Category Archives: Data Security

Before we say good bye to AFP

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The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) file sharing service in the MacOS Server is gone. The AFP file server capability was dropped in MacOS version 11, aka Big Sur back in December last year. The AFP client is the last remaining piece in MacOS and may see its days numbered as well as the world of file services evolved from the simple local networks and workgroup collaboration of the 80s and 90s, to something more complex and demanding. The AFP’s decline was also probably aided by the premium prices of Apple hardware, and many past users have switched to Windows for frugality and prudence reasons. SMB/CIFS is the network file sharing services for Windows, and AFP is not offered in Windows natively.

MacOS supports 3 of the file sharing protocols natively – AFP, NFS and SMB/CIFS – as a client. Therefore, it has the capability to collaborate well in many media and content development environments, and sharing and exchanging files easily, assuming that the access control and permissions and files/folders ownerships are worked out properly. The large scale Apple-only network environment is no longer feasible and many studios that continue to use Macs for media and content development have only a handful of machines and users.

NAS vendors that continue to support AFP file server services are not that many too, or at least those who advertise their support for AFP. iXsystems™ TrueNAS® is one of the few. This blog shows the steps to setup the AFP file services for MacOS clients.

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The other pandemic – Datanemic

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It is a disaster. No matter what we do, the leaks and the cracks are appearing faster than we are fixing it. It is a global pandemic.

I am not talking about COVID-19, the pandemic that has affected our lives and livelihood for over a year. I am talking about the other pandemic – the compromise of security of data.

In the past 6 months, the data leaks, the security hacks, the ransomware scourge have been more devastating than ever. Here are a few big ones that happened on a global scale:

Data Security Breach, Cyber Attack, Ransomware

Closer to home, here in South East Asia, we have

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Encryption Key Management in TrueNAS

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iXsystems™ TrueNAS® has moved up a notch when it comes to encrypting data structures in the storage . In additional to supporting self encrypting disks (SEDs) and zpool encryption, version 12.0 added dataset and zvol encryption as well.

The world has become a dangerous place. The security hacks, the data leaks, the ransomware scourge have dominated the IT news in 2021, and we are only 3 months into the year. These cybersecurity threats are about to get worse and we have to be vigilant to deescalate the impacts of these threats. As such, TrueNAS® Enterprise has progressed forward to protect the data structures in its storage arrays, in addition to many other security features depicted below:

TrueNAS Multilayer Security

Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP)

One of the prominent cybersecurity features in TrueNAS® Enterprise is KMIP support in version 12.0.

What is KMIP? KMIP is a client-server framework for encryption key management. It is a standard released in 2010 and governed by OASIS Open. OASIS stands for Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.

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Relinquishing Freedom in our Digital Future

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There was a TV cartoon show I loved when I was a kid called “Wait till your Father gets home“. I was probably 5 or 6 then, but I can still remember the mother was practically nagging all the time of having the father to come back to deal with the problems and issues caused by the kids, and sometimes the dog.

This patriarchal mentality of having the male manning (yeah, it is not a gender neutral word) the household is also, unfortunately, mimicked in our societies, in general, being obedient and subservient to the government of the day. This is especially true in East Asian societies, .

While dissent of this mindset is sprouting in the younger generation of these societies, you can see the dichotomy of the older generation and the younger one in the recent protests in Thailand and the on-going one in Myanmar. The older generation is likely fearful of the consequences and there are strong inclinations to accept and subject their freedom to be ruled by the rulers of the day. It is almost like part of their psyche and DNA.

So when I read the article published by Data Storage Asean titled “Malaysians Optimistic on Giving the Government Increased Access to Personal Data for Better Services“, I was in two minds. Why are we giving away our Personal Data when we do not get a guarantee that the our privacy is protected?

Data Privacy should be in our own hands

Why are we giving away our freedom in new digital Malaysia when in history, we have not been truly protected of that freedom? 

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When you buy storage solutions on price alone

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Most people won’t bat an eye buying a car. It is a status symbol for many, but the value of the work returned from the car to the cost of buying the car is a great disparity. Furthermore, the price of the car depreciates quickly, making the “investment” more like an act of losing money fast.

