Important Datacenter Network Topology Types Leading Business in 2022

What is Data Center Network topology?

A Datacenter network topology is the combination of Data Center resources including computing power, storage, and networks that make up your data communication network. Datacenter networks are one way you can easily connect to thousands of servers, to manage the demands of your cloud computing network.

Before we get into it, let’s keep in mind what a datacenter is…

What is a Data Center?

A data center is a place or building set aside to manage the storage of computing systems and associated or interconnected components and devices; such as telecommunication devices, routers, and servers, and storage systems. All data on the internet gets stored on a server and remains accessible round the clock.

Types of Data Centers

The Data centers may differ in size; it can be one small server room or a group of servers in a larger warehouse.

The data center provides storage space to maintain various computing infrastructures and to connect with the cloud computing infrastructure. Remember that maintaining a datacenter consumes lots of energy. But it allows you to store your data and access it 24/7.

Note these four types of data centers:

Enterprise Data Centers

These types get built for a special purpose that makes them very useful in internal purposes of a single organization.

Colocation Data Centers

A co-location datacenter is a management space, within a larger data center, you rent for personal or business use and is in a remote location. The rental space provides the various resources of the data center that are available for the people.

Managed Service Data Centers

Management of this data center gets carried out by a third-party services provider and it offers different aspects of data storage, computing, and many other data management and computing services.

Cloud Data Centers

The cloud data center offers various types of services with the help of the third-party services provider and data and applications get hosted in cloud service platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform.

What is Network Topology?

A Datacenter Network Topology is simply the channels used to connect various nodes, servers, and computing devices to create physical and wireless network connections. It is the communication methods of the devices and telecommunication networks between various computing devices.

Types of Data Center Network Topology

There are multiple data center network topology types available;

Three-tier Data Center Topology

The Three-tier data center network topology uses the multi-rooted tree-based network topology, which involves the combination of three layers namely; access aggregate layer, core layers, and network switches.

Aggregate layer switches get interconnected to various access layer switches. And the core layer is used to create a connection for the data center to the Internet.

It’s efficient for enterprise-level network devices and it is very costly and power-consuming.

Fat tree Data Center Network

The Fat tree data center network is used to solve a basic problem with the three-tier data center network architecture. It uses the network switches-based architecture by using the Clos topology.

The fat-tree network topology also operates network switches to access the various layers, like aggregate and core layers. It uses more network switches rather than the three-tier data center network.

DCell

The DCell is a hybrid Datacenter Network. Here, one server gets connected directly to the other different servers within the same data center. The server in the DCell Network topology uses multiple Network interface cards.

This topology use servers and switches connected within the cell.

Core Components of a Datacenter Network Topology

The core components of the data center: 

  • Routers
  • Switches
  • Firewalls
  • Storage
  • Servers.
  • Network infrastructure
  • Computing resources

Conclusion

In this article, we have covered the important data center network topology types and the concept of the data center. I hope you have found this article helpful. Don’t forget to leave a comment below.

The Top 4 Data Center Security Best Practices

What is Data Center Security?

Data Center Security refers to the physical and virtual protection of your data network and all connected technologies. Datacenter infrastructure is prone to cyber-attacks, data loss, and many attacks on databases like SQL injection, hacking, tailgating, intellectual property theft. You probably know that a data center is simply the storage facility for the IT infrastructure of your business.

Keep in mind that a data center provides many services, including data organization, processing, storage, data recovery, backup, etc. Data centers hold the most crucial technologies regarding the operations of your business. Your data center security and physical safety have to be considered as the topmost priority. Access to the data center and safety procedures have to get managed and maintained consistently.

Best Known Practices for Data Center Security

Mentioning all the datacenter security best practices, procedures, and methods is absolutely difficult because they are just too many. But don’t worry, this article will concentrate on the most important:

Physical Accessibility Security Control

Although there are several variables to devotional physical safety, the construction of the structure itself is a major consideration. You can dedicate a building to the housing of a data center, or additional services and offices independent of the data center. Protect it from internal and environmental threats. Add an area with little windows and bullet protective walls.

Other significant physical safety issues include on-site video monitoring, safety guards, and metal detectors, as well as tiered security methods adapted for protecting data sensitivity, security checkpoints, limited or single access, departure points, etc.

You’ll love this one,

The application of mantraps. This includes an airlock between two different doors, and both doors require authentication. Consider future extensions within the same limits Separate white-space support systems enable allowed employees to fulfill their functions. It also inhibits the unattended access of maintenance and service professionals.

Monitoring and Limiting Access Physically and Virtually

Secured spaces, in particular those with servers and vital assets, should never allow unauthorized employees access. To do this, data centers require various tiers of physical and digital access restrictions. Human error is a major area of caution, more especially for data centers.

