aDesk Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Abstract Today’s business landscape is constantly changing in response to digital transformation. Against this backdrop, efficient and cost-effective IT infrastructure, namely cloud computing, is critical to giving organizations a competitive edge. Cloud computing allows businesses to scale up and out fast to keep pace with ongoing market disruptions. However, no single cloud can meet all needs; IT infrastructures must also adapt to fast-evolving business requirements. Therefore, there is a need to deploy different cloud models, such as private and public clouds. The dilemma is that, by adopting varied infrastructure and technologies, organizations have to face increasingly complex IT environments. In this article, we will discuss cloud options that enable you to enjoy the benefits of various cloud models without complicating your IT landscape. The IT Landscape Today As digitalization has rapidly accelerated the transformation of industries over the past decade, business leaders now expect more from their IT departments. They are demanding better and faster service and higher operational and cost efficiency. In addition, several major industry trends have significantly influenced the direction of information technology, including: The growth of the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend The rise of Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI) and server virtualization Widespread adoption of cloud computing as a major business enabler Increased use of all-flash storage in specific enterprise applications Challenges of Legacy IT Organizations still operating with traditional legacy data center setups will struggle to adapt quickly to new market changes due to constraints imposed by their infrastructure.  This struggle often arises from the complex composition of multiple platforms and software components, each with separate management consoles and policy engines. These issues give rise to the following challenges: Difficulty in scaling out and scaling up dynamically, easily, and linearly to meet increasing user demands. Greater management complexity due to operations, policies, and processes tied to IT platforms for various workloads. Frequent and costly refresh cycles — as soon as one component is updated or upgraded, it’s time to update/upgrade the next. A constant need to up-skill talent to keep pace with newer technologies running on different cloud platforms (multi-cloud). Cloud Options to Reduce IT Complexity These challenges have two main areas that need to be addressed: increasing efficiency by "doing more with less" and decreasing costs relating to operating, maintaining, and elevating IT capabilities. Several options have gained popularity rapidly, and we shall discuss two widely accepted models by many organizations globally. Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) HCI is a data center architecture that embraces cloud principles, economics, and a software-first architecture. It consolidates compute, storage, networking, and management using virtualization on commodity x86 servers. This simplifies operations, increases efficiency and scalability, and improves agility while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO). Typically managed through a single user interface, HCI enables resources to be provisioned and executed at the virtual machine (VM) or container level through a shared resource pool. This allows high availability and workload mobility, facilitating efficient performance and capacity scaling. HCI also helps organizations consolidate servers on a common platform at the hypervisor layer. This greatly reduces the number of physical servers in a data center, thus lowering power and cooling consumption and minimizing the carbon footprint. HCI also lessens the need to create a new physical hardware environment for each deployment, significantly reducing operational bottlenecks and enabling businesses to move forward faster. In summary, it has proven to effectively address the challenges of legacy IT infrastructures by reducing and eliminating IT complexity. Hybrid Cloud A hybrid cloud integrates public and private clouds into a unified environment. This setup provides centralized control, operations, and management of cloud resources. It allows organizations with mixed applications, data, and operating systems to extend their on-premises IT infrastructure to the public cloud while retaining control. Businesses can deploy workloads in private and public clouds, transferring data between them as requirements and costs change. Legacy applications can operate in on-premises data centers, while cloud-ready applications can run on the public cloud. Developing, testing, and adopting new technologies is more efficient and effective, enabling businesses to evolve quickly and stay relevant. Conclusion Globally, the IT infrastructure landscape is undergoing unprecedented transformation due to digitalization. Organizations must constantly find ways to do more with less by increasing efficiencies and reducing IT complexity. Many face challenges modernizing their legacy IT infrastructure, but an HCI-based hybrid cloud offers a way out. This setup provides the flexibility and economics of the cloud without sacrificing performance, availability, and reliability. This approach allows businesses to scale quickly and cost-effectively without the need to keep adding hardware, thus reducing IT complexity. By creating a unified resource pool for various applications, these solutions facilitate on-demand capacity expansion and centralized management. This results in lower operating expenses and quicker time to market, effectively addressing the challenges posed by legacy IT systems.   Contact Us for Business Inquiry

