Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, and other cloud providers inform customers that they may experience downtime and performance degradation as a result of an urgent effort to correct critical errors found in many computer processors.
The errors, known as Specter and Meltdown, were revealed today after a report by The Register. They are caused by microprocessor design issues that could potentially allow malicious code to read the contents of a computer's kernel memory. These issues greatly affect the Intel chips that power the overwhelming majority of servers in the cloud running, but other processors, including some designed by AMD and Arm, appear to be affected.
These three major cloud providers have revealed to users that some of them were cryptographically informed about the downtime scheduled late last year as part of the first efforts to implement patches for counter the error. These efforts, initially silent and progressive, have accelerated after the official disclosure of the errors today.
AWS stated in a statement that the overwhelming majority of instances of virtual machines running in its fleet are protected, and the rest receive updates within hours of this notification. Google has already updated its G Suite productivity service and cloud platform to protect users. Microsoft said most of its Azure infrastructure has been updated to protect itself from vulnerabilities, but some customers will still have to spend some time to protect themselves.
However, the owners of the platforms that update the underlying infrastructure on which their clients' workloads are running are only half the battle: users will also need to update their operating systems . Microsoft is expected to release patches for Windows as part of its next patch cycle on Tuesday, as other operating systems remove patches.
Customers can see slowdowns with their workloads because the root cause of the problem is related to speculative execution, a technique used by processors to improve performance. The Microsoft blog said that most of its customers should not see a significant impact on the performance of updates implemented to mitigate errors, but some will see degraded network performance.
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Thursday, January 4, 2018
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
How AWS is rotting the buyer’s brain with sprawl
AWS re: Invent 2017 has become one of the most important technology events of the year, reaching 43,000 participants with sessions spread across six sites two miles along the Las Vegas Strip.
However, this carnival in the cloud is not only physically overwhelming. The never-ending stream of product announcements, feature enhancements and partnership agreements, as well as a series of secondary news from hackers in the cloud ecosystem exploiting the vast re: invent advertising, it's impossible to digest everything that happens, especially if you're in the middle of the noise and concussion that amplifies only the background noise of Las Vegas.
The 61 product announcements in 15 service categories demonstrate that AWS is trying not to allow customers to want, but overall they only worsen the complexity of the cloud and the herculean task of incorporating AWS services in the Conceptions and IT Strategies application.
It's hard to blame a company for publishing too many products and updating them too quickly. However, this can lead to a family problem for consumer product companies, namely the overload of choice.
The presence of choice can be attractive as a theory, but in reality, people can find more and more options to be truly debilitating.
The problem of choice is related to the information overload in which,
Having more options to choose from within a category will probably make the choice difficult because the differences between attractive options are reduced and the amount of information available about them increases.
In any case, AWS services are considered to be complicated problems that contain technical details, documentation, and relevant information.
Product strategy: see what sticks
AWS 'penchant for adding services and features shows its lineage as a technology arm of Amazon, a consumer goods retailer that aims to have something for everyone.
According to one measure, Amazon directly carries more than 12 million products, a number that is inflated nearly 30 times by including items from sellers in the market. Although having a lot of options when buying a TV or a pair of shoes is good, it can be confusing and counterproductive when it comes to selecting a VM instance or base. data.
Curatorship is a strange concept on Amazon, and as evidenced by the explosion of services, AWS. The problem is that the customer experience of a retailer versus a technology service provider is defined by different factors.
Making AWS a flea market that satisfies all the quirks of long-standing customers hampers the most important goal of guiding users and especially the large corporations that AWS wants to conquer their vision of a cloud-based future .
The problem of product overload is rampant in the technology industry, where it's easy to create custom references for every need. Product expansion starts with the best of intentions, more in line with the needs of each customer segment, but this strategy has unintended consequences. Buyers end up being confused as product development and marketing resources become diluted and compete for resources.
