The fight of the century: Data Center VS Cloud! Let’s go!

In this blog we have always been eager for fights or competitions of whatever we please. We are like that, like fierce pokemon trainers who want to finally find out who has the greatest capabilities to win. They have praised us for it, they have hated us for it, but it does not matter, the point here is not having fun, but to give the most complete information about the litigants and the battle, so that the user can see closely who they should choose in the future. For all these reasons, today we have in our very own ring Data Center VS Cloud.

How to choose between a data center and Cloud storage?

When the decisive moment arrives, a company must decide about what it intends to do with data storage: “Do we send everything to the Cloud? Do we store our data right here, in our datacenter? Do we outsource them to a professional data center? After all, there are multiple factors, financial elements, the logistics of the company, different clauses and details. A lot of regulation to take into account that has you sweating when it comes to finding the correct answer.

The truth? In this article we are going to expose situations in which data centers beat the Cloud, because, for better or for worse, we are facing a foreseen victory.

Do you need more security?

It is true that the Cloud is no longer sooo in cloud 9 and both the Cloud and its computing and data storage solutions have made great progress in recent times. In fact, they offer a great infrastructure with protected access and the add-on of pay-as-you-go. But if you really want to have the appropriate protocols, compliance and security software, well, your data can be better and more secure in a data storage center, external or at home. There are many companies that offer external, professional and guaranteed data storage, which certifies that the information is your exclusive property and that the data will always be kept safe.

As we have said, storage security in IT Clouds is not as weak as some leaks of private pictures of celebrities have led us to believe. What’s more, the Cloud is often the first choice for a large number of companies, but there are certain nuances in Cloud storage that lead others to choose data centers. And there is a certain lack of control when choosing Cloud storage: problems with shared servers, lack of automatic backups, data leaks, fraudulent devices, vulnerable storage gateways, etc.

Combining infrastructure and profitability

If there is something that the clouds look like from the mainland, it is comfort and convenience, and so does the Cloud, something comfortable, agile… However, user fees can end up being quite expensive, depending on the type of services that one might need. An on-premise data center, in your own facilities, can also be one of the most expensive options, in addition that to manage it you must have a good security and IT team that takes care of regular updates and keeps it operational and always ready.

External storage might be the middle ground. Your own space within a data center or as part of a colocation package. If you think about it, you get the advantages of the Cloud without having to spend all that money that normally requires hosting data on a local data center. It is a very attractive option, considered by companies that have started getting consolidated and are now in full growth. Something more robust and reliable than the Cloud and without so many problems with the facilities.

Do you handle sensitive customer data?

Do you know when companies make up their minds quickly in this fierce fight between on-premise vs Cloud? When it comes to collecting, saving and using customer data that if leaked, lost or stolen would mean the destruction of their business, the private life of the person who trusted them or the public welfare in general. To give you an idea, Emperor Palpatine would never hang plans for The Death Star in the Cloud. Too risky.

Imagine then companies that compile and safeguard financial, political, medical, institutional, sensitive data… All of them choose to use physical data centers instead of the Cloud. And the same goes for telecommunications or social media companies. Physical centers are not the best thing ever, but the Cloud has proven itself more often to be vulnerable and easier to be violated more times.

You need a Cold Storage Location

When we talk about a Cold Storage Location we mean the storage of data that is completely offline, that is, they are not in the Cloud at all, they do not relate to the Cloud, they do not want the Cloud, they do not know what the Cloud is. Data is stored on safe physical means and then moved off-site in the event of a cataclysm. Like you know, a dana, a volcanic explosion, the Twister hurricane or a robbery attempt. This data storage option is often used by companies that have long-term compliance dates, financial institutions, brands threatened by ransomware attacks… They all see Cold Storage Location as the safest backup plan they can have.

Conclusion: Then, what about it?

Well, if we have to reach some conclusions, it must be said that storage in the Cloud is often convenient and has its place, but, of course, it is not the only option, nor is it the best for many companies. Data centers are the ones that best help companies, provide them with security, scalability and peace of mind. It is also the only alternative for companies looking for Cold Storage Location.

After this brawl, Cloud VS on-premise, you can take more into account the advantages and disadvantages of each one of them and make the best decision for your company and your customers’ data.

Pandora FMS Monitoring as a service is here!

On the way to perfecting its services, Pandora FMS launches one of the most advanced and complete solutions in its history as monitoring software: Monitoring as a Service (MaaS).