The first safeguards that spring to mind are access cards and identity badges; even offices that do not possess data use them in their centers. Additional guarantees include ongoing background checks by allowed staff, weight scales, visitors entering and leaving the premises, and biometric locks.

All individually guarded areas need to get authenticated and accessed in over one way, as not all workers need to access every section of a data center. Biometric technology is an effective safety layer based on unique features of an individual, such as a fingerprint or a retinal scan. Besides conventional access cards, many businesses are implementing biometric-controlled locks.

You must implement specific security measures for each room and location, depending on the sensitivity of the data and equipment involved.

Regular Network Security Audits

Firewalls and IDs assist the monitoring and checking of traffic before reaching your internal network for perimeter safety. To enhance their defenses, a data center must frequently deploy access control lists. Most current firewalls have ACLs, which enable or restrict traffic to particular locations by analyzing the information in the header packet.

The firewall of a data center gets created by defining access control lists for particular interfaces.

The basic aim of a firewall is to block unauthorized access, and it works as the network’s initial defensive line, dividing its secured and unprotected sections. Just make sure you do not use the firewall as just a measure of security theatre.

Understand this;

Access control should highlight the monitoring of IP addresses and the establishment of various threat prevention services. Traffic monitoring should always be workable, and any menaces and background noise should get distinguished quickly.

Another significant aspect of network security in data centers is intrusion detection systems.

They can identify anomalous activities by users or phishing signs, DDoS assaults, and other common or sophisticated threats to the network. Authentication of two and three factors is also an important measure of network security. You must conduct penetration testing annually, or perhaps twice a year. And ensure to include a certified third party to help with pen-testing.

Protection of Data

All data must be heavily secured, monitored at all times and periodically backed up for efficient protection and storage during transport. In addition, all data security protocols must monitor current trends, approaches, and technology.

You must always pursue strong password restrictions and good cybersecurity and spread the culture in all staff who frequently interact with data.

Understanding How AI Can Enhance Datacenter Security: 8 Powerful Attributes

Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Security

Data centers are vulnerable to many cyber-attacks. Especially now that almost every business can leverage and implement AI data collection and analysis solutions for diverse purposes.

A breach of data can be exceedingly harmful!

Industrial revolution 4.0. has created a data culture that allows businesses to leverage Artificial Intelligence for the enhancement of datacenter security and design business models that make data a substantial asset and key element of all company activities.

Cybercriminals now develop novel approaches to steal data from datacenters. Hackers frequently build complex malware and schedule cyber assaults that can enter the data networks of corporations. Hackers can easily use such software to access the private data of millions of people. For example, a security investigator revealed some major infringements, lately exposing millions of emails and passwords.

Searching and analyzing cyber assaults is quite a labor-demanding task for cyber-security professionals. Hence, let analyze how AI can revolutionize data center security.

How Can AI Enhance Datacenter Security?

Data violations are emerging more frequently in data-driven companies and every firm is rapidly employing cybersecurity specialists to investigate emerging cyber assaults and to develop tactics for preventing and mitigating them.

Businesses that employ Artificial Intelligence in their data center network can enhance their capacity to automate routine network activities, improve security, and identify cyber threats based on changes in behavior.

EES has the goal of securing your information from external and internal threats. With our data center security consulting and services, you never have to compromise on confidentiality and integrity. We implement proven methodology and deep tech expertise.

You can easily identify loopholes in your system and make significant improvements to your datacenter security management:

  1. You can automatically evaluate events and inputs from many systems and supplement security incidents and Event Management solutions. For example, a human cannot efficiently monitor events when over 20,000 occurrences get registered at once.
  2. Artificial Intelligence-based technologies can aid the identification of false positives’ harmful traffic and enable data center operators to address cybersecurity risks quickly and efficiently.
  3. You can also automate how you gather and analyze business information, scan code and vulnerabilities in infrastructure, and configuration mistakes. You can easily optimize the usage of security tools and learn from experience to adapt better.
  4. Artificial Intelligence recognizes drifting compliance in the data center and then adjusts and writes a new firewall rule for reverse control.
  5. If anything is moving from one data center to another, or from the same data center, artificial intelligence can write and rewrite firewall rules. In addition, input and outgoing data can get screened carefully and evaluated for security dangers.
  6. AI helps automate the security and maintenance of data centers in the future. If a security assault occurs today, server security employees must get secured manually. In addition, many maintenance jobs are still manual, such as getting rid of defective servers or storage devices. When robotics get added to the mix, data centers may be autonomous and human-free.
  7. The latest technology allows you to instruct robots to carry out delegated maintenance duties in the future. This means better service quality (QoS) at reduced operating costs.
  8. Artificial Intelligence service providers uphold strong financial incentives. With more AI-based security solutions, data centers can benefit from reduced operating costs and higher efficiency. It is a win-win for AI and data center suppliers both.

