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SoftLayer and AWS: What’s the Difference?

People often compare SoftLayer with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

It’s easy to understand why. We’ve both built scalable infrastructure platforms to provide cloud resources to the same broad range of customers—from individual entrepreneurs to the world’s largest enterprises.

But while the desire to compare is understandable, the comparison itself isn’t quite apt. The SoftLayer platform is fundamentally different from AWS.

In fact, AWS could be run on SoftLayer. SoftLayer couldn’t be run on AWS.

AWS provisions in the public cloud.

When AWS started letting customers have virtual machines deployed on the infrastructure that AWS had built for their e-commerce business, AWS accelerated the adoption of virtual server hosting within the existing world of Web hosting.In an AWS cloud environment, customers order the computing and storage resources they need, and AWS deploys those resources on demand. The mechanics of that deployment are important to note, though.

AWS has data centers full of physical servers that are integrated with each other in a massive public cloud environment. These servers are managed and maintained by AWS, and they collectively make up the available cloud infrastructure in the facility.

AWS installs a virtualization layer (also known as hypervisor) on these physical servers to tie the individual nodes into the environment’s total capacity. When a customer orders a cloud server from AWS, this virtualization layer finds a node with the requested resources available and provisions a server image with the customer’s desired operating system, applications, etc. The entire process is quick and automated, and each customer has complete control over the resources he or she ordered.

That virtualization layer is serving a purpose, and it may seem insignificant, but it highlights a critical difference in their platform and ours:

AWS automates and provisions at the hypervisor level, while SoftLayer automates and provisions at the data center level.

Source: http://blog.softlayer.com/2014/softlayer-and-aws-whats-difference

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Tips from the Abuse Department: DMCA Takedown Notices

If you are in the web hosting business or you provide users with access to store content on your servers, chances are that you’re familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If you aren’t familiar with it, you certainly should be. All it takes is one client plagiarizing an article or using a filesharing program unscrupulously, and you could find yourself the recipient of a scary DMCA notice from a copyright holder. We’ve talked before about how to file a DMCA complaint with SoftLayer, but we haven’t talked in detail about SoftLayer’s role in processing DMCA complaints or what you should do if you find yourself on the receiving end of a copyright infringement notification.

The most important thing to understand when it comes to the way the abuse team handles DMCA complaints is that our procedures aren’t just SoftLayer policy — they are the law. Our role in processing copyright complaints is essentially that of a middleman. In order to protect our Safe Harbor status under the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), we must enforce any complaint that meets the legal requirements of a takedown notice. That DMCA complaint must contain specific elements and be properly formatted in order to be considered valid.

Responding to a DMCA Complaint

When we receive a complaint that meets the legal requirements of a DMCA takedown notice, we must relay the complaint to our direct customer and enforce a deadline for removal of the violating material. We are obligated to remove access to infringing content when we are notified about it, and we aren’t able to make a determination about the validity of a claim beyond confirming that all DMCA requirements are met.

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2013/tips-from-the-abuse-department-dmca-takedown-notices

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When in doubt with firewalls, “How Do I?” it out

Spring is a great time to take stock and wipe off the cobwebs at home. Within the sales engineering department at SoftLayer, we thought it was a good idea to take a deeper look at our hardware firewall products and revamp our support documentation. Whether you’re using our shared hardware firewalls, a dedicated hardware firewall, or the FortiGate Security Appliance, we have lots of new information to share with you on KnowledgeLayer.

One aspect we’re highlighting is a series of articles entitled, “How Do I?” within the Firewalls KnowledgeLayer node.  A “How Do I?” provides you with a detailed explanation about how to use a SoftLayer service or tool with the customer portal or API.

For example, perhaps your cloud admin has just won the lottery, and has left the company. And now you need to reorient yourself with your company’s security posture in the cloud. Your first step might be to read “How Do I View My Firewalls?” which provides step-by-step instructions about how to view and manage your hardware firewalls at SoftLayer within the customer portal. If you discover you’ve been relying on iptables instead of an actual firewall to secure your applications, don’t panic—ordering and securing your infrastructure with hardware firewalls can be done in minutes. Be sure to disable any accounts and API keys you no longer need within the Account tab. If you’re new to SoftLayer and our portal, take a look at our on-demand webinars and training video series.

Now that you’ve identified the types of firewalls you have protecting your infrastructure, fel free to drill in to our updated articles that can help you out. If you’re running a dedicated hardware firewall and want to know how to manage it within the portal, this “How Do I?” article is for you. We’ve also tailored “How Do I?” entries for shared hardware firewalls and the FortiGate Security Appliance to help you beat the heat in no time. The SoftLayer customer portal also provides you with the ability to download firewall access logs in a CSV file. See for yourself how the Internet can truly be a hostile environment for a web-facing server. Every access attempt blocked by your firewall has saved your server from the work of processing software firewall rules, and keeps your application safer.

We know that not all issues can be covered by how-to articles. To address that, we’ve also added a number of new entries to the Firewalls FAQ section.

Keep the feedback coming! We’re here to help answer your sales-related technical questions. And be sure to check out our latest Sales Engineering Webinar: Creating a Digital Defense Plan with Firewalls.

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/knowledge-layer-how-to