Secure multi tenancy, always an important concern for service providers, is about to become an even larger issue. Forbes today highlighted draconian new data protection regulations proposed in the EU that will demand even greater care. So how do these new rules bite, and what can you do to avoid getting bit?

In the Forbes article, the author states, “In the first revamping of the EU’s data protection legislation in over fifteen years, businesses would face fines of as much as 5%  per cent of their global turnover (i.e., the ratio of annual sales to inventory) if they are adjudged to have mishandled the personal data of customers, suppliers, or employees.”

Virtual connections are mapped to specific physical ports. Servers can share a common converged fabric and maintain physically isolated links to external networks for ensured secure multi tenancy.

That’s huge. It’s no longer in the realm of just compensating people for damages. These are penalties that could apply to any violation. And they can apply even in the face of determined hackers who cleverly find a way in.

Secure Multi Tenancy

One way to protect information is to keep it isolated within a walled-off environment. In other words, put that information only on a network that never gets out of the building. Creating such physically isolated networks is a well-established practice.

The advent of virtualization, however, adds a new challenge for secure multi tenancy: we want fixed, isolated networks for data protection, but we want data center agility to get the most from virtualization. How do you reconcile those two, sometimes-competing needs?

Xsigo virtual I/O provides a very simple answer. It lets you deliver isolated network and storage connections to servers, just as you would with physically separate networks. But you can add and delete those connections to any server at any time, entirely in software.

Xsigo’s technology is not the same as using VLANs that share a common Ethernet network. Xsigo’s virtual connections have been verified in an independent security audit to be fully isolated. In fact, companies already use it to isolate medical records, payment card information, and financial data.

For a quick look, here is a secure multi tenancy data isolation solution note. If you would like a copy of the audit, please drop me a note at jtoor “at” xsigo.com. Or learn more about the Xsigo I/O Director here.

Physically isolated networks with secure multi-tenancy within a virtual environment. Now you can have your cake and keep people from stealing it, too.

VMware’s Executive Briefing Center in Tokyo highlights the latest in virtualization technology, including the Xsigo I/O Director.

Demand for virtualization in Japan surged when recent power shortages spurred data centers to find new ways to save power.

Xsigo virtual I/O can save about 100 watts per server by consolidating I/O cards and reducing switch ports by 70%. It also permits the use of smaller, more power-efficient servers by eliminating the need for multiple PCI slots.

Here’s a photo of VMware’s demo rack.

“Data center agility” sounds great, but what does it really mean? We recently saw a great agility example with a Xsigo customer, Farrer & Co. This law firm saved about 99.9% of the time required to complete an important reconfiguration project, finishing the job in minutes rather than weeks.

When Farrer & Co., a London-based law firm, embarked on a data center infrastructure upgrade, they targeted increased agility as one of the project objectives. They had an ongoing need for agility because the practice of law is becoming increasingly information technology-intensive. Client requests now have a much higher IT component than in the past. As the firm’s infrastructure supervisor, Peter East, noted, “We get a lot of short notice requirements.”

To help meet their client requests, they deployed Xsigo virtual I/O. Xsigo’s ability to reconfigure I/O on the fly, entirely in software rather than hardware, and on live servers, gave them the infrastructure agility they wanted. Assets can be repurposed in a hurry.

What they did not necessarily foresee was exactly how much time it could save in an important project.

Significant time savings on a VMware project

When Farrer had a pressing need to run their practice management software in a fault tolerant VMware environment, the use of VMware’s FT feature was an obvious solution. The only problem was this: FT requires a dedicated network.

With traditional infrastructure, configuring a dedicated FT network would have taken several weeks. But with Xsigo they had the job done in five minutes.

Farrer deployed a fully isolated Ethernet network, with performance guaranteed by hardware enforced QoS, in less time than it takes to get a cup of coffee.

That’s the meaning of “data center agility.”

This is just one example, but Farrer found that agility helps them every day in providing better service to their clients.

Xsigo support saves time as well

They found that Xsigo’s team was pretty agile too, leading the firm’s IT Operations Manager, Andy Beech, to comment, “In addition to providing Farrer with an agile network environment, the Xsigo team also demonstrated their responsiveness when working with Farrer’s IT department during implementation… The Xsigo engineers understand our issues and respond promptly. It’s refreshing to deal with a very professional team that is always there and always pulls through.”

To read the entire case study note, click here.

See the basics of Xsigo XMS 3:  Create virtual NICs and HBAs, monitor performance, and deploy templates to replicate I/O configurations.

Try XMS 3 for yourself right now! For access to an online data center simulator, register here.

How do you increase VMware performance? ViaWest has innovated in cloud services with an interesting new hybrid offering called their KINECTed Cloud that capitalizes on the performance and any-to-any connectivity of Xsigo virtual I/O.

Jason Carolan, Vice President of Product Development at ViaWest, describes it like this:

“ViaWest’s KINECTed Cloud service offers our customers a complete hybrid solution that provides cost-effective managed services for day-to-day needs and capacity-on-demand cloud services to satisfy peak requirements, all within a single services and support framework.”

Read about it in this Network World article.

Xsigo played a central role here by providing the virtual I/O glue. Any-to-any connectivity that allows ViaWest resources and customer resources to be joined as needed.

“Xsigo’s virtual I/O provides the dynamic connection point that allows us to combine resources – our data center capacity plus our customer’s capacity – to address within minutes the customer’s immediate business challenges.  Xsigo offers the flexibility to seamlessly interoperate with all of our customers varied resources and furthermore delivers performance that is 4X faster than10G Ethernet.”

Increase VMware Performance with 40Gb Connectivity

Specifically, Xsigo lets ViaWest:

• Connect any server to any data center resource in real time
• Consolidate Ethernet and FC traffic to a single cable
• Deliver up to 40Gb throughput through each physical connection
• Accelerate processes such as vMotion for faster, easier management

Or as Jason summarized it, “Xsigo gives us a way to connect into that (SAN FC) legacy, provides a great bridge… (and) lets us have a managed platform to slice and dice with greater granularity than other products out there.”

Take a look at the Network World article for a view of where cloud solutions are headed. For more information on ViaWest and their new offering, visit their web site here.