The Cloud Repatriation Trend in 2023 Browse the pages of most IT tech news websites and chances are you will come across stories of enterprise organizations migrating en masse to the public cloud as part of their cloud adoption strategy. But does the premise of hosting on the public cloud, a service dominated by cloud hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and GCP, still ring true? By and large, yes. Organizations of all sizes still rely on public cloud infrastructure for application and data hosting to support their mission-critical workloads. However, the idea of going all-in on a public-cloud-only strategy and abandoning the on-premises data center and/or colocation services is slowing down. Organizations now realize the benefits of a hybrid cloud approach, giving rise to more cloud repatriation initiatives. In this article, we will discuss and address the areas relating to the cloud repatriation trend. What is Cloud Repatriation? Cloud repatriation is the process of moving data, applications, or workloads from a public cloud environment back to an on-premises infrastructure. It also refers to transferring IT resources from a public cloud environment located outside the country of operations back to a local data center, whether on-premises, a local public cloud, or a colocation facility. Drivers of Cloud Repatriation Cloud repatriation has garnered significant attention in recent years. There are several key reasons why organizations are moving workloads back from hyperscaler cloud-based environments to on-premises or local cloud infrastructure. Let’s explore a few of them. Cost Savings: One of the most compelling reasons for repatriating workloads is the high cost of hyperscaler clouds. Organizations often encounter unexpected financial pitfalls, such as high data transfer (ingress/egress) fees that result in significant "bill shock". In many cases, migrating and hosting the wrong workloads in inappropriate configurations can be more costly in public clouds than on-premises. As enterprises scale, many have reported that it becomes increasingly cost-effective to manage their workloads on-premises, allowing for predictable costs and the prevention of unforeseen expenses like data transfer fees. Data Security & Sovereignty Requirements: Concerns about data sovereignty, combined with stringent regulatory measures by governments, demand a more controlled environment for hosting and storing customer data. The preference often leans towards in-country hosting to meet compliance and security measures. Better Performance: Public cloud services, while providing extensive geographic reach, can sometimes introduce performance issues. Latency can negatively impact user experience, especially for edge computing use cases that demand real-time processing. The close proximity of a local data center effectively addresses this issue. Resource Optimization: Repatriation isn't just a reactionary move; it can also be strategic. Companies are continuously looking to optimize IT resources, ensuring that workloads are aptly distributed across various environments and geographies. Skill Shortage: The diverse nature of hyperscaler cloud platforms demands a specific skill set, and a scarcity of talent to manage these platforms can lead organizations to reconsider their cloud-first approach. Vendor Lock-in Avoidance: Vendor lock-in is the situation where companies become overly reliant on a single cloud provider's infrastructure and services. This can prompt businesses to reassess and, if necessary, repatriate for long-term flexibility. Cloud Repatriation Examples Dropbox In 2015, Dropbox, a cloud-based file storage and synchronization service, undertook a massive migration from AWS to its own private cloud infrastructure called "Magic Pocket." The primary drivers for this move included cost savings, performance optimization, and greater control over hardware and network configurations. As a company storing exabytes of data for over 500 million users, Dropbox faced escalating costs on AWS. By transitioning to a private cloud, Dropbox reduced operational expenses while tailoring its system for better performance and security. The migration itself was executed over two years, involving meticulous planning to move petabytes of data without disrupting user experience. Financial statements revealed that the move had saved Dropbox almost $75 million in operational expenses over the first two years. The result was a more cost-effective, scalable, and high-performing storage service, validating the company's strategic decision to move away from public cloud services. The Cloud Repatriation Strategy Cloud repatriation is a complex and time-consuming process that requires careful assessment, planning, and execution to avoid disruption to business operations and data loss. As such, organizations must critically evaluate the overall benefits and risks before making the critical decision to move away from the cloud. Drawing on successful use cases, the following are steps and best practices to consider as part of a cloud repatriation strategy: Developing and evaluating the business case: Organizations should rigorously evaluate the business case to determine the motivations, projected outcomes, and benefits before starting the repatriation process. This assessment should include an end-to-end review of the current cloud environment, encompassing aspects like performance, cost, operations, compliance, and other relevant factors. It’s also important to consider the loss of some public cloud benefits, such as scalability and elasticity. Creating a migration plan: Once a decision has been made, the next step is to formulate a detailed project plan that outlines the specific steps, timelines, resources, and budgets required to complete the entire migration process. The plan must specify the types of migration tools, network connectivity, data transfer