National Science Foundation Awards grant to develop next-generation cloud computing testbed powered by Red Hat

Red Hat announced that the National Science Foundation (NSF) division of Computer and Network Systems has awarded a grant to a research team from Boston University, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) to help fund the development of a national cloud testbed for research and development of new cloud computing platforms.

The testbed, known as the Open Cloud Testbed, will integrate capabilities previously developed for the CloudLab testbed into the Massachusetts Open Cloud (MOC), a production cloud developed collaboratively by academia, government, and industry through a partnership anchored at Boston University’s Hariri Institute for Computing. 

As a founding industry partner and long-time collaborator on the MOC project, Red Hat will work with Northeastern University and UMass, as well as other government and industry collaborators, to build the national testbed on Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies.

Testbeds such as the one being constructed by the research team, are critical for enabling new cloud technologies and making the services they provide more efficient and accessible to a wider range of scientists focusing on research in computer systems and other sciences.

By combining open source technologies and a production cloud enhanced with programmable hardware through field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the project aims to close a gap in computing capabilities currently available to researchers. 

As a result, the testbed is expected to help accelerate innovation by enabling greater scale and increased collaboration between research teams and open source communities. Red Hat researchers plan to contribute to active research in the testbed, including a wide range of projects on FPGA hardware tools, middleware, operating systems and security.

Beyond this, the project also aims to identify, attract, educate and retain the next generation of researchers in this field and accelerate technology transfer from academic research to practical use via collaboration with industry partners such as Red Hat.

Since its launch in 2014, Red Hat has served as a core partner of the MOC, which brings together talent and technologies from various academic, government, non-profit, and industry organizations to collaboratively create an open, production-grade public cloud suitable for research and development. The MOC’s open cloud stack is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat OpenShift.

Beyond creating the national testbed, the grant will also extend Red Hat’s collaboration with Boston University researchers to develop self-service capabilities for the MOC’s cloud resources. For example, via contributions to the OpenStack bare metal provisioning program (Ironic), the collaboration aims to produce production quality Elastic Secure Infrastructure (ESI) software, a key piece to enabling more flexible and secure resource sharing between different datacenter clusters. 

By sharing new developments that enable moving resources between bare metal machines and Red Hat OpenStack or Kubernetes clusters in open source communities such as Ironic or Ansible, Red Hat and the MOC’s researchers are helping to advance technology well beyond the Open Cloud Testbed.

Red Hat JBoss EAP 7.2 secures Common Criteria Certification to deliver solutions for regulated industries

Red Hat, provider of open source solutions, announced Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) 7.2 has been awarded Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+ by the Italian Common Criteria scheme Organismo di Certificazione della Sicurezza Informatica (OCSI). 

The certification provides government agencies, financial institutions, and customers in other security-sensitive and regulated environments the assurance and confidence that JBoss EAP 7.2 meets government security standards.

This achievement demonstrates Red Hat’s position in technology and security. This is the third time JBoss EAP has achieved Common Criteria certification. 

JBoss EAP 7 is built to provide simplified deployment and full Java EE performance for applications in any environment. Whether on-premise or in virtual, private, public and hybrid clouds, JBoss EAP features a modular architecture that starts services only as they are required. JBoss EAP 7 is built for performance and flexibility in modern application environments. Its modular architecture and services-driven set of components reduces scale-out times and provides flexibility for applications deployed in different environments.

In 2015, JBoss EAP 6.2 also achieved recognition at the EAL4+ assurance level. Red Hat’s latest certification will be recognized by all countries under the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA) at Evaluation Assurance Level 2 since there is no generally agreed criteria for higher assurance levels.

The Common Criteria is an internationally recognized set of standards used by the federal government and organizations to assess the security and assurance of technology offerings. EAL categorizes the depth and rigor of the evaluation, and EAL4+ assures consumers that the software has been methodically designed, tested, and reviewed to meet the evaluation criteria.

Red Hat worked with atsec information security, a government accredited laboratory in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Singapore and Italy to complete the certification. atsec tested and validated the security, performance and reliability of the solution against the Common Criteria Standard for Information Security Evaluation (ISO/IEC 15408) at EAL4+.

