For many people in IT, the road to cloud computing has one huge roadblock: security concerns. To get to the cloud, you’ve got to first get beyond all your security questions. And to do that, you’ve got to “get to know” your cloud.

One place where this can begin is at the hardware level. That’s where you can establish the integrity of the server and use that knowledge to create trusted compute pools. Like the concrete footers on a house, trusted compute pools provide a foundation for a secure environment.

So how do you go about creating this foundation? A good first step is to watch a new Intel video on YouTube. This video, “Securing a Cloud Infrastructure with Intel, HyTrust and VMware,” walks you through the process of configuration, policy creation, and implementation of a trusted compute environment.

The demonstration is based on an Intel^® Cloud Builders reference architecture that was put into action in a lab setting. In the demo, we established a five-server configuration and then activated Intel^® Trusted Executive Technology (Intel^® TXT) on four VMware vSphere* hosts.

We configured one of the hosts as a management server, and then created three virtual machines on the server, with the following roles:

• Infrastructure server
  
• VMware vCenter* Server
  
• HyTrust* Appliance
  

After we configured these VMs, we used VMware vCenter Server to create a VMware vSphere cluster with the three remaining hosts. We then used the HyTrust Appliance to set up a trusted compute pool consisting of two of the three servers in the cluster. We left the third server untrusted so we could demonstrate how HyTrust Appliance can garner platform trust status, use that for defining security policies, and then enforce those policies.

Along with the step-by-step demonstration, this video offers some great tips for building a trusted compute platform. So if you’re thinking about a cloud, you’ll definitely want to tune in to this video. It gives you a fast and easy way to see how you can get to know more about your cloud infrastructure, and then use that information to better protect your critical data and workloads.

For a deeper dive:

• Watch the video.
  
• Download the VMware and HyTrust reference architecture.
  

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Cloud4Com delivers cloud computing solutions to medium and large enterprises in the Czech Republic. Its central offering is its Virtual Data Center* service, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution that provides customers with remote access to the resources typically found on demand in an enterprise data center.

Cloud4Com used reference architectures from Intel® Cloud Builders when planning the technology platform for its service. It identified the Cisco Unified Computing System* with 12 Intel® Xeon® processors 5600 series as the solution best able to offer the powerful, flexible, and energy-efficient server platform it needed. To support unified networking, Cloud4Com deployed a Hitachi Data Systems Adaptable Modular Storage* 2300 solution based on an Intel Cloud Builders reference architecture for unified networking based on 10 gigabit Ethernet.

“The commercial insights we gained through our membership in the Open Data Center Alliance and the reference architectures provided by Intel® Cloud Builders proved invaluable to us when developing our Virtual Data Center service,” explained Jaroslav Hulej, sales director of Cloud4Com. “Using the support provided  by Intel, Cisco, and others, we were able to implement an infrastructure platform that delivers all we—and our customers—need from the service.”

For the whole story, download our new Cloud4Com business success story.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.