As we all know by now, Pandora FMS is a software for network monitoring that, among many other possibilities, allows visually monitoring the status and performance of several parameters from different operating systems (servers, applications, hardware systems, firewalls, proxies, databases, web servers, routers…). It can also be deployed on almost any operating system and has remote monitoring (WMI, SNMP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP …), etc.

But what concerns us this time is to see how Pandora FMS once again surpasses itself with Monitoring as a Service. Because yes!, it is time for you to have Pandora FMS ready to use and ready to cover all of your needs. Avoid, from now on, wasting valuable resources on installation, maintenance and operation, MaaS is fully intended as a flexible and easy-to-understand subscription model.

Monitoring as a Service (MaaS) advantages

In order not to roughly explain it in a rush, we better go into detail and list some of the most important advantages of Monitoring as a Service (MaaS).

• With Monitoring as a Service, you do not need to invest in an operations center, or in an internal team of engineers to manage monitoring. That’s it, without capital expenditures (capex) or operating expenditures (opex).
• With Pandora FMS as a Service monitoring you may accelerate the time to obtain values.
• Available 24/7, access it anytime, anywhere. There are no downtimes associated with monitoring. Wonderful and available 24/7.
• Generate alerts based on specific business conditions and discover the easy integration of this service with business processes.
• Important: Permanent security. All information is protected, monitored and complies with GDPR.
• Operation services, we can operate for you, saving resources and optimizing startup times.
• Custom integrations, with Pandora FMS specialist consultants at your disposal.
• Deployment projects, to support specialized resources wherever you need them.

Here is our proposal in more detail

What does this mean for your company or business?

Going straight to the point, Monitoring as a service (MaaS) provides unlimited scalability and instant access from anywhere and gets rid of worrying about maintaining storage, servers, backups, and software updates.

It is up to you to discover, right away, how the digital transformation of all business processes makes Monitoring as a Service (MaaS) an essential activity to boost the productivity of your company.

Some frequently asked questions about the solution (FAQ)

Of course, given such a technological scoop, you may have some doubts about the subject. Here we answer several of the most frequent questions that we were asked.

What agent limit does the service have? Does it have an alert or storage limit?

There is no agent limit, although the service starts from 100 agents. There is no limit on alerts or disk storage.

How long is history data stored?

45 days maximum. However, you may optionally hire a history data retention system to store data for up to two years.

What is the service availability? What happens if it crashes on a weekend?

The service availability SLA is 99.726% in Basic service, 99.932% in Standard service and 99.954% in Advanced service. In short, we will make sure it is never down.

In which country are the servers located?

We have several locations, to comply with different legislations, such as GDPR (EU), GPA (UK), CBPR (APEC) and CPA (California).

What security does the service offer?

In addition to an availability SLA guaranteed by contract, our servers are exclusive for each client, we have 24/7 monitoring, and our own system security. Of course, backup is included in the service.

How much does the service cost?

You pay a fee per month, which is calculated on the number of agents you are using that month. So if you increase the number of agents in a certain month, you will pay more that month. However, if you decrease the number of agents, you will pay less. There are also some start-up costs for the service and also some optional packages, such as if you want our engineers to develop a custom integration or help you deploy monitoring in your internal systems.

How is it billed?

Quarterly or semi-annually, with monthly cost calculations, so you can plan growth and costs without surprises.

What does the service include?

From Pandora FMS Enterprise license to the operating system, database management, system optimization, maintenance, updates, emergency patches, integration with Telegram and SMS sending, backup and recovery, preventive maintenance, environment security and any other technical task that may take up operating time. You will only have to operate with Pandora FMS.

What is the difference between Basic, Standard and Advanced services?

With the basic service, if you want to make a report or configure an alert, you can do it directly, without worrying about installing, configuring or parameterizing anything. In the Standard and Advanced service you can ask us to do it for you and we will be happy to do so, the same applies for building remote plugins, creating reports, users, policies, graphs or any other administrative Pandora FMS task. In the Standard and Advanced services you will have a number of hours of service each month for any request you may make, and our technical team will be at your disposal. Our technical team will be at your complete disposal.

What are the service hours?

Full office hours (from 9 AM to 6 PM) in America and Europe. From San Francisco to Moscow.

If you can no longer handle the intrigue and want to see how far the possibilities of Monitoring as a service go, you may now hire the solution through this link.

What is an SLA?

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a document that details the expected level of service guaranteed by a vendor or product. This document generally sets out metrics such as uptime expectations and any payoffs if these levels are not met.

For example, if a provider advertises an uptime of 99.9% and exceeds 43 minutes and 50 seconds of service downtime, technically the SLA has been breached and the customer may be entitled to some type of remuneration depending on the agreement.

What do we want SLAs for?

