Archive for April, 2009

Using Amazon EC2 for PCI DSS compliant applications

Compliance and regulatory concerns are often voiced when it comes to Cloud Computing, and often many of the interesting types of applications organisations would like to deploy to the cloud are  often those governed by some form of regulatory standard. Lets look in more details at one of these. PCI DSS is a set of comprehensive requirements [...]

Overcoming the EC2 Windows AMI 10GB limit

Amazon limit the Windows AMI instance to 10GB in size which almost makes the image unusable if you try and add other software within the windows C Drive. Windows is notoriously heavy on disk space and whereas 10 GB may seem a lot believe us, it isn’t when it comes to windows and a combination [...]

System hardening guidelines for Amazon EC2

One of the biggest questions we get from Clients is “Is Amazon EC2 secure” . That is like saying is my Vanilla network secure. Like anything you can take some steps to make the environment as secure as you can, such as: – First read the Amazon Security Whitepaper and the Amazon discussion of Security processes [...]

McKinsey Cloud research kicks up a storm

A research paper on Cloud Computing by McKinsey & Company entitled ‘Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing’ has kicked up a right old storm with various luminaries either for or against it. The premise of the results of the article are that for large organisations, if they adopt the cloud model, then they would be [...]

Sun’s Cloud Computing Vision

The below presentation is a very good presentation on Sun’s Cloud Computing Vision. It covers all areas, including public and private cloud, as well as open source initiatives. It’s a very good intro’ to get the skinny on where Sun is right now with Cloud and where it intends to focus and drive forward. Cloud [...]

Could you lose your data on the Cloud if your virtual instance is seized because of another users nefarious activity

Imagine the scene. You have set up your Cloud related service / business or you finally decided to make the move to the Cloud to save costs and get better flexibility. You are happily poodling along when wham ! You get notice that your service is down and the data has been taken by a law [...]