Global Digital Management Solutions Laos is proud to announce that it has passed its CISA audit.
For GDMS customers and partners, information system availability is of exceptionally high importance. Passing the CISA audit demonstrates GDMS’s commitment to information system availability also to its continuous improvement of products and services.
To pass the CIA audit, GDMS went through an extensive datacenter-wide audit by CBA. The audit included demonstrating GDMS datacentre and cloud infrastructure in Laos have achieved a high level of availability and performance over the past 6 months, assessed the implications, and have implemented systemized controls to secure business continuity.
The auditor has identified zero shortcomings, which is considered an excellent result. To pass the CISA audit once again, GDMS will need to continuously improve its information system availability and performance going forward.
CISA is world-renowned as the standard of achievement for those who audit, control, monitor, and assess an organization’s information technology and business systems.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/img_e9e176da2780b429936094dfd271fb71112151-1.jpg396681Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2022-01-26 11:14:322022-02-22 17:08:23GDMS Cloud Infrastructure passed CISA audit in Laos
Choosing the right data center for your IT infrastructure is not a decision to take lightly.
The wrong choice can put your security, resiliency, availability, and services at risk. It is very important to think carefully and choose wisely your data center location so you don’t jeopardize your service availability and your business reputation.
A data center strategy is not something to take lightly and considering the effort to relocate your workload from one facility to another, it should be a long-term plan that should take into account your business growth over the years to come.
Criteria to consider when choosing a data center location
Location is one of the top criteria when choosing a datacenter facility. And it does not only mean choosing a location close to your office.
Prior to moving forward with your data center location, consider the following :
What are your data center objectives?
What do you expect from a datacenter facility? How will it help your company launch new services, reduce risk, improve availability while cutting down on costs? You need the datacenter to be a playground where you feel at ease to innovate. The facility shall not be a constraint to your growth.
For instance, if today you require 2 racks 3 KVA each, you should ask yourself what will be your requirements in 1 year, 3 years or 5 years? With hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), high-density racks are a must and you should be able to increase the power at ease. It would be also interesting to ask the datacenter facility what the current capacity is and how fast you can extend your colocation area to additional racks.
What is your data center’s role?
One of the top things to define is whether this datacenter facility will be used for your test, UAT, prepod, or production? You also need to consider disaster recovery. If this datacenter is meant to host production, where will be the disaster recovery site? Is this datacenter the primary or secondary site?
Upon the definition of this role, you should consider carefully the datacenter connectivity to the outside world. a good datacenter facility shall be carrier-neutral and host multiple carriers.
Ideally, this datacenter shall accept and welcome third-party telecom providers selected by the customer.
For instance, if your office and branches telecom connectivity is provided by Unitel, ask yourself if the said datacenter is also connected to Unitel. Having all your sites on the same network will help reduce latency, improve performance and possibly keep the costs to the minimum.
if this datacenter facility is used for testing purposes, you also should consider site access as a very important factor. Testing means building and putting down the environment constantly. Depending on your architecture, you may need to send technicians onsite to do so. How easy is it to access the facility? How long do you need to ask in advance to grant permission? Can you access the facility at night or during the weekends?
Do you have access to a staging area or a hot desk for you to work onsite? These questions are crucial before choosing your datacenter provider.
Do you need remote hand service?
Using colocation services is not as easy as the cloud. If your server freeze or crash, you need someone onsite to reboot it. Depending on the data center location, it can take some time to reach the site and perform the manual action.
Some datacenter facilities provide smart hand service. In such a case, you simply have to open a ticket with your datacenter provider and they will send someone onsite to act.
What are your restrictions?
In today’s business world, customers expect to access services day and night at lightning speed. Can your datacenter meet this requirement? What is the average latency between the datacenter facility and your customers? Can the datacenter facility offer redundant connectivity that will protect you in case of fiber failure? Does the datacenter facility have a comprehensive service level agreement (SLA)?
What is your security or risk profile?
Does the selected location meet your compliance requirements? How is the facility secured against natural disasters?
If your company hosts customer personal data, you may also check with the country regulation if it is preferred/required to host this data in the country.
GDMS has secured data center facilities in Myanmar and Laos that comply with local regulations.
Nowadays, companies are fully aware of cybersecurity threats. IT departments are responsible to ensure that company data and customer data are never compromised. But what if someone can simply walk into your office and steal documents or files from a computer? You can have the best IT security in the world, you also need a physical security plan.
It goes the same for your datacenter facility. When choosing the right colocation area, make sure the provider has 24/7 onsite security. If you schedule a data center visit, pay attention the all the details during your admission. Is someone asking for your ID when accessing the facility? Do they know you are coming today? Do they have a record of your visit explaining why you are here and what area you are allowed to access?
It is also very important to have multi-layers of access control in the datacenter itself with role-based access. Ultimately, you need to make sure that only fully qualified and selected personnel have access to your rack.
A good security practice for datacenter is also to make sure that the provider has the policy to escort the customer to their rack and that the datacenter personnel attends the visit at all times.
GDMS is your datacenter, ICT, and cloud provider of choice for your business in Myanmar and Laos.