As a cloud watcher observed, Steve Jobs faced that when he returned to Apple. According to the biography of Walter Isaacson, he immediately began to reduce his portfolio by focusing on one product in each of the four segments.
A partner of the management consulting firm Bain describes the "defeat" of the proliferation of products in this way,
However, this carnival in the cloud is not only physically overwhelming. The never-ending stream of product announcements, feature enhancements and partnership agreements, as well as a series of secondary news from hackers in the cloud ecosystem exploiting the vast re: invent advertising, it's impossible to digest everything that happens, especially if you're in the middle of the noise and concussion that amplifies only the background noise of Las Vegas.
The 61 product announcements in 15 service categories demonstrate that AWS is trying not to allow customers to want, but overall they only worsen the complexity of the cloud and the herculean task of incorporating AWS services in the Conceptions and IT Strategies application.
It's hard to blame a company for publishing too many products and updating them too quickly. However, this can lead to a family problem for consumer product companies, namely the overload of choice.
The presence of choice can be attractive as a theory, but in reality, people can find more and more options to be truly debilitating.
The problem of choice is related to the information overload in which,
Having more options to choose from within a category will probably make the choice difficult because the differences between attractive options are reduced and the amount of information available about them increases.
In any case, AWS services are considered to be complicated problems that contain technical details, documentation, and relevant information.
Product strategy: see what sticks
AWS 'penchant for adding services and features shows its lineage as a technology arm of Amazon, a consumer goods retailer that aims to have something for everyone.
According to one measure, Amazon directly carries more than 12 million products, a number that is inflated nearly 30 times by including items from sellers in the market. Although having a lot of options when buying a TV or a pair of shoes is good, it can be confusing and counterproductive when it comes to selecting a VM instance or base. data.
Curatorship is a strange concept on Amazon, and as evidenced by the explosion of services, AWS. The problem is that the customer experience of a retailer versus a technology service provider is defined by different factors.
Making AWS a flea market that satisfies all the quirks of long-standing customers hampers the most important goal of guiding users and especially the large corporations that AWS wants to conquer their vision of a cloud-based future .
The problem of product overload is rampant in the technology industry, where it's easy to create custom references for every need. Product expansion starts with the best of intentions, more in line with the needs of each customer segment, but this strategy has unintended consequences. Buyers end up being confused as product development and marketing resources become diluted and compete for resources.
As a cloud watcher observed, Steve Jobs faced that when he returned to Apple. According to the biography of Walter Isaacson, he immediately began to reduce his portfolio by focusing on one product in each of the four segments.
A partner of the management consulting firm Bain describes the "defeat" of the proliferation of products in this way,
Monday, November 13, 2017
KVM? Us? Amazon erases new hypervisor from AWS EC2 FAQ
Amazon Web Services has silently edited your frequently asked questions, revealing that you have created a new KVM-based hypervisor and will use it instead of Xen for future instances.
The web page contains no mention of the hypervisor. But saving the page in Google's cache does. And in case AWS cleans it, we take this screenshot and screenshot of the now modified page.
If you can still see references to the new KVM-based hypervisor in Amazon dotcoms, then you will see a cached copy: the information disappears. The Internet Archive took a snapshot of the site on Wednesday and could not find a word on KVM development. From computers in California, Australia, and Europe, we can only see the version of frequently asked questions that has been removed from the new custom hypervisor. And our contacts in the industry have also seen the change.
Amazon's announcement of its new C5 instances still mentions a new hypervisor. We covered this screen, here too, and here, in case AWS would put it in the hole of memory.
Why did Amazon do that? The company is already marked and wants to talk about its hypervisor later this month at its conference re: Invent. We suspect that this does not mean that the hypervisor information was made public before that date. With luck, all concerned have maintained their work.
And now, a confession: the recording hackers were very excited when we discovered the new hypervisor, and we missed one or two details that we have now noticed by rereading the frequently asked questions. For starters, it seems like the new hypervisor is about server support with NVMe. Running virtual machines will boot from EBS volumes using an NVMe interface, instead of the emulated IDE device used in the AWS Xen implementation.
