p	Data Center Jobs: ViaWest At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from ViaWest, which is seeking a Regional Data Center Director in North Las Vegas, NV. The Regional Data Center Director is responsible for oversight and daily management of the facility infrastructure (HVAC, Electrical and Mechanical), including customer interaction, hands-on facilities maintenance, management of contractors, minor construction oversight, and response to incidents.To view full details and apply, see job listing details. Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our jobs RSS feed. (Comment on this)
3:00p	Latisys Adding More Space, Power at California Campus The interior of a Latisys data center in Virginia. The company has announced plans to expand its data center campus in Irvine, California. (Photo: Latisys) Latisys is expanding its west coast hub, adding 12,000 square feet of raised floor and 1.8 megawatts of power to its OC2 data center in Irvine, California, which currently features 20 megawatts of power capacity and 93,000 square feet of data center space. The new space is expected to be available to customers by the end of the second quarter of 2013. In addition, Latisys also announced that it has purchased its OC1 data center, a 50,000 square foot facility next door to OC2, in a strategic move to control existing assets for the long term. “Southern California continues to grow as a destination of choice for outsourced IT infrastructure services and as a gateway to Asia Pacific,” said Tom Panarisi, Regional Sales Director for Latisys. “Latisys has been an active participant in the Orange County business community for several years and we take our role as the region’s trusted provider for outsourced IT solutions very seriously. We have come to know the most dynamic large and mid-size enterprises—not just in Orange County but across the U.S.—and we are proud to serve as an extension of any organization’s critical IT team.” National Demand for IaaS Solutions Latisys’ growth in Southern California reflects increasing national market demand for data center, hosting and cloud services, with Gartner predicting the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market will grow by 47.8% through 2015. The Irvine data center serves as the west coast hub of Latisys’ national IT Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform – which also includes Denver as an ideal disaster recovery site, along with Chicago and Northern Virginia as gateways to Europe and Latin America. “Every day we see accelerating demand for high performance, highly secure, hybrid Infrastructure as a Service,” said Pete Stevenson, CEO of Latisys. “And because that demand is national, Latisys continues to invest in our platform so we can ensure that businesses continue to have multi-site deployments across most flexible, secure and resilient infrastructure solutions optimized for today, and scalable for tomorrow.” Latisys’ national expansion has been ongoing through 2012 and into 2013.  Recent announcements include DEN2—Latisys’ newest state-of-the-art data center in Denver— along with the DC5 and CHI2 data centers that added an additional 22,000 and 10,000 sq. ft. of secure, ultra high-density raised floor in Northern Virginia and Chicago respectively.  Latisys’ total data center platform now exceeds 343,000 square feet across seven data centers in four major markets. OC2 is tied directly to a variety of fiber carriers, monitored 24x7x365 by on-site NOC personnel and systems, and operated under SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 audited controls. (Comment on this)
3:26p	Unleash Your Applications with Cloud-aware Application Delivery Kavitha Mariappan is director of product marketing (Stingray Business Unit) Riverbed Technology. KAVITHA MARIAPPAN Riverbed The evolution of cloud architectures and their ability to deliver a greater level of efficiency and flexibility has been a hot topic recently. So why put your apps in the cloud? Why Should I Use the Cloud? Ultimately, business priorities should drive the decision, not simply some arbitrary need to streamline IT resources. It’s evident that the business advantages of moving to the cloud are significant and provide sustaining benefits. There are good reasons for this. One of the most compelling is elasticity—IT resources can automatically scale up and down as required by the business. The risks of under-provisioning and the costs of over-provisioning evaporate. Running applications from an enterprise-grade cloud eliminates the need to sink excessive capital into complex and expensive hardware and other infrastructure components. Additionally, it eliminates the recurring and cumulative costs—a kind of tax, really—of maintaining hardware-based, on-premise infrastructure components. And, the cloud, no longer novel, has been widely utilized and is mature enough to support a large variety and scale of applications. Shedding much of the costs of delivering services enables you to provide your customers with a much richer user experience and access a greater variety of apps and services. In the cloud, developers can put their ideas to the test sooner and potentially mitigate issues