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) specifies the quality of a service. It is a way of defining the limit of failures or times in which the response to a service is measured. Each service measures its quality in a different way, but in all cases it refers to times, and therefore it can be measured.

For example, if you worked in a restaurant, you would define your customer service SLA with several parameters:

• Maximum time since a customer sits at the table and is served by a waiter.
• Maximum time since you order the drink and it is served to you.
• Maximum time since requesting the bill and paying.

Suppose that in our restaurant, we consider that the most important thing is the initial attention, and that no more than 60 seconds can go by, from when you sit down to when you are served. If we had a fully sensorized business with IoT technology, we could measure the time from when the customer sits at a table until a waiter approaches the table.

That way, we could measure the number of times each waiter manages to serve a customer in the established time. The way to do it can be more or less simple, but let’s keep it simple, suppose that every time they do it in less than 60 seconds they comply and when they do not make it, they do not comply. So if out of ten clients they serve in an hour, they fail only with two, they would be 80% compliant. We could make the average of their entire work day and thus easily compare different employees to find out which one has more “quality” in the metric of “serving a customer when they sit down.”

If we use a monitoring system, we could notify their manager every time that the overall quality of the service drops below 80% and by generating automatic reports, we could each month reward those with the best service compliance percentage and take measures (or fire) for those who are doing it worst.

One of the most important functions of monitoring systems is to measure. And measuring service compliance is essential if we care about quality. Whether we are on the provider side or on the client side.

If you are paying for a service, wouldn’t you like to check that you are actually getting what you pay for?

Sometimes we do well not to trust the measurements of others, and it is necessary to check it for “ourselves.” For this, monitoring tools such as Pandora FMS are essential.

What is the «uptime» or activity time?

Uptime is the amount of time that a service is available and operational. It is generally the most important metric for a website, online service, or web-based provider. Sometimes uptime is mistaken with SLA, but uptime is nothing more than a very common metric in online services that is used to measure SLAs, not an SLA, which as we have seen before is something much broader.

The trade-off is downtime – the amount of time a service is unavailable.

Uptime is usually expressed as a percentage, such as “99.9%”, over a specified period of time (usually one month). For example, an uptime of 99.9% equals 43 minutes and 50 seconds of inactivity.

What are the typical metrics of a supplier?

Those that are agreed between the supplier and the client. Each service will have its own metrics and indicators. Thus, in our Monitoring as a Service (MAAS) we can establish several parameters to be measured, among others, let’s see some of them to better understand how to «measure the service quality» through SLA:

• Minimum response time to a new incident, 1 hr in standard service.
• Critical incident resolution time: 6 hours in standard service.
• Service availability time, 99.932% in the standard service.

When we talk about a time percentage, it generally refers to the annual calculation, so 99.932% corresponds to a total of 5h 57m 38s of service shutdown in a year. We can use our SLA calculator (below to test other percentages).

On the contrary, 1hr would be the inverse calculation, and for this we can use online tools such as uptime.is. By using it we will get that six hours would correspond to:

• Weekly reporting: 99.405 %
• Monthly reporting: 99.863 %
• Quarterly reporting: 99.954 %
• Yearly reporting: 99.989 %

Similarly to the initial waiter example, we can measure compliance with a support SLA by measuring the sum of several factors, if all are met, we are meeting the SLA, otherwise we’re not. This is how Integria IMS measures it, the helpdesk component integrated in Pandora FMS. Pandora FMS clients use Integria for support, and thanks to it we can ensure that we attend to client requests on time.

How to calculate the service SLA time?

Use our online calculator to calculate a service downtime. For example, test 99.99% to see the maximum downtime for a day, a month, or the entire year.

How can Pandora FMS help with SLAs?

Pandora FMS has different tools to exhaustively control the SLAs of your client/supplier. You have SLA reports segmented by hours, days or weeks. That way you can visually assess where the defaults are.

This is an example of an SLA report in a custom time range (one month) with bands by ranges of a few minutes.

There are reports prepared to show the case of information sources with backup so that you can find out the availability of the service from the customer’s point of view and from the internal point of view:

This is an example of a monthly SLA view with detail by hours and days:

This is an example of a monthly SLA report view with a weekly view and daily detail:

This is an example of an SLA report view by months, with simple views by days:

Service monitoring

One of the most advanced functions of Pandora FMS is monitoring services with Pandora FMS. It is used to continuously monitor the status of a service, which, as we have seen at the beginning, is made up of a set of indicators or metrics. This service often has a series of dependencies and weightings (there are things more important than others) and all services have a certain tolerance or margin, especially if they are made up of many elements and some of these are redundant.