Contact us for a private conversation about your digital transformation projects.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/datacenter4.jpg9001600Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2022-01-12 11:21:572022-02-22 17:05:36How to choose a colocation facility?
GDMS as a VMware cloud service provider leverages network, and security platform NSX to provide secure networking services to its customers.
As companies in Myanmar and Laos increasingly turn to digital transformation via the cloud, they’re relying on partners like GDMS to help them migrate their apps and workloads to the cloud without sacrificing performance and mitigating risk.
By subscription to GDMS cloud services, you get access to the complete NSX suite giving you the possibility to centrally define, implement, and manage perimeter security gateway services, such as DNS, DHCP, and NAT. NSX allows customers to control North-South traffic quickly and easily without any hardware dependencies.
“Never Trust – Always Verify”
Security is an ongoing challenge for organizations with today’s dynamic and distributed workforce, growing BYOD, and the continued expansion into the cloud. While the cloud is often safer than a company’s own data center, it is still crucial for organizations to own and control who and what is allowed access to their applications and data – no matter where they are running.
With Zero-Trust, network security is set up to assume that you have already been compromised and any traffic, even behind the firewall, is considered “untrustworthy” until it’s proven to meet the right criteria.
Inside your network perimeter or DMZ, smaller segments of the network are protected by their 4 own tiny perimeters (called a “micro perimeter”).
This allows a security administrator to add an extra layer of security around the company’s most important data, assets, applications, and services.
To access any individual segment in a Zero-Trust architecture, users must pass strict identity and device verification procedures. A “least-privilege” model is recommended, which limits access to only needed resources.
The first step in implementing a Zero-Trust network is to secure individual parts of the network using micro-segmentation. Micro-segmentation should be adopted in addition to network perimeter security controls. When you have both perimeter controls, as well as micro-segmentation, not only is traffic inspected and controlled as it enters your network (North-South), it’s also inspected as it moves laterally (East-West) between VMs and systems.
GDMS provides critical software-defined networking firewall capabilities for both perimeter,
or edge firewalls, as well as services for micro-segmentation, also known as distributed firewalls.
By offering these services at the software layer—decoupled from hardware—they are:
VMware Edge Gateway (ESG)
The ESG gives you access to all NSX Edge services such as firewall, NAT, DHCP, VPN, load balancing, and high availability. You can install multiple ESG virtual appliances in a data center.
GDMS offers a number of professional services to help you design and deploy your edge firewall. We can help with setting up least-privilege rules and other gateway configurations to support your Zero-Trust security goals.
Edge Gateways come in 4 sizes: Compact, Large, Quad-Large and X-Large.
Micro-segmentation, also known as distributed firewalling (DFW), is an approach to defining network and security policies that allow organizations to segment and control workloads based on application profiles.
Distributed Firewalling is available with our cloud offering through either a self-service portal or as a managed service.
Features:
Virtual firewalls embedded in the hypervisor
No VM can circumvent the firewall (egress and ingress packets are always processed)
Policies are attached to the VM for secure mobility
Avoids routing traffic to the edge (and back) for inspection
Enhanced context-aware protection for applications
As networks become virtualized and micro-segmentation becomes a strategic advantage for security teams, data inherently becomes segmented into buckets to allow teams greater visibility and control over information on the network. Segmentation can be used to separate day-to-day business data from sensitive or proprietary data.
From there, security and risk teams can place the proper security and access controls on sensitive data segments using micro-segmentation.
Enable network security controls
Network admins can more quickly identify and adjust privileges for certain data
types through micro-segmentation, enabling:
Users to work with network data faster and more efficiently
Increased agility and quick response to changing security needs
Easier compliance with regulations
Least-privilege enforcement
Achieve better data visibility and protection
If organizations understand where data exists, and which users are supposed to
have access to it, then:
Data and services can be better monitored
Data flows more quickly through an organization to the appropriate users
Overall data security and agility improve
Stop lateral spread of threats
Network segmentation automatically interweaves connections and services to
create micro-perimeters around specific sets of data and information. This:
Inhibits the spread of threats
Accelerates identification and response to threats
Minimizes impact of an attack
Layer 4 Protection
By default, our distributed firewalls offer protection up through layer 4 of the OSI
network stack, enabling:
Users to work with network data faster and more efficiently
Increased agility and quick response to changing security needs
Easier compliance with regulations
Least-privilege enforcement
Layer 7 Protection
Application context-aware If organizations understand where data exists, and which users are supposed to
have access to it, then:
Data and services can be better secured and monitored
Overall data security and agility improve
Professional Services
GDMS offers professional and managed services to help you design, deploy, and manage your distributed firewalls.
Assess on-premises networks, applications, and dependencies
Design and deploy stretched networks for hybrid cloud/multi-cloud environments
Define and implement firewall policies
Migrate existing workloads/applications
Transform security and networking to enable improved business agility and outcomes
Advanced Insights
GDMS offers additional advanced insights into traffic patterns to determine where you
can benefit the most from a context-aware firewall. This helps you to lower operational expenses
while focusing on these advanced capabilities where they’re needed most. This is available self-service or as a managed service.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Capture2.png482933Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2021-10-07 11:44:132021-10-07 11:56:59Secure your cloud with GDMS Network and Security Platform
VMware vCloud Suite is an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure and management solution that combines the industry-leading VMware vSphere compute virtualization platform and the VMware vRealize Suite multi-cloud management solution, delivering the modern infrastructure automation and operations capabilities you need to deliver traditional and modern infrastructure and apps.
