Amazing Features of recently introduced Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL7) by Red Hat

Introduction 

After 6 + months of public beta testing and more than 3 years after its previous major point release, RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) version 7 is out. The update speaks to Red Hat's interests in outfitting RHEL with many of the latest enterprise and data center features. Here are the some amazing features of newly launched RHEL 7

Features

Red Hat’s latest release of its flagship platform RHEL 7 delivers dramatic improvements in reliability,  performance, and scalability. A wealth of new features provides the architect, system administrator, and developer with the resources necessary to innovate and manage more efficiently.

Linux Containers

Linux Containers provide a method of isolating a process and simulating its environment inside  a single host. It provides application sandboxing technology to run applications in a secure container environment, isolated from other applications running in the same host operating system environment. Linux Containers are useful when multiple copies of an application or  workload need to be run in isolation, but share environments and resources.

Identity Management

Cross-Realm Kerberos Trust

Identity Management in Red Hat Enterprise Linux can now establish cross-realm trust with  Microsoft Active Directory. Synchronization between the two identity stores is not needed.  This new capability makes it possible for users with Active Directory credentials to access Linux resources without requiring additional identity authentication so that single sign-on functionality exists across Microsoft Windows and Linux domains.

RealmD

RealmD discovers information about the domain or realm automatically and simplifies the configuration needed to join it. RealmD works with Microsoft Active Directory and Red Hat Enterprise Linux identity management. 

Performance Management

Performance Co-Pilot

Performance Co-Pilot is a new framework for system-wide performance monitoring, recording, and analysis that provides an API for importing and exporting sampled and traced data. It also includes tools for interrogating, retrieving, and processing the collected data. Performance Co-Pilot can transmit this data across a network and integrate with subsystems such as syslogd, sar/sysstat, and systemd. It provides a common graphical user interface for browsing through all collected data as well as interactive text interfaces. 

TUNED AND TUNED Profiles

Tuned is an adaptive system-tuning daemon that tunes system settings dynamically depending on usage. Red Hat Enterprise 7 includes several default tuned profiles, allowing administrators to benefit from better performance and power management for common workloads with very little tweaking. By default, the tuned profile selected is based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux product variant, though administrators can modify the profile to address intended use cases.

TUNA

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 enhances Tuna beyond just the process performance monitoring capabilities found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 with additional support for kernel parameter tuning, along with profile customization and management. 

Tuna has a unified, easy-to-use graphical user interface for system performance tuning, monitoring, and tuned profile management. It helps customers get the best performance out of their systems  by using proactive load balancing and monitoring to eliminate hot spots, prevent performance  problems, and avoid potential service calls.

NUMA Affiniy

With more and more systems, even at the low end, presenting Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) topologies, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 addresses the performance irregularities that such systems present. A new, kernel-based NUMA affinity mechanism automates memory optimization. It attempts to match processes that consume significant resources with available memory and CPU resources in order to reduce cross-node traffic. The resulting improved NUMA resource alignment improves performance for applications and virtual machines, especially when running  memory-intensive workloads. 

Hardware Event Reporting Mechanism (HERM)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 unifies hardware event reporting into a single reporting mechanism. Instead of various tools collecting errors from different sources with different timestamps, a new Hardware Event Reporting Mechanism (HERM) will make it easier to correlate events and get an  accurate picture of system behavior. HERM reports events in a single location and in a sequential timeline. HERM uses a new userspace daemon, rasdaemon, to catch and log all RAS events coming from the kernel tracing infrastructure.

Virtualization

Guest Integration with VMWARE

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 advances the level of integration between the Red Hat  Enterprise Linux guest and VMware vSphere. 

Integration now includes:

• Open VM Tools. 
• 3D graphics drivers for hardware-accelerated OpenGL and X11 rendering. 
• Fast communication mechanisms between VMware ESX and the virtual machine. 

Combined, these additions provide a rich, high-performance environment for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine running on VMware.

Cryptography Support

KVM-based virtualization capabilities meet new cryptographic security requirements from both US and UK governments by adding the ability for the virtual machine to draw entropy from the host. By default, this information is sourced from the host’s /dev/random file, but hardware random number generators available on hosts can be used as the source as well.

By alleviating entropy starvation in guests, cryptographic applications running on the guest are more effective. This feature is especially important to highly security-conscious customers such  as federal governments, online merchants, financial institutions, and defense contractors. 