The best example is a cluster, where if you have ten servers, you know that the system works perfectly with seven of them. So the service as such can be operational with one, two or up to three machines failing.

In other cases, a service may have non-critical elements, which are part of the service and that we want to control, even if the service is not affected:

One of the advantages of service monitoring is that you can easily get the route to failure, literally being able to find the needle in the haystack. When you talk about technology, the source of a problem can be somewhat tiny compared to the amount of data you receive. Services help us determine the source of the problem and isolate ourselves from informational noise. They also allow to monitor the degree of service compliance in real time and take action before the quality of the service for a customer is affected.

Is Cybersecurity Awareness Month the event of the year?

Welcome back to the incredible and majestic Pandora FMS blog. In today’s post, we are going to deal with an event belonging to the month of October, that depressing month in which we become aware of fall, it is colder and someone keeps cutting short our daylight hours. If April is the month of flowers and November the month of the male mustache for testicular cancer, October is the Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

What is Cybersecurity Awareness Month?

Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which is commemorated every October, was created between the United States government and national industry to ensure that everyone had the necessary resources to stay safe and secure online.

Since its inception, under the supervision of the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance, Cybersecurity Awareness Month has grown stronger and more widespread, reaching out to millions of users and businesses, and all types of corporations and institutions. Today, in 2021, it continues to make an impact, and not only in its country of origin, it already does around the world because, who would not join the cause of feeling more protected in these times we live in?

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Origins

As we’ve explained, the National Cyber Security Alliance and the US Department of Homeland Security launched Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October as a shared effort to help Americans stay safe online. And they did it a few of years ago, at least all those that distance us from October 2004.

When a baby starts to walk, the first steps are short and simple. So were the early Cybersecurity Awareness Month awareness efforts. Most of them focused on giving recommendations on how to update the antivirus, at least twice a year. But little by little they increased their ambitions, their reach and their participation. For example, launching complex campaigns in the industry, involving clients, NGOs and even university campuses.

The organizers made it clear in these years that responsibility for cybersecurity problems is fully shared. From large companies to small users with their battered laptops, all of us must protect our digital treasures and always keep them under supervision.

The European Cybersecurity Month (ECSM)

What is European Cybersecurity Month? The European Cybersecurity Month works, like the American Cybersecurity Awareness Month, as an annual campaign devoted to promoting cybersecurity among users, companies and institutions. The only difference is that the European Cybersecurity Month is promoted by the European Union.

Throughout the month of October, safety information is provided online and awareness is raised through good practices. Activities are carried out around the entire continent: conferences, workshops, seminars, presentations, etc. Everything in order to make us finally aware of digital hygiene.

We must thank the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the European Commission for the fruitful month of European Cybersecurity Month, which, of course, has the full support of the EU Member States.

Some events of Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Like the Homecoming Week for high schools, Cybersecurity Awareness Month is also divided into different segments. We are going to list those established by the National Cybersecurity Alliance this year, 2021.

First week

The first week will be themed on creating strong passwords, using multi-factor authentication, backing up data, and updating software.

Only that way will we be able to realize how dependent we are on technology and reconsider the amount of personal and commercial data that we treasure on platforms located on the Internet. There, at the hand of any cybercriminal.

Second week

The motto? “You must be careful with emails, text messages, and chats opened by strangers and incognitos.” You are just one click away from a suspicious email, link, or attachment, to bother the hell out of you. Indeed phishing and digital scams in general have been on the rise since we began with this pandemic. Since we have the damn COVID among us, phishing attacks represent more than 80% of reported security incidents.

Third week

The third week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month will be focused on supporting, inspiring and applauding students who have chosen, or want to choose, a university career focused on cybersecurity. Whether they are teenagers, adults or confused kids who want to change fields of study. Cybersecurity is cool, youngster! It is fully growing and has space and credits for everyone!

Fourth week

This week we will try to make security a priority for companies more than ever. Incorporate security in products, processes, tools… Promote cybersecurity in employees and teams. Get cybersecurity in the minds of department heads until they themselves celebrate the vanguards and news of this discipline on a daily basis.

Together we check out the key concepts of systems and networks

In the middle of the information century, who has not surfed the Internet or used a computer, be it a desktop or a laptop? But do you really know what a computer is and what it is made of? and what about the Internet?

It is important to know at least the most superficial layer of something as important as computer systems and networks, and therefore, we are going to talk about the key concepts of these two topics.

A computer system is a device made up of the union of hardware and software, which allows the use of this system by a person, whether qualified or not, that depends on the purpose of the system.

