FlexPod Is First Validated Data Center Infrastructure for Private Cloud Enabled by System Center 2012

Posted by Maggie Marsden on April 30, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Customers Gain Speed and Flexibility with Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track 2.0

Las Vegas – Microsoft Management Summit 2012 — April 19, 2012 — For customers who are looking to benefit from the latest version of System Center 2012 and the technologies that enable Microsoft’s private cloud, Cisco and NetApp today announced that the FlexPod™ shared infrastructure is the first data center solution to be validated by Microsoft for the updated Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track 2.0. Through the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track 2.0 program, Cisco and NetApp have collaborated with Microsoft to help customers reduce infrastructure and application deployment time from days to hours while helping them achieve greater utilization of their physical and virtual resource pools.

Additionally, for desktop virtualization deployments, Cisco and NetApp released a new validated design architecture running Microsoft private cloud with Citrix XenDesktop® software on the FlexPod shared infrastructure. By delivering desktops, applications, and data as a cloudlike service with XenDesktop, enterprises are able to quickly support existing and new applications, migrate to new operating systems, and deliver corporate resources to billions of new devices coming into the workplace.

Key Facts and Highlights:
FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud Solution Supports New System Center 2012

  • FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud builds on Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012 and is the first design validated by Microsoft for the updated Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track 2.0 program.
  • The Cisco UCS™ Management Packs and NetApp® OnCommand™ plug-in for Microsoft allow customers to monitor and manage FlexPod and any applications running on top—from a single interface. Customers can comprehensively manage NetApp storage systems and Cisco UCS from within System Center 2012, and they can automate compute and storage workflows across their cloud infrastructure.
  • Cisco offers comprehensive infrastructure management under the control of Windows PowerShell by providing a user-friendly command-line-interface-based UCS management tool, called Cisco UCS PowerTool. Operations teams can use the UCS PowerTool to more easily tie together the management of storage components, compute components, and software applications into a custom, end-to-end management solution that is easy to use and easy to script.
  • The validated design combines the recently announced Microsoft System Center 2012 with NetApp FlexClone® technology and Windows PowerShell automation to provision desktop virtual machines at scale as much as 25 times faster than VDI designs built with traditional storage solutions. The validated design also takes advantage of NetApp Flash Cache to support simultaneous booting of desktop virtual machines at a scale unmatched by traditional storage technologies—up to 2,000 in less than 25 minutes.
  • Additionally, for desktop virtualization deployments, Citrix XenDesktop on Windows Server Hyper-V is the first workload validated by Cisco and NetApp to run on top of FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud. This combined solution helps customers embrace mobile work styles for their employees, allowing anywhere, anytime access to Windows desktops, applications, and associated data.

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Comm Solutions is a NetApp Gold Partner, to find out more visit: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/partner/netapp

Posted in Partner, Press Release, Storage

Citrix GoToAssist Has Fastest Remote Support Connection Times in Head-to-Head Industry Comparison

Posted by Maggie Marsden on April 27, 2012 — Leave a Comment

GoToAssist Remote Support Now Connects to Customers up to 3x Faster Than Major Competitors

Santa Barbara, California » 4/24/2012 »

Citrix announced today that the latest version of Citrix GoToAssist Corporate, Version 10, delivers the industry’s fastest speed for connecting to a live remote support session as verified by international consulting and testing firm iGATE Patni. GoToAssist is the worldwide preferred choice in remote support, ranked #1 in market share by IDC.

GoToAssist was exhaustively tested in head-to-head competition on live production systems. These real-world tests demonstrated that GoToAssist is up to two times faster than the competition and in many cases as much as three times faster. In some scenarios, connections were completed in as few as six seconds, which is unprecedented in the industry. The testing encompassed both first-time support requests from customers and repeat sessions and was conducted in locations around the world.

Efficiencies in support operations depends on how many customers a rep can service in an hour or a day. The amount of time saved with the latest release of GoToAssist can translate directly into hundreds of thousands of dollars saved in the form of reduced contact center staffing requirements.

