Amazon S3 vs EFS vs EBS. Which storage option is the best for you?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is known for its vast number of product offerings. In the storage arena, three of amazon’s most popular services are S3, EFS, and EBS.

The question is, which one to use for your solution?

Fortunately, these services work differently from each other. So, once you have listed down your requirements clearly, it is easy to pick one over the other.

The storage strategy plays a crucial role in determining performance as well as expenditure. We have written up all you need to choose the right one.

Difference between S3 VS EFS VS EBS

·      S3

      It provides simple object storage. It manages data as objects which means all data types are stored in native formats. There is no relation between files. It is used to host images and videos, data analytics, mobile and web applications.

Data objects are distributed across several machines and are accessible from anywhere in the world. Files are managed with the help of metadata.  

·      EFS

     It is an Elastic File Storage system that grows or shrinks as per resource requirements. It is similar to a traditional file storage system. The only difference is data is organized into directories and sub-directories. It is widely used for SaaS applications. You can use the same EFS to several EC2 instances simultaneously. It is fast and accessible. However, it fails to provide the potential to execute complex queries.

·      EBS

    AWS EBS is block-level data storage. It stores files in equal-sized multiple volumes called blocks. These blocks act as separate hard drives. Block storage devices provide higher performance than regular file storage. It is more flexible. You need to initialize EBS on an Amazon EC2 instance.

  IOPS = Input/Output operations per second

Conclusion

Amazon provides you with three options out of which one will match up with your requirement. Use S3 for static purposes. EFS can be used for an application that is highly scalable and high-performance oriented. EBS is best suited where a single device requires high performance. The best example of EBS will be transactional databases.

You can reach out to us and share your thoughts at contact.us@virtuetchinc.com

5 reasons why AWS framework is well architected

Good software has a well-designed infrastructure that is the foundation of any software. It is something that separates resilient software from the rest. It becomes challenging to build a solution that meets your requirement and has a strong infrastructure.

AWS (Amazon web services) provides you with some rock-strong and simple pillars to help you in building technical solutions. Involving these pillars in your design will help you in producing high-performance and resilient software. It will allow you to focus more on other aspects like business requirements.

AWS’s well-architected framework gives you a set of guidelines and benchmarks to build a resilient infrastructure for your applications. It helps in reviewing and improving your cloud infrastructure.

Let us discuss each pillar of AWS’s well-architected framework with their design principles.

1.   Operational Excellence

It enables to deliver business value by supporting development, carrying out workloads, driving insights from operations, and continuous process improvement.

            5 Design principles associated with it are:

• Treat operations as code: Review it, limit human error and enable a consistent response to events.
• Make small, frequent changes that can be easily reversed.
• As workload keeps evolving, refine operation procedures frequently.
•  Anticipate failure: Look for failing scenarios, identify the possible source of them and test your applications on them.
• Learn from operational failure: Keep a record of reasons for operational failure, grow from them and share them with the team.

2.   Security

The 2^nd pillar of the AWS framework encompasses the complete protection of data, systems, and assets while leveraging the benefits of cloud technologies. Use detective controls to identify a security breach.

Its design principles are:

• Implementing a strong identity foundation: Provide minimum required permissions and create separate roles for authentication.
• Enable traceability: Monitor, audit, and alert actions.
• Apply security to all layers: Use multiple security controls to prevent unauthorized attacks.
• Automate security best practices: Automation will help in taking action rapidly without manual intervention. It will help in increasing security even at idle times.
• Protect data in transit and at rest:  Use encryptions, tokenization, and bifurcate data into sensitivity levels.
• Keep people away from data: Remove direct access or manipulation of data.
• Prepare for security events: Implement incident management and investigation protocols.

3.   Reliability

It is the ability to perform intended functions correctly and consistently. It involves operating and testing the workload throughout the lifecycle.

 Its design principles are:

• Automatically failure recovery: Use indicators to trigger when the threshold breaches.
• Test recovery procedures: Use automation to exercise different failure test cases and test recovery procedures.
• Scale horizontally to increase aggregate workload availability: Use a load balancer to assign requests to multiple resources.
• Stop guessing capacity: Automate to add or remove resources based on scalability.
• Manage change in automation: Make the change in infrastructure using automation.

4.   Performance efficiency

It is the fourth pillar of AWS’s well-architected framework. It encompasses the ability to use compute resources judiciously while maintaining performance with variable workloads. It includes continuous monitoring to observe how workload is changing.