So the story begins. When it comes to buying a storage technology platform, the initial price on the quote more or less decide the outcome. The reply of “Too expensive!” with little consideration about the returns of certain values relative to the initial buying price is far too frequent and plenty.

There has to be more considerations about these values. Here are in buying a storage technology platform besides just the initial price.

Performance

One recent conversation was about Intel® Optane™ vs NAND Flash. An well-known online eCommerce proprietor in South East Asia decided to go against the grain, and went for the more “expensive” Optane™ instead of the getting an array of NAND Flash NVMe SSDs.

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Multicloud is sprouting Storage Silos

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Grain Silos

We get an avalanche of multicloud selling from storage vendors. We get promises and benefits of multicloud but from whose point of view?

Multicloud is multiple premises

This is an overly simplistic example how I created 3 copies of the same spreadsheet yesterday. I have a quotation on Google Sheets. A fairly complicated one. Someone wanted it in Excel format, but the format and the formulas were all messed up when I tried to download it as XLSX. What I had to do was to download the Google Sheets as ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) format to my laptop, and then upload the LibreOffice file to my OneDrive account, and use Excel Online to open the ODS file and saved as XLSX. In one fell swoop, I have the same spreadsheet in Google Drive, my laptop and OneDrive. 3 copies in 3 different premises. 

As we look to the behaviour of data creation and data acquisition, data sharing and data movement, the central repository is the gold image, the most relevant copy of the data. However, for business reasons, data has to be moved to where the applications are. It could be in cloud A or cloud B or cloud C or it could be on-premises. The processed output from cloud A is stored in cloud A, and likewise, cloud B in cloud B and so on.

To get the most significant and relevant copy, data from all premises must be consolidated, thus it has to be moved to a centralized data storage repository. But intercloud data movement is bogged down by egress fees, latency, data migration challenges (like formats and encoding), security, data clearance policies and many other hoops and hurdles.

With all these questions and concerns in mind, the big question mark is “Is multicloud really practical?” From a storage guy like me who loves a great data management story, “It is not. Multicloud creates storage silos“.

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Fueling the Flywheel of AWS Storage

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It was bound to happen. It happened. AWS Storage is the Number 1 Storage Company.

The tell tale signs were there when Silicon Angle reported that AWS Storage revenue was around USD$6.5-7.0 billion last year and will reach USD$10 billion at the end of 2021. That news was just a month ago. Last week, IT Brand Pulse went a step further declaring AWS Storage the Number 1 in terms of revenue. Both have the numbers to back it up.

AWS Logo

How did it become that way? How did AWS Storage became numero uno?

Flywheel juggernaut

I became interested in the Flywheel concept some years back. It was conceived in Jim Collins’ book, “Good to Great” almost 20 years ago, and since then, Amazon.com has become the real life enactment of the Flywheel concept.

Amazon.com Flywheel – How each turn becomes sturdier, brawnier.

Every turn of the flywheel requires the same amount of effort although in the beginning, the noticeable effect is minuscule. But as every turn gains momentum, the returns of each turn scales greater and greater to the fixed efforts of operating a single turn.

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TrueNAS – The Secure Data Platform for EasiShare

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The Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) EasiShare presence is growing rapidly in the region, as enterprises and organizations are quickly redefining the boundaries of the new workspace. Work files and folders are no longer confined to the shared network drives within the local area network. It is going beyond to the “Work from Anywhere” phenomenon that is quickly becoming the way of life. Breaking away from the usual IT security protection creates a new challenge, but EasiShare was conceived with security baked into its DNA. With the recent release, Version 10, file sharing security and resiliency are stronger than ever.

[ Note: I have blogged about EasiShare previously. Check out the 2 links below ]

Public clouds are the obvious choice but for organizations to protect their work files, and keep data secure, services like Dropbox for Business, Microsoft® Office 365 with OneDrive and Google® Workspace are not exactly the kind of file sharing with security as their top priority. A case in point was the 13-hour disruption to Wasabi Cloud last week, where the public cloud storage provider’s domain name, wasabisys.com, was suspended by their domain name registrar because of malware discrepancy at one of its endpoints. There were other high profile cases too.

