Data Protection
Nexsan SATABeast chases Apple shops with SATA disk array - January 7, 2008
Nexsan Technologies Inc. is planning a version of its SATABeast disk array that has been modified specifically for Apple servers as it tries to tempt loyal Mac users by filling a gap between Apple's storage products.
With the SATABeast Xi, which is expected to become generally available around March 15, Nexsan is aiming to fill a gap between the capacities of Apple's XServ RAID and the XSan. XServ scales to 14 disks and 10.5 TB capacity with 750 GB SATA drives. The XSan is actually a SAN with a SAN file system layered over it that's designed to scale to hundreds of terabytes or petabytes.
Nexsan is adding Apple-specific enhancements to SATABeast, including Apple-like hardware packaging, a Web-based management GUI meant to look like Apple's Safari Web browser and wizards to address some of the peculiarities of Apple's approach to Fibre Channel, according to Nexsan chief technology officer Gary Watson.
"Apple's XServ RAID operates so that a given LUN can only show up on one port, and if you want to multipath, you need to mirror the data," Watson said. "Our wizard will prevent users from setting up storage in a way that can't be resolved by Apple's system and offers them a lower cost approach to multipathing." The Xi's cache has also been tweaked to optimize streaming video performance.
Sencilo Solutions a Nexsan reseller say media companies are looking for new storage alternatives as Apple's Final Cut Pro gains popularity in the video editing world. According to Brian McCarthy, president of Orlando-based Sencilo Solutions, his company first began reselling Nexsan several months ago as disk-based backup for XSan deployments that were often massive. McCarthy said his customers liked Nexsan's pricing and density -- Nexsan can cram 42 TB into a 4U footprint, while the same capacity in Apple's smaller XServ RAID disk arrays would take up 8U.
McCarthy said the value is in the speeds and feeds Nexsan can offer over XServ RAID, such as support for 4 Gbps Fibre Channel and 1 TB disk drives. "Any little jump in performance is huge for companies doing video processing." Nexsan also offers a three-year warranty standard, while Apple's standard warranty is one year.
Apple has not qualified Nexsan's product, and there is no formal relationship between the two companies, which means Nexsan will have a tough time swaying hardcore Mac loyalists. But analysts point out the product could appeal to users in mixed environments who want to manage Mac, Linux and Windows systems together.
"It's in small environments where you're more likely to see total dedication to Mac and Apple products only," said Greg Schulz, founder of the StorageIO Group. "Larger organizations where this disk array would fit tend to be hybrid environments more often than not."
According to Donoyan, the loyalty tends to be more focused on workstations than back-end IT equipment. "I have users attaching Apple XServs via dual Linux controllers to Hitachi Data Systems arrays," he said. "Companies make business decisions, not emotional ones."
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-protection.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
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ICANN and overbearing governments are gearing up for a major expansion of the attack surface of the DNS. - January 7, 2008
The use of domain names in most phishing is relatively crude, You see a lot of names like www.somefreewebsite.com/~ingrid/www.bankofamerica.com/.... There's no SSL, and the tricky part of the domain name is off to the right. A user would really have to ignore the domain name and focus on the body of the page, which is where the real phishing expertise comes in.But a potentially lucrative minefield for phishing domains may open up through a series of developments currently underway. One of them is the move by some governments to develop alternative root servers. The other is the development of internationalized domain names, especially top-level domains. In at least one case the two are combined.
The alternative root server is a strange concept to most people, says Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions. The root servers are the DNS servers that control the root of the DNS. They control the top of the hierarchy or the bottom (root) of the tree, depending on the metaphor you want to use. So eWEEK controls the eweek.com domain; VeriSign controls the .com domain; and the root, the level above .com and also known as "." is controlled by the IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).
This Wikipedia article includes a list of alternative roots that exist and the non-standard zones they include. For instance, the home page for OpenNIC is http://opennic.glue/. You might be wondering at that ".glue" top-level domain, and if you click on it you'll get an error. That's because OpenNIC is an alternative root with a completely different name space. Your DNS, probably derivative of your ISP's DNS, doesn't point into the OpenNIC name space. Organizations like OpenNIC sometimes exist in order to escape the control of ICANN. Free to put up any TLD they wish, they have .geek for example.
But OpenNIC does exist on the public Internet; it's not a private network. If your DNS is set up for it, it's possible to see these as well as the real Internet. In fact, UnifiedRoot goes this extra mile, by setting up your systems to see the public DNS as well as their own, on which they sell new TLDs to whoever wants them.
These groups don't worry me. Who's going to use them anyway? I get worried when I see whole countries, like Russia, trying to set up separate roots. In the case of Russia, the government wants more control over the Cyrillic portion of the Internet. They can never have real control as long as the root zone is in the hands of the IANA. Call me a western hegemonist, but I just don't trust the Russian government with a root zone.
Compounding the Russian issue is the ongoing development of IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names), which are domain names that support non-Latin character sets, including the Cyrillic used in Russia. Work on this has been in standards bodies coordinated by ICANN for years and some are in use. Work on Internationalized TLDs is also underway, and here's where the phishing angle becomes really clear. .ru the Russian TLD, translates in Cyrillic to .py, the TLD for Paraguay. It's not hard to see a Cyrillic phishing domain in the Paraguayan .py being used to fool Russian users.
This specific example isn't the real point. I have a general concern about these expansions of the DNS in ways that seem destined to provide massive new opportunities for abuse. The limitations of freedom for the people of Russia and China, which is also interested in both developments. Internationalized domain names are not inherently objectionable, of course, and it would be great if they could be made to work securely. Unfortunately, I see most of the news being about new browser exploits and scams. It's companies like Infoblox that keep things running. Read more about this in the 2H2007 Gartner, Inc.'s Magic Quadrant.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-security.phpAbout Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
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