Virtual Function I/O Device Assignment 

The Virtual Function I/O (VFIO) userspace driver interface improves PCI device assignment for KVM. VFIO provides kernel-level enforcement of device isolation, improves security of device access, and is compatible with features such as secure boot. For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 uses the VFIO framework for Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) device assignment. Note that VFIO replaces the KVM device assignment mechanism used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Development

OpenJDK

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 includes OpenJDK 7 as the default Java development and runtime environment. OpenJDK 7 is the most current stable version of publicly available Java. It provides more stability, better performance, better support for dynamic languages, and quicker startup times.

All Java 7 packages (java-1.7.0-openjdk, java-1.7.0-oracle, java-1.7.0-ibm) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 let you install multiple versions in parallel, similarly to the kernel. Parallel installation makes it simpler to try out multiple versions of the same JDK simultaneously in order to tune performance and debug problems if needed.

Installation and Deployment

IN-PLACE Upgrade

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 provides support that simplifies the task of performing in-place upgrades. A pre-upgrade assistant package is provided in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. 5 beta zstream, which reports what can be upgraded in-place and what will have to be done manually.  The report describes the issues and links to knowledgebase articles available in the Red Hat Customer Portal. 

The report includes information on configuration files that will be modified and identifies existing user-modified configuration files, recommending some to be manually checked. At that point, the administrator can decide if the end result of an in-place upgrade is sufficient for their needs. Upon executing the in-place upgrade, the administrator can then inspect the final results and decide to complete the upgrade.

Partitioning Defaults for Rollback

The ability to revert to a known, good system configuration is crucial in a production environment. Using LVM snapshots with ext4 and XFS (or the integrated LVM snapshotting feature in Btrfs) an administrator can capture the state of a system and preserve it for future use. An example use case would involve an in-place upgrade that does not present a desired outcome and an administrator who wants to restore the original configuration.

ANACONDA KICKSTART for Active Directory Integration

A system administrator can now create kickstart installation files that do not require administrative credentials. The installed system can then join an Active Directory domain with a one-time password. This new feature eliminates the need for writing and maintaining large blocks of interdependent code in two domains.

Creating Installation Media

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 introduces Live Media Creator for creating customized installation media from a kickstart file for a range of deployment use cases. Media can be used to deploy standardized images whether on standardized corporate desktops, standardized servers, virtual machines, or hyperscale deployments. Live Media Creator, especially when used with templates, provide a way to control and manage configurations across the enterprise.

Server Profile TEMPLATES

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7  features the ability to use installation templates to create servers for common workloads. These templates can simplify and speed creating and deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers, even for those with little or no experience with Linux.

Desktop

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 includes three desktops to match different work styles and preferences:

• GNOME 3, 
• GNOME Classic, and 
• KDE

GNOME 3 provides a focused working environment that encourages productivity. A powerful  search feature lets you access all your work from one place. Side-by-side windows make it easy  to view several documents at the same time, and you can turn off notifications when you need to concentrate on the task in hand.

Every part of GNOME 3 has been designed with simplicity and ease-of-use in mind. Activities Overview gives an easy way to access all your basic tasks. A press of a button is all it takes to view your open windows, launch applications, or check if you have new messages.

GNOME 3 integrates well with online document-storage services, calendars, and contact lists, so all your data can be accessed from the same place.

GNOME Classic combines old and new; it keeps the familiar look and feel of GNOME 2, but adds the powerful new features and 3-D capabilities of GNOME Shell.

In addition to GNOME 3 and GNOME Classic, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 offers the version 4 of the KDE desktop, the latest stable version of this popular desktop.

Management 

SYSTEM-WIDE Resource Management

Systemd, a system and service manager for Linux, is compatible with SysV and LSB init scripts and can work as a drop-in replacement for sysvinit, as it is backward-compatible with sysvinit scripts. Systemd, now included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 :

• Provides aggressive parallelization capabilities. 
• Uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services. 
• Offers on-demand starting of daemons. 
• Keeps track of processes using Linux cgroups. 
• Supports creating snapshots and restoring system state. 
• Maintains mount and automount points. 
• Implements fine-grained transactional, dependency-based, service control logic.