costs, data backup and recovery options, and infrastructure requirements. It should also incorporate contingency measures to address any unexpected problems, issues, or delays. Choosing the right infrastructure: Determining the optimal infrastructure for repatriation is crucial. Options include on-premises data centers, private clouds, and local cloud providers. Criteria such as compliance, performance, security, and scalability should guide the infrastructure selection process. Executing a successful migration: The actual repatriation process involves migrating applications, data, and workloads from the existing public cloud environment to the new on-premises or local cloud environment. This process can span weeks, months, or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the “to be” landscape and environment. Crucially, organizations need to ensure that they have skilled personnel in place, whether in-house or a professional service provider, to manage and execute the migration. Validating and optimizing the new environment: After the completion of the migration, organizations need to test and optimize their new environment to ensure it meets current and future performance, security, and governance/compliance requirements. Additionally, they should establish processes for the ongoing management and monitoring of the new environment. Conclusion At the outset, the hyperscalers and public clouds projected significant IT cost reductions and elevated operations/performances. For many, the initial results of going all-in on the public clouds did reduce their capex (IT software & infrastructure) as data centers were collapsed and expensive legacy infrastructure was divested. However, recent surveys conducted on CSPs and data center colocation providers found that cloud repatriation is happening on a global scale, albeit to varying degrees depending on the type of organization and their landscapes. In several recent global IT surveys, it was noted that around 70-80% of organizations are repatriating at least some data from hyperscalers and public cloud due to a variety of concerns, as discussed above. Organizations must now seriously consider whether cloud repatriation is a viable strategy or explore other ways of achieving their objectives other than relying on hyperscaler/public clouds. Notably, they are now adopting a moderated “hybrid cloud” approach that combines on-premises infrastructure with certain workloads in the public cloud. Others are pursuing a private cloud, which offers some of the benefits of virtualized infrastructure in a single-tenant environment, either on-premises or in a colocated data center. Hence, the adoption and trend of cloud repatriation can vary widely depending on the specific needs and circumstances of each organization.   Contact Us for Business Inquiry

Solving Data Backup Challenges with VSS Backup Data is the lifeblood of any business, and protecting it from loss, corruption, or disaster is crucial for ensuring business continuity and competitiveness. However, traditional backup solutions like tape drives, external hard drives, and cloud storage often face challenges such as high cost, low efficiency, complex management, and inconsistent data quality. How can you overcome these challenges and achieve reliable and secure data protection for your data center and cloud computing? In this blog post, we will introduce Sangfor HCI 6.9.0, the latest version of our hyper-converged infrastructure product. It offers high performance, reliability, security, and easy operability for your data center and cloud computing needs. We will focus on the reliability features of Sangfor HCI 6.9.0, especially on its support for VSS backup, which was not available in previous versions. We will also provide several use cases in which Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 helps to protect your data. What is VSS Backup? VSS backup is a technology that allows you to create consistent snapshots of your data without interrupting your applications. VSS stands for Volume Shadow Copy Service or Volume Snapshot Service, which is a Windows service that coordinates the actions of applications, writers, requestors, and providers to create shadow copies of volumes or files at a specific point in time. Figure: Architecture diagram of Volume Shadow Copy Service (Source: Microsoft) VSS Service: A built-in feature in Windows that ensures the other VSS components can communicate with each other properly and work together. VSS Requester: This is the backup software that requests the creation, import, and deletion of shadow copies. The backup applications in Widows are the Windows Server Backup utility and the System Center Data Protection Manager. VSS Writer: This component ensures a consistent data set is available for backup. It is often included with applications like SQL Server and Exchange Server and with the OS for Windows components like Registry. VSS Provider: This component creates and maintains shadow copies. It can be software or hardware. The Windows operating system comes with a VSS provider that uses copy-on-write. The Advantages of VSS Backup VSS backup is important because it offers a more robust way to protect data from accidental loss, corruption, or disaster. You can use VSS backup to restore your data to the original location or move them to a new one. You can also use the backup files to perform data mining, disk-to-disk backups, as well as fast recovery. However, not all backup solutions support VSS backup. Some backup solutions only support file-level backup or block-level backup, which may cause data inconsistency or application errors when restoring the data. In general, VSS Backup offers several advantages over other backup solutions. Let’s explore these. Real-Time Backup vs Scheduled Backup: VSS captures and creates snapshots in real