"We're exceptionally proud that Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform again has achieved the Common Criteria Certification. It is important that our customers know they are getting the highest standard of security when they use JBoss EAP,  especially those in highly regulated industries,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president and general manager, Public Sector, Red Hat. “Common Criteria accreditation is a rigorous security standard and means customers can confidently trust Red Hat with sensitive applications, services and data. Repeatedly achieving this accreditation is a key value of the Red Hat subscription, and one that differentiates enterprise-class open source, and proves our on-going dedication to providing top solutions to security-conscious customers." 

Broadcom introduces Tomahawk 4, its high bandwidth Ethernet switch chip at 25.6 terabits per second

Broadcom announced that it has delivered the StrataXGS Tomahawk 4 switch series, demonstrating 25.6 terabits/sec of Ethernet switching performance in a single device— double the bandwidth of any other switch silicon currently available.

Delivered in less than two years after the previous 12.8Tbps product generation, Tomahawk 4 is implemented in 7nm technology with 512 50G PAM4 SerDes. Tomahawk 4’s high level of integration and highly efficient architecture delivers up to 75 percent lower power and cost compared to alternative solutions.

The growth of hyperscale cloud networks continues its unrelenting upward trend, with bandwidth increasing by 25 percent and storage by 36 percent year-over-year. Workloads for deep learning, using massively distributed neural networks and alternative computing nodes, require a dramatic increase in bandwidth with dense 100/200/400GbE links spanning high-radix, ultra-low-latency network topologies.

The continued trend towards disaggregated, high-density flash storage is concurrently demanding step functions in network throughput and reduced end-to-end access times. With its switching performance, high 100/200/400GbE port density, and rich feature set optimized for cloud use cases, Broadcom’s Tomahawk 4 is ideally suited to serve as the backbone for the next generation of hyperscale data center networks.

StrataXGS Tomahawk 4 Series enables next generation of high-throughput, low latency hyperscale networks with 64 ports of 400GbE switching and routing; comes with 256 ports supported on a single chip, enabling low-latency, single-hop networks for massive alternative compute cluster; and delivers connectivity using 512 instances of the industry’s highest performance and longest-reach 50G PAM4 SerDes core, enabling long-reach East-West optical links and Direct-Attached-Copper in-rack cabling in the data center.

The offering includes 25.6Tbps shared-buffer architecture, offering up to five times higher incast absorption and providing the highest performance and lowest end-to-end latency for RoCEv2 workloads; advanced load balancing mechanisms, virtually eliminating hash polarization and providing extremely efficient, controllable link utilization; and advanced congestion management, enabling new traffic management paradigms.

Broadcom also announced the introduction of Broadcom Open Network Switch APIs (OpenNSA), opening its SDK APIs for StrataXGS and StrataDNX products. Multiple open source network operating system initiatives are underway in the disaggregation ecosystem, focused on hyperscale and service provider markets. OpenNSA enables these initiatives on merchant silicon and allows the larger community to build on top of these efforts. 

OpenNSA also expands Open Compute Project efforts, like Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), by simplifying the process of translating SAI APIs to Broadcom SDK APIs. Moreover, OpenNSA accelerates the SDN ecosystem by enhancing the toolset available for the developer community.

“The Tomahawk franchise is the flagship for cutting-edge, single-chip performance and integration among Broadcom’s multi-vectored Ethernet switch silicon portfolio, tailored to the unique and rigorous demands of hyperscale data center operators,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. “We are proud of our world-class engineering team for innovating and delivering the 25.6Tbps Tomahawk 4 chip in less than two years after we released Tomahawk 3.  Broadcom is proving yet again that customers can rely on us to lead the industry on switch silicon performance and execution at every generation.”

“Tomahawk 4 is an engineering tour de force, packing an unprecedented number of serdes into a monolithic 7nm chip,” said Bob Wheeler, principal analyst, The Linley Group. “As a result, Broadcom is once again first in delivering the next switch density, which hyperscalers need as they deploy 400G Ethernet.”

Tomahawk 4 accelerates the adoption of 100/200/400GbE Ethernet solutions at a point where optics utilizing 50G PAM4 electrical connectivity are shipping in high volumes. Products from Broadcom’s Optical Systems Division, which offers a suite of optical interconnect solutions supporting 50G PAM4 and 100G PAM4 optical data rates, complement Broadcom’s switch chips. The combination of switches and pluggable optics from Broadcom provides a complete system-level solution with plug-and-play functionality.

SANTALUCÍA digitalizes user experience with Red Hat for greater business efficiency and faster time to innovation

Red Hat announced this week that SANTALUCÍA Group is embracing Red Hat’s agile integration and open hybrid cloud technologies as part of its ongoing strategic plan for digital transformation.