OpenLMI

The OpenLMI project provides a common infrastructure for the remote management of Linux systems. Capabilities include configuration, management, and monitoring of hardware, operating systems, and system services. OpenLMI includes a set of services that can be accessed both locally and remotely, multiple language bindings, standard APIs, and standard scripting interfaces. It enables system administrators to manage more systems, automate management operations, and manage both physical and virtual servers. The standardized tool interface shortens the learning curve for new administrators and the standard APIs make it easier to build custom tools.

Storage management capabilities simplify configuring and managing storage, especially on systems with multiple drives. A traditional issue on Linux systems is that volume labels can change when hardware is reconfigured. OpenLMI avoids this problem by allowing you to address volumes by volume label, UUID, or Device ID. The combination of a standardized API and persistent device names makes it easy to keep storage consistent, even when hardware and software change.

OpenLMI enables remote network management by providing a standardized API to query and configure the network hardware. In addition to standard network configuration, it supports configuring network bridging and bonding and provides notification of changes in network configuration.

A system administrator can use the OpenLMI Software Provider to remotely to add or remove  services, determine the state of the service (started, running, stopped, failed), enable, start, or restart a service.

File Systems

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux now supports XFS file systems that are up to 500TB in size. The  previous support limit was 100TB.
• BTFS (Brtfs) is a relatively young file system especially useful for local, large-scale use cases. BTFS includes basic volume management, snapshot support, and full data and metadata integrity checksumming, and a command-line interface that makes these advanced features easier to use than in other large-scale file systems. 
• Ext4 supports a file system that is 50TB in size, up from 16TB. 
• The Red Hat Enterprise Linux PNFS client now supports all commercially available server layout types. 
• The CIFS networking file system with server message block (SMB) protocol updates will provide better performance, security, and more features than were available with previous protocols.
• GFS2 commands now more accurately deal with RAID stripe alignment and placement of critical elements such as journals and resource groups. This increases the scalability and performance of GFS2 when the file system is being created and when it is used.

Storage

ISCSI and FCOE Targets

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 includes a new software implementation of the iSCSI (RFC-3720 mode) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) targets in the kernel, as opposed to the user space, as was the case previously. This new implementation makes it possible to replace expensive shared storage arrays to Linux-based storage appliances built on commodity hardware.


Dynamic LUN Detection

Logical units (LUN) can now be dynamically recognized by the operating system with no manual intervention, resulting in fewer reboots and less downtime.


SNAPPER

Snapper is a new utility that creates, deletes, labels, and organizes snapshots of the Btrfs file  system and logical volume manager block device. The additional information and tooling give system administrators more control over their backup environment.

Security

Dynamic FIREWALL

With firewalld, a firewall does not have to be stopped in order to change its rules. This increases the security of the system by eliminating vulnerability and adding the ability to respond to threats by quickly activating new rules. In addition to dynamic configuration capabilities, firewalld supports a powerful rules language that simplifies configuring firewalls.


Structured Logging

Information in log files is now structured, making automated log analysis tools more powerful  and effective. The log file structure is not changed, ensuring that your existing tools and processes continue to work without requiring modifications.


Labeled NFS

Labeled NFS allows customers to deploy more secure environments, including secure virtual machine home directories stored on NFS servers. Images in a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization storage domain can have labels conveniently assigned and issued by the Red Hat  Enterprise Virtualization Manager.

Many types of attacks on a system can be prevented by providing fine-grained control of who  can access system resources. SELinux protection is now available when using NFS, simplifying the development of secure applications. The Linux kernel has enhanced support for passing SELinux labels between a client and server using NFS.

Networking

NetworkManager Interfaces

NetworkManager has two new user interfaces: a command-line tool (nmcli) and a curses-based,  text user interface (TUI). Nmcli is intended for administrators who prefer command-line access for managing network services and is useful for remote network administration and managing headless servers. The TUI replaces system-config-network-tui and simplifies configuring many network settings for those who do not want to edit configuration files directly.


Accurate Time Synchronization

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 supports the network time protocol (NTP) implementation Chrony, which provides more accurate clock synchronization than the network time protocol daemon (ntpd).


Benefits of Chrony include:

• Faster synchronization. Chrony usually needs only minutes instead of hours to minimize the time and frequency error, which is useful on desktops or systems not running 24 hours a day.
• A larger range for frequency correction (100000 ppm vs. 500 ppm) is useful for virtual machines that have quickly drifting clocks. 
• Better response to rapid changes in the clock frequency, useful for virtual machines that have unstable clocks or for power-saving technologies that don’t keep the clock frequency constant. 
• After the initial synchronization, the clock is never stepped, which is useful for applications needing system time to be monotonic.
• Better stability with temporary asymmetric delays, for example when the link is saturated by a large download.
• Periodic polling of servers is not required, so systems with intermittent network connections can still quickly synchronize clocks.