that otherwise might arise only after the application has been moved to production. Cloud computing isn’t limited to a collection of virtual machines and storage you rent by the hour in a location far away from your data center. Mature cloud providers offer the ability to extend existing on-premise infrastructures into cloud facilities, creating a unified architecture with the benefits of instant infrastructure. Applications can span both, and users need not notice the difference. To better understand the business benefits of deploying applications in the cloud, let’s examine three compelling aspects: 1.) Reduced complexity. Deploying applications in the cloud reduces the burden of hands-on system administration and allows you to spend more time thinking strategically. Application developers experience greater agility to innovate and contribute to your bottom line and avoid the wastefulness and boredom of day-to-day heavy lifting. 2.) Reduced costs. The two biggest savings realized by many organizations that move to the cloud come from economies of scale and a usage-based pricing model. Pay-as-you-go brings true capital cost savings, eliminating the need to invest in unused capacity while ensuring that spikes in demand don’t cripple your business. As their processes mature, enterprises minimize operational costs by automating rote tasks using repeatable and standardized components and blueprints. 3.) Increased flexibility and agility. The cloud offers increased agility, dynamic scalability, and faster speed to market. Imagine a scenario in which your IT department no longer sits idle while waiting for the UPS truck to arrive and no longer camps out in your data center during the weekends to install new hardware. Cloud resources can scale to match demand at any point in time. Automation allows you to simplify and streamline formerly manual and cumbersome IT processes. What Should I Worry About in the Cloud? Performance, availability, and security top the list of concerns that our customers mention. Notably, these same concerns apply to on-premise implementations, too. Our customers expect that they will receive similar levels of service, efficiency, performance, and security as their applications migrate to the cloud. Together, these requirements constitute a certain degree of measurable business continuity. How can a shared platform, not under your control, deliver the same or better response times? How can it protect your applications from security threats? How can it ensure continued customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and productivity when network latency varies from one location to another? In reality, these questions apply to any IT infrastructure, whether on premise or in the cloud. Deployment practices that alleviate these concerns work in any environment – traditional data centers, virtualized private clouds, public clouds, and hybrid clouds. How Do I Deploy Effectively in the Cloud? As you start to deploy business applications in the cloud, take some time to consider—or reconsider—your application delivery infrastructure. Does it provide the performance, flexibility, cost savings, and agility that you need, now and in the future? Legacy load balancers sit in front of web and application servers. They accept requests on behalf of external users and manage the dialog with the application. They traditionally focus on enhancing reliability of the back end of the data center, by ensuring availability and also scalability of applications. They implement features such as server offload and content caching to reduce application server costs. Traditional load balancers deal with problems that arise from traffic surges and spikes but with a server-side focus. Applications undergo constant evolution, and one rapidly emerging property is a high degree of distributed processing across multiple locations. Application delivery solutions must similarly evolve to meet the requirements of large-scale distributed processing readily available in the cloud. Such requirements include: Enhancing efficiency and response times of applications and services Improving availability between instances that span multiple geographic zones and regions Solving latency problems with content optimization and acceleration tools Ensuring proper protection, using intelligent layer-7 inspection, against known and unknown threats Scaling resources to provide encryption and compression services without affecting performance Yesterday’s load balancers and legacy application delivery controllers are not designed for the cloud. The mismatch is clear. Only a modern, cloud-ready application delivery solution can truly help you make this shift – software-based application delivery controllers (ADCs) have emerged as the right solution for cloud-based application deployments. Software ADCs are natively designed for virtualization and cloud portability. Pure software solutions are intended for the widest variety of deployments and enable a more flexible application delivery strategy. It’s the foundation of a true Opex-centric resource model. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)

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