time while the system is online. In contrast, traditional backup methods often require scheduling backups during off-hours to minimize impact on system performance. Consistent State Backup vs Inconsistent Backup: Unlike basic file copy methods or simple disk cloning, VSS ensures that all files, even those open or in use, are backed up in a consistent state. Basic file copy methods often cannot backup files that are in use, leading to potential inconsistencies in the backup data. For example, if you backup a database file while it is being updated by an application, the backup file may contain incomplete or corrupted data that cannot be restored properly. Disk Space Efficiency vs Full Backups: VSS backups usually take up less disk space because they can be incremental or differential, storing only changes since the last backup. Traditional full backups, on the other hand, take a complete snapshot of all data, consuming more storage space. Easier Restoration vs Tape Backup: Restoring from VSS is often quicker and simpler than from tape backups. Tape backups usually require sequential reading, which takes longer, especially if the data you need is at the end of the tape. Application-Specific Backup vs General-Purpose Backup: While VSS can integrate with specific applications for more reliable backups, many traditional backup methods treat all files the same, regardless of whether they belong to a complex application like a database or are just simple text files. Multiple Backup Sources vs Single Backup Source: VSS allows for both local and network-based backup, offering more flexibility. Some older backup technologies might only support local backups or might require additional hardware or software to support network-based backups. VVS Backup in Sangfor HCI Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 supports VSS backup for both Windows virtual machines (support for Linux VMs is on the way), which means you can create consistent snapshots of your VMs without affecting their normal operation. You can also use Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 to back up your VMs to local storage, remote storage, or cloud storage, and restore them quickly and easily when needed. Other Reliability Features of Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 In addition to VSS backup, Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 offers other reliability features that enhance your data protection and availability. These include: Network health check: This feature detects network latency and packet loss at the data link layer and promptly alerts the administrator of any potential problems. RAID controller health check: This feature isolates and repairs RAID controller failures to prevent any impact on the cluster’s reliability and performance. Network attack protection: Sangfor HCI provides a built-in Cloud Security Center for administrators to configure network attack protection policies for the virtual network, providing seven-layer protection for cloud applications. Virtual patch protection: The cloud security center also provides an intrusion prevention system (IPS) to protect VMs and block vulnerability attack traffic. Cross-cluster live migration: This feature allows you to migrate VMs from different versions of Sangfor HCI clusters without downtime or data loss. iSCSI HA for a two-node cluster with witness deployment: A physical terminal is used as a witness node to prevent cluster split-brain and improve reliability for small-scale scenarios. These features make Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 a reliable and secure solution for your business needs. What are the Use Cases of Sangfor HCI 6.9.0? Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 caters to a wide range of digital transformation use cases across industries, including data center consolidation, mission-critical application hosting, hybrid cloud, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), remote office/branch office (ROBO), and disaster recovery (DR). Conclusion Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 is by far the most reliable version to date, offering features like VSS snapshot and backup, cross-cluster live migration between different versions, as well as health checks for the network and RAID controller. These enhancements improve both the reliability and availability of businesses using Sangfor HCI. If you are interested in learning more about Sangfor HCI 6.9.0 or want to try it out for yourself, please visit www.sangfor.com or contact us. We will be happy to assist you with any questions or inquiries you may have.   Contact Us for Business Inquiry

Sangfor is proud to be listed as a Representative Vendor in the recently published Gartner Market Guide for AIOps, China¹. This Market Guide provides a detailed analysis of the AIOps market in China. AIOps, short for Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, is defined in the Market Guide as follows: AIOps platforms enhance IT operations management by integrating AI into the event management process to augment, accelerate and automate responses to signals from monitoring and observability tools. This covers areas such as anomaly detection, event correlation and reduction, root-cause analysis and accelerated or automated remediation. In terms of market direction, Gartner stated that "China’s interest in AIOps is growing. According to Gartner’s Forecast: IT Operations Management Software, Worldwide, 2021-2027 research, the AIOps market in China is estimated to grow by 46.9% annually between 2023 and 2025, from $30.2 million to $64.9 million." The large number of internet users worldwide is generating significant amounts of data and transactions. This increases the complexity of IT infrastructure management and cybersecurity risks. We believe that the use of AI technology can