Google’s achievement in reducing its data center expenses by using deep learning has encouraged many entrepreneurs to leverage AI and improve their data center operations with quick identification of abnormalities.

Over four years, QTS created its software-driven Service Delivery Platform (SDP) and artifact engine for digitizing, aggregating, and analyzing over 4 billion (per day) data points across IT environments for all QTS clients. QTS is the first and only multi-tenant data center operator with a powerful Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Virtual Reality based software-defined management platform.

Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Security

Data centers are vulnerable to many cyber-attacks. Especially now that almost every business can leverage and implement AI data collection and analysis solutions for diverse purposes.

A breach of data can be exceedingly harmful!

Industrial revolution 4.0. has created a data culture that allows businesses to leverage Artificial Intelligence for the enhancement of datacenter security and design business models that make data a substantial asset and key element of all company activities.

Cybercriminals now develop novel approaches to steal data from datacenters. Hackers frequently build complex malware and schedule cyber assaults that can enter the data networks of corporations. Hackers can easily use such software to access the private data of millions of people. For example, a security investigator revealed some major infringements, lately exposing millions of emails and passwords.

Searching and analyzing cyber assaults is quite a labor-demanding task for cyber-security professionals. Hence, let analyze how AI can revolutionize data center security.

How Can AI Enhance Datacenter Security?

Data violations are emerging more frequently in data-driven companies and every firm is rapidly employing cybersecurity specialists to investigate emerging cyber assaults and to develop tactics for preventing and mitigating them.

Businesses that employ Artificial Intelligence in their data center network can enhance their capacity to automate routine network activities, improve security, and identify cyber threats based on changes in behavior.

You can easily identify loopholes in your system and make significant improvements to your datacenter security management:

  1. You can automatically evaluate events and inputs from many systems and supplement security incidents and Event Management solutions. For example, a human cannot efficiently monitor events when over 20,000 occurrences get registered at once.
  2. Artificial Intelligence-based technologies can aid the identification of false positives’ harmful traffic and enable data center operators to address cybersecurity risks quickly and efficiently.
  3. You can also automate how you gather and analyze business information, scan code and vulnerabilities in infrastructure, and configuration mistakes. You can easily optimize the usage of security tools and learn from experience to adapt better.
  4. Artificial Intelligence recognizes drifting compliance in the data center and then adjusts and writes a new firewall rule for reverse control.
  5. If anything is moving from one data center to another, or from the same data center, artificial intelligence can write and rewrite firewall rules. In addition, input and outgoing data can get screened carefully and evaluated for security dangers.
  6. AI helps automate the security and maintenance of data centers in the future. If a security assault occurs today, server security employees must get secured manually. In addition, many maintenance jobs are still manual, such as getting rid of defective servers or storage devices. When robotics get added to the mix, data centers may be autonomous and human-free.
  7. The latest technology allows you to instruct robots to carry out delegated maintenance duties in the future. This means better service quality (QoS) at reduced operating costs.
  8. Artificial Intelligence service providers uphold strong financial incentives. With more AI-based security solutions, data centers can benefit from reduced operating costs and higher efficiency. It is a win-win for AI and data center suppliers both.

Google’s achievement in reducing its data center expenses by using deep learning has encouraged many entrepreneurs to leverage AI and improve their data center operations with quick identification of abnormalities.

Over four years, QTS created its software-driven Service Delivery Platform (SDP) and artifact engine for digitizing, aggregating, and analyzing over 4 billion (per day) data points across IT environments for all QTS clients. QTS is the first and only multi-tenant data center operator with a powerful Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Virtual Reality based software-defined management platform.

All You Need to Know About The Top 5 Datacenter Security Solutions

What is a Datacenter Security Solution?

Data Center Security Solutions are the specialized tools, software, and equipment that help you keep your data secured from threats; internal or external, and increase sustainability. Security solutions get designed to safeguard your online networked system from cyber-attacks and to ensure security over your business’ computing infrastructure.

The top three goals for datacenter security solutions include:

  1. Prevention from damage
  2. Fast detection of probable threats
  3. Quick Remediation

Datacenter security software works by either creating an unbreakable firewall or detailed security monitoring to track allowed and unauthorized access to data resources. While choosing your data center security product, ensure to check all the features.

Most of the datacenter security solutions offer several additional safety features to help manage security-related threats better.

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FireEye

A security solution was established around toughening datacenter security. They designed FireEye for cybersecurity and it evidently delivers targeted security. This solution is can detect advanced terrorizations, and it’s engineered to launch the best-mitigated response to remove any threat.

The FireEye Helix is the key product; a cloud-hosted security platform featuring high-grade endpoint security, expansive apparency, threat intelligence, and network and email security.

What a useful package!

With the use of advanced analytics and AI, you can catch all threats in real-time. Besides, you will know more about your datacenter’s limitations and program vulnerabilities. This will help you fortify those special security measures.