Precision Time Protocol

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 supports IEEE 1588 PTPv2 (Precision Time Protocol version 2) in combination with a supported network card. PTP is used to precisely synchronize clocks in an Ethernet network. When used in conjunction with the appropriate hardware, it is capable of achieving clock accuracy in the sub-microsecond range, which is far more accurate than is  typically obtainable with the network time protocol (NTP). This feature is particularly important  for applications in the financial services and trading-related industries, where application latency is measured in microseconds.  


Team Driver Link Aggregation

The Team Driver project is new for Red Hat Enterprise 7 and provides a mechanism to team multiple network devices (ports) into a single logical interface at the data link layer (layer 2). This mechanism is typically used to increase the maximum bandwidth and provide redundancy.

Team Driver identifies only the necessary data fast-path parts in the kernel, and the majority of its logic is implemented as a user space daemon. This approach provides advantages over traditional bonding such as more stability, easier debugging, and simpler extensions while providing equal or better performance.


TCP Enhancements

Various improvements to transmission control protocol (TCP) aim to reduce latency for connection-oriented services such as web servers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• Fast Open is an experimental TCP extension (not yet approved by the Internet Assigned  Numbers Authority (IANA)) designed to reduce the overhead when establishing a TCP connection by eliminating one round time trip (RTT) from certain kinds of TCP conversations. Fast Open could result in speed increases of between 4% and 41% in page-load times.
• Tail loss probe (TLP), an experimental algorithm, improves the efficiency of how the TCP  networking stack deals with lost packets at the end of a TCP transaction. TLP could reduce  re-transmission timeouts by 15% and shorten HTTP response times by an average of 6%.
• Early Retransmit (RFC 5827) allows the transport to use fast retransmits to recover segment losses that would otherwise require a lengthy timeout. Connections can recover from lost  packets faster, which decreases overall latency. 
• Proportional Rate Reduction (PRP) is an experimental algorithm designed to return to the maximum transfer rate quickly. It can potentially reduce HTTP response times by 3-10%.

40G Ethernet Link Speed

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 supports 40G Ethernet link speeds, which enables faster network communication for systems and applications.


Low-Latency Sockets

Low-latency sockets are a software implementation that reduces networking latency and jitter within the kernel. This implementation makes it easy for applications to poll for new packets directly in the network driver which speeds up packets moving into the network stack. Applications that are sensitive to unpredictable latency benefit from the top-down, busy-wait polling method that replaces interrupts for incoming packets. 

High Availability

Enhanced CLUSTER Resource Manager

Cluster resource management has been enhanced through several additions: 

• Simplified administrative procedures reduce the amount of effort it takes to monitor and manage a cluster. 
• Finer-grained monitoring of every component in the cluster stack provides more awareness and control over applications running in high-availability environments. Resources can have multiple states associated with them and can be managed on a schedule basis or manually. An important new feature is the ability to create user-defined actions.
• Resource cloning allows a single command to be replicated across multiple nodes in the cluster. For example, by using cloned resources, issuing a single command can cause a GFS2 filesystem to be mounted on all nodes within the cluster.
• The new cluster resource manager has both a graphical and a command-line interface. The new resource manager provides a single environment for managing clusters running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7.

PACEMAKER Policy Engine

The pacemaker remote capabilities now apply to virtual machines within a cluster. Now with  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, users can run pacemaker from within a virtual machine and to control resources and applications running in other virtual machines in the cluster.

A Quick Overview - SFA, TFA & MFA

What is SFA - Single Factor Authentication 

This is “something a user knows.”  The most recognized type of Single Factor Authentication method is the password. Single Factor Authentication (SFA) is the traditional security process that requires a user name and password before granting access to the user.

SFA security relies on the diligence of the user, who should take additional precautions -- for example, creating a strong password and ensuring that no one can access it. For applications that require greater security, it may be advisable to implement more complex systems, such as Multi Factor Authentication.

