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Certified Ubuntu Images Available in SoftLayer

In partnership with Canonical, we are excited to announce today that SoftLayer is now an Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud Partner for Ubuntu guest images.

For clients, this means you can harness the value of deploying Ubuntu certified images in SoftLayer. The value to our clients includes:

  • Running Ubuntu on SoftLayer’s high performance and customizable virtual and bare metal server offerings
  • Ubuntu cloud guest image updates with enablement, publication, development, and maintenance across all data centers. Customers will have the latest Ubuntu features, compliance accreditations and security updates
  • Quality assurance ensures that customers enjoy one of the highest-quality Ubuntu experiences, including some of the fastest security patching of any Linux provider
  • Archive mirrors for faster updates retrieval for Ubuntu images
  • The opportunity to engage with Canonical for enterprise-grade support on Ubuntu cloud guest images, and use Landscape, Canonical’s award-winning system monitoring tool

In a continued effort to enhance client experience, SoftLayer’s partnership with Canonical assures clients as they look to accelerate transformation on Ubuntu workloads with a consistent SoftLayer experience.

“Canonical has a broad partnership with IBM with Ubuntu images already available on LinuxOne, Power and Z Systems,” said Anand Krishnan, EVP, Cloud, Canonical. “By signing this new public cloud partnership with SoftLayer we have made Ubuntu images available for its customers.”

Canonical continually maintains, tests, and updates certified Ubuntu images, making the latest versions available through Softlayer within minutes of their official release by Canonical. This means that you will always have the latest version of Certified Ubuntu images.

Please visit these pages for more information:

Find an Ubuntu Partner

Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud

About Canonical

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading OS for container, cloud, scale-out and hyperscale computing. Sixty-five percent of large-scale OpenStack deployments are on Ubuntu, using both KVM and the pure-container LXD hypervisor for the world’s fastest private clouds. Canonical provides enterprise support and services for commercial users of Ubuntu.

Canonical leads the development of Juju, the model-driven operations system, and MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service), which creates a physical server cloud and IPAM for amazing data center operational efficiency. Canonical is a privately held company.

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Cloud, Interrupted: The Official SoftLayer Podcast, Episode 3

You’re never going to believe this. You already know the second episode of Cloud, Interrupted—the one, the only, the official SoftLayer podcast—hit the streets in December. And now, coming in hot, we’re bringing you the long-awaited third episode of Cloud, Interrupted—only a month after the last one! Contain your excitement. We’re getting good at this.

In the third episode of our authoritative, esteemed podcast, we discuss why our first podcasts were recorded in wind tunnels, we pat ourselves on the back for being doers and not scholars, and we reveal the humble, testosterone-fueled origins of the iconic Server Challenge.

Join Kevin Hazard, director of digital content, Phil Jackson, lead technology evangelist, and Teddy Vandenberg, manager of network provisioning, as they wreak havoc interrupting the world of cloud. Yet again.

You skipped that fluff-filled intro, didn’t you? We’ll reward your impatience with the CliffsNotes:

Cloud, Interrupted, Episode 3: In the end, you’ve gotta start somewhere.

  • [00:00:01] Yo yo yo, it’s the new and improved bleep bloops!
  • [00:00:25] We’ve finally stopped recording Cloud, Interrupted from our pillow forts. Now we just follow the mountains and valleys.
  • [00:04:23] So you want to host your own podcast? Cool. Take it from us on the ultimate, definitive, pretty-much-only guide to success: gear, software, and magical editing.
  • [00:06:24] Teddy takes us on a boring tangent about startups that’s not really a tangent at all. (You decide if it’s boring.)
  • [00:07:25] Ha ha, Kevin totally used to trick out his MySpace page.
  • [00:09:16] GOOD JOB, PHIL!
  • [00:09:26] Phil was THE most popular kid in school. That’s how he started programming.
  • [00:13:40] There are two types of technical people: those that do and those that read the docs. Teddy doesn’t read the docs. Ask him about YUM.
  • [00:17:59] C’mon, Kevin. No one wants to build a server at a conference for fun. What a dumb idea!

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/cloud-interrupted-official-softlayer-podcast-episode-3

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Use DSR to Take a Load Off Your Load Balancer

Direct server return (DSR) is a load balancing scheme that allows service requests to come in via the load balancer virtual IP (VIP). The responses are communicated by the back-end servers directly to the client. The load is taken off the load balancer as the return traffic is sent directly to the client from the back-end server, bypassing it entirely. You may want to do this if you have larger files to be served or traffic that doesn’t need to be transformed at all on its way back to the client.

