Blog

The end of your billing cycle shouldn’t bring an unwelcome surprise.

Self-service cloud computing makes it easy for developers and sysadmins to requisition new machines but hard to account for spending. Too often, IT falls into one of the common Sins of the Cloud.

Get up-to-the-hour visibility into the cost of your cloud with ScaleXtreme’s Cloud Budget and Cost Control, launched today. Use it to always know where you stand with spending.

Budget for operating groups, divisions or individuals. Set soft limits to send warnings and hard limits to prevent new instances from being launched.

We thought you might enjoy this brief interview ScaleXtreme CEO Nand Mulchandani did with Sys-Con.TV. It's a good view into what we're working on here at ScaleXtreme and Jeremy Geelan does a remarkable job of keeping it light and fast-paced. Enjoy:

There's been a remarkable rise in the number of Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) popping up to help people deploy Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and we're keeping a close watch on these VMWare VSphere-enabled clouds as they grow. Each offers something slightly different: better SLAs and uptime, faster speeds, additional security precautions, localized datacenters, better support, lower prices. Whatever you need to optimize for, there's a good chance that someone on the list below can help you. We've developed a special program for these cloud providers to help manage client instances, which we encourage you to check out.

Adapt Enterprise Virtual Data Centre (eVDC)

All for Cloud

Anittel vCloud

AT&T Synaptic Compute

Ayera Virtual Datacenter vContainer

Bitbrains

Bluelock

Bluemile's Cloud

Q: What does it do?

A: ScaleXtreme for iPhone allows you to see the status of all the servers you have under management with ScaleXtreme. You can view basic monitoring data, such as CPU usage and bandwidth and you can drill down into the configuration of any particular machine. ScaleXtreme for iPhone will also push alerts to you about server events, such as the beginning of a scheduled job. This functionality is available for any physical server, virtual machine or public cloud instance running the ScaleXtreme agent. It’s simply the easiest way to keep track of your machines when you’re on the go.

Q: How does it work?

A: ScaleXtreme for iPhone is able to access data and receive notifications from your servers directly from the cloud. It uses ScaleXtreme’s proprietary HTTPS Out Only secure communications infrastructure, which does not require any special ports be opened, to get this information.

Q: How do I get started?

Today we’re announcing something very special—a new way of monitoring and managing your modern distributed datacenter.
 
ScaleXtreme for iPhone puts the information you need in the palm of your hand. You get remarkable clarity about what’s going on inside your physical servers, virtual machines and public cloud instances all in one place.
 
And it’s completely mobile. Use ScaleXtreme for iPhone anywhere.
 
This is the first step in a major shift in the systems management.
 
It’s a move from the decade-old command-and-control paradigm to a faster, more response-driven model.
 
It’s a necessary transition. It’s driven by the rise in the number of machines under management and the increasing complexity of cloud-enabled infrastructure.
 
Sysadmins need better tools to stay abreast of what’s going on. They need to access to insights and the ability to act from anywhere.
 
Look for more to come as we continue our commitment to making systems management mobile.

-- Nand Mulchandani, CEO & Co-Founder

Amazon informed its EC2 customers of a potential vulnerability in their EC2 instances Thursday, sending many sysadmins scrambling for a fix to the Microsoft Remote Desktop vulnerability.

The exploit highlights the need for robust vulnerability scanning and patch management in public cloud instances as it could allow a malicious hacker to gain remote access to any Windows server running on EC2.

Systems administrators can try to find which of their cloud instances may or may not be running RDP on Windows CVE-2012-0002 by hand—it can take hours of tedious inspection, depending on the size of your operation. Then there’s the arduous update process, which can take even longer. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ve solved the issue.

ScaleXtreme offers an alternative. We can surface this vulnerability in your public cloud instances for free and within minutes. Learn more about ScaleXtreme’s patch management. Customers of ScaleXtreme Xtreme can also apply the patch automatically or schedule it for a certain maintenance period.

Amazon’s email to EC2 customers:

Subject: Microsoft Security Announcement and Your AWS EC2 Windows Instances

Amazon informed its EC2 customers of a potential vulnerability in their EC2 instances Thursday, sending many sysadmins scrambling for a fix to the Microsoft Remote Desktop vulnerability.

The exploit highlights the need for robust vulnerability scanning and patch management in public cloud instances as it could allow a malicious hacker to gain remote access to any Windows server running on EC2.

Systems administrators can try to find which of their cloud instances may or may not be running RDP on Windows CVE-2012-0002 by hand—it can take hours of tedious inspection, depending on the size of your operation. Then there’s the arduous update process, which can take even longer. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ve solved the issue.

ScaleXtreme offers an alternative. We can patch this vulnerability in your public cloud instances for free and within minutes. Learn more about ScaleXtreme’s patch management.

Amazon’s email to EC2 customers:

Subject: Microsoft Security Announcement and Your AWS EC2 Windows Instances

Dear EC2 Customer,

The Apple keynote is over, Tim Cook has left the building and the Apple website is having serious trouble with pages down, formatting issues and other problems.

As an accompaniment for one of the most choreographed events in the technology world, Apple’s site ought to be the ready to rock and roll the minute the presentation is over. Yet, somehow, the site never is quite up to speed.

This isn’t the first time we’ve noted problems with Apple’s back-end IT operations. The company’s servers got slammed when it released the iOS5 update last year.

One can’t but help to wonder if the company’s systems administrators update the webservers and patch servers by hand. It’s difficult to imagine the world’s biggest company, a technology company, forces its sysadmins to do manual server updates.

Speed is one of the biggest advantages of server automation. The ability to push an update to a thousand servers at the same time instead of having an army of admins do it by hand can be a big cost saver and time saver. Maybe Apple should look into it.

Security is the single biggest thing keeping IT professionals from adopting public cloud computing and it’s something we’re addressing head on here at ScaleXtreme.

Today we’re announcing patch management for the public cloud. It’s available now for all ScaleXtreme users.

We worked closely with a select group of customers to ensure the solution works great and are confident that you’ll be impressed with this new functionality.

Patching is the foundation of strong digital security. It prevents malicious hackers and data thieves from penetrating your servers and stealing important information. What’s more, not addressing publicly known issues with operating systems may result in substantial legal liability.

Patch management from ScaleXtreme will help you begin to apply the same enterprise-level security you’ve come to expect inside the firewall to all the machines you’ve got running outside in the public cloud.

ScaleXtreme scans your servers for known vulnerabilities, identifies what needs fixing and gives you the tools to automatically execute the fixes. It’s that simple: visibility, reporting and remediation all in one place.

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are always looking for an edge to improve their offering to customers. It’s especially true when competing for savvy consumers looking to rapidly ramp up their cloud-computing footprints. CSPs can wrestle with any number of single-point products, opensource offerings or expensive suites to satisfy these demanding customers, none of which can quickly integrate with their existing offerings. Taking time to force these pieces into place cuts into profit margins and is a headache for everyone involved.

The ScaleXtreme Cloud Service Provider Program is a unique opportunity for providers on VMware vCloud, Citrix CloudStack or OpenStack platforms. It enables you to automatically offer your users a free ScaleXtreme Xpress account to immediately gain control of their CSP machines. This will help differentiate your business with expanded service offerings and improve margins with our exclusive reseller/affiliate model. User benefits include accelerated machine launch, server automation, monitoring and alert capabilities and hybrid cloud support.

Learn more and sign up today.