What is TFA - Two Factor Authentication

In Two Factor Authentication, in addition to the first factor, the second factor is “something a user has.”  Examples of something a user has are a fob that generates a pre-determined code, a signed digital certificate or even a biometric such as a fingerprint.  The most recognized form of two-factor authentication is the ubiquitous RSA SecurID fob.

In a Two Factor Authentication system, the user provides dual means of identification, one of which is typically a physical token, such as a card, and the other of which is typically something memorized, such as a security code. This is a process involving two stages to verify the identity of an entity trying to access services in a computer or in a network. In a Two Factor Authentication, each step involves a different authentication factor.

An Automated Teller Machine (ATM) typically requires Two Factor Authentication. To prove that users are who they claim to be, the system requires two items: an ATM smartcard (application of the possession factor) and the personal identification number (PIN) (application of the knowledge factor). In the case of a lost ATM card, the user's accounts are still safe; anyone who finds the card cannot withdraw money as they do not know the PIN. The same is true if the attacker has only knowledge of the PIN and does not have the card. This is what makes Two Factor Authentication more secure: there are two factors required in order to authenticate.

What is MFA - Multi Factor Authentication

In Multi Factor Authentication, in addition to the previous two factors, the third factor is “something a user is.”  Examples of a third factor are all biometric such as the user’s voice, hand configuration, a fingerprint, a retina scan or similar.  The most recognized form of Multi Factor Authentication is usually the retina scan with Two Factor Authentication. 

Multi Factor Authentication is an approach to authentication which requires the presentation of the three authentication factors: a knowledge factor ("something only the user knows"), a possession factor ("something only the user has"), and an inherence factor ("something only the user is"). After presentation, each factor must be validated by the other party for authentication to occur.

Multi Factor Authentication is often confused with other forms of authentication. The Multi Factor Authentication requires the use of the three authentication factors. The factors are identified in the standards and regulations for access to U.S. Federal Government systems. These factors are:

1. Something only the user knows (e.g., password, PIN, pattern);
2. Something only the user has (e.g., ATM card, smart card, mobile phone); and
3. Something only the user is (e.g., biometric characteristic, such as a fingerprint)

The goal of MFA is to create a layered defense and make it more difficult for an unauthorized person to access a target such as a physical location, computing device, network or database. If one factor is compromised or broken, the attacker still has at least one more barrier to breach before successfully breaking into the target.

Typical MFA scenarios include:

• Swiping a card and entering a PIN.
• Downloading a VPN client with a valid digital certificate and logging into the VPN before being granted access to a network.
• Logging into a website and being requested to enter an additional one-time password (OTP) that the website's authentication server sends to the requester's phone or email address.
• Swiping a card, scanning a fingerprint and answering a security question.
• Attaching a USB hardware token to a desktop that generates an OTP and using the one-time password to log into a VPN client.

In the United States, interest in Multi Factor Authentication has been driven by regulations such as the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) directive calling for Multi Factor Authentication for Internet banking transactions.

A Quick Overview - IP Spoofing

IP Spoofing (IP address forgery or a host file hijack)

IP address spoofing or IP spoofing is the creation of Internet Protocol (IP) packets with a forged source IP address, with the purpose of concealing the identity of the sender or impersonating another computing system.

IP spoofing is also known as IP address forgery or a host file hijack, is a hijacking technique in which a cracker masquerades as a trusted host to conceal his identity, spoof a Web site, hijack browsers, or gain access to a network. Here's how it works: The hijacker obtains the IP address of a legitimate host and alters packet headers so that the legitimate host appears to be the source.

When IP spoofing is used to hijack a browser, a visitor who types in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a legitimate site is taken to a fraudulent Web page created by the hijacker. For example, if the hijacker spoofed the Instagram Web site, then any Internet user who typed in the URL www.instagram.com would see spoofed content created by the hijacker.

If a user interacts with dynamic content on a spoofed page, the hijacker can gain access to sensitive information or computer or network resources. He could steal or alter sensitive data, such as a credit card number or password, or install malware . The hijacker would also be able to take control of a compromised computer to use it as part of a zombie army in order to send out spam.

Web site administrators can minimize the danger that their IP addresses will be spoofed by implementing hierarchical or one-time passwords and data encryption/decryption techniques. 

Users and administrators can protect themselves and their networks by installing and implementing firewalls that block outgoing packets with source addresses that differ from the IP address of the user's computer or internal network.