Its design principles are:

• Democratize advanced technologies: Assign complex tasks to the cloud vendor.
• Go global in minutes: Deploy your workload in multiple AWS applications and regions.
• Use serverless architecture: Remove physical servers for your computational activities.
• Experiment more often: Use different instances, storage, and configuration to find the best solution for you.
• Consider mechanical sympathy: Use a technical approach that best suits your workload.

5.   Cost optimization

It is delivering business value at the lowest price possible without compromising the quality.

Its design principles are:

•  Implement cloud financial management: It helps you in optimizing the cost.
• Adopt a consumption model: Use the pay-per-usage model for your resources. Add or subtract resources based on business requirements.
• Measure overall efficiency: Monitor the gains you make by increasing outputs and reducing costs.
• Stop spending money on undifferentiated heavy lifting: Let AWS manage data center operations like racking, stacking, and powering the server.
• Analyze and attribute expenditure: Identify usage and cost of the system. It provides transparent attribution of IT costs to each workload owner.

Conclusion:

            The 5 pillars of AWS’s well-architected framework provide architectural best practices to run your application without facing any bottleneck and anomaly. These help you in gaining insights and creating a stable and effective system.

Let us know what you think of this framework and design principles at contact.us@virtuetechinc.com

Starting guide to SAS

SAS (Statistical Analysis Software) was created in 1960 by the SAS Institute. It is used for Advanced Analytics, Data Visualization, and Multivariate Analysis. When it comes to data analytics, SAS software is the first choice for most companies because it offers high-quality services that other analytics tools cannot match. Companies can incorporate SAS analytics easily into their processes because of functionalities, support, and extensive interoperability. SAS is also easy to understand for people with a non-technical background because of its simple visual presentation of information and data.

Are you aware of the standalone reason why SAS has an advantage over others in the Business world? It is because of the data security. It is impossible to extract data without a license. It is one of the reasons where SAS beats the R programming language for analysis. SAS comes with complete data security and thoroughly tested algorithms that make it much more reliable than other data analytics software. Its data management tools, business intelligence, and services help users to convert data into better decisions.

SAS has a large user base – exceedingly more than 4000 companies using SAS. Some of them are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Accenture, etc. Whether it’s IT, healthcare, or banking, companies from every industry have invested in SAS analytics. Despite the availability of alternative platforms for answering the many questions which persist at a business and organizational level, SAS is widely preferred for generating informative reports.

SAS took advantage of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) introduced by the Macintosh with the introduction of JMP (Jump) for statistics. Jump is primarily used for applications such as Six Sigma for design, quality control, engineering, and scientific analysis.

SAS is an independent platform that allows you to run SAS either on Linux or Windows. SAS is driven by SAS programmers who create reports for data analysis using several sequences of operations in the SAS datasets. Over the years, SAS has been supplementing its product line with various solutions. It provides a solution for data governance, data quality, Big Data analytics, text mining. We may presume that SAS has a solution for any business area.

SAS Institute Inc. has released a free SAS University Edition that is good enough for learning SAS programming. It provides all the features that you need to know in BASE SAS programming. It is a widely used core component that contains a data management facility and a programming language for data analysis. It enables you to learn other SAS components too.

REFERENCES:

1. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sas/sas_overview.htm
2. https://www.newtechdojo.com/overview-of-sas-download-certification/
3. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-to-sas-programming/
4. https://seleritysas.com/blog/2019/01/23/sas-software-4-reasons/#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20data,the%20availability%20of%20alternative%20platforms.

Top IoT Security Challenges and their Solutions

IoT is one of the most common emerging technology. It comes with its benefits and risks. The advocates of the technology promote IoT as a means to make life easier and better. Almost every appliance is IoT-enabled. Today, more than 30% of all network-connected enterprise endpoints are IoT devices.  The IoT market will rise to 1 trillion USD in 2023 from 749 billion USD in 2020.

On the other hand, IT professionals are considering it risky due to user privacy and security issue. According to NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report, on average IoT device gets attacked within 5 minutes after it goes live. In 2025, 152,000 IoT devices will be connecting to the internet every minute. How disastrous would it be if a majority of these devices are prone to cyberattacks?

Let’s find out more about these security challenges before it gets too late.

IoT Security Challenges

1. Lack of physical security

Attackers tend to attack physical devices located in remote places for a long time. IoT Device manufacturers must ensure the physical security of the devices. However, building secure and low-cost IoT devices will be a challenging task for manufacturers. In 2020, IoT hardware made up one-third of the malware-infected devices.