accelerate digital transformation across various industries. Specifically, the emergence of AIOps helps organizations process data more quickly and accurately, as well as carry out complex operations more efficiently. Sangfor SkyOps In recent years, Sangfor has invested heavily in AI and big data technologies, including AIOps. It is recognized as a Representative Vendor in AIOps by the Gartner Market Guide for its SkyOps engine. Sangfor SkyOps uses over 50 AI algorithms and correlates vast amounts of data to offer granular operation and maintenance for IT infrastructure and cloud platforms. It addresses over 150 typical failure scenarios, predicts issues 7-30 days in advance, detects problems within a minute, and pinpoints them in three minutes, significantly improving operational efficiency. Key Capabilities of Sangfor SkyOps Full-Stack Resource Monitoring SkyOps provides extensive monitoring capabilities across software and hardware layers, including virtual machines (VMs), desktop applications, databases, business health status, resource status, cloud platforms, servers, storage, CPUs, memory, and RAID. It creates a unified data collection system that covers over 500 monitoring metrics, enabling rapid detection and remediation of issues. Hardware Failure Prediction and Detection  SkyOps predicts disk issues in advance and provides an overview of potential risks. It alerts operations staff to inspect hard drives and suggests migrating business operations to prevent downtime and data loss. The system also forecasts memory failures and recommends immediate replacement of faulty memory sticks. Additionally, it predicts hardware failures 7-30 days in advance with over 90% accuracy using log and metric data. Resource Forecasting SkyOps accurately forecasts the resource demands of hosts and VMs with a 96.8% accuracy rate. It provides early warnings for resource overloads, preventing risks caused by emergency capacity expansion and guiding rational scaling based on historical trends. Alert Correlation and Root Cause Analysis SkyOps combines AI algorithms and domain expertise for slow service detection and root cause analysis. It automatically diagnoses faults and provides remediation suggestions. Alert correlation reduces over 90% of repetitive alerts, improving operational efficiency by 30% and cutting the Mean Time to Identify (MTTI) by 50%. Network Quality of Service (QoS) Analysis SkyOps’ network QoS analysis technology analyzes and predicts network performance, correlating different network layers for a unified operational view. It identifies over 50 common failure scenarios within minutes, reducing the risk of faults by 70%. AIOps in Sangfor Products SkyOps is integrated into Sangfor Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and uses technologies like operational knowledge graphs, deep learning, transfer learning, and small sample learning. SkyOps uses extensive data and computational power for deep learning algorithms, covering 150+ typical fault scenarios. It predicts hardware failures 7-30 days in advance and identifies root causes in one second with over 90% accuracy. SkyOps in Sangfor HCI is scheduled for international release in October 2023. Sangfor Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) integrates the IOM platform, which is equipped with a full-stack intelligent operations and maintenance engine. IOM automatically detects and resolves over 70% of virtual desktop resource bottlenecks, cutting the time needed to identify and repair 50% of faults to within one minute. IOM in Sangfor VDI is scheduled for international release in Q4 2023. In the face of emerging technologies and complex challenges, Sangfor continues to innovate to Make Digital Transformation Simpler and Secure for every organization. Our ongoing exploration and application of AIOps aim to help our customers improve operational efficiency and advance toward a brighter digital future.   Source: 1. Gartner, Inc., Market Guide for AIOps, China, By Leo Li, Matt Crossley, Padraig Byrne, Published August 31, 2023 Disclaimer: GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission.  Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

A Strong Performer with a 100% "Willingness to Recommend" Score among 25 Overall Reviews Sangfor Technologies (hereafter referred to as Sangfor), a global leader in AI-enabled and integrated cybersecurity and cloud computing, proudly announced its recognition in the latest edition of Gartner Peer Insight "Voice of the Customer" for Full-Stack Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software¹ (hereafter referred to as VoC for Full-Stack HCI Software). This marks the fourth consecutive year that Sangfor has been recognized in this publication (formerly known as Gartner Voice of the Customer: Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software), having also been included in 2020, 2021, and 2022. It is notable to us that Sangfor received the distinction of "Strong Performer" in the Voice of the Customer quadrants and received a 100% "Willingness to Recommend" among 25 overall reviews. We believe that these recognitions affirm the exceptional capabilities of our HCI solution and the first-class user experience enjoyed by our customers. What is Gartner Voice of the Customer? For readers who are unfamiliar with this Gartner publication, "Voice of the Customer is a document that synthesizes Gartner Peer Insights' reviews into insights for IT decision makers¹."   