Data Centre Architecture Insights & Best Practices

Cato Networks has announced a new SASE throughput record, achieving 5Gbps on a single encrypted tunnel with all security inspections enabled. “Once again, Cato has set the mark for SASE at scale,” says Gur Shatz, Co-Founder, President, and COO of Cato Networks. "Pushing the boundary of SASE throughput worldwide is more than an engineering achievement. It demonstrates how quickly a platform with a cloud-native architecture can make new technology globally available."  As larger enterprises adopt SASE, higher capacity connections are needed for interconnecting data centres and private clouds. Cato meets that need with leading support for 5Gbps throughput on a single, encrypted tunnel regardless of security inspections. Previously, Cato supported a maximum of 3Gbps per tunnel. The improved throughput underscores the benefits of a cloud-native architecture. It nearly doubled the performance of the Cato Socket without requiring any hardware changes. This was only possible because Cato runs the compute-intensive operations that normally degrade edge appliance performance, in the Cato Single Pass Processing Engine (SPACE) running across Cato PoPs. By improving SPACE, all edges connected to the Cato SASE Cloud gain increased throughput. Replacement of the Cato Socket is not required. By contrast, SASE solutions implemented as virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud or modified web proxies remain limited to under 1Gbps of throughput for a single tunnel. This limitation forces enterprises to have their edge appliance create and manage multiple tunnels and load-balance their traffic between them. Cato is also delivering 5Gbps connections to other cloud providers. The new Cato cross-connect will enable private, high-speed layer-2 connections between Cato and any other cloud provider connecting to the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) or Digital Reality. The Cato cross-connect meets the need for multicloud and hybrid cloud deployments that demand reliable, high-throughput connections. It also enables channel partners to deliver Cato SSE 360 into legacy deployments by establishing a network-to-network interface (NNI) into the Cato SASE Cloud.

DigiCert has announced that it will be providing digital trust services to the European Production Giganet project. In doing so, it will be serving a key role in secure data communication and exchange for the manufacturing industry, adhering to European standards of self-sovereign identity. EuProGigant is set to bring about the next step in Industry 4.0 in Europe, by demonstrating a shared, intelligent and automated data ecosystem, that will drive value creation within the European manufacturing sector. This will be the first practical implementation that will make Gaia-X understandable for the manufacturing domain, a framework for federated European data architecture. The company will be providing its digital trust services, based on the DigiCert ONE platform, within the EuProGigant’s federation services for secure identity and authentication. These include content and IoT trust services and following eIDAS guidelines for creating verifiable credential wallets, as well as the self-description principles of Gaia-X. Mike Nelson, DigiCert’s Vice President of Digital Trust, says “DigiCert’s role in EuProGigant reinforces its position as a global leader in digital trust and a driver of digital transformation within the European Manufacturing Industry. We are proud to be involved in this landmark project and hope that our contributions will pave the way for future innovation with the sector.” The project is led by Vienna University of Technology and Darmstadt University of Technology. It involves over 20 companies from within the industrial and technology sectors including manufacturing companies such as voestalpine High Performance Metals, Heller and MTU Aero Engines. The project intends to exhibit how industry can use sovereign data and information exchange, with a shared data ecosystem to revolutionise the manufacturing sector. By automating and improving data-driven value chains, it estimates that the European manufacturing industry will profit from higher data quality and lower costs. In part, this is meant to allow the industry to compete with low cost manufacturers from emerging markets through innovation and establishment of stronger connected systems.

Subzero Engineering Launches ‘Essential Micro Data Center’

Subzero Engineering has introduced its Essential Micro Data Centre, the world’s first modular, vendor agnostic and truly flexible modular micro data centre architecture. Available for order in the United States of America, United Kingdom and Europe, the Essential Micro Data Centre meets customer demands for a standardized, premium quality, cost-competitive and quick-to-install edge infrastructure system, that provides a reduced total cost of ownership of between 20%-30%. Based on its Essential Series and AisleFrame product lines, the Essential Micro Data Centre is a small-footprint, on-premises data centre, engineered for distributed and remote infrastructure environments. Its modular architecture includes white-glove installation and support, power, cooling, infrastructure conveyance and containment. All of which are housed within a pre-fabricated, factory-assembled, modular room, and shipped flat-packed to site. With increased requirements for real-time data processing, low latency, greater security and automation, the Essential Micro Data Centre ensures predictability and performance for distributed applications. Furthermore, its customizable, modular design offers a fast, flexible and easy-to-build micro data centre system, perfectly suited for colocation, 5G, retail, enterprise and industrial environments. Strength, security, customization The Essential Micro Data Centre is comprised of two-parts including a physically secure, modular room containing critical power and cooling infrastructure, and Subzero’s high-strength AisleFrame. Using this approach, the Essential Micro Data Centre can support a variety of load requirements and includes built-in, customizable containment, integrated with self-supporting ceiling modules and insert panels available in ABS, acrylic, polycarbonate, aluminum or glass. The pre-fabricated system can accommodate all ladder racking, busway, fibre trays and infrastructure necessary for micro data centre applications, and offers support for hot or cold aisle applications, regardless of cooling methodology. For example, the high-strength ceiling can support a range of cooling systems, including overhead Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units. This feature offers complete customization for users who can deploy their infrastructure in aisle, row or rack configurations. Further, its flexible, vendor-agnostic design provides users with the ability to custom-specify their own choice of power and cooling infrastructure. This approach helps overcome the challenge of having to use inflexible, pre-specified power and cooling systems in a containerized system, while retaining the ability to standardize, repeat and scale quickly, as business requirements change. “The Essential Micro Data Centre's flexible design makes it a perfect fit for customers searching for an alternative to the obstinate and expensive, pre-integrated solutions currently available,” says Sam Prudhomme, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Subzero Engineering. “Our vendor-agnostic approach to component specification, combined with rapid speed of and installation and lower TCO, ensures customers can truly define and scale the edge on their own terms.” The Subzero Engineering Essential Micro Data Centre joins its recently launched Essentials Series, demonstrating the company’s commitment to delivering customer-focused, efficient and precision-engineered digital infrastructure solutions.