More proof that they are flashy servers: AWS also states that "most applications will work the same way with Xen and the new EC2 hypervisor, provided that the operating system has the necessary support for the networks ENA and NVMe storage. "
Speaking of Xen, he is not completely out of the immediate plans of AWS, because the company says that "in the short term, certain types of new instances will use Xen according to the requirements of the platform."
But the long-term prospects for the hypervisor are bad because AWS says that "all new instance types will use the new EC2 hypervisor."
We asked AWS to explain its hypervisor strategy and the Linux Foundation, which oversees the Xen project, to comment on the loss of its most important user. If any of you respond, we will inform you of your offers. ®
The web page contains no mention of the hypervisor. But saving the page in Google's cache does. And in case AWS cleans it, we take this screenshot and screenshot of the now modified page.
If you can still see references to the new KVM-based hypervisor in Amazon dotcoms, then you will see a cached copy: the information disappears. The Internet Archive took a snapshot of the site on Wednesday and could not find a word on KVM development. From computers in California, Australia, and Europe, we can only see the version of frequently asked questions that has been removed from the new custom hypervisor. And our contacts in the industry have also seen the change.
Amazon's announcement of its new C5 instances still mentions a new hypervisor. We covered this screen, here too, and here, in case AWS would put it in the hole of memory.
Why did Amazon do that? The company is already marked and wants to talk about its hypervisor later this month at its conference re: Invent. We suspect that this does not mean that the hypervisor information was made public before that date. With luck, all concerned have maintained their work.
And now, a confession: the recording hackers were very excited when we discovered the new hypervisor, and we missed one or two details that we have now noticed by rereading the frequently asked questions. For starters, it seems like the new hypervisor is about server support with NVMe. Running virtual machines will boot from EBS volumes using an NVMe interface, instead of the emulated IDE device used in the AWS Xen implementation.
More proof that they are flashy servers: AWS also states that "most applications will work the same way with Xen and the new EC2 hypervisor, provided that the operating system has the necessary support for the networks ENA and NVMe storage. "
Speaking of Xen, he is not completely out of the immediate plans of AWS, because the company says that "in the short term, certain types of new instances will use Xen according to the requirements of the platform."
But the long-term prospects for the hypervisor are bad because AWS says that "all new instance types will use the new EC2 hypervisor."
We asked AWS to explain its hypervisor strategy and the Linux Foundation, which oversees the Xen project, to comment on the loss of its most important user. If any of you respond, we will inform you of your offers. ®
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Big Blue's former CIO tried to join AWS, ends up at energy company
IBM seems to have managed to prevent its former CIO from joining Amazon Web Services.
Jeff S Smith left IBM in May 2017 after being offered a senior contract at AWS.
This move really pissed IBM off because Smith knew all about Big Blue's plans to reorganize his cloud and set sail for Amazon. Therefore, IBM threw a throwing ball at Smith and tried to enforce his non-compete agreement.
This effort seems to have worked, as the energy management company of World Fuel Systems last week proclaimed Smith's arrival as chief executive and chief operating officer.
According to World Fuel Systems, "Smith's agility experience for sales teams will help improve operational performance to deliver a great experience to our customers and suppliers."
The record read court documents in the case and suggest that IBM and Smith reached an agreement in September and the Southern District of New York was satisfied with the terms and dismissed the case.
Judicial records do not include the details of the agreement, but reveal the arguments used. Smith's team argues that he was not privy to the secret details of the next IBM cloud, his conversations with the AWS people did not reveal the secret and attempts to use Big Blue their non-competition agreement was punitive and an example for the another 1,700 members bound by those agreements. AWS also made considerable efforts to create a job for Smith that would avoid its non-competition.
IBM stated that Smith knew the company well and, therefore, knew that going to AWS was a no-no.