VMware Cloud Foundation supports both traditional enterprise and modern apps and provides a complete set of highly secure software-defined services for compute, storage, network, security, Kubernetes and cloud management Increase enterprise agility and flexibility with consistent infrastructure and operations across private and public clouds.
Please join in to learn More about : managing a private cloud with vRealize Suite and VMware Cloud Foundations capabilities.
SIP trunk and DID are not competing with each other. Both are parts of a completed phone system and work together.
But it’s important to know how they integrate, as you’ll need to obtain and configure both of them to set up an operational IP phone system.
GDMS is offering VoIP services to enterprises in Myanmar and Laos. If you are interested to connect your enterprise PBX to the public network, we have a solution for you. If you do not have a PBX or it is near the end of support, we can easily replace your physical PBX with a cloud-based PBX that will achieve the same purpose and enrich your communication with video calls, IVR, and conferences.
What is DID?
A DID (Direct Inward Dialing) number is a virtual phone number that can connect to one or multiple phones without the need to dial an extension or operator assistance. DIDs enable your staff to have a direct long number that is directly connected to their phone.
If you run an office with hundreds of phones, you could possibly assign a DID number to each phone, rather than having a single phone number and requiring external callers to dial an extension to reach a specific phone in the office. It creates a seamless experience.
How does DID – Direct Inward Dialing really Work?
A DID number connects over the internet, using a SIP trunk. The call path using a DID looks like this:
If you only have one phone, you do not need to have a PBX in place and calls would go straight from the internet right to your IP phone.
SIP Trunk: A SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunk is the pipe that attaches your phone to the internet. A SIP trunk is a solid alternative to traditional PRI (Primary Rate Interface) phone line trunks. SIP trunking is much easier to setup, and scale better than a PRI trunk, because you do not have any protocol limit except the internet bandwidth provided by your ISP.
VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol): VoIP is a protocol for transmitting phone calls over the internet. If you use a SIP trunk connection, you are using VoIP protocol. VoIP phone numbers are virtual phone numbers. But VoIP phone numbers look the same as traditional phone numbers. You can create your own dialplan with short number for communicating inside your enterprise network. Or you can map VoIP number to DID to connect calls from and to the traditional public network
VoIP Device: A VoIP device is simply a soft or hard phone or any other device that is capable of making calls using VoIP protocol. Smartphones, computers, and VoIP phones are all VoIP capable devices.
PBX (Private Branch Exchange): A PBX system is a local phone system that connects multiple phones to your SIP trunk. A medium or large office uses a PBX system to connect all of these phones to the SIP trunk and route calls to the right phone based on the phone extension.
PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network): The PSTN is the traditional phone network that has existed for decades. It is composed of fixed and mobile operators that are interconnected with each other. Each operator has its own number allocation which is how the calls are routed between telecom operators.
VoIP Gateway: A VoIP gateway connects VoIP phone numbers and devices to the PSTN and vice versa. A VoIP gateway translate digital signals, so that they can be transmitted over the PSTN. Conversely, a VoIP gateway will translate data for transmission over the internet. In short, a VoIP gateway is the bridge between the internet and the PSTN.
Popular Use Cases
The principal advantage of using DID numbers over traditional phone numbers is that it’s much faster and more cost-effective to add phone numbers. Expanding traditional phone infrastructure requires running new physical wires. On the other hand, you can scale up many DID numbers on a single internet connection, as long as you have the bandwidth to support the concurrent calls from and to all your phone numbers.
Here are a few popular uses cases for DID numbers, to add clarity:
PBX Systems: PBX systems caters to multiple phones and require their own dialplan. Without DID numbers, outside callers need to call a central business phone number, then dial the internal extension to route the call to the person they want to reach. Using DIDs allows you to assign a unique phone number to each phone. That way callers can simply dial a phone number to reach an employee in the office.
Communication Apps: Messenger, communication apps, and VoIP softphones can use DID numbers to produce a more natural calling experience. That way, users can use an app to make a standard phone call.
SIP Trunk vs DID Providers
GDMS is a SIP trunking and DID provider covering Myanmar and Laos. Customers can leverage our in-country VoIP gateway to connect their enterprise PBX to the PSTN network. If the customer does not own a PBX, GDMS offers cloud-based IPBX solutions that are both cost-effective and extremely scalable.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/wholesale-sip-trunking.jpeg10641600Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2021-07-02 11:47:242021-07-02 11:48:51SIP Trunk and DID, what is the difference?
Why does the Cloud Hosting provider choice matter?
Migrating business operations, emails, or document storage to the cloud will significantly reduce the cost of running a business, streamline operations, and eliminate the need for in-house IT solutions.
The right cloud hosting provider should ease remote employee collaboration and access to critical business data. In summary, cloud hosting allows SME and Large Enterprises to focus on their core business, as the cloud hosting provider takes care of all the heavy lifting, and handles the IT infrastructure.