Gartner Peer Insights is "a crowdsourced enterprise review platform that relies on dynamic data¹." Gartner states that "Key to maintaining the integrity of the site is our ongoing moderation and validation of those reviews. Reviews are examined before publishing to the site and periodically, post publishing¹." Sangfor's Highlights in VoC for Full-Stack HCI Software In addition to being recognized as a "Strong Performer" and receiving a 100% "Willingness to Recommend" score, up to Sep. 20, Sangfor HCI received an Overall Rating of 4.8 out of 5 among 94 overall reviews, earning 4.8 for both the “Product Capabilities” and “Service & Support” categories. Among the reviewers, 56% hail from enterprises with revenues ranging from 50M-1B USD and 16% from enterprises with 1B-10B USD in revenue. 28% of reviewers are affiliated with the public sector, government, or education. In terms of industries, 20% of reviewers are from the healthcare sector, 16% are from the finance and government sectors, and 12% are from the education sector. We believe that these figures collectively demonstrate our capacity and versatility to serve a wide range of organizations, spanning from SMEs to large corporations, from the private sector to the public sector, and across an array of industries. Sangfor is also the only "Strong Performer" in the Voice of the Customer for Full-Stack HCI Software Asia/Pacific, a distinction we believe reinforces our local expertise and the exceptional local support services we provide in this region. A Glimpse into Sangfor HCI Reviews on Gartner Peer Insights Customers from various industries and of varying organization sizes have kindly shared their opinions and experiences with Sangfor HCI. Let's delve into several reviews of Sangfor HCI on Gartner Peer Insights that fall within the 18-month submission period for the Gartner VoC for Full-Stack HCI Software, ending 30 June 2023. In one review titled "Best HCI When It Comes To Recoverability, Reliability, Security And Productivity," the Division Head of IT of a Finance industry customer scored Sangfor HCI 5/5 for each category (Product Capabilities, Integration & Deployment, Service & Support, and Evaluation & Contracting) and left the following comment: I'm a user of traditional setup where we have several host and using enterprise storage, the performance is acceptable since it is using SSD's. But maintenance is quite challenging because I need someone who will manage the server, the storage, the SAN switch and the hypervisor. With HCI the management is so easy and you don't need different Engineers to manage the infrastructure. I can say that performance of our Systems have improved so much...we have this one system wherein 1 query takes more or less 30minutes, but when we migrated to HCI query is now only 1minute. In another review, the Manager of IT Services of a telecommunications industry customer with revenues exceeding 30B USD also scored full marks for each category and said this about Sangfor HCI: The HCI Server run stably since it online. With it powerful feature, I can run my business system without any problem. The Head of the IT Department of a finance industry customer wrote a review titled "Creating New Server Very Easy And Excellent Quality Support Team" and made the following comment:  Simple to maintain all the VM and Excellent GUI, software-defined IT infrastructure make the product more effective and efficient, Performance better than old system. And which makes me most happy is…. if we have any technical issue, the Technical Engineer are ready to support with quality of excellent skill to be delivered even though it’s not in office hours. To read the entirety of reviews, explore the Sangfor HCI webpage on Gartner Peer Insights, available here. Sangfor would like to extend its heartfelt thanks to all customers for their unwavering support. Your positive experiences and success stories serve as the catalysts behind our continuous innovation and pursuit of excellence to Make Your Digital Transformation Simpler and Secure. Discover Sangfor HCI Sangfor Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), powered by cutting-edge virtualization technology, seamlessly integrates compute, storage, networking, security, and management into a unified software stack. Whether running on Sangfor's unified aServer appliance or commercially available x86 servers, Sangfor HCI offers an agile, simple, resilient, and scalable software-defined data center. It optimizes performance and reliability, streamlines operations and maintenance, and significantly reduces data center footprint. Sangfor HCI caters to a wide range of digital transformation use cases across industries, including mission-critical application hosting, hybrid cloud, virtual desktop infrastructure, remote office/branch office, distributed storage, continuous data protection (CDP), and disaster recovery. Sangfor was also named as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner Market Guide for Full-Stack Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software². Visit the Sangfor HCI webpage to learn more about its full range of features, advantages, customer success stories, testimonials, and more!   Contact Us for Business Inquiry   Sources: 1. Gartner Inc., Voice of the Customer for Full-Stack Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software, By Peer Contributors, Published September 18, 2023 2. Gartner Inc., Market Guide for Full-Stack Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software, By Jeffrey Hewitt et al., Published March 14, 2023 Disclaimer: GARTNER and PEER INSIGHTS are trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a popular choice for modernizing data centers and supporting mission-critical enterprise applications. However, HCI also brings new challenges for data security and compliance, especially when it comes to managing encryption keys across multiple platforms and environments. In this post, we will introduce how Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS work together to provide a secure and compliant solution for key management on HCI. Compliance Challenges for Key Management on HCI HCI simplifies the deployment and management of compute, storage, and