2. Botnet attacks

A botnet is a collection of malware-infected machines. Attackers use them to bring down a target by sending thousands of requests per minute. In this way, IoT devices can be transformed into a new botnet. It is possible because IoT devices do not get security updates like computers.

3. Absence of visibility

IoT-enabled devices such as coffee machines, refrigerators, and air conditioning systems are not tracked. As these devices don’t have regular security updates, it serves as an entry point to the network for attackers. Security teams could not do anything if they don’t have complete information of devices connected to the network.

4. Industrial Espionage

Privacy is a grave security issue. IoT devices collect user’s information. Hackers may take over the device and use this personal data against the owner. Privacy issue escalates when hackers can collect corporate data. They can either expose it or sell it.

5.Hijacking

IoT devices with poor security become the target of ransomware. Ransomware encrypts and blocks access to sensitive data. Hackers will ask for ransom for decrypting the files. Though, cases of ransomware are rare in IoT. However, it is the most vulnerable sector at risk in the future.

IoT Security Solutions

Average annual global spending on IoT security measures will reach 631 million in 2021 with a CAGR of approximately 21%. Any device connected to a network is vulnerable to cyberattacks. Let’s try to mitigate these issues with the following solutions.

1. Usage of IoT Security Analytics

Security analytics helps in significantly reducing security issues and potential threats.

It can prevent potential threats by deducing insights from the data collected from various sources. It can also raise an alert over an anomaly in a network by correlating data from different domains. The collection of valuable information helps in the early detection and effective prevention of threats.

2. Endpoint Detection and Response Security

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) security tool helps you in identifying attacks in real-time. It quickly identifies and prevents malicious activities. EDR solutions use IoT data to gain threat intelligence. The threat intelligence can improve the base configuration and deployment of IoT devices in a more secure way.

3. Fortifying Visibility

Every organization must maintain a detailed inventory of all connected devices. It helps in responding to security incidents and taking security-compliant actions.

4. Encrypted Communication

Attackers eavesdrop on the communication to hijack the devices. So, one must encrypt communication between IoT devices and other applications to prevent a data breach. The most common encryptionprotocols are HTTPS, AES 128, and AES 256.

5. Implementing Authentication mechanism

Various authentication mechanisms are available for IoT devices like multi-factor authentication, digital certificates, and biometrics. They can help in reducing the vulnerability of IoT devices.

Conclusion

Securing IoT devices is a collaborative task of the manufacturers as well as users and admins. The manufacturer must focus on encryption and security analytics. And the admins should monitor activities and respond promptly. Let’s decide to turn IoT into the Internet of Secure Things. Share your thoughts about this at contact.us@virtuetechinc.com.

What are the benefits of choosing agile over other software development methodologies?

Every technical organization is shifting towards the agile methodology of software development. Today, it is influencing your work. But before we dive into the role of the agile process, let’s understand what it is.  And, how it got started?

Time before Agile

                        Before the agile process, waterfall model was dominant for software development. It was the only standard followed at that time. It emphasized on documentation before the start of the software development. Coding was started when both functional and technical documentation had completed. Integration, testing, and deployment were completed after coding. This whole cycle takes a lot of time.

Now imagine, in the middle of the development cycle, you forgot to write a crucial specification or you had written a wrong specification. This was normal as coding often highlights the concealed practical aspects. Many times customers were delivered functionality that was of no use or had expected a different outcome. In the waterfall model, all-important feedbacks were taken after the software deployment.

According to a UK study of 1081 projects in 2001, 81% of project failures quoted waterfall as the primary cause.

Rise of Agile

                        The gaps between expectations and results led to industrial frustration in the 1990s. The time lag between requirement and delivery led leaders to think of new development method. That method is today known as Agile.

 Agile is an iterative approach of project management and developing software that delivers little bits of user functionalities at the end of 2-4 week cycles called iterations or sprints. Every sprint consists of small functionally working requirements called user stories. At the end of a sprint, mutually agreed user stories will be delivered to the client. Customer feedback is considered and incorporated into future sprints. This backlog is called sprint backlog. In 2008, a survey by Voke inc. took feedback about agile. 90% of survey takers claimed agile improved their flexibility. 84% of respondents said agile improved project visibility. 

Roles of agile

User:

The agile process keeps the user or customer in the center of the development that was missing in the traditional waterfall model.

Product Owner:

A product owner is an internal stakeholder who acts as the voice of the user. His/her responsibilities are to define a product vision and help the development team to make it happen.