The fact that the parties have moved, each paying its own costs, suggests that common ground has been found. But it's not central enough to allow Smith to work for AWS before his non-competition expires next year. The World Fuels statement, however, does not suggest that Smith's position is temporary: it seems that Big Blue has brought his man to wherever he wants him to go. ®
Jeff S Smith left IBM in May 2017 after being offered a senior contract at AWS.
This move really pissed IBM off because Smith knew all about Big Blue's plans to reorganize his cloud and set sail for Amazon. Therefore, IBM threw a throwing ball at Smith and tried to enforce his non-compete agreement.
This effort seems to have worked, as the energy management company of World Fuel Systems last week proclaimed Smith's arrival as chief executive and chief operating officer.
According to World Fuel Systems, "Smith's agility experience for sales teams will help improve operational performance to deliver a great experience to our customers and suppliers."
The record read court documents in the case and suggest that IBM and Smith reached an agreement in September and the Southern District of New York was satisfied with the terms and dismissed the case.
Judicial records do not include the details of the agreement, but reveal the arguments used. Smith's team argues that he was not privy to the secret details of the next IBM cloud, his conversations with the AWS people did not reveal the secret and attempts to use Big Blue their non-competition agreement was punitive and an example for the another 1,700 members bound by those agreements. AWS also made considerable efforts to create a job for Smith that would avoid its non-competition.
IBM stated that Smith knew the company well and, therefore, knew that going to AWS was a no-no.
The fact that the parties have moved, each paying its own costs, suggests that common ground has been found. But it's not central enough to allow Smith to work for AWS before his non-competition expires next year. The World Fuels statement, however, does not suggest that Smith's position is temporary: it seems that Big Blue has brought his man to wherever he wants him to go. ®
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
AWS Marketplace Now Offers Private Pricing For Partners
Customers are moving applications to the cloud at an unprecedented pace, but many want the help of a trusted advisor when it comes to software procurement and fulfillment.
For partners that could translate to a huge opportunity in providing software solutions, said David McCann, vice president of Amazon Web Services Marketplace and Catalog Services during The Channel Company's Best Of Breed (BoB) conference in Atlanta on Monday.
At the BoB conference, McCann announced private pricing for the AWS Marketplace, a feature that allows partners to quote prices to customers that are only visible to those customers.
"In the past, Marketplace had a single price. Now you can have prices unique to customers," he said.
The channel plays a critical role in software choice. According to AWS, overall software spend will reach $569 billion by 2020. The indirect channel share of that spend will be $292.6 billion, or about 51 percent.
"Everyone is on a different journey and you are an advisor of what is going to move to the cloud, and at what velocity. Software is a major part of that decision and the software portfolio for many companies is in massive flux," McCann said to an audience of solution providers.
The AWS Marketplace, a place for AWS cloud computing customers to find, compare and deploy AWS software and other IT services, is a digital library, or a "toolkit" for channel partners. Two years ago, the Marketplace consisted of 800 vendors. Today, that number is up to 1,250, McCann said.
"We are adding three software vendors a week to the catalog, and those companies are there for your engineers to run on behalf of a customer," McCann told partners. "We want the channel to work with the marketplace as a fulfillment engine."
Private pricing will be generally available to partners in the next few weeks, McCann added.
Network Solutions Provider, a Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based solution provider in the audience, said it has its own cloud practice today, but is not an AWS partner. Private pricing, however, is "the missing piece" that solution providers needed from Amazon, according to Phillip Walker, customer advocate leader for Network Solutions Provider.
For partners that could translate to a huge opportunity in providing software solutions, said David McCann, vice president of Amazon Web Services Marketplace and Catalog Services during The Channel Company's Best Of Breed (BoB) conference in Atlanta on Monday.
At the BoB conference, McCann announced private pricing for the AWS Marketplace, a feature that allows partners to quote prices to customers that are only visible to those customers.
"In the past, Marketplace had a single price. Now you can have prices unique to customers," he said.