Today there are many companies offering cloud hosting services, choosing the right provider for your business is a lengthy and complex process. Like any other business, hosting providers have varying aptitudes, services, and expertise.
The best cloud hosting provider offers secure, reliable, and cost-effective services.
Here are the top attributes you should look into when choosing a cloud service provider.
1. Security
Before shortlisting any cloud hosting provider, assess your security requirements, and ensure that the security level of your candidate hosting providers is at least equal if not higher to your security terms.
Besides, it is crucial to have a good understanding of the responsibilities of each party.
You must understand which security features are offered for free, which ones are paid-for features from the hosting provider.
You should also confirm with the cloud provider that it is compatible with third-party security solutions that you plan to implement in the mid-term as per your IT roadmap.
When looking for a cloud hosting provider, it is crucial to choose a company that meets your industry-specific compliance needs.
In Laos, GDMS cloud infrastructure is operated from government data center facilities that comply with international build standards.
In Myanmar, GDMS cloud infrastructure is hosted in a private data center facility Tier3 by design.
3. Technologies and Support
Every cloud stack is different. When choosing a cloud hosting provider, ensure that the cloud hosting company uses a cloud infrastructure that is designed for public cloud hosting, is fit for multi-tenancy, with 24/7 vendor support.
Before finally closing the deal with a specific cloud services provider, request to see the architecture design, ask to trial the environment.
GDMS is a VMware certified cloud service provider, the cloud infrastructure is deployed as per VMware Validated Design ensuring that the cloud stack is built as per industry standard of compliance, security, and reliability.
GDMS also offers migration support and assistance, to make the process easy on your part.
4. Reliability and Performance
Downtime can lead to significant monetary losses, especially for companies that rely on cloud services to transact. It is crucial to assess the cloud service provider’s reliability.
To assess the service reliability, ask the cloud provider for its SLA document.
GDMS offers 99.99% on its cloud infrastructure. We offer a comprehensive and transparent SLA agreement that is proof of our commitment to provide a reliable service to your business.
Downtimes are inevitable, what matters is how companies deal with the problem and have processes in place to solve it quickly. GDMS follows the ITIL framework for its support process and has a complete escalation chain in place to ensure smooth and rapid recovery in the event of an outage.
5. Self-Service User Interface
When choosing your cloud service provider, make sure that your environment has an out-of-band interface (management portal) for you to access your applications even in case of an issue.
GDMS leverages vCloud Director Self-Service Portal, a powerful management portal designed for service providers willing to offer self-service capabilities to their tenants. With the portal, users can spin up their virtual machines, scale up and down, create networks and security policies without any intervention from the service provider.
Thanks to a policy-driven approach, end users have isolated virtual resources, independent role-based authentication, and fine-grained control. This meets the current market demand in which users request resources without the involvement of the service provider.
The Infrastructure-as-a-service can be cut down into private and public cloud depending on how the infrastructure is shared or managed. GDMS can offer both private and public cloud infrastructure to their customers in Laos and Myanmar.
Public and private cloud offers different levels of privacy, security, and cost suggestions, and can either be managed or unmanaged. GDMS offers by default 24/7 support service. Customers can opt-in for managed services if required.
7. Experience In Migration, Integration, And Configuration
You need to dig a little deeper to find out exactly how much experience your potential cloud hosting service has. The more competent they are, the more likely there will be processes, measures, and contingencies in place.
If you want to make your project a success, run smoothly, and almost free from glitches, choose a provider with in-depth experience.
A solid cloud service provider shall be able to spot potential issues and give you recommendations based on best practices. A reliable cloud provider is passionate about technology and constantly releases new products and services to improve customer experience, service availability, and reliability.
8. Pricing
Before settling on a specific cloud service provider, it is essential to have a solid understanding of the price structure. Many providers will offer low-cost and alluring offers, but the devil is in the details, or in the footnote in our case. Check what services they are offering, review all the price points, and anticipate your growth for the next few years. While it does not mean all affordable cloud services are questionable, they can become extremely expensive in the long run as your estate grows.
GDMS offers a clear and transparent pricing structure with no hidden fees. Our offering including pay as you grow, reserved price as well as burst price option. No matter your company size, we have a pricing model that will suit your budget.
9. Datacenter locations
If you plan to use the VPS as a front-end server for your online customers or end-users then the datacenter locations do matter a lot.
Even if there is only one location available, there must be one that is close to your visitors. The round trip time between your server can be anything between 10ms and 300ms, 10ms within the country for example, and 300ms between the US east coast and Australia. A typical website will require at least 3 sequential round trips before the first page can begin rendering. That may not be the biggest factor delaying the page display but the impact of round trip time should not be overlooked.
GDMS Cloud Infrastructure is deployed in facilities respectively in Vientiane, Laos, and Yangon, Myanmar. Our data center facilities have been selected for their dense peering with domestic networks to ensure your applications are accessible with low latency no matter from which network you try to connect from.
