News

Firms Provide AWS Automation, Security and Data Synchronization

• By David Ramel
• 11/07/2016

Despite a dizzying array of products and services available in the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) cloud, third-party companies continue to offer solutions that provide niche functionality in areas such as automation, security and data synchronization.

Here's a roundup of new offerings in each of those areas.

Automation -- Ansible 2.2 from Red Hat Inc.
Open source champion Red Hat last week announced the new 2.2 edition of its Ansible IT automation framework. "Ansible 2.2 brings performance enhancements, expanded container and Windows automation capabilities, and several new modules, including those for networking, cloud provider platforms, and expanded vault support," the company said.

One of those cloud provider platforms is AWS.

"New functionality for cloud providers has been added, including: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and OpenStack providers," Red Hat said. "Finally, new capabilities for VMware and Amazon Web Services have been added. Ansible 2.2 features new VMware virtual machine management modules and supports new AWS capabilities, including Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), Amazon Redshift and AWS Lambda."

Security -- Big Data Management Platform from Talena Inc.
The "always-on Big Data pioneer" announced enhancements to its Big Data management platform, expanding support for the Amazon S3 object storage service and extending security functionality. For example, the platform now supports all AWS S3 options for encrypting data.

"The new platform broadens its support of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to include capabilities such as Amazon S3 for highly-scalable object storage, and extends its security capabilities including data masking, encryption and authentication," the company announced last month. "The new features will help companies utilizing Talena for backup, recovery and test data management, store backup data in Amazon S3, run backup software in Amazon AWS, and prevent personally identifiable information (PII) from appearing in native forms in non-production environments. As a result, companies can drive down the high costs associated with deploying big data platforms, minimize compliance risk and increase business flexibility."

The platform also supports AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Glacier as target data stores.

Data Synchronization -- Cloud Sync Service from NetApp Inc.
The company last week announced new data fabric solutions and services with a focus on the secure storage and movement of data within hybrid clouds. These include new versions of AltaVault for cloud-integrated storage; StorageGRID Webscale for scalable object storage for Web apps and rich content; and SnapCenter for application-consistent data protection.

As part of those initiatives, NetApp introduced its new Cloud Sync service.

"This on-demand Software-as-a-Service [SaaS] offering simplifies cloud service usage by allowing users to continuously move and synchronize data between on-premises storage and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) in the cloud," the company said. "Customers gain greater visibility into data by seamlessly leveraging AWS analytics tools with on-premises data. They experience a lower total cost of ownership by paying only for cloud resources when needed. Cloud Sync is currently available through AWS Marketplace."