“In a world driven by mobile workstyles and the consumerization of IT, we are seeing a renewed demand for cloud-based remote support services,” said Elizabeth Cholawsky, GM and VP of IT Support at Citrix. “We’ve long been recognized as the gold standard for in-session performance. With the time-to-session improvements in the new release, GoToAssist is now more valuable than ever for maximizing the efficiencies of mobile, distributed teams. The speed of GoToAssist as verified by these tests is yet another reason we are the worldwide leader in remote support solutions.”

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Comm Solutions is a Citrix Systems Gold Partner, for more information visit: http://www.commsolutions.com/citrix

Posted in Press Release

Getting a Handle on DDoS

Posted by Maggie Marsden on April 27, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Palo Alto Networks – April 16, 2012 - Wade, Threat Advisory/Analysis

Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks (DDoS) have become an increasingly common problems for enterprises of all sizes. DDoS campaigns are commonly used by hacktivists to embarrass or otherwise disrupt a target company or government agency. Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t stop there. Botnets controlled by criminal groups can recruit thousands and even millions of infected machines to join in a truly global DDoS attack, enabling the gang to essentially extort a ransom from the target network in exchange for stopping the attack. Regardless of the source, defending a network from these DDoS attacks has become an integral part of any IT threat prevention strategy.  While we don’t claim to be an end-to-end solution for stopping DDoS attacks (nothing really is), there are many features in the Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall that security teams should integrate into their counter-DDoS strategy. Let’s take a quick look at how an overall DDoS strategy could look.

Keep DoS Attacks as Far Away From the Network As Possible
While of course, we tend to focus on the protections that we can provide at Palo Alto Networks, its very important to acknowledge that DDoS protection must begin before traffic ever reaches your network. ISPs are increasingly important partners in the fight against DDoS, and they have the ability to keep some DDoS traffic from reaching the intended target. ISPs can monitor Internet links and can filter or blackhole traffic to protect the customer network. Preparing for DDoS really does require looking beyond our own perimeter, and the working with your ISP is a great way to keep DoS traffic as far away from your network as possible.

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Comm Solutions is a Palo Alto Networks Platinum Partner, to learn more visit: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/partner/palo-alto-networks

Posted in Articles, Firewall, Partner

Getting a view into the secret world of an iDevice as a WLAN client

Posted by William Carr on April 25, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Do you believe there is no insight into an iPhone, iPad or IPod as a WLAN client?

This week’s tip is for you. Most WLAN clients (Windows/MAC/Linux) provide some logging to help you assist or at least identifying how a client performs on your WLAN.  Using statistics and logs from the AP only tells you about one-half of the conversation, so let’s look at how we can get statistics and insight into the inner workings of your most secretive of WLAN client’s.

First, head out to Apple’s website and download the Apple Iphone configuration utility.   (Both Windows & MAC versions exist…)

Windows version 3.5 can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1466



After installing and connecting to your device via USB, select your device in the left-hand pane.

After your device is selected, choose the “CONSOLE” tab in the right-hand pane.

Now simply use your device as you would if you were not “debugging” it, and watch the output in your console application.

In this case we simply connected to an open WLAN network, and saw the (DISSASSOC/ASSOC) response expected.

We then observed the authentication type, and chosen CIPHER (in this case none/open).    This can be useful when mixed-mode (WPA-TKIP / WPA2-AES) environments exist, to see what the client chooses to utilize.

We then see the BSSID chosen (which AP/RADIO) as well as the Receive Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), the channel and additional details.

We then also can see the client obtain an IP address (and then aggressively go into powersave mode!).

We also get a view into the “Captive Network Assistant”, a background process that detects if a Captive Portal page needs to be displayed for login credentials or acceptable use pages.    It attempts to connect to http://www.apple.com and if the correct headers are not received, it opens a limited Safari window (with no URL  bar) known as the “Websheet sandbox”.

Hopefully now you realize there is some visibility into this very secretive WLAN client, and we hope the short lesson here will help you in supporting iDevices on your Wireless LAN.