Cisco

Cisco Systems need no introduction!

They have introduced a highly commanding and strong software-focused networking security tool that will amaze you with its long list of impressive AI features and standard tools for securing your datacenter against cyberattacks. Looking at the Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) platform, you need to be an expert, because one with simple basic knowledge cannot handle it.

It’s quite a complex tool, but definitely worth the effort. Consider it a smart, long-lasting investment. Cisco datacenter security systems are made for consistent multi-cloud networking. All you need is ONE click, and they will present you with all Cisco ACI fabric information in a single view. Cisco Cloud ACI guarantees secure automated connectivity.

IBM

If you want a variety of security solutions for your datacenter, look no further than IBM. It guarantees enhanced security.

IBM Cloud Pak System Offering 0

Buying IBM will get you:

  • Unbeatable firewall management
  • Unparalleled intelligent cloud management
  • Hyperactive intrusion detection
  • Highly responsive prevention system management
  • Immediate security intelligence analysis
  • Refined gateway management
  • Forged endpoint security
  • Ultra-secure SD-WAN
  • Robust unified threat management

McAfee

This is one of the most recognized names for delivering top-class security services. McAfee datacenter security solutions make massive amounts of data threat resistant. This solution has cloud-native tools that comprise a long-range of useful and inspiring products and services.

Alongside overall visibility, it offers renowned protection regarding unpatched databases, with highlighted features that include:

  • Amazing endpoint security
  • Cloud access security broker (CASB)
  • Data loss prevention
  • Automated database discovery
  • Easy to use single-pane manageability
  • Advanced encryption tools

Are you interested in having real-time protection from internal, external, and intra-database threats? Then this is your solution.

Symantec

It’s impossible to roam the cybersecurity field and never come across the name Symantec!

With broad-scale enterprise items that address many datacenter security threats along with sustaining their security, Symantec is always ready to give you integrated cybersecurity with its highly progressive software. The key appeal for Symantec is how its system can detect and mitigate advanced threats whilst protecting information with outclassed endpoint data security.

sddc security

Its tools can effectively give you the best of both the cloud and on-premise worlds!

WHOA!

With all-inclusive server protection, it will make the monitoring easier either through clouds or firewalls. The astonishing ability to block zero-day exploits takes it to the top of the list.

5 Ways to Improve Datacenter Security

Before illustrating HOW best you can optimize your datacenter security, let’s quickly understand WHAT a Datacenter is, and WHY it’s important for any and every business.

For those who don’t know, we’ll start with the basics!

What is a Datacenter?

Without delving into intricate terms and excessive details, a Datacenter is simply a facility responsible for saving the company’s large amounts of sensitive or proprietary information, whether it is about team members, business deals, or finances. Consider it a corporation’s IT infrastructure based on networked computers holding all data that must be digitally and physically secured.

In modern times, cloud computing a very cost-effective and efficient option. And it comes with three basic functionalities:

  1. Data storage
  2. Backup and recovery
  3. Data management and networking

What is Datacenter Security?

“Datacenter security includes all the physical and virtual practices that are available and exercised to guard your datacenter storage facility against national and international external threats.”

Why is Data Center Security Important?

Every year, many businesses lose significant financial resources and data to cyber-attacks. The only way to put an eventual stop to these incurring losses is to implement an unbreakable security strategy, both physical and in technological terms.

Datacenter security plays an important role when:

  • Securing the finances and budgeting
  • Keeping the proprietary and personal data private
  • Keeping the customers’ trust
  • Maintaining the company’s reputation
  • Restricting the unwelcoming access
  • Protection from cyber-bullying
  • Security against cyber-attacks

How can you Improve Data Center Security?

Remember, you must work hard to certify the optimal level of security for your datacenter overview; it’s a highly intricate network that demands ultra-safety and protection.

Keep reading to get hold of the top 5 ways to improve datacenter security:

Offer Access to the Limited Staff

Keep a close eye on who enters and leaves the Data Center. It’s important to train your datacenter security team to keep a detailed record of individuals who can gain access to critical areas of your data center, and all sensitive data. This will help to track unauthorized activities.

Restricting datacenter access to a specialized security management team must be your top priority.

Enhanced Physical Security

What we mean by physical security exactly is:

  • Installing CCTV throughout the building, not only the Data Center. You must install cameras with clear angles at the center’s entrance, exit, and access points. 24hrs. surveillance is a necessity of time.
  • Keep the number of windows and doors minimum
  • Invest money and time, effort, and hard work in hiring a specialized security team
  • Making the Datacenter strong enough to withstand weather calamities. Ensure the walls are well-forged, thickened, and made bulletproof, so it will keep your information safe from terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and even natural disasters.
  • Take all the measures for fire protection
  • Design your center with no blind spots and have the architecture that offers complete visibility

Access Control Systems & Biometrics

Another way to ensure security is the application of “biometric identification” as a method of entry that doesn’t work on access cards. Or else, use application-scanning and code-scanning tools at access points (entry and exit). These tools help you highlight all the vulnerable points where hackers can easily make quick and silent access.