He often divides complete product vision into user stories and prioritizes them according to the customer’s requirements. He becomes the anchor who resolves any problem faced by the software development team.

Software development team:

                                    Teams in agile comprise diversely skilled people. It is because agile focuses on delivering a working model (user story). To test, integrate and deploy end-to-end working user story team needs to be multidisciplinary. One can directly communicate with the customer at any  time for queries and issues.

Four core values of the Agile

• More Focus on People and Interaction

Agile focuses more on people and interaction as they are vital for collaboration and problem-solving. Best tools and processes are worthless if they are in the wrong hands.

• Working Software

Agile emphasizes working functionality than detailed documentation. Agile is more product-centric than other process-centric methodologies.

• Customer Collaboration

The customer is more involved in an agile process. He/she will review the deliverable at the end of a sprint. He/she addresses the queries of the development team throughout the process.

• Responding to change

Changing requirements and priorities lead to the success of agile. A dynamic roadmap is mandatory that can vary from sprint to sprint, sometimes even from month to month.

Benefits of Agile

Increased customer’s involvement, continuous delivery of sprints throughout the year, and an adaptable customer-centric approach lead to the following benefits:

1. High-quality products
2. User-focused testing
3. Greater customer satisfaction
4. Reduced risks of project failure
5. Better tracking of project’s progress
6. Better project predictability
7. Faster return on investment
8. The speedy and flexible process increases productivity

Please reach out to us for any of your business requirements for Agile methodology at contact.us@virtuetechinc.com

5G: A giant step in the evolution of the telecommunication

The unfolding dimensions in technology had made Data the new oil of the 21^st century. Today the world order is determined by data. Therefore, technology has ushered a new competition across the globe with “DATA” in the center of it. This race started with the onset of the 21^st century that saw a prodigious technology development. Increased internet speed and bandwidth are other contributing factors.

A short story on the long evolution of the Internet

It all started when first-generation(1G) analogy phones came with  the relatively simple picture. With the evolution of this prototype, the forthcoming generations 2G, 3G, and 4G were developed over decades of years.

The 4G technology is widely used, allowing to share live messages, video calls, and bring in virtual reality. According to Ericsson, global mobile data will increase 39% by 2023 with 107 Exabytes of data generated per month. At this rate, the number of connections will rise over 29 billion in 2022.

Their successor, 5G has today created a great buzz in the world.

What is 5G?

The term 5G refers to the fifth-generation technology prototype that uses high-frequency radio waves to transfer data. It provides low latency and high connection density.

5G will reduce the data sharing time to only 1ms that was 40ms-60ms in the 4^th generation.

It claims to be the bridge to the future. It addresses the need for more bandwidth and speed. 5G ultra-wideband will eventually allow the development of more proficient technology that will bring a massive change. In 2024, 5g will host 25% of mobile data traffic that would be 30% more traffic than that of today.

Roadmap of 5G revolution

5G revolution will open doors for numerous advancements such as self-driven cars communicating with each other or remote robotic surgeries. We must remember 5G revolution won’t happen overnight. The transition takes time to reach the masses. Currently, all major service providers are rolling out 5G services. Verizone claimed the availability of its 5G network in more than 60 US cities till the end of 2020.

Every year, there is an exponential increase in 5G service providers. We can expect 5G network to reach beyond large cities.

The cause of delay is the infrastructure.  5G has multiple frequency bands. The infrastructure of lower frequency can be mapped to a 4G network. Other bands will need new infrastructure. Also, 5G works on shorter wavelengths that require more antennas.

IHS Markits says 5G’s full impact will be seen near 2035 with about $13.2 trillion business from goods and services. 

Use cases of 5G

Increased speed, low latency, and more connection density give limitless possibilities. Initial infra costs may be tremendous. It must be accommodated with the launch of a new set of services for customers.

Driverless automobiles that are already on their way by companies like Tesla will rely on real-time data with no or less latency. Next one will be VR and AR applications. The computing speed required will be easily catered to by 5G.

Cloud computing will be more efficient. Due to low latency, PC hosting cloud app may be shifted to devices with less processing power.

As of now, there are 14.2 billion IoT devices in use. It will increase to more than 55 billion by 2025. Industrial IoT will also leverage the benefits of 5G networks. Consequently,an entire supply chain can be reshaped.

Conclusion

5G will help businesses in stepping up their game. And customers will get exposure to new methods in their life.

Have you used it yet? Tell us more about your 5G experience at contact.us@virtuetechinc.com and let us assist you.