To learn more about what Comm Solutions can do for your organization, contact us at: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/contact-us

Posted in Articles, Tech Tip

Implementing a SAN solution with VMware

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on April 24, 2012 — Leave a Comment

When implementing a SAN solution with VMware, one quick tip is to create a datastore for ISO images and vmtemplates.  This provides quick access to Windows Installation files and other valuable ISO’s, as well as, makes your vmtemplates available from all of your ESX hosts.  If SAN space is an issue, you can always create a datastore on the local hard drives of the ESX hosts and then utilize vmotion to migrate the data to the other ESX hosts that would need access to the files within this datastore.  Ultimately, this allows you to only have to upload the ISO image once into your VMware environment.

To learn more about what Comm Solutions can do for your organization, contact us at: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/contact-us

Posted in Storage, Tech Tip

Citrix NetScaler 10 Brings the Power of the Cloud to Any Network

Posted by Maggie Marsden on April 20, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Groundbreaking TriScale Technology Gives Any Network the Elasticity, Simplicity and Expandability of the Cloud

SANTA CLARA, Calif. » 4/16/2012 » Citrix today unveiled NetScaler® 10, a landmark release that brings the elasticity, simplicity and expandability of the cloud to both enterprise and carrier networks. NetScaler 10 features the groundbreaking new Citrix TriScaleTM technology, making it easy for businesses of any size to scale their networks “up, in and out” with ease, just like the world’s largest public clouds. This revolutionary new technology elevates NetScaler beyond traditional service and application delivery controllers, creating the industry’s most advanced cloud networking platform. The new release ships today and will be featured prominently in the upcoming Citrix Synergy 2012 conference May 9-11 in San Francisco.

NetScaler is already well established as the industry’s leading internet delivery system, touching an estimated 75 percent of internet users each day. The new NetScaler 10 release builds on this leadership to deliver the world’s most advanced “cloud networking platform”, giving customers a single integrated solution that brings the elasticity, simplicity and expandability of the cloud to networks of any size. This powerful combination helps customers deliver public and private cloud services with the best performance, security and reliability to any device.

Introducing NetScaler TriScale Technology

The centerpiece of NetScaler 10 is the product’s new TriScale technology, a revolutionary advancement of the NetScaler architecture that brings multi-dimensional scalability to enterprise datacenters and provider networks. This innovative approach delivers the unique capability to Scale Up the performance of a single appliance for greater elasticity, Scale Out to expand capacity by deploying NetScaler appliances in a unified cluster, and Scale In by consolidating multiple networking functions into a single NetScaler service delivery platform to dramatically simplify network infrastructure – all with the same powerful, but simple, management capability.

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Comm Solutions is a Citrix Systems Gold Partner, to learn more visit: http://www.commsolutions.com/citrix

Posted in Articles, Partner, Virtualization

Client problems continue to plague even new hardware: Apple investigating New iPad WiFi issues

Posted by William Carr on April 19, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Does your shiny new iPad have intermittent WLAN access problems?

According to an internal AppleCare document, Apple is actively investigating a series of WiFi-related issues affecting the third-generation iPad. Since the new iPad’s launch, many users have been complaining about third-generation iPad WiFi issues ranging from connection drops, slow download and upload speeds, or the device’s inability to even pickup local WiFi networks. A thread discussing the issue exists on Apple’s online support forums has almost amassed 700 replies from users with similar issues.

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To learn more about what Comm Solutions can do for your organization, contact us at: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/contact-us

Posted in Articles, Wireless

Aruba Networks helps advance learning with mobility

Posted by Danielle Fontana on April 18, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Mobility and BYOD is here to stay and is transforming higher education to allow for easier access, a richer multimedia experience, improved collaboration, better research, and a better overall educational experience at colleges and universities.

Mobile devices such as tablets, e-readers, and smartphones are providing a rich multimedia experience, improving collaboration, and driving excellence in both academics and research. But educational institutions need a new network architecture that can meet the requirements of today’s campus—across classrooms, residence halls, public venues, and remote sites.

That’s why six of the eight Ivy League universities and the largest state higher education system in the United States are among the many that chose Aruba’s Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE™) architecture to enable mobility on their campus.