The channel plays a critical role in software choice. According to AWS, overall software spend will reach $569 billion by 2020. The indirect channel share of that spend will be $292.6 billion, or about 51 percent.
"Everyone is on a different journey and you are an advisor of what is going to move to the cloud, and at what velocity. Software is a major part of that decision and the software portfolio for many companies is in massive flux," McCann said to an audience of solution providers.
The AWS Marketplace, a place for AWS cloud computing customers to find, compare and deploy AWS software and other IT services, is a digital library, or a "toolkit" for channel partners. Two years ago, the Marketplace consisted of 800 vendors. Today, that number is up to 1,250, McCann said.
"We are adding three software vendors a week to the catalog, and those companies are there for your engineers to run on behalf of a customer," McCann told partners. "We want the channel to work with the marketplace as a fulfillment engine."
Private pricing will be generally available to partners in the next few weeks, McCann added.
Network Solutions Provider, a Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based solution provider in the audience, said it has its own cloud practice today, but is not an AWS partner. Private pricing, however, is "the missing piece" that solution providers needed from Amazon, according to Phillip Walker, customer advocate leader for Network Solutions Provider.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Discover why AWS is the world's biggest cloud computing platform
With Amazon Web Services, everyone can leverage the power of a cloud cluster to deliver services and process data without managing their own data center. To learn how to administer your cloud, this AWS Solution Architect training package is offered in Boing Boing Store.
Throughout 22 hours of content, you will find an overview of the tools available to you, including Elastic Compute Cluster (EC2) for on-demand scalability, simple storage service (S3) for durable object storage RDS (Relational Database Service) for efficient data retrieval and storage of block units issued with Elastic Block Store (EBS). In addition to familiarizing yourself with the management console, you will learn how to design a large-scale information infrastructure, deploy fault-tolerant applications, and even migrate existing systems to AWS.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
A certificate in Amazon's AWS cloud technology can boost your salary by 26%
The latest research confirms that Aaron continues to dominate cloud computing.
Amazon Web Services has been a great engine for the company. But the e-commerce giant is not the only one that has benefited from its leadership in the cloud. Similarly, IT professionals are specialized in AWS technology.
"The high adoption rate of AWS cloud services by organizations around the world has resulted in some of the best salaries for IT professionals who choose to follow these specific certifications," Global Knowledge said in a blog post at the beginning of this year.
What you pay
Global Knowledge interviewed information technology workers in North America and around the world last fall to find out their average salaries and their special skills specialization have affected their salary. The organization's report, released in April, gives the impression that premium employers are paying for AWS skills.
On average, among those responding to the survey, IT workers in non-administrative positions in the United States and Canada who have received certification somehow earned $ 79,796,000 per year. However, among respondents who have a certificate stating that they did not know how to work with AWS, the average annual salary was $ 101,755 a year, an increase of 27.5%.
Employers pay a similar but less dramatic premium for managers with AWS skills. On average, IT managers in the United States and Canada who responded to the survey who had a certificate of any kind earned $ 112,525 per year. But those with an AWS certificate earned $ 127,942 a year on average, according to the survey, an increase of 13.7%.
Overall, by combining the salaries of managers and non-managers who participated in the global knowledge survey, certified IT professionals earned an average of $ 90,512 per year. But among those with an AWS certification, the average salary was $ 113,932 per year, a premium of 25.9%.
Not all AWS certificates are so valuable. Wages paid by employers depend to a large extent on the particular certificate a computer agent has. Among the US and Canadian computer workers who participated in the survey - managers and non-managers - average wages are broken down by certificate:
Interestingly, although professional certification is more advanced than the associated certification, the average salary was lower among certified solution architects who responded to the survey. However, Global Knowledge indicated that the difference was probably influenced by the size of the sample. Only 70 respondents to the survey said they had the AWS Certified Architect Professional certification, while 300 said they had the associated version.
However, the survey provides an overview of the value of AWS skills. And this is understandable given the popularity of the AWS. In the second quarter of this year, AWS accounted for 34% of the money spent on the growing and growing cloud services market.