Here’s how it works: Incoming requests are assigned a VIP address on the load balancer itself. Then the load balancer passes the request to the appropriate server while only modifying the destination MAC address to one of the back-end servers.

netscaler_DSR_workflow

You need to be aware of the following when using DSR:

  • Address resolution protocol (ARP) requests for the VIP must be ignored by the back-end servers if the load balancer and back-end servers are on the same subnet. If not, the VIP traffic routing will be bypassed as the back-end server establishes a direct connection with the client.
  • The servers handling the DSR requests must respond to heartbeat requests with their own IP and must respond to requests for content with the load balancer VIP.
  • Application acceleration is not a possibility because the load balancer does not handle the responses from the backend servers.

 

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/use-dsr-take-load-your-load-balancer

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SL-APS: The faster way for resellers to offer SoftLayer services

SL-APS is a SoftLayer infrastructure application package that allows a simple and fast way for cloud service providers to offer new and existing SoftLayer services to their customers. Since it is based onAPS Standard’s Application Packaging Standard (APS), you can get your Odin Cloud Marketplace Storefront up and running in a matter of a days—instead of spending months to develop and integrate—so you can sell and deploy SoftLayer services (virtual servers, bare metal servers, network devices, etc.) faster than ever before.

Putting the “r” back in fee

Providers (distributors and resellers) can download the software package from IBM free of charge. Once installed, the SL-APS package will dynamically discover SoftLayer products, pricing, and available data centers and display them in a “configurator” interface.

You’re in control

Providers then customize or simplify the product set by building a list of products they wish to offer to customers. The package also accommodates Provider-Reseller-Customer Sales models as well as two-tier distribution.

IBM SL-APS v3.0 (July 2016) provides deeper integration with many of SoftLayer’s catalog items and services. New features include:

  • SAML SSO to SoftLayer Customer Portal: Odin SL-APS customers can one-click securely sign on to their SoftLayer customer portal using a strong one-time security token.
  • SoftLayer Invoice-Driven Billing: All Odin invoices relating to SoftLayer services will be generated directly based on SoftLayer invoices, on customer’s SoftLayer monthly billing date, converted for customer/reseller currency and discount rate.
  • Detailed Reseller and End-Customer Invoices: Resellers and end-customers will receive detailed invoices containing all SoftLayer devices and associated charges, converted for customer/reseller currency and discount rate.
  • POWER8 servers (additional latest SoftLayer catalog item): POWER8 servers provide bare metal power for big data workloads.

source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/sl-aps-faster-way-resellers-offer-softlayer-services

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New SoftLayer Accounts Now With IBMid Authentication

New SoftLayer Accounts Now With IBMid Authentication

 Hi, and welcome to SoftLayer. We’re so happy you are joining our cloud family. For our new customers, if you haven’t heard the news, SoftLayer was acquired by IBM in 2013. With this comes transition, including the setup of an IBMid.

But this is a great news for our new customers because not only does this ID allow you to manage your SoftLayer account, but you can also access Bluemix-based services and resources by using a single sign-on. Although separate accounts, you can link your Bluemix and SoftLayer accounts. This is just a step toward providing you with an optimal IBM Cloud user experience.

Here’s what you need to know.

image1

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/new-softlayer-accounts-now-ibmid-authentication

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Cloud HSM: Our secure key management approach

Customers concerned about key management often require a HSM (hardware security module). They want the same level of key protection in the cloud as they do on-premises. An HSM provides guaranteed access to encrypted data by authorized users by storing mission-critical master encryption keys in HSM and backing it up. Powered by SafeNet’s HSM and hosted in geographically dispersed data centers under controlled environments independently validated for compliance, IBM Cloud HSM offers enterprises high-assurance protection for encryption keys and also helps customers meet their corporate, contractual, and regulatory compliance requirements.

You can easily order Cloud HSM through the SoftLayer customer portal or Softlayer APIs. A dedicated FIPS complaint HSM device will be provisioned inside your private network.

Your HSM access credentials that are provided to you are reset as part of your first login. This ensures that you are the only entity with access to your HSM functionality. SoftLayer is responsible for the management of the HSM in terms of health and uptime; this is done without access to the partitions, roles, keys stored and managed on the HSM. You are responsible for the use of the HSM to manage and backup the customer’s keys.