Interested in hearing more about how Comm Solutions and Aruba Networks can help your campus embrace mobility? Join us at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey on May 1st, register here.

For more information on Comm Solutions Company, visit our website.

*Comm Solutions Company Named Aruba Networks 2012 East Partner of the Year

Posted in Events, Partner

Multicast Configuration on Enterasys Edge Switches

Posted by Rich Weber on April 18, 2012 — Leave a Comment

I recently ran into an issue with a Cisco Phone system using IPcelerates IPSession product line to do Paging through the Cisco phones.  All of the routers between the locations were Cisco and the Edge switches at the Satellite locations are Enterasys.  Well after taking a good look at the Cisco environment I was able to confirm that the multicast traffic was indeed traversing the layer 3 network and exiting the Ethernet port of the voice gateway at the satellite sight.

So I was faced with some kind of issue on the Enterasys Switch stack.  Being a Cisco guy it was a bit hard for me to track down the solution so I thought I would share my findings.

After getting logged in to the Enterasys switch and doing some quick research on configuring IGMP here was what I found.

Using the “show igmpsnooping” command displayed the following results:

C3(su)->show igmpsnooping
Admin Mode                                      Enable
Group Membership Interval                       260
Max Response Time                               100
Multicast Router Present Expiration Time        0
Interfaces Enabled for IGMP Snooping……….. none
Multicast Control Frame Count……………… 904954
Data Frames Forwarded by the CP

Notice how the IGMP is not enabled on any of the interfaces.  So to turn that on I used the following command to turn on IGMP and it solved my multicast issues.

“set igmpsnooping interfacemode *.*.* enable”

To learn more about what Comm Solutions can do for your organization, visit us at: www.commsolutions.com

Posted in Tech Tip, Unified Communications

BYOD or Bust: Survey Results Report

Posted by Danielle Fontana on April 17, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Employees using their own devices (smart phones, tablets, PCs) are able to use the technology they’re most comfortable with–which has a positive impact on productivity. But as anyone in IT can tell you, this has risks. To address those, some organizations are creating BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies that establish guidelines for proper use. Last month, Kyle Lagunas of Software Advice launched a survey to get a pulse on what companies are doing to manage employee-owned mobile devices.

Kyle’s share a few highlights with us here. You can find the full report of his findings on his Blog.

Fact: Employees Are Already Using Their Own Devices for Work

The question many business leaders are asking their HR partners is: “Do we need a formal policy for managing mobile devices?” This is not an easy question to address, as it requires perspective on what employees are doing with their mobile devices. To that end, we asked a couple of questions around usage.

The most important question when discussing BYOD, of course, is whether or not people are even using their personal devices for work-related purposes. As shown in Figure 1, the majority of employees (77%) are using their own devices to some extent–either exclusively or in addition to company-issued devices–to do work. Of course, “work-related purposes” could be something as simple as checking their email. So we wanted to gauge what else they’re doing.

According to our respondents, employees are using mobile devices at a roughly equivalent frequency for personal and business use. As shown in Figure 2 above, 67% of employees are using devices for business correspondence (email, phone calls, etc.), and 44% are using their device–company-owned or not–for professional networking.

Whenever employees are using mobile devices to access company data (48%), one would think a policy with guidelines for proper use is a must. However, another survey question revealed that only 30% of respondents’ companies had a policy for managing personal mobile devices in place. Is there a disconnect here? Survey says… Quite possibly.

Will BYOD Become a Higher Priority?

Considering the majority of employees are already using personal devices for work-related purposes, we were surprised that only 12% of organizations without a BYOD policy plan to adopt one in the near future (half of those are currently developing policies). 30% of participants without BYOD policies said that instituting one wasn’t a priority, 33% plan to modify their plans for managing use of personal mobile devices in 2012.

Security risks associated with BYOD policies continue to intimidate some–one respondent said he is “scared to death of security vulnerabilities”–but what would do more to minimize risks than to adopt an official policy? Are organizations better served by addressing issues as they arise? Or should leadership elevate mobile device policy as a priority for 2012?

Posted in Press Release
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