Well, that is not all!

The easiest but most assured tactic is to create a mantrap! Yes, you have heard it right! You can create a mantrap by installing two doors with an airlock where the last or second door to exit or entry will only open on getting authentication from the other side of the door.

securechip 1

Network Security

Once you are all done with physically optimizing your datacenter security and accessibility, you move on to “securing the network”. The hard work starts from here!

Start with installing firewalls as a first layer defense fortifying the accessing perimeter. It will help you get rid of unauthorized traffic right at the entry-level.

The next step is to make the best out of the Zero Trust model; to inspect and monitor all the internal traffic that’s entering your network. If any threat has dodged your perimeter firewall, it will get detected instantly by the model, and it will begin its removal at the moment.

For the ultimate security, or we can say to add an extra pop, put A Security Information and Event Management tool (SIEM) in your networked computers. It will enhance the overall visibility of the upcoming traffic and give you extensive control over your system by updating alarm systems and sensors.

Get a real-time view of your datacenter’s security posture!

Bonus:

Wireless networking is not a necessity datacenters because it’s pretty difficult to maintain and supervise.

Secure Your Data for Emergency

The last step is to be ready if anything goes down. But how? By taking comprehensive measures including:

  • Complete data backup
  • Easy modes of data recovery
  • Using data encryption while sharing or transferring data

Energy Efficiency in Data Center Networking: 8 Helpful Solutions

Data Center Networking and Energy Efficiency

High energy consumption by data centers has raised many concerns about energy efficiency in data center networking. More especially with the increase of internet usage, video streaming, use of artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Carbon emissions have also increased. So, saving energy in data centers has become very crucial to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers across the globe.

This article highlights the best ways to optimize energy efficiency in data center networking practices, and helpful ways to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emission in data centers and server rooms.

Ways to The Increase Energy Efficiency in Data Center Networking

Thankfully, there are some ways that can save our world from CO2 emissions and help reduce energy consumption in a datacenter network. The points below briefly discuss those ways:

Use of Server Virtualization to Reduce Energy Efficiency

Until the last few years, the average data center was using several physical servers for different applications including Oracle, SQL, Applications, Email, File, Print, etc. Now, server virtualization technology allows data centers to virtualize a single physical server into several computable machines with the help of software implementation.

Using one physical machine for many applications or workloads. This technology significantly decreases power consumption by cutting down the number of physical servers required for specific operations.

Decommissioning Unused Servers

After implementing virtualization technology, a lot of servers may remain idle. Decommissioning these unused servers will significantly increase energy efficiency in your data center network.

But first, identification of unused servers needs to be done, prior to being decommissioned. Use DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) to see which machines are having low CPU utilization, and decommissioning those will help increase the energy efficiency of the data center.

Consolidating Servers

Consolidating lightly used servers and combining all the applications onto one server significantly reduces energy consumption over the long term. When you use a single server for a single workload, 90% of the servers in a data center run at 10% utilization only.

So, consolidating your many tasks into a single server will help turn off the remaining servers and increase the energy efficiency of the data center.

Effectively Managing Data Storage Space

Data storage devices take up a lot of space and energy in a data center. Managing them properly can help increase efficiency.

Use features like data compression, keeping a single copy of multiple duplicate files, use of snapshots, use of high-level RAIDs with lesser discs, storing old data to low-performance drives.

You can also use lower-speed drives, using MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks), and using solid-state drives over hard disks can significantly reduce energy consumption.

Using More Energy-Efficient Machines

Day by day, many electronic devices are becoming more energy-efficient. So is the case of server equipment such as machines, storage drives, UPSs, PDUs.

Replacing old machines with modern energy-efficient machines on a large scale will cut energy consumption to a great extent. And save costs over the long run.

Using Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle Layout

The servers consume cold air via the front and exhaust hot air via the backside of the servers. This makes physical cooling of the data center a top cost.

The hot aisle/cold aisle solution proposes to reduce energy consumption and management costs involved in server temperature management. Hot aisle/cold aisle refers to a data center layout design that manages air-flow, lowering the energy, cooling, and management cost of data centers.

Using Variable Speed Fan Drives

A simple 10% reduction of your server fan’s speed can also cut your energy consumption by approx. 25%. Using variable speed fan drives to replace the constant speed fans will help increase energy efficiency within your data center network.

Using Outside Air Instead Of HVAC

Using air from the environment to ventilate the data center, especially during winter or nighttime, instead of HVAC reduces the cooling cost up to 60% and more. Installing a cooling system will help compress and cool down the air within your data center. Although, running cooling compressors 24/7 is energy-consuming.

