A health insurance provider in Tennessee was recently fined $1.5 million by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for a violation that occurred in October of 2009.  The violation, a loss of protected health information, occurred when 57 computer hard drives were taken from a training facility while employees were preparing to relocate.  The PHI data on the hard drives was also unencrypted.  The company also provided free credit reporting to nearly all of its 3.1 million customers since it could not determine the actual number of affected customers.

We all know the complexities and costs of managing large geographically separated fleets of desktops.  Just maintaining hardware, OS patches and AV software updates tend to consume all of the small amount of resources that most small to mid-size companies have in their IT budget.  And that doesn’t even start to add the complexities of encrypting data at rest on those fleets of pc’s.

An often talked about benefit of Virtual Desktops is data security.  However, I’m not sure that discussion sinks in deeply since we’re all worried about how much RAM we might need and how many IOPS we have to plan for in order to avoid the dreaded boot storm.  But, this benefit is real and in this case all the thieves would have walked away with COULD have been some dumb thin clients.  In the VDI world the PHI that was stored on these disks would have never left the data center and had any of the trainees or trainers stored PHI data on their desktops, the data would still have remained in the data center.

I realize there are long lists of pro’s and con’s along with ROI and TCO models that companies must go through prior to choosing or not choosing VDI but, these 1.5 million reasons go a long way to proving that VDI can provide many more benefits to businesses than just easier patch or software deployment tasks.

Here are instructions on how to configure a Nexus 5K with a FEX line card. This is for connecting one FEX to one Nexus5K using two connections that we will put into a port-channel.

On the Nexus 5K:

NEXUS5K#configure terminal
NEXUS5K(config)#interface ethernet1/1
NEXUS5K(config-if)#description UPLINK TO FEX101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#switchport mode fex-fabric
NEXUS5K(config-if)#fex associate 101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#exit

NEXUS5K(config)#interface ethernet1/2
NEXUS5K(config-if)#description UPLINK TO FEX101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#switchport mode fex-fabric
NEXUS5K(config-if)#fex associate 101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#exit

At this point the Nexus 5K should see the FEX and start the image download. Once this is completed you can configure the interfaces into a port-channel.

NEXUS5K(config)#interface port-channel 101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#switchport mode fex-fabric
NEXUS5K(config-if)#fex associate 101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#exit

NEXUS5K(config)#interface ethernet 1/1
NEXUS5K(config-if)#channel-group 101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#exit

NEXUS5K(config)#interface ethernet1/2
NEXUS5K(config-if)#channel-group 101
NEXUS5K(config-if)#end
NEXUS5K#copy run start

At this point you should have your FEX connected to your Nexus 5K and be able to configure the ports of the FEX.

*For some reason my screenshots will not upload today. I will get them uploaded as soon as the issue is resolved. Thanks,

Recently Cisco has just released its 5500-X series Firewalls. These are context aware firewalls, that deliver everything we loved about the previous generation ASA’s, but include multigigabit performance, flexable interface options, and optionally provide broad and deep network security without the need for additional hardware modules. I am really looking forward to working with these.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps6032/ps6094/ps6120/qa_c67-700608.pdf

Here is a great article on how to safeguard your data if you are a small business. The importance of making sure your data is safe cannot be understated. In today’s business world Data is most often the company. Lose your data lose your company.

http://www.crn.com/blogs-op-ed/channel-voices/232700473/how-to-safeguard-small-business-data-in-10-steps.htm

In another move that shows everything is moving rapidly to the cloud. Cisco has acquired ClearAccess. They are makers of software that allows service providers to easily provision and manage residential and mobile devices. It will be interesting to see how this integrates with everything else that Cisco is offering.