But, what does “hardware” and “software” mean? Let’s talk a little more about it.

You can define as hardware the set of physical components that make up a computer system. We are going to define the main components of a computer system, although there are a few more:

• Processor: It is the component in charge of executing all the system programs. It is in turn made up of one or more CPUs.
• RAM memory: This component stores the data and instructions executed by the CPUs and other system components.
• Hard Drives: Information and content are stored here in computer systems.
• Motherboard: It is the component where the others are located, and works as a bridge for communication between them.

Well, now that we have a basic understanding of what hardware is, we move on to software.

Software are all the programs that run on a computer system, among which you may differentiate three types of software:

• System Software: It is responsible for the proper functioning of the operating system and hardware in general, such as device drivers.
• Programming software: They are tools whose sole purpose is the development of new software.
• Application software: It is any program designed to perform one or more specific tasks, for example video games or applications designed for business or education.

We already know what a computer system is, but without communication with the outside we are not making the most out of the potential that these systems have (which is a lot), so we decided to connect it to that abstract site full of information and services: the ‘Internet’.

Everyone knows the term “Internet”, but do we know what the “Internet” is?
We could say that the Internet is the great global network that unites all existing devices, allowing communication between all of them from anywhere on the planet. In turn, this large network is made up of other smaller networks, such as those of a country, city, neighborhood, etc.
Mainly, we distinguish three types of networks:

• LAN: It is the smallest network, a local area network, such as the one in work areas or the one you have at home.
• MAN: It is a somewhat larger network, being able to cover from neighborhoods to cities. They can also be the networks used by large companies for communication between their different offices.
• WAN: It is a network that connects countries or even continents to each other, not devices. We can say that the Internet is the ultimate WAN network.

Ok, we already know what the Internet is made of. But, how do devices communicate on these networks? There are systems used to identify each computer on the network, known as IP addresses. An IP address is, basically, the ID or identifier of a device, so it is unique and unrepeatable.

At the beginning, when the idea of an IP address was created, there were only a few dozen computers in the whole world, and this, as we already know, has gotten quite out of control since then. As a result of this increase, they decided to come up with a new concept, known as DNS (for its acronym Domain Name System).

What the DNS protocol does is, basically, translate the domain name that we enter, either in the web browser or in any other program, and convert it into an IP address, with which it communicates with the destination. Of course, all domain names are stored on DNS servers, scattered around the world to avoid connection overload, and to avoid slow name resolutions.

There are a large number of protocols, each with a different purpose. These protocols are grouped in layers, such as application, transport, Internet or access to the network, according to the TCP/IP model. But, that’s not all. We still lack another important concept in relation to communications between devices, what we know as “ports” of a computer system.

Imagine a road, if all the traffic that wants to enter a city only had a single road, what would happen? Well, the same thing happens in computing, and that is why these virtual ports exist.

These ports range from 0 to 65535, but the first 1024 are reserved for “important” protocols, such as the DNS protocol, which we have mentioned above, belonging to the application layer and that uses port 53 for both UDP and TCP connections.

TCP and UDP are two protocols belonging to the transport layer, whose main difference is that the TCP protocol is connection-oriented. That is, the TCP protocol makes sure that the data reaches its destination, while the UDP protocol sends the data, faster but less securely. This data may even not arrive or at least not fully arrive.

The protocols for web connections or HTTP/HTTPS, both belong to the application layer. Depending on which one you choose, it uses a different port. That is, for HTTP connections, port 80/TCP is used, although it is deprecated due to its lack of security, so the standard has become HTTPS connections, which use port 443/TCP and include a security layer based on SSL/TLS.

Connections made through safe channels or SSH, also from the application layer, use port 22/TCP, and thus we could continue with lots of other protocols.

Of course, these ports are a standard in the systems that receive the requests, the client that initiates the request can use any port that is not reserved to send the request and receive this data. As you can see, this is much easier to communicate with servers, although they can also modify their default ports, but the normal thing is that they do not do so if they want to provide a public service.

Finally, we are going to talk about a concept that, due to the pandemic, is the order of the day: the VPN.

As its name indicates (Virtual Private Network), we can define a VPN as a network “tunnel” that is created between client and server, where data are fully encrypted and sent through the Internet. The common use of VPNs is anonymity on the network, since the IP that is exposed is that of the VPN server, or, also, to be able to visit pages that cannot be accessed from the source country.
In the business environment, this tunnel allows direct communication between the client device with any other device in the network of that server, which allows access to an environment as if we were physically in the office of our company. It also allows access control and registration, which otherwise could not be done.