With Red Hat’s unified integration portfolio delivering the core integration, messaging and API management functionality, and Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, serving as a common platform to run containerized applications across its infrastructure, SANTALUCÍA has gained greater flexibility and scalability, with automated operations optimized for developer productivity and innovation as it builds out its hybrid cloud strategy going forward.

SANTALUCÍA can now benefit from an accelerated software development process. One of the first services it has since built and launched is its API Portal for developers, which is helping the business to increase consistency and interoperability between applications, and facilitate the sharing and provision of services between group companies and with third parties. It has also redesigned its digital contracting strategy to enable automation and an improved user experience during the sign up process for customers. 

This is powering its new cross-platform application for home insurance, among others. Being able to push out improvements to the customer journey and launch new services more frequently than before helps the organization to gain deeper and broader relationships with customers.

Through this initiative, the Spanish insurer is aiming to better meet the changing needs and preferences of its customers, reinforce its relevance and core business leadership in the digital age, and open new areas for growth by accelerating the time to market for new customer channels and services.

To support its transformation efforts, SANTALUCÍA adopted an agile integration approach that harnesses open APIs (application programming interfaces), microservices and containers to build, connect and manage new cloud-native applications faster and more easily, as well as more efficiently connect and manage heterogeneous applications, data and devices that have proliferated throughout the organization in recent decades.

"SANTALUCÍA recognised that keeping up with market disruption requires excellence in meeting customer expectations. The challenges of achieving agility and dynamism, as well as reducing release cycles for new products and services, can be addressed with the help of hybrid cloud architectures and modern software processes,” said Julia Bernal, country manager, Spain and Portugal, Red Hat. “Red Hat is proud to support SANTALUCÍA along its digital transformation journey, helping it to be more technologically efficient and to innovate to meet the evolving needs of customers using our agile integration blueprint for enterprise architecture."

"As SANTALUCÍA approaches its 100th year, our focus on customer experience remains steady, while our business continues to transform. The agile integration approach that we are enacting with Red Hat is helping us become a faster, more efficient and more adaptable organization, in terms of IT and digitalization,” said Javier Sanchis Bonilla, director arquitectura, SANTALUCÍA. “Combining open source innovation and flexibility with features designed for security and reliability, Red Hat technology and expertise is enabling us to create new opportunities with our partners and build stronger relationships with our customers."

Optiv, Veracode align to boost application security at development stage with software assurance as-a-service

Optiv Security announced it has partnered with Veracode to improve application security at the development level. The Software Assurance as-a-Service (SAaaS) offering leverages Optiv’s cybersecurity knowledge and Veracode’s program management framework and software testing automation technology to help organizations secure web applications without slowing down the speed of development.

SAaaS assists with the detection, analysis and response to application vulnerabilities and the integration of security and development workflows through static Application Security Testing through recurring analysis of source code in an application prior to it being compiled to find security vulnerabilities.

It also features dynamic Application Security Testing using securing vulnerability scans on web applications in a running state to identify common security vulnerabilities; and software composition analysis through management for open source repositories and libraries to prevent the use of insecure code in applications.

SAaaS helps strengthen application security program by providing security program support (SPS) and security consulting services. The structure provided by SPS prevents SAaaS from becoming “shelfware,” while triage conducted by our security experts reduces false positives and focus on remediation efforts on findings that matter.

“The Optiv SAaaS offering, powered by automated software testing from Veracode, brings world class AppSec capabilities to satisfy market demand for software that is secure from the start,” said Leslie Bois, vice president, global channel and alliances at Veracode. “Optiv SAaaS enables modern organizations of all sizes and maturity levels to take advantage of our highly scalable platform and seamless integration to build a customized AppSec program that delivers secure software faster. This offering can help companies empower their development and security teams, lower their security risk, and turn security into a competitive advantage.”

Immuta and Databricks partner to offer cloud-native, automated data governance for Apache Spark and Delta Lake

Immuta announced a partnership with Databricks that empowers data teams to perform analytics on sensitive data in the cloud in a compliant, policy-driven, and automated way. Through a new, native integration, the two companies help customers make data secure, anonymized and compliant for cloud analytics and machine learning.

