Today’s topics include AWS bringing its cloud hardware on premises with AWS Outposts, and Dell resetting user passwords after a website attack.
Amazon Web Services unveiled its AWS Outposts initiative at its re:Invent conference last week, in response to businesses telling the company they want their on-premises systems to be an extension of their AWS or VMware Cloud in AWS, with the same hardware, APIs and interfaces.
AWS Outposts initially will come in two flavors. One will enable customers to run VMware Cloud on AWS locally in their own data centers, allowing them to use the same VMware control plane and APIs that they’ve been using for their own infrastructures.
The other option is for organizations that want the same APIs and control plane they’ve used in the AWS cloud. This offering will include the new, integrated VMware solution called VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, which includes VMware technologies like NSX for network virtualization and AppDefense that can work across VMware and Amazon EC2 environments.
AWS will deliver the racks of servers and storage to customers and can install, manage and maintain them. Outposts are in private preview and will be generally available in the second half of 2019.
Dell announced on Nov. 28 that its Dell.com customer-facing website was the victim of a cyber-attack discovered on Nov. 9, with attackers taking aim at usernames, email addresses and passwords that had been cryptographically hashed. Dell has no evidence that customer information was actually removed from the site.
Officials stated, “Upon detection of the attempted extraction, Dell immediately implemented countermeasures and initiated an investigation … and has engaged law enforcement.”
Dell noted that credit card information was not targeted and there was no direct impact on Dell’s products or services. The company also announced it has initiated a mandatory password reset for all of its Dell.com users to further mitigate any potential risk.