This is where EasiShare shines, because it is a secure, private EFSS solution for the enterprise and beyond, because business resiliency is in the hands and control of the organization that owns it, not the public cloud service providers.

EasiShare unifies with TrueNAS for secure business resiliency

EasiShare is just one several key business solutions iXsystems™ in Asia Pacific Japan is working closely with, and there is a strong, symbiotic integration with the TrueNAS® platform. Both have strong security features that fortify business resiliency, especially when facing the rampant ransomware scourge.

Value of a Single Unified Data Services Platform

A storage array is not a solution. It is just a box that most vendors push to sell. A storage must be a Data Services Platform. Readers of my blog would know that I have spoken about the Data Services Platform 3 years ago and you can read about it:

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Ransomware recovery with TrueNAS ZFS snapshots

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This is really an excuse to install and play around with TrueNAS® CORE 12.0.

I had a few “self assigned homework exercises” I have to do this weekend. I was planning to do a video webcast with an EFSS vendor soon, and the theme should be around ransomware. Then one of the iXsystems™ resellers, unrelated to the first exercise, was talking about this ransomware messaging yesterday after we did a technical training with them. And this weekend is coming on a bit light as well. So I thought I could bring all these things, including checking out the TrueNAS® CORE 12.0, together in a video (using Free Cam), of which I would do for the first time as well. WOW! I can kill 4 birds with one stone! All together in one blog!

It could be Adam Brown 89 or worse

Trust me. You do not want AdamBrown89 as your friend. Or his thousands of ransomware friends.

When (not if) you are infected by ransomware, you get a friendly message like this in the screenshot below. I got this from a local company who asked for my help a few months ago.

AdamBrown89 ransomware message

AdamBrown89 ransomware message

I have written about this before. NAS (Network Attached Storage) has become a gold mine for ransomware attackers, and many entry level NAS products are heavily inflicted with security flaws and vulnerabilities. Here are a few notable articles in year 2020 alone. [ Note: This has been my journal of the security flaws of NAS devices from 2020 onwards ]

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Storage in a shiny multi-cloud space

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The multi-cloud for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) era is not here (yet). That is what the technology marketers want you to think. The hype, the vapourware, the frenzy. It is what they do. The same goes to technology analysts where they describe vision and futures, and the high level constructs and strategies to get there. The hype of multi-cloud is often thought of running applications and infrastructure services seamlessly in several public clouds such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft® Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and linking it to on-premises data centers and private clouds. Hybrid is the new black.

Multicloud connectivity to public cloud providers and on-premises private cloud

Multi-Cloud, on-premises, public and hybrid clouds

And the aspiration of multi-cloud is the right one, when it is truly ready. Gartner® wrote a high level article titled “Why Organizations Choose a Multicloud Strategy“. To take advantage of each individual cloud’s strengths and resiliency in respective geographies make good business sense, but there are many other considerations that cannot be an afterthought. In this blog, we look at a few of them from a data storage perspective.

In the beginning there was … 

For this storage dinosaur, data storage and compute have always coupled as one. In the mainframe DASD days. these 2 were together. Even with the rise of networking architectures and protocols, from IBM SNA, DECnet, Ethernet & TCP/IP, and Token Ring FC-SAN (sorry, this is just a joke), the SANs, the filers to the servers were close together, albeit with a network buffered layer.

A decade ago, when the public clouds started appearing, data storage and compute were mostly inseparable. There was demarcation of public clouds and private clouds. The notion of hybrid clouds meant public clouds and private clouds can intermix with on-premise computing and data storage but in almost all cases, this was confined to a single public cloud provider. Until these public cloud providers realized they were not able to entice the larger enterprises to move their IT out of their on-premises data centers to the cloud convincingly. So, these public cloud providers decided to reverse their strategy and peddled their cloud services back to on-prem. Today, Amazon AWS has Outposts; Microsoft® Azure has Arc; and Google Cloud Platform launched Anthos.

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