With Databricks and Immuta, customers can enforce fine-grained access controls and dynamically apply anonymization techniques from directly within Databricks and Delta Lake, the open source storage layer that brings reliability to data lakes. As a result, Databricks users see only what they’re allowed to see, based on who they are, and their approved purpose. This enables organizations to securely access data and build machine learning models.

With Immuta natively integrated within Databricks, the customer now has the power to create automatically-enforced data policies, combining ABAC (or attribute-based access control) and purpose. 

Now, the customer’s analysts enjoy dynamic access to data, with Immuta ensuring proper security and privacy protection – down to the row, column, and cell-level. Immuta’s integrated data governance made possible the migration to Databricks. The customer now benefits from analytics on a modern platform, without sacrificing governance and security.

Wind River introduces Kubernetes-based cloud native offering for complex 5G vRAN network edge needs

Wind River announced Wind River Cloud Platform, its high-performance, production grade Kubernetes-based offering for managing edge cloud infrastructure. Optimized for the network edge, the platform addresses the service provider’s complex challenges of deploying and managing a physically distributed, cloud native vRAN infrastructure.

Cloud Platform leverages the OpenStack Foundation’s open source project StarlingX to deliver the foundation for a geographically distributed managed solution able to simplify Day 1 and Day 2 operations by providing single-pane–of-glass (SPoG), zero-touch automated management of thousands of nodes, no matter their physical location. 

The platform provides orchestration of fully automated software updates and upgrades across a geo-distributed cloud, with rollback capabilities. Unlike enterprise-class IT platforms, Cloud Platform is an out-of-the-box open source solution designed specifically for edge compute that delivers ultra-low latency with deterministic performance. This is critical for high-availability, performance sensitive 5G virtualized radio infrastructure, as well as advanced applications such as autonomous vehicles.

Cloud Platform scales from a single compute node at the network edge to enable ultra-low cost deployments, up to thousands of nodes to meet the needs of high-value applications as they grow. Remote nodes can survive control plane disconnection and continue to operate and re-synchronize upon reconnection. 

All control functions can exist at all sites. Remote sites can be zero-touch enrolled and replicated across thousands of sites with fully automated deployment of known-good configurations.

Cloud Platform’s common virtualization architecture can enable service providers to create a single approach to cloud infrastructure across far edge, near edge, regional, and core data center site elements within a planned 5G deployment topology. The distributed infrastructure can be managed as a single high-availability cloud, and do so with both containers and VMs co-existing seamlessly.

“Wind River has been a long-standing contributor to open source projects. We are excited to have Wind River as a member of CNCF and we look forward to their contributions and collaboration to drive container technology to the edge,” said Dan Kohn, executive director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “With Wind River Cloud Platform, Wind River is helping to further advance technologies such as Kubernetes at the edge.”

NetApp and Google Cloud help customers unlock the power of data with enterprise-class data services and solutions

NetApp and Google Cloud announced general availability of NetApp Cloud Volumes Service, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud, and support for Anthos on NetApp HCI to help organizations focus on innovation across any hybrid environments.

As enterprises seek to take advantage of the agility and efficiency benefits of the cloud, they need to know that their data is secure and in the right place, for the right cost, at scale. 

To achieve these goals, they are building data fabrics that provide maximum flexibility as they move to hybrid multi-cloud environments. With NetApp and Google Cloud, customers can unlock the power of their data with integrated, enterprise-class data solutions that are optimized and validated for Google Cloud.

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is a cloud-native, Google Cloud integrated file service with the performance, availability, and security required to efficiently run business-critical applications. Additionally, customers can run production workloads in Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is also now available in the United Kingdom region.

Also, now globally generally available, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud is a data management solution that accelerates the enterprise cloud journey by bringing enhanced data protection, storage efficiencies, and mobility to Google Cloud and hybrid multicloud environments.

NetApp HCI is a scalable, on-premises hybrid cloud infrastructure that transforms private clouds into a deployable region of a multicloud. NetApp HCI is now validated to work with Google Cloud’s Anthos, giving customers the peace of mind of a true enterprise-class platform validated with Anthos to reliably deploy and run their applications.

With NetApp Trident, a fully supported open source project, organizations can orchestrate a complex hybrid cloud environment that ties together Google Cloud, Anthos, and NetApp HCI on the premises. Enterprises can scale on demand and add compute or capacity as needed to meet business requirements, and choose from a range of application platforms, including Anthos, Kubernetes, VMware, and NetApp Kubernetes Service.