IP spoofing is most frequently used in denial-of-service attacks. In such attacks, the goal is to flood the victim with overwhelming amounts of traffic, and the attacker does not care about receiving responses to the attack packets. Packets with spoofed addresses are thus suitable for such attacks. They have additional advantages for this purpose—they are more difficult to filter since each spoofed packet appears to come from a different address, and they hide the true source of the attack. Denial of service attacks that use spoofing typically randomly choose addresses from the entire IP address space, though more sophisticated spoofing mechanisms might avoid unroutable addresses or unused portions of the IP address space. The proliferation of large botnets makes spoofing less important in denial of service attacks, but attackers typically have spoofing available as a tool, if they want to use it, so defenses against denial-of-service attacks that rely on the validity of the source IP address in attack packets might have trouble with spoofed packets. Backscatter, a technique used to observe denial-of-service attack activity in the Internet, relies on attackers' use of IP spoofing for its effectiveness.

IP spoofing can also be a method of attack used by network intruders to defeat network security measures, such as authentication based on IP addresses. This method of attack on a remote system can be extremely difficult, as it involves modifying thousands of packets at a time. This type of attack is most effective where trust relationships exist between machines. 

For example, it is common on some corporate networks to have internal systems trust each other, so that users can log in without a username or password provided they are connecting from another machine on the internal network (and so must already be logged in). By spoofing a connection from a trusted machine, an attacker may be able to access the target machine without an authentication.

Spoofed IP packets are not incontrovertible evidence of malicious intent; however, in performance testing of websites, hundreds or even thousands of "vusers" (virtual users) may be created, each executing a test script against the Web site under test, in order to simulate what will happen when the system goes "live" and a large number of users log on at once.

Since each user will normally have their own IP address, commercial testing products (such as HP's Loadrunner software or Websense etc) can use IP spoofing, allowing each user its own "return address", as well.

A Quick Overview - NMS (Network Management / Monitoring System)

NMS (Network Management / Monitoring System)

A Network Management/Monitoring System (NMS) is a set of hardware and/or software tools that allow an IT professional to supervise the individual components of a network within a larger network management framework.

Network management system components assist with: 

• Network device discovery -  identifying what devices are present on a network.

• Network device monitoring - monitoring at the device level to determine the health of network components and the extent to which their performance matches capacity plans and intra-enterprise Service-Level Agreements (SLAs).

• Network performance analysis -  tracking performance indicators such as bandwidth utilization, packet loss, latency, availability and up time of routers, switches and  other Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)/WMI -enabled devices.

• Intelligent notifications - configurable alerts that will respond to specific network scenarios by paging, emailing, calling or texting a network administrator.

Some enterprise level NMS

IMPORTANT: Choosing, Implementation and Configuration of any NMS, requires domain specific knowledge. Wrong configuration of any NMS may be slowdown the network performance !!!

Virtualization Performance - IBM Power Systems with PowerVM Technology

IBM Power Systems with PowerVM technology 

IBM Power Systems — with the superior performance of PowerVM virtualization technology and with features such as reliability, security, high availability, and resiliency — are well positioned for cloud computing and smarter planet solutions today and in the future.

Virtualization has become a pervasive means of consolidating workloads on fewer systems, controlling server sprawl and minimizing costs. With IBM Power Systems and PowerVM virtualization technologies, organizations can achieve virtualization with outstanding performance. IBM Power Systems with PowerVM technology demonstrated superior performance and greater efficiency in using system capacity at higher utilization, as well as at higher resource contention (over-commit levels), and superior scaling with higher throughput performance.

Feature at a glance :

In summary, the study has shown that IBM POWER7 systems and PowerVM technology have demonstrated:

• Higher throughput performance for both AIM7 and TPoX benchmarks, ranging from 50 percent better to as much as 200 percent better.   

• Higher efficiency in resource over-commit mode (higher consolidation ratio), with the response time on PowerVM virtualization technology two to six times shorter, compared to response time for VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1, as the number of VMs scaled from five to 40 VMs.

• Higher processor affinity by default (40 VMs sharing eight cores), retaining 2.3 times better performance than HP Intel/VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 technologies, even with reconfiguration using CPU affinity (VMware Scheduling Affinity group) on VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1.

• Efficient leveraging of maximum configured processor capacity.

• Accurate accounting of resource usage within a VM.

• Tighter integration across system, hypervisor, and guest OS.