GDMS also offers CDN (Content Distribution Network) services to cache static files and accelerate the delivery of your web applications. A CDN will improve the user experience and reduce the load on your servers.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Cloud-Server-Blog-Post-02.jpg11761600Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2021-04-27 14:46:422023-12-26 11:45:39How to choose a Cloud Hosting Provider?
Local cloud services provider Global Digital Management Solutions (GDMS) partners with Conversant Solutions, a Singapore-based digital media solutions provider to offer the first software-defined Enterprise Content Delivery Network (CDN) service in Myanmar and Laos.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many have shifted their day-to-day activities to online. To sustain the spike in Internet traffic, CDN services are now more critical than ever.
Thanks to CDN services, businesses that serve local and global markets or mobilize employees via the Internet will be able to provide their customers or users with an enhanced online experience in terms of the accessibility and responsiveness of their website or web-based applications.
Online gaming, video streaming, payment transactions as well as other digital content and media are delivered over the web with minimized lag and improved availability through CDN services.
Thanks to this partnership, the CDN solution is readily available for Myanmar and Laos enterprises through an easy subscription-based model that allows digital companies to use GDMS’s CDN services without the need to invest in hardware equipment, maintenance, and other related operational expenses.
According to Mathieu Ploton, GDMS Chief Technical Officer, “GDMS enterprise CDN services help organizations improve the security and performance of their digital assets. Slow website performance has a measurable effect on conversion rates which results in revenue loss. DDoS attacks can have disastrous consequences for an online business as well. Adopting CDN is a fundamental step for any digital business these days.”
On the other hand, Cheong Kong Wai, Executive Chairman, and CEO for Conversant Solutions said, “This strategic alliance allows GDMS to provide CDN services to its customers by leveraging on the reach and scale of our network, through our SwiftFederation Partners. We are excited to share GDMS’s commitment to helping its customers to grow and drive their brand forward in this increasingly connected world.”
In practical terms, CDN acts as an intermediary between the point of origin of data and an internet-connected device. Through a network of servers located around the world, companies can deliver digital content, such as websites or videos, faster, safer, and more reliably to end-users. This is especially beneficial to developing countries like Myanmar and Laos, where internet speed and resiliency remain an issue.
By subscribing to GDMS’s CDN offering, clients will also have access to numerous features like monitoring tools and analytics for customer insights and analysis, and be able to use it for geolocation. At the same time, the platform should be leveraged to cache and deliver the content through the nearest edge and help offload origin servers.
Thanks to Conversant CDN federation, GDMS can leverage a stable network through more than 90 POPs located worldwide, with a steady footprint in the Asian region. GDMS will provide local in-country customer support 24/7 to enterprises that desire to use its CDN services. Customers are also free to test the product and discover its resiliency before signing up.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/img-swiftserve-cdn.jpg672950Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2021-01-19 09:40:282021-04-01 17:28:31GDMS partners with Conversant to deliver Next-generation CDN services in Myanmar and Laos
Gartner estimates that the cost of downtime is $5,600 a minute. As you continue to evolve into a digital business, you literally can’t afford for applications to be unavailable. But growing data, increasing the risk of cyberattacks, and more complex regulations make it a struggle to ensure business continuity.
GDMS provides cloud-based disaster recovery that:
Gets your mission and business-critical apps protected fast
Reduces cost and complexity for disaster recovery
Offers flexibility to tailor to your unique needs
Works with your VMware environment to streamline operations
Accelerates cloud adoption
Comply with data sovereignty by keeping your data in-country
We also offer consultative services to improve outcomes and aid you on your journey to protecting the business. Interested? get in touch with us!
Flexible, cloud-based DR
Flexible off-premises, cloud-based disaster recovery to cloud and between clouds, covers needed hybrid scenarios – designed specifically for your VMware environment.
Unified – GDMS DRaaS is a unified solution that allows for fast, efficient disaster recovery from on-premises to cloud as well as cloud to cloud. It is unified for all vSphere clouds, supporting any vSphere site to our Cloud from within your vSphere client via a simple plugin.
Cost-Effective – GDMS DRaaS to cloud is much cheaper to manage than trying to create a Disaster Recovery platform yourself; you don’t have to purchase the target hardware and software, and you rent what you need based on usage.
Supportable – Your operations teams needn’t learn a new product; it is very intuitive and works inside your existing vSphere-based solutions. You are in charge of our DRaaS solution to cover your business needs.
Simple to deploy and simple to use – Deployment is a simple replication virtual appliance. Connect to the endpoint GDMS supply then start replicating and protecting.
One View – GDMS DRaaS solution delivers a smooth, integrated experience with VM/vApp context menu actions and protection indication visibility within our platform.
Quick to protect – As it is based on vSphere there are no agents to deploy and no host firewall changes, unlike Zerto and other products such as Azure Site Recovery (ASR).
Granular Protection – DRaaS works on replication and differential sync between replicants. You can configure your own timeframe for the replicants and differential sync to allow for better granularity and speed of recovery.
Suitable – GDMS DRaaS is a VMware mid-tier solution suitable, applicable for most, if not all workloads up to mission-critical. It supports up to a 5 min Recovery Point Objective which is typically good enough when looking at the criticality of most workloads.