network resources by consolidating them into a single platform. However, this also means that the encryption keys that protect the data stored on HCI need to be managed in a centralized and consistent way. Some of the compliance challenges for key management on HCI include: Ensuring that encryption keys are stored securely and separately from the data they protect, to prevent unauthorized access or tampering. Implementing policies and controls to govern the life cycle of encryption keys, such as creation, rotation, revocation, backup, and recovery. Supporting multiple encryption standards and algorithms, such as AES, RSA, ECC, and KMIP, to meet the requirements of different applications and regulations. Integrating with various cloud services and platforms, such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, VMware, and Kubernetes, to enable seamless encryption and key management across hybrid environments. Auditing and reporting on the usage and status of encryption keys, to demonstrate compliance with internal and external policies and regulations. Thales CipherTrust KMS: A Trusted Solution for Encryption Key Management Thales CipherTrust KMS is a comprehensive solution for encryption key management that addresses the compliance challenges for key management on HCI. Thales CipherTrust KMS offers the following benefits: It provides a centralized platform for managing encryption keys across multiple platforms and environments, including HCI, cloud, virtualization, containers, databases, applications, and devices. It supports various encryption standards and algorithms, such as AES, RSA, ECC, and KMIP, to enable interoperability and compatibility with different encryption products and services. It enables separation of duties between data owners and key custodians, by securely storing encryption keys in a dedicated hardware security module (HSM) or in the cloud. It automates key lifecycle management processes, such as creation, rotation, revocation, backup, and recovery, based on predefined policies and schedules. It integrates with various cloud services and platforms, such as AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, Google Cloud KMS, VMware vSphere, Kubernetes, etc., to enable consistent encryption and key management across hybrid environments. It provides audit trails and reports on the usage and status of encryption keys, to facilitate compliance monitoring and reporting. Sangfor HCI: A Leading Platform for Hyperconverged Infrastructure Sangfor HCI is a leading hyperconverged infrastructure platform that provides a one-stop solution for cloud computing and data center transformation. Sangfor HCI offers the following benefits: It simplifies the deployment and management of compute, storage, security, and network resources by consolidating them into a single platform that can be easily scaled out according to business needs. It enhances the performance and reliability of applications by leveraging advanced technologies such as NVMe SSDs, RDMA, etc. It reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) by optimizing resource utilization and eliminating unnecessary hardware purchases and maintenance costs. It supports various types of workloads and applications, such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), database (DB), artificial intelligence (AI), etc., by providing flexible configuration options and tailored solutions. It enables seamless integration with Sangfor Managed Cloud Service (MCS) to enable hybrid cloud scenarios such as cloud bursting, disaster recovery, backup, etc. How Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS Work Together Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS work together to provide a secure and compliant solution for key management on HCI. The integration between Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS enables the following capabilities: Encryption of data at rest on Sangfor HCI using AES-256 algorithm with XTS mode. Encryption of data in transit between Sangfor HCI nodes using TLS 1.2 protocol with AES-256 algorithm with GCM mode. Centralized management of encryption keys on Thales CipherTrust KMS using KMIP protocol. Secure storage of encryption keys on Thales CipherTrust KMS using HSM or cloud service. Automated key lifecycle management on Thales CipherTrust KMS using policies and schedules. Seamless integration with cloud services and platforms using Thales CipherTrust KMS connectors and APIs. Use Cases for CipherTrust KMS on Sangfor HCI There are many use cases for CipherTrust on HCI, such as: Protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access or theft, such as personal information, financial records, intellectual property, etc. Meeting compliance requirements for data security and privacy, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, etc. Enabling secure data migration and replication across different platforms and environments, such as HCI, cloud, virtualization, containers, etc. Supporting disaster recovery and backup scenarios by ensuring data availability and integrity in case of system failure or outage. Enhancing data governance and auditability by tracking and reporting on the usage and status of encryption keys. Conclusion Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS provide a secure and compliant solution for key management on HCI. By integrating Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS, organizations can benefit from the simplicity, performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of HCI, while ensuring the security, compliance, interoperability, and automation of encryption key management. To learn more about Sangfor HCI and Thales CipherTrust KMS, please visit  https://cpl.thalesgroup.com/partners/sangfor-technologies-inc  or contact our sales representatives.   Contact Us for Business Inquiry