Cloud HSM supports a variety of use cases and applications, such as database encryption, digital rights management (DRM), public key infrastructure (PKI), authentication and authorization, document signing, and transaction processing. NAT and IP aliasing will not work with HSM, while BYOIP might be possible in future. Currently, HSM is not in federal data centers, but it certainly is on the roadmap.

Configuration

Cloud HSM is “used” and accessed in exactly the same way as an on-prem managed HSM.

As part of provisioning, you receive administrator credentials for the appliance, initialize the HSM, manage the HSM, create roles and create HSM partitions on the appliance. After creating HSM partitions, you can configure a Luna client (on a virtual server) that allows applications to use the APIs provided by the HSM. The cryptographic partition is a logical and physical security boundary whose knowledge is secure with the partition owner authorized by you. Any attempts to tamper the physical appliance will result in data being erased. Similarly incorrect attempts to login beyond a threshold will result in erasing partitions, hence we highly recommend backing up your keys.

 

Source :http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/cloud-hsm

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Magic Quadrants, Performance Metrics & Water Cooler Discussions

When you make decisions about extending your infrastructure footprint into the cloud, you do so very intentionally. You hunt down analyst reports, ask peers for recommendations, and seek out quantitative research to compare the seemingly endless array of cloud-based options. But how can you be sure that you’re getting the most relevant information for your business case? Bias exists and definitions matter. So each perspective is really just a single input in the decision-making process.

The best process for evaluating any cloud solution involves four simple steps:

  1. Understand what you need.
  2. Understand what you’re buying.
  3. Understand how you’ll use it.
  4. Test it yourself.

Understand What You Need

The first step in approaching cloud adoption is to understand the resources your business actually needs. Are you looking to supplement your on-premises infrastructure with raw compute and storage power? Do your developers just need runtimes and turnkey services? Would you prefer infrastructure-abstracted software functionality?

In the past, your answers to those questions may send you to three different cloud providers, but the times are changing. The lines between “Infrastructure as a Service,” “Platform as a Service,” and “Software as a Service” have blurred, and many cloud providers are delivering those offerings side-by-side. While SoftLayer cloud resources would be considered “infrastructure,” SoftLayer is only part of the broader IBM Cloud story.

Within the IBM Cloud portfolio, customers find IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions to meet their unique workload demands. From an infrastructure perspective alone, IBM Cloud offers cloud servers and storage from SoftLayer; containers, databases, deployment, and monitoring tools within Bluemix; and turnkey OpenStack private cloud environments from Blue Box. We are integrating every component of the IBM Cloud portfolio into a seamless user experience so that when a customer needs to add cognitive capabilities or a private cloud or video services to their bare metal server infrastructure, the process is quick and easy.

Any evaluation of SoftLayer as a cloud provider would be shortsighted if it doesn’t take into account the full context of how IBM Cloud is bringing together multiple unique, highly differentiated offerings to provide a dynamic, full-featured portfolio of tools and services in the cloud. And as you determine what you need in the cloud, you should look for a provider that enables the same kind of cross-functional flexibility so that you don’t end up splintering your IT environment across multiple providers.

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/evaluating-cloud-iaas-gartner-forrester-frost-sullivan

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SoftLayer API Overview

SoftLayer’s Application Programming Interface (API) is the development interface that gives developers and system administrators direct interaction with SoftLayer’s backend system. The functionality exposed by our API allows users to perform remote server management, monitoring and retrieve information from SoftLayer’s various systems such as accounting, inventory and DNS. Our API powers many of the features in the SoftLayer Customer Portal, which typically means if an interaction is possible in the Customer Portal, it may be executed in our API, as well.

Who Should Use the API?

The SoftLayer API (SLAPI) is available to all SoftLayer customers at no additional charge. We encourage our customers with a basic knowledge of object-oriented programming to take full advantage of the capabilities the SLAPI offers. While SoftLayer customers use the SLAPI for a variety of tasks, the ability to programmatically interact with all portions of the SoftLayer environment within the API results in the majority of our customers using the SLAPI to automate tasks.

Where to go From Here

Now that you know the basics, it is time to start coding. Check out our Getting Started Guide to see how to create an API user and make your first call. We also maintain a number of guides for specific languages:

  • C#
  • Perl
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Visual Basic .NET

 

Source :  http://sldn.softlayer.com/article/SoftLayer-API-Overview