Long Term protection – GDMS DRaaS doesn’t just offer simple replications that are thrown away, you can also save replicants to meet compliance or any other need for as long as you want, consider it a backup of sorts.
Secure – GDMS DRaaS uses SLL to encrypt traffic that is put over the network from source to target to ensure there is no exposure during transit. Also, once in the Virtual Data Center target environment, multi-tenancy isolation from VMware Cloud Director ensures your workloads are separated from everyone else.
Domestic – GDMS Cloud Infrastructure is domestic (Laos and Myanmar respectively). By using GDMS Cloud infrastructure, you can be confident that your data will never leave the country.
Streamline cloud migration
Our DRaaS offers dramatically simplified, secure and cost-effective onboarding to cloud, accelerating your migration efforts.
Easy – The same mechanisms used for DR processes are highly leverageable to facilitate an easy, fast move to the cloud.
Flexible – Migrate and cutover, using a cold (complete offline sync) or warm cutover (differential sync only which is faster and has less downtime).
Customizable – Migrate in your maintenance windows; you can run migration jobs scheduled in a maintenance window to avoid business impact. The migration can also re-IP and re network instances at the target site making the move as flexible and seamless as possible.
No complex recovery – Unlike solutions that require different hypervisors there are no complex disk conversions or format changes at source and target, making cutover and DR testing simple and real. Lots of other solutions advertise simple DRaaS, but unless the source and target are on the same hypervisor, recovery is never automatic out of the box. The same mechanisms used for DR processes are highly leverageable to facilitate an easy, fast move to the cloud.
Speed and simplicity
It’s easy to get started with zero capital investment, a short time to being protected, and no new skills required. The ability to add business resilience without increasing your skills gaps overcomes one of the biggest hurdles in adopting new technologies.
Your DRaaS VMware-native solution uses the same vSphere replication underlying technology, so no changes are required to on-premises hosts
GDMS DRaaS is a self-service offering (and managed service) and will allow you to run replication on your vSphere client to our target cloud or from our target cloud. You have complete synchronous control – you can execute failover from each end and configure from each end too. The same applies to cloud to cloud DR where your only interface is GDMS’s Cloud Director platform.
No agents to deploy! Once you have signed up, simply install the vCenter plug-in and deploy the replicator appliance – most of the configuration happens on GDMS’s side; you simply choose what to protect.
Improve business continuity
Disaster recovery is an important part of your business continuity plan. Cloud-based DRaaS provides safety from disasters that may impair your applications and infrastructure.
DRaaS is a part of a broader Business Continuity plan, but an essential part. As an essential part it needs regular testing; this should be a best practice for all customers. Testing can be executed easily and simply without impacting existing replications (you are always protected), and is not just a simulation, it is a real copy up and running. Testing is non impactful and completely customizable from the start up order of VMs to modifying networking so as not to clash with other workloads. Testing is in your hands; it’s your business continuity plan, and you are responsible for ensuring it works.
Additional professional services are available for business continuity planning, DR onboarding, configuration assistance and more.
Leverage investments / Lower TCO
Streamline DR processes by leveraging existing VMware investments, reducing cost as well as overhead.
Benefit from a subscription-based, competitively priced solution designed with core features to minimize costs.
Managed DR reduces complexity and overhead by having a trusted partner own core DR operational work as well as make sense of regulatory and compliance mandates.
Your DRaaS VMware-native solution uses the same vSphere replication underlying technology, so no changes are required to on-premises hosts.
Enjoy standard vCenter console for both day-to-day IT operations and your disaster recovery solution, capitalize on your existing skills and resource user interfaces. With flexible target destination resource options and DR functionality tiers you can chose the right combination for your needs.
Your cost of ownership is kept to a minimum by only paying for what you consume in normal operation. This will just be storage and bandwidth; in failover events this will involve production compute.
Look at your business-critical applications and assign them to a faster Recovery Point Objective, with more granular replications to give you the right level of recovery time and granularity. Remember there is a trade off for mission critical and business critical coverage; the more critical, the more granular the recovery and more cost – not everything needs to be business/mission critical.
Lower your bandwidth costs with compression enabled on all replications from your on-premise to our cloud. If you wish you can also schedule the initial sync of VMs to be out of office hours to ensure no interruption to bandwidth in office hours.
Chose to save replications at any point in time for any duration, effectively creating a replicant you can recover from any time in the future.
Trusted and secure
Confidently deploy a secure solution with a certified VMware Cloud Provider managing the security.
GDMS’s DRaaS is a platform service from VMware and certified for our usage.
Built-in security capabilities of our VMware platform at our target cloud but also encryption of data in transit between your site and ours using TLS encryption from end to end.
Fast, non-disruptive DR testing
Backups and DR can be worthless if organizations don’t perform regular validation to ensure they’ll work right when needed. Reduce risk with fast, clean simulated DR testing in minutes that enables regularly scheduled testing required for proper DR planning and validation without impacting your ongoing DR activity… or your IT staff.
Testing a VM or vAPP doesn’t impact existing replication and you can test your recovery coverage and capabilities in minutes, not hours.
Unlike other DRaaS products, your target cloud is a vSphere-based cloud and hence there is zero conversion needed, minimizing the effort to test and failover and increasing the speed of your recovery to really meet the Recovery Time Objective you want.