• Better performance overall than Intel Xeon 7560 /VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. 

The charts that follow summarize the results  :

The first — the AIM7 performance benchmark 32-core VM scaling (scale-up) results — shows that PowerVM on POWER7 delivers superior scale-up efficiency that outperforms VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 by up to 115 percent while running the same Linux workloads and virtualized resources.

AIM7 Performance Benchmark 

32 VM Scale-out on 32 cores

In fact, PowerVM on POWER7 retains its superiority even configured with an additional 

virtual CPU per VM.

The second  — the TPOX performance benchmark 5 VM per core (scale-out) — shows that PowerVM on POWER7 delivers robust scale-out efficiency that outperforms VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 by up to 201 percent while running the same workloads and virtualized resources.

 

TPOX Performance Benchmark 

40 VM Scale-out on 8 cores 

5 VMs per core

PowerVM maximizes workload performance and system resources while running 

multiple virtual machines on a core better than does VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1.

StorSimple Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS)

StorSimple Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS)

StorSimple cloud-integrated storage provides primary storage, backup, archive, and disaster recovery, combined with Microsoft Azure. This allows you to optimize total storage costs and increase data protection and service agility. With StorSimple, you can integrate the public cloud with on-premises storage to reduce datacenter infrastructure complexity, maximize data protection, reduce overall storage total cost of ownership (TCO) by 60-80%, and provision storage more rapidly to reclaim IT time cycles.

Benefits

Some key benfits of StorSimple Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS) are given below

Reduce Overall Storage TCO by 60-80%

Significantly reduce storage capital expenses (primary backup, archives, disaster recovery (DR)) and related support cost.

Maximize Data Protection

Automate backups using local and cloud snapshots to ensure constant data protection. Dramatically improve recovery time objectives (RTO) by downloading only active data sets.

Reduce Datacenter Infrastructure Complexity

Deploy a single StorSimple system—integrated with Microsoft Azure Storage—to consolidate primary storage, backup hardware and software, archives, and disaster recovery.

Provision Storage More Rapidly and Reclaim IT Time Cycles

Add storage capacity in minutes for primary, archive, and backup data, and reclaim significant administrative time by automating backup and archiving procedures.

Test and Improve Disaster Recovery Function

Multi-location disaster recovery is now as fast and simple as mounting a cloud snapshot.

Capabilities

Enterprise-class storage

StorSimple solutions offer enterprise-class high-availability with fully redundant disk controllers, power supplies, network connections and no single point of failure. They also support non-disruptive software upgrades.

AES-256 security

All data stored in the cloud with StorSimple has AES-256 encryption applied to it. The encryption key is never given to StorSimple or the cloud provider, ensuring complete data privacy to support compliance requirements as stringent as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Solid state disk performance with cloud elasticity + economics

Applications get local SSD performance with the elasticity of the cloud through automatic tiering based on a BlockRankTM algorithm that does for blocks of content what Page Rank does for Google.

Instant thin provisioning of massive live archives

Instant thin provisioning enables you to provision Instantly and thinly provision massive archive volumes with live access and cloud economics. Automatic tiering moves older blocks to the cloud without the need for complex archival procedures

Fast backup and near instant restore using the cloud

Incremental, deduplicated snapshots reduce storage requirements by more than 90%, while delivering instant snapshot and restore technology in minutes as opposed to days. Cloud Snapshots offer offsite data protection via the cloud. It is now simple and cost-effective to retain as many snapshots as you need – no more 30, 60 or 90-day limits.

Fast multi-location disaster recovery without tape

Backups made to the cloud can be recovered to the same location or a different location. Disaster recovery is now as fast and simple as mounting a volume. Now you can replace tape without having to double your storage infrastructure investment.

One solution means simple integrated management

Separate primary storage, archival, backup/restore, and disaster recovery hardware means multiple separate management consoles. One integrated console makes it dramatically simpler to manage the whole storage infrastructure, freeing up IT resources.

Application-optimized storage and data protection

Application-optimized volumes are supported for Windows file shares, SharePoint and VMware libraries. Full support for VSS application-consistent snapshots is provided.

Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS) At A Glance

Quick Reference Guide - DNS

What is DNS

We are now in the age of Cloud Computing or more specifically Virtualization platform. Every resources we are using, delivered to us as a service model. In that scenario communication system takes a major role. Because in Cloud Computing platform all resources are distributed over the Cloud and we access them as per our requirement where communication system or network is the backbone. We can identify or access the network resource by its name or IP address only. This Name Resolution service is manged and provided by DNS. Without proper DNS the big like Cloud Computing or the small like Printer Sharing is not possible. So, here we try to understand a little bit about DNS.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. Most prominently, it translates easily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for the purpose of locating computer services and devices worldwide. The Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet.


An often-used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the phone book for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, the domain name www.example.com translates to the addresses 93.184.216.119 (IPv4) and 2606:2800:220:6d:26bf:1447:1097:aa7 (IPv6). Unlike a phone book, the DNS can be quickly updated, allowing a service's location on the network to change without affecting the end users, who continue to use the same host name. Users take advantage of this when they use meaningful Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and e-mail addresses without having to know how the computer actually locates the services.


The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain. Authoritative name servers are assigned to be responsible for their supported domains, and may delegate authority over subdomains to other name servers. This mechanism provides distributed and fault tolerant service and was designed to avoid the need for a single central database.


The DNS translates Internet domain and host names to IP addresses. DNS automatically converts the names we type in our Web browser address bar to the IP addresses of Web servers hosting those sites.
DNS implements a distributed database to store this name and address information for all public hosts on the Internet. DNS assumes IP addresses do not change (are statically assigned rather than dynamically assigned).


The DNS database resides on a hierarchy of special database servers. When clients like Web browsers issue requests involving Internet host names, a piece of software called the DNS resolver (usually built into the network operating system) first contacts a DNS server to determine the server's IP address. If the DNS server does not contain the needed mapping, it will in turn forward the request to a different DNS server at the next higher level in the hierarchy. After potentially several forwarding and delegation messages are sent within the DNS hierarchy, the IP address for the given host eventually arrives at the resolver, that in turn completes the request over Internet Protocol.


DNS additionally includes support for caching requests and for redundancy. Most network operating systems support configuration of primary, secondary, and tertiary DNS servers, each of which can service initial requests from clients. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) maintain their own DNS servers and use DHCP to automatically configure clients, relieving most home users of the burden of DNS configuration.


The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned.


The Domain Name System also specifies the technical functionality of this database service. It defines the DNS protocol, a detailed specification of the data structures and data communication exchanges used in DNS, as part of the Internet Protocol Suite.

The Internet maintains two principal namespaces, the domain name hierarchy and the Internet Protocol (IP) address spaces. The Domain Name System maintains the domain name hierarchy and provides translation services between it and the address spaces. Internet name servers and a communication protocol implement the Domain Name System. A DNS name server is a server that stores the DNS records for a domain name, such as address (A or AAAA) records, name server (NS) records, and mail exchanger (MX) records.

Some Important DNS Record Types 

A records

Address (A) records direct a hostname to a numerical IP address. For example, if you want mycomputer.yourdomain.com to point to your home computer (which is, for example, 192.168.0.3), you would enter a record that looks like:

mycomputer.yourdomain.com. A 192.168.0.3 

You must put a period after the hostname. Do not put periods after IP addresses.

CNAME records

CNAME allows a machine to be known by one or more hostnames. There must always be an A record first, and this is known as the canonical or official name. For example: yourdomain.com. A 192.168.0.1
Using CNAME, you can point other hostnames to the canonical (A record) address. For example:


ftp.yourdoman.com. CNAME yourdomain.com.
mail.yourdomain.com. CNAME yourdomain.com.
ssh.yourdomin.com. CNAME yourdomain.com.

CNAME records make it possible to access your domain through ftp.yourdomain.com, mail.yourdomain.com, etc. Without a proper CNAME record, you will not be able to connect to your server using such addresses.

NAMESERVER (NS) records

NS records specify the authoritative nameservers for the domain. Changing NS records may cause your site to stop working. There is generally no need to change NS records.  For example:

yourdomain.com NS ns1.slamdot.com.

MX records

MX or Mail Exchanger record is required e-mail service to work. Please note that changing MX records will prevent your current POP3 accounts, forwarders, autoresponders, and mailing lists from functioning.

PTR records

Pointer records (PTR) are used for reverse lookups. For example, to make 192.168.0.1 resolve to www.yourdomain.com, the record would look like:

1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa PTR www.yourdomain.com.

PTR records are only effective if named.conf is manually edited and the proper zone information is added. This can only be done by a root user (the server Admin).