Pure storage announces availability of pure as-a-service in AWS Marketplace

As part of its focus on simplifying hybrid architecture mobility, Pure Storage, the IT pioneer that delivers storage as-a-service in a hybrid world and an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Technology Partner, today announced two new offerings to make it easier than ever for enterprises to consume and deploy storage – the availability of Pure as-a-Service in AWS Marketplace and a new Cloud Block Store Efficiency Guarantee program backed by Pure’s promise to reduce cloud storage consumption with no feature trade-offs. Pure Storage works with AWS to drive applications that run across AWS Regions and AWS Outposts and leverage the agility and innovation of private, edge, SaaS, and clouds simultaneously. Today’s announcements are the latest innovations that reinforce how Pure and AWS work together to serve customers' modern data needs. Pure as-a-Service helps enterprises get the value of cloud economics, operational excellence and an outstanding customer experience in a “pay as you go” flexible model. This allows organizations to place capacity and performance in locations that make sense to the business utilizing a single unified subscription whether on-premises, in a colocation facility, or in the cloud. With availability in AWS Marketplace, AWS customers can now deploy Pure as-a-Service capacity in locations that service cloud, on-premises and edge workloads. "Customers are looking for flexibility and choice as they procure, store, and manage their data across the enterprise as part of a comprehensive digitization initiative," comments Garth Fort, Director of Product Management, AWS Marketplace, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We are delighted to welcome Pure Storage to offer our shared customers enhanced flexibility, mobility, and consistency between on-premises and edge applications to AWS storage.” "Working with Pure Storage and AWS is an essential part of our business, and today's announcements are a strong demonstration of their value together," says Lance Broderick, Director of Technology Finance and Enterprise Architect, NuSkin. "We can see the power of Pure as-a-Service on the AWS marketplace for our on-prem and edge workloads." New Cloud Efficiency Guarantee Also announced today, Pure’s Cloud Efficiency Guarantee program allows customers to take advantage of Cloud Block Store in a risk-free manner with guaranteed cloud operational cost savings. Customers can rely on Pure’s Cloud Block Store to achieve specific efficiency gains over and above what they had with cloud-native storage options, backed by Pure as-a-Service credit guarantees. “Pure and AWS share a commitment to customer obsession – focused on the cloud principles of agility and flexibility to deliver best of breed technology for customers in our respective areas,” says Michael Sotnick, Vice President, Global Alliances, Pure Storage. “Having a hybrid architecture strategy and the right technology partners helps enterprises achieve more than ever in today’s environment.” Pure Portfolio and AWS Outposts Ready Designation                                                                                    Pure’s unified fast file and object solution, FlashBlade, achieved the AWS Outposts Ready designation in September. Fully tested and supported, FlashBlade for AWS Outposts delivers a hybrid cloud solution with all-flash performance, cloud scalability, and operational simplicity to accelerate modern applications, support cloud native application development and break down IT silos. This combination is the industry’s first portfolio of modern block, fast file, and object storage that is AWS Outpost Ready, ensuring simplified and proven deployment options for customer and partners.FlashArray recently achieved AWS Outposts Ready designation as part of the AWS Service Ready Program. Pure Storage FlashArray has been tested for ease of deployment, performance and high availability, and is approved by AWS to run alongside Outposts in customer and partner data centers. Now, Pure FlashArray provides AWS Outposts customers with enterprise class, 100% NVMe all-flash block storage to address traditional enterprise databases, low latency and local data processing applications on premises consistent with AWS services, APIs and tools in the cloud.Additionally, Portworx by Pure Storage achieved the AWS Outposts Ready designation enabling Kubernetes applications to run across AWS Regions and AWS Outposts for maximum flexibility. Portworx by Pure Storage and AWS  Portworx by Pure Storage, an AWS Advanced Technology Partner and available in AWS Marketplace, is designed to deliver the benefits of container-granular storage, data protection, data security, and capacity management for applications running on Kubernetes.  A complete data services platform, Portworx enables more applications to run on Kubernetes on AWS with the performance, reliability, and security of traditional applications. Portworx PX-DR enables up to RPO disaster recovery between AWS Availability Zones and AWS Regions, and PX-Autopilot enables customers to achieve flexible consumption of storage on AWS, reducing storage costs.