Test and dispose of – it’s easy to activate the target through a simulated test without impacting ongoing DR replication service; after validating application functionality simply remove the test replica.
Protect collection of VMs (vApps)
Enhanced grouping and protection workflows help preserve recovery priorities and network configurations for virtual apps (vApps), eliminating manual scripting and shortening RTOs.
Unified, intelligent recovery of an entire customer-defined VM group within a vAPP.
Prioritize boot order of critical machines over less critical VMs; preserve dependencies.
Automated transfer of vAPP settings and configurations such as vApp networks, gateways, guest OS customization, and properties from source to destination, drastically reducing the level of effort in recovery.
Bandwidth monitoring
Get visibility into what DR is adding to bandwidth to help troubleshoot latency issues.
In the DRaaS UI view real-time and historic bandwidth monitoring for DR processes to help triage latency issues and to keep track of how much bandwidth is being used for replication.
Customers have the option to enable data compression before sending data over the network to mitigate performance issues. Customers concerned with the potential impact to system performance, or don’t have bandwidth constraints, have the flexibility to leave this feature turned off.
Capacity reporting
Get visibility into what DR is consuming in terms of storage on the target environment.
View dashboards showing your consumption of storage and other Virtual Data Center resources to ensure you remain within the capacity for your replication needs.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/VCA_Tri-IconAsset-1-768x719-1.png719768Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2021-01-04 17:00:272021-04-01 17:30:22Protect Your Business with Disaster Recovery as a Service
A software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN), is a network that is abstracted from its hardware, creating a virtualized network overlay.
Enterprise customers can remotely manage and quickly scale this overlay, which can extent over large number of sites and geographical distances. It is one of the application of software-defined networking (SDN).
An SD-WAN can connect hundreds of branch locations to one or multiple central hub offices or data centers. Because it is abstracted from hardware, it is more flexible and available than a standard WAN.
It relies on four key principles:
Centralized management
Elastic traffic management
Edge connectivity abstraction
WAN virtualization
SD-WAN is huge
According to P&S Intelligence, “the globalSD-WAN market is expected to witness an explosive CAGR of 38.6% during 2020–2030. At this rate, the revenue generated from the sale of such solutions would rise to $43.0 billion by 2030, from merely $1.4 billion in 2019.”
Why use SD-WAN?
The sales pitch for SD-WAN is that it simplifies the deployment of new branches as the installation is completely plug-and-play. Once the SDWAN edge device is connected to the network, the cloud-based orchestrator detects it and informs the network administrator who just has to push the preconfigured policy to the new edge. In a matter of minutes, the new branch is online and completely compliant security-wise with the rest of the network.
SD-WAN also aims to improve the overall network uptime by offering fast failover and dynamic traffic management capabilities.
As SDWAN motto is to be completely abstracted from the infrastructure layer, it does not relate anymore to the underneath technology, it considerably reduces the complexity. No matter how the branch is connected to the network, SDWAN implementation is always the same.
Plus, SDWAN offers fast failover by monitoring in real-time the availability and performance of each upstream. It also has the capability to shift network traffic if the upstream is degraded which was complex to achieve with traditional WAN.
In a nutshell, a good SD-WAN solution can be a real blessing for IT managers as it simplifies not only the implementation but operation and maintenance (O&M) activities as well. It also gives the technical team complete visibility on the enterprise network from a single dashboard. It is also extremely easy to audit as the configuration is centralized.
How is SD-WAN a good fit for Laos?
Now, that we have set the scene about SD-WAN, let’s discuss the particular case of SD-WAN in Laos and why we believe this is a great technology for the country at this moment in time.
As we have discussed extensively, SD-WAN provides significant benefits to enterprises:
1. SDWAN eases the implementation of Disaster-Recovery Plans
According to Wikipedia, “DisasterRecovery involves a set of policies, tools, and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster”. Failing to design and implement DR puts businesses at risk of data loss which can lead to economical loss or worst bankruptcy.
Which the emergence of virtualization and cloud-based solutions, replicating workloads from site to site has never been simpler. But activating a simple replication feature is by no means enough to achieve a disaster recovery plan.
One of the most complex parts of a Disaster Recovery Plan is to design how remote users resume access to business applications through a disaster scenario. As SD-WAN is completely abstracted of the physical layer and centrally managed, it makes a great case for ensuring that all traffic is redirected to the disaster site.
SD-WAN can help to build and operate a point to multipoint network between the branches and a DR site in a few easy steps. The leading SDWAN solutions in the market are also compatible with the most popular private and public cloud providers (VMware, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba) which enable enterprise customers to quickly deploy a hybrid approach with a Disaster Recovery Site in the cloud.
2. SDWAN improves reliability and performance
SD-WAN is a perfect solution to implement site redundancy. The technology is entirely agnostic of the underneath infrastructure which means that the company looking to implement SD-WAN can leverage existing connectivity no matter the medium.
Furthermore, SDWAN runs seamlessly over Fiber, xDSL, Wifi, 3G, and 4G Mobile Data, even VSAT. It lies on OSI Layer 3 and works seamlessly over any Internet and MPLS connectivity.