Behind the data
Global Knowledge has sent more than half a million people to participate in its salary survey, distributed through its own channels, as well as technology vendors such as Cisco, AWS and Microsoft.
Approximately 14,300 people completed the survey, of which approximately 12,500 were computerized. And among the technicians, 625 had some kind of AWS certification.
Actual wages varied depending on the certification level and whether someone had multiple certificates. But in general, among those who participated in the survey, the certificates gave a big boost to wages. On average, among survey participants in the US. and Canada, the difference between IT salary people with any type of certification and non-certification was almost $ 8,400 11.7%. For managers, the difference was $ 9,201, or 8.9%.
Not surprisingly, 82% of computer workers in the United States and Canada who were interviewed had at least one certificate. And the average number of certifications among respondents was 2.9
Amazon Web Services has been a great engine for the company. But the e-commerce giant is not the only one that has benefited from its leadership in the cloud. Similarly, IT professionals are specialized in AWS technology.
"The high adoption rate of AWS cloud services by organizations around the world has resulted in some of the best salaries for IT professionals who choose to follow these specific certifications," Global Knowledge said in a blog post at the beginning of this year.
What you pay
Global Knowledge interviewed information technology workers in North America and around the world last fall to find out their average salaries and their special skills specialization have affected their salary. The organization's report, released in April, gives the impression that premium employers are paying for AWS skills.
On average, among those responding to the survey, IT workers in non-administrative positions in the United States and Canada who have received certification somehow earned $ 79,796,000 per year. However, among respondents who have a certificate stating that they did not know how to work with AWS, the average annual salary was $ 101,755 a year, an increase of 27.5%.
Employers pay a similar but less dramatic premium for managers with AWS skills. On average, IT managers in the United States and Canada who responded to the survey who had a certificate of any kind earned $ 112,525 per year. But those with an AWS certificate earned $ 127,942 a year on average, according to the survey, an increase of 13.7%.
Overall, by combining the salaries of managers and non-managers who participated in the global knowledge survey, certified IT professionals earned an average of $ 90,512 per year. But among those with an AWS certification, the average salary was $ 113,932 per year, a premium of 25.9%.
Not all AWS certificates are so valuable. Wages paid by employers depend to a large extent on the particular certificate a computer agent has. Among the US and Canadian computer workers who participated in the survey - managers and non-managers - average wages are broken down by certificate:
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Partner: $ 119,233 thousand
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional: $ 116,838
- AWS Certified Developer - Associate: $ 116,456
- System Administrator AWS (SysOps) - Partner: $ 111,966
- Certified Engineer of Development of AWS (DevOps): $ 108,315
Interestingly, although professional certification is more advanced than the associated certification, the average salary was lower among certified solution architects who responded to the survey. However, Global Knowledge indicated that the difference was probably influenced by the size of the sample. Only 70 respondents to the survey said they had the AWS Certified Architect Professional certification, while 300 said they had the associated version.
However, the survey provides an overview of the value of AWS skills. And this is understandable given the popularity of the AWS. In the second quarter of this year, AWS accounted for 34% of the money spent on the growing and growing cloud services market.
Behind the data
Global Knowledge has sent more than half a million people to participate in its salary survey, distributed through its own channels, as well as technology vendors such as Cisco, AWS and Microsoft.
Approximately 14,300 people completed the survey, of which approximately 12,500 were computerized. And among the technicians, 625 had some kind of AWS certification.
Actual wages varied depending on the certification level and whether someone had multiple certificates. But in general, among those who participated in the survey, the certificates gave a big boost to wages. On average, among survey participants in the US. and Canada, the difference between IT salary people with any type of certification and non-certification was almost $ 8,400 11.7%. For managers, the difference was $ 9,201, or 8.9%.
Not surprisingly, 82% of computer workers in the United States and Canada who were interviewed had at least one certificate. And the average number of certifications among respondents was 2.9
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