1. Use both a router firewall and a software firewall
2. Your name servers should be hosted on at least two different servers
3. If you use content delivery services, make sure they have servers close to your primary users
4. Block all ports except the most essential (i.e. web server, ssh, ftp)
5. Use traceroute and dns lookups to test network connectivity issues
6. Be sure to follow Internet standards with your DNS records
7. Use SSH, SCP, SFTP, and other secure protocols whenever you need to connect to your server

Photo Source: Flickr

Although a capital investment is any physical asset that has long-term value, most of Google’s capital investments are IT-related. Large capital investments are often a sign of recovery. However, Google’s current expenditure figures are nothing compared to the $842 million it spent in Q1 2008. The company drastically cut back data center spending after the recession set in.

Other tech giants like Microsoft are also expanding their capital investment budgets. At this point, it is unclear where Google’s data center is going.

Photo | pzado

As far as Ellison is concerned, cloud computing has been around for years. It’s just a computer connected to a network, he says. He also believes many of the people who push cloud computing have no idea what they’re talking about.

Although the CEO doesn’t use the kindest of words to make his point, his argument is very valid. Cloud computing hold a lot of promise for the feature, but too many people have “jumped on the cloud” without fully understanding the technology or its background.

Dubbed Encanto, the Xeon-powered super computer contains some 3,500 quad-core processors. Each one of these CPUs has been hard at work determining where the oil will head next. Although not perfectly accurate, the computer has been able to predict the oil’s destination six months from now.

However, it is unlikely that North Korea will make the Internet available to the general public anytime soon.

Leonid A. Petrov, a lecturer in Korean studies at The University of Sydney, stated:

There is no place for the Internet in contemporary DPRK. If the people of North Korea were to have open access to the World Wide Web, they would start learning the truth that has been concealed from them for the last six decades.

Still, it’s a sign of hope for the information-starved North Koreans. Citizens have had access to an intranet called Kwangmyong since 2000, but it only provides access to content uploaded by the government. Only a few thousand North Korean elites have full-fledged web access.

Photo | Flickr

Wikipedia already has a primary data center with 300 servers in Tampa and an additional 50 servers in Amsterdam. Wikimedia realized how vulnerable this setup is to outages in March, when overheating at the Amsterdam facility sent all of its sites down.

The non-profit will most likely build the data center in northern Virginia, a key hub for network traffic. It has budgeted $3.27 million for the project.

Photo | Flickr

According to Antonio Piraino, Research Director at Tier 1 Research, cloud computing is one of the main reasons for heavy data center demand:

The demand is extremely healthy. We’re seeing more and more cloud computing providers coming into this space. It’s just a great opportunity for the data center space.

Wholesale data center space is especially hard to come buy. Large sites like Facebook as well as web hosting companies are scooping up data center space left and right. To many, it seems as though new data centers can’t be built quickly enough.

Source | Data Center Knowledge
Photo | Flickr

And if the expected completion date of spring 2011 is any indication, this will also be one of the fastest data center construction projects ever. Microsoft originally intended to build the project in West Des Moines in 2008, but halted construction because of the recession.

Microsoft’s decision to recommence building the plant is a good sign for the economy. Obviously Redmond thinks there will be more demand for technology in the near feature. The data center will create around 25 jobs that pay an average of $31.04 per hour in benefits and wages.

Source | Data Center Knowledge

The explosion of digital data is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how servers are built, bought and deployed. The days of just throwing “raw” performance at the problem are long gone and the era of efficient computing with servers that balance price, performance and power is officially upon us.

Previously, we’ve been accustomed to monster servers with ten hard drives and a kilowatt power supplies. While these servers won’t disappear overnight, the web is all about scaling. Big servers are very expensive, but spreading out a load among many small servers is cheaper and more reliable.

Check out the above video for some pretty cool statistics about cloud computing.

Nearly half of respondents said it would be reasonable for their agency to give up data centers under the plan. Around the same number of people expressed concern about using services from a private firm, however.

Some 86%of the executives believe that government culture is the biggest obstacle to consolidation. Most agreed that sharing data centers between government agencies was the most viable option for trimming the fat. If the government is successful, it will have conducted the largest data center consolidation ever.