By implementing SD-WAN on top of two diverse Internet connections, the enterprise can obtain high availability and improve user experience.
Furthermore, SD-WAN provides the capability to tag applications and protocols that are critical to the business (E.g. VoIP, Videoconference…) and ensure that in case of performance degradation or unavailability of one of the upstream link, these get priority over non-business-critical applications.
SDWAN also optimizes network performance. It monitors the characteristics and real-time performance of the upstreams and steers packets to achieve optimal performance.
3. SDWAN is cost-effective
One of the sale argument of SD-WAN is also the cost reduction on the underlying infrastructure as SD-WAN limit the enterprise investment in private lines as SD-WAN works perfectly over standard Internet services.
In Laos, this argument is quite relevant as MPLS connectivity is expensive, at least 10x more expensive than broadband internet access.
For those looking to cut down costs, a solution to explore could be to use home / SME broadband connectivity to protect an existing enterprise dedicated uplink with SD-WAN. The current price for a 10mbps home broadband in Laos is around 400,000 Kips ~$44 per month which makes an easy business case for a redundant solution.
Another cost reduction opportunity is on the Internet connectivity of the main site.
For security reasons, enterprise IT administrators usually implement one or two Internet gateways for an entire organization. These gateways are usually located at the company data center or headquarter.
This to ensure that Internet traffic goes through all the Internet security policies no matter where the user is located.
As more and more applications are hosted in the public cloud such as Office365, or Salesforce, Internet traffic keeps growing for the enterprise.
Enterprises that implement a centralized firewall/gateway to access the Internet are somehow billed twice for Internet bandwidth. First, at the branch level where the Internet is the underneath technology for the point to multipoint WAN network. Second, at the HQ level when the traffic goes out to the Internet.
As SDWAN can implement consistent security policies across the entire organization, it is absolutely possible to let the internet traffic of the branch exits directly at the branch level, therefore, reducing drastically the internet usage at the HQ level.
4. SDWAN centralized management could be outsourced to a Managed Service Provider such as GDMS
As SDWAN is centrally managed, it reduces the need for technical resources across your network. The complete network and security infrastructure can be managed from the SDWAN orchestrator sitting in the enterprise cloud or the public cloud.
With years of experience in the IT and Telecom field, GDMS can help enterprises in Laos implement SD-WAN in a managed service fashion, offloading the IT department from the day-to-day support and operation and allowing them to focus on new innovative projects and digital transformation.
5. SDWAN is your gateway to public cloud
SD-WAN can be deployed easily in the cloud. If you take a look at AWS marketplace for instance, you will find 45 SD-WAN products readily available for deployment. Among them, the top brands for SD-WAN:
VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud Virtual Edge
Cisco Cloud Services Router (CSR) for SD-WAN
Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition
CloudGenix ION SD-WAN Virtual Appliance
Riverbed SteelConnect Gateway (SD-WAN)
Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect for AWS
Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
More and more companies these days are adopting a hybrid cloud strategy. A hybrid cloud is a mixture of a private cloud (usually the enterprise data center) combined with the use of public cloud services like AWS or Azure. The objective is to combine services and solutions from a selection of cloud providers to create a unified and consistent computing environment.
SD-WAN fulfills this need for consistency by implementing a standard set of network and security policies across the board.
Conclusion
GDMS is a registered VMware partner in Laos and Myanmar. As an SD-WAN Managed Service Provider, GDMS is committed to supporting our clients with their digital transformation projects.
We specialize in telecom and IT network architecture, deployment, vendor selection, and management.
Our goal is to help enterprise customers implement SD-WAN solutions and services, ensuring a high level of security, improved performance for a lower cost.
If you are interested in implementing SD-WAN for your organization, we would love to hear from you: contact us.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/sd-wan-blog.png883718Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2020-11-11 12:10:452023-09-10 22:16:31GDMS to deliver Managed SD-WAN Services in Laos
GDMS, a new provider of enterprise-class data center, connectivity, and managed services in Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam announced that it has joined the VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP).
GDMS advanced infrastructure (IaaS) offering combines the familiarity of a VMware-based cloud with the flexibility of a world-class data center environment.
With GDMS Cloud, customers have access to the full set of flexible and interoperable capabilities of VMware’s Cloud Infrastructure.
The security, scalability, and cost optimization of the VMware Cloud Infrastructure, combined with GDMS’s secure on-ramp to the in-country cloud availability zones allow customers to manage entire app suites and cloud workloads across hybrid cloud environments.
Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure
GDMS Cloud offers a self-service cloud infrastructure, built to meet the most demanding needs of your business, whether short or long term. Built on VMware vCloud and Cisco technology, GDMS Cloud is designed to support a variety of workloads, business continuity, and compliance needs.
Built for applications with the most complex network, security, scalability, storage, and compliance needs, GDMS enables an IT infrastructure strategy that can adapt no matter how your business or the market evolves.
https://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/unnamed.jpg900900Mathieuhttps://www.global-dms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/logo-GDMS.pngMathieu2020-10-09 16:43:042021-04-01 17:33:52GDMS joins VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP)
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