Hence, using environmental ventilation during winter and nighttime will help reduce energy cost significantly.

Visual Data Modeling in Datacenter Networking: Important Features You Must Know In 2022

Datacenter Networking and Visual Data Modeling

Visual data modeling usually helps administrators enhance network monitoring efficiency by providing the information needed for the determination in real-time and even identifies whether or not the network is running optimally. Administrators can effectively identify the deficiencies and the network efficiently with the help of tools like networking software.

What is Visual Data Modeling?

Visual data modeling, or visual modeling, is a graphical representation of data that you have analyzed. You can either convert all your data into a visual presentation or use parts of it to make a visual model.

The process of visual data modeling is quite complex at first glance, but it becomes straightforward once you get a grip.

Why is it used? Continue reading..,

What is The Role of Visual Data Modeling in Data Center?

Visual Data Modeling conveys only the necessities of a system from a separate view and hiding all the unessential details. It works on a higher level of abstraction, which helps beginners to build visually advanced mobile applications and websites. It also helps to understand complex systems easily and search, differentiate design choices at a low cost.

Benefits of Visual Data Modeling

There are many advantages of Visual Modeling in datacenter networking:

Transparent Perception of Your Data Network

By simply improving transparency in your network monitoring process, you, especially if you’re the administrator, can easily have a clear visualized picture of all the connected devices in the network; go through how the data is revolving among them, and then identify and rectify the issues that may interrupt smooth performance and lead to a failure.

Quick Identification of Security Threats

The primary aim of network monitoring is to help the organization understand the normal performance of the network. When some unusual activities occur, like an incomprehensible growth in the network traffic level, it becomes easy for the administrators to identify the issue and regulate it whether it is a security threat.

Better Use of IT Resources

The usage of hardware and software tools in the network monitoring system reduces the work of the IT teams. This leaves them with enough time to attend to the critical projects of your organization.

Building Flexible-Timeless Infrastructure

The network monitoring system usually provides reports on performing all network components over a specific period.

Network Monitoring software tracks the overall performance of a computer network. The solutions provided are used to detect the problems faced in a network by analyzing the live performance against an expected performance baseline. There are some tools available that help the IT staff have access to the center diagram of intelligent data, which is an important component in the IT department.

ManageEngine OpManager

The ManageEngine Op manager is a solution for network management that comprises both network and server monitoring, plus analysis of network capacity, and management of configuration and faults.

The OpManager allows the user to observe the availability, traffic, packet loss, performance metrics, and time of responding to different devices like servers, routers, switches, and virtual machines. The OpManager has several visualization tools that help the employees in network monitoring.

Visual Data Modeling of the Datacenter

The management of data center infrastructure becomes difficult if one does not visualize the components present in it. It’s very important to have a plain knowledge of every aspect. Then, you can easily determine the performance at the rack and floor levels of the data center with the help of different data center visual data modeling tools.

3D Datacenter Floor

There are many features of OpManger’s data center networking tools, and datacenter visual data modeling is one of the most prominent. It enhances your capacity to create a 3D blueprint of the data center, with the racks. The 3D view is dynamic, and it shows the health status of devices in each rack.

Rack Builder

The network visualization capabilities of the OpManger enable creating virtual racks with the devices that are populated on it. The rack shows the live health status of the devices that are scaled on it. The faults or issues in the performance are being highlighted with the help of color codes.

By clicking on the faulty devices, it will drill it down to the device’s snapshot page to analyze the device’s performance and then identify the fault. You can create a virtual rack simply by adding the devices to the OpManager. After this, the devices on the rack can get copied and pasted and the sizes changeable whenever required.

Let’s Sum It Up!!

These are the important aspects that you should know about visual data modeling. The entire process might seem tough, but the result will be helpful even in future projects. Proper visualization of your data analysis can significantly help with the project’s execution. It encourages organization in the order of running your project and documenting everything.

Last, visual data modeling even helps you track mistakes with precision. It even helps you to adjust the changing requirements and erase the mistakes without affecting the entire project. 

Datacenter Vulnerabilities: 7 Life-Changing Attacks You Must Know

Securing the data center from cyber-attacks is quite difficult today. The number of attacks directed at data centers of different businesses and enterprises across the globe has increased significantly over the past years. In this article, we are going to talk about the various vulnerabilities and attacks that can affect your data center, and how to prevent them.

let’s get into it

Vulnerabilities And Common Attacks in Datacenter

DDoS Attacks

DDoS attacks, or Distributed Denial of Service attacks, have been used by cyber attackers and hackers for decades. A DDoS attack occurs when an enormous amount of traffic gets sent to a targeted server intending to gobble up all the bandwidth and disrupt server access for its rightful users.

In the past decade, the world has seen some major DDoS attacks on different small and big-sized companies, including; Google, Amazon Web Services, OVH, GitHub. According to Cisco’s analysis, over 10 million DDoS attacks got made in 2020 alone. The same analysis forecasted a significant rise in DDoS cyber-attacks in the future. Cisco’s forecast entails the number of DDoS attacks will have a 100% increase to about 15.4 million by 2023.

It remains a tremendous concern for all the data center owners.

Several poorly secured IoT-connected devices are getting produced every day, and it’s quite easy for hackers to compromise data centers and exploit network servers using unsecured IoT devices. If the right security measures don’t get implemented, things can go from good to OMG! within seconds.

Ransomware Attacks

Remember how many people wept when the “WannaCry” ransomware attack took place? Almost 200,000 computers across hundreds of countries got infected with WannaCry.

A ransomware attack occurs when malicious software gets installed on your computer, which after getting installed, gains access to all the files and folders on your computer, and uses encryption to seize your data. Recent years have highlighted a rise in ransomware attacks on enterprise infrastructure.

Ransomware can spread through email attachments, pop-ups, messages, etc

After successfully taking over your system, the ransomware demands a ransom in cryptocurrency (to maintain the anonymity of the hacker) as an exchange for the decryption key.

External Access

Hackers can also leverage Cloud Access Security Brokers or third-party DNS servers to get access to a data center. Hence, overlooking the external services being used within your data center may bring you serious nightmares. Consider installing a third-party remote access system like NordVPN, which is a leading and experienced VPN provider.

Although they experienced quite a breach back in 2018. Dyn, a very popular and trusted DNS service provider also became a victim of an attack that halted their service alongside the service of many big enterprises like PayPal, CNN, Comcast, Boston Globe, etc.

Application Attacks

Application attacks happen when an application that is being used for providing the service of a data center, such as the control panel or customer dashboard, gets infected or compromised. This can cause service unavailability and severe loss of reputation for the data center provider.

Hackers consider this as a great way to attack data centers because it requires very little resources in contrast to a DDoS cyber-attack.

Internal Attacks

The biggest security threat can come from an attack by a data center’s own employees. As the employees have access to the servers of a data center, they can abuse their ability to inflict damage. These attacks are the most dangerous, but most data center providers remain unprepared for these kinds of attacks.

Phishing Attacks

Phishing attacks get activated by sending a message, email, or website that pretends to be authentic to a person with credentials. If the attacker becomes successful to pretend like an authentic source, the person may release the credential by himself thinking that the message is from a trusted source. And once the attacker gets the credential, he can easily access the target server and do whatever he wants.

Using Vulnerable Software

Software and operating systems are key components that help data centers to run smoothly. If any of this software contains a vulnerability, hackers and attackers will exploit the weakness and find their way into your data center. It’s extremely important to always apply updates and patch the software used to operate your data center.

It’s crucial to always protect your digital assets and content in this ever-growing digital landscape. Cybersecurity must be a top priority for you if you significantly depend on the Internet to run your business and conduct personal activities online. Ensure to protect every data center network surface and respond to network glitches quickly and confidently.

You must leverage actionable insights and scalable data center solutions to secure your employees’ devices, IoT network connections, data infrastructure, and all business proprietary data.

7 Important Datacenter Networking Challenges You Would Loved to Know in 2022

Challenges in Datacenter Networking

Data Centre networking is the incorporation of computing services including switches, routers, load balancing, and analytics software to enable the collection and distribution of data.

Modern data center networking challenges present an expensive impact that may extend across the connected variety of data resources, including virtual machines, containers, and bare-metal applications. This may negatively affect the unified monitoring and granular security controls.

Top Datacenter Networking Challenges

Some challenges in data center networking include:

Data Security

One consistent source of datacenter networking challenges is security. A data breach could cost millions of dollars in lost intellectual property, private data leakage, and stolen personal information. Target, for example, lost $162 million because of a data breach. All data center administrators must consider risk management and protect both stored and distributed data across the network. Indeed, according to a survey conducted by the Information Management Society, 32 percent of CIOs ranked security as their top concern.

Power Management

While server consolidation and virtualization reduce the amount of hardware in the data center, they do not always lower energy consumption. Despite being significantly more efficient, blade servers consume four to five times the energy of previous data storage technologies.

Power and cooling requirements are becoming more important as equipment requirements change.

Capacity Planning

Maintaining optimum performance requires operating the data center at maximum capacity. Still, IT managers often leave a margin for error, a capacity protection gap, to ensure that activities do not suffer interruptions. Over-provisioning is costly and a waste of computing space, computer processing power, and electricity.

Datacenter administrators are becoming more worried about running out of space, which is why a growing number of datacenters are implementing DCIM programs to detect idle processing, storage, and cooling capacity.

DCIM enables data centers to operate at maximum capacity while minimizing risk.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

The capability to control sensors remotely in almost every system is raising plenty of additional issues for data centers. The Internet of Things, according to Gartner, is a disruptive force that will transform the data center, owing to the sheer volume of data it will produce. The IoT data will have to get processed, prioritized, stored, and analyzed.

Still, since IoT data gets generated in bulk, new data center technologies like edge computing are necessary to keep the volume under control.

Read more on the tech making IoT networking relevant

Mobile Enterprise

Datacenter networking challenges consequently plague mobile computing service providers and their “personal device” strategies, just as they are by the security of these devices. Employees have immediate access to business-critical data through handheld devices, but these devices must remain controlled and protected.

To avoid the loss of confidential information with emerging datacenter networking challenges, data access must remain controlled and limited, whether workers use their own devices or the organization provides smartphones and tablets. Remotely wiping a mobile device’s memory or tracking and locking a missing or stolen device would require extra protection.

Simultaneously, additional questions about user privacy continue to emerge—for example, what are the long-term consequences of law enforcement having access to the data stored on any computer confiscated as part of an investigation? Mobile enterprise computing poses technological, organizational, and legal problems that the data center must resolve in the end.

Real-Time Reporting

The importance of real-time data analytics and reporting is growing. Not only are DCIM tools used to track physical data center activities, but big data analytics enables real-time monitoring of irregularities or problems that may show a security breach or other problem.

Real-time monitoring following analytics advances us closer to self-healing data centers capable of initiating a response, such as isolating a server or rerouting data traffic to a pre-defined alert.

Balancing Cost Controls with Efficiency

Budgeting and cost management are ongoing issues for every department, but the data center’s cost-control concerns are special. Whilst you want to ensure that your data centers are effective, creative, and elegant, you must also be mindful of cost control.

For example, greening the data center is a continuous goal. Promoting energy efficiency lowers operational costs while still promoting environmental responsibility, which is why IT managers control the efficacy of power use. Other methods, such as virtualization, improve operational performance while keeping costs in check.

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Important Network Infrastructure Security Trends For 2022

Network Infrastructure Security

If you run an enterprise-level IT company, renowned Network Infrastructure Security measures must be your top priority. This involves having control over who can access the network, firewalls, virtual private networks, and few other things.

This article will highlight the top network infrastructure security measures that can help you prevent unauthorized access, theft, or loss of data.

Network Infrastructure Security Measures

Many hardware and software components get connected to a computing network. If any of the connected devices contain vulnerabilities, the network can easily get compromised.

Keeping the network secure at all times is a must. This requires several network infrastructure security measures, and the most important ones are:

Network Security Audits are Must

To keep a network secure, the network needs to go through regular network security. This process will help identify any potential vulnerability in the network. The network security policies and all the software and hardware connected to the network must get audited by professionals.

You can audit your network either with the help of third-party network security service providers or you can hire in-house cybersecurity professionals. The internal team can run routine audits.

Monitor User Access Privileges

User access privileges must get minimized with increased monitoring of who is accessing the network. Otherwise, unmonitored access can lead to the network getting compromised, even by internal users who have access to the network.

Applying a POLP (Policy of Least Privilege) policy to each user account can also help to minimize the risk.

Quick Software Patching

This is very important. If you use outdated software or constantly delay the application of security patches, your network becomes vulnerable and hacking attacks could become inevitable.

Always monitor the software you use in your network and ensure that it’s always updated. Most cyber attacks take advantage of outdated software vulnerabilities.

Look at Network Hardware as Well

Overseeing all the hardware components including servers, storage drives, routers, and switches, connected or about to be connected to the network, is as important as maintaining the software. The software installed in each hardware component needs to go through checks and scanned for any potential attack.

Detection Systems to Guard Network

Detection systems help detect any unauthorized access to the network, including harmful software within the network at the early stage. Using these detection systems can help to secure the network infrastructure to a great extent.

Use Virtual Private Networks (VPN)

You can easily divide the entire network infrastructure into several sub-segments or virtual private networks. A VPN keeps the data encrypted between endpoints. This can help you protect other parts of the network when a specific section of the network gets compromised.

Isolating the network can also help protect other segments during a cyber attack.

Using Antivirus Software in The Network

Using antivirus software can detect any vulnerability in any specific software or files being used in the network. It also helps to get rid of adware, spyware, and spam. The presence of an Antivirus in the network infrastructure is a must.

Using Behavioral Analytics Tools

The behavior of all users who have access to the network can and must get tracked and monitored continuously. This will help you keep up with any unusual behavior in any user account and protect the network from any calamity.

Apart from all the listed network infrastructure security measures, there are several other things that you can do to keep the network protected from hackers and cyber attackers. For instance, using strong passwords, having a backup of data, and restricting hardware components from unauthorized users.

Using encryption when possible and the help of a third-party network security service provider solves security risk management. You can also consider some of these network security reportings.

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