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Enterasys (News - Alert) Networks Inc. has launched Enterasys Secure Networks for Virtual Data Centers to ensure reliability, mobility, manageability and quality of service. The Secure Networks solution for Virtual Data Centers provides a way to respond to security issues of virtual machines following network access control policies according to internal, industry and government regulations.

Virtualization brings new responsibilities to organizations as security becomes a priority when integrating server storage and networking at the same time ensuring performance and cost effectiveness, said Mike Fabiaschi, President and CEO of Enterasys.

“Enterasys Secure Networks can automatically sense and respond to data center infrastructure threats to ensure only the right users have access to the right information from the right place at the right time regardless of move/add/change activity,” he said in a recent company statement.

Neil MacDonald, VP and Fellow with Gartner (News - Alert), Inc. said that security should not be compromised when an organization moves towards virtualization.

“Virtualization, as with any emerging technology, will be the target of new security threats,” he said. “Security must be ‘baked in’ from conception, not addressed later as an afterthought. Best practices that must be considered when deploying virtual machines include enforcing the principle of least privilege and leveraging intrusion prevention and network access control.”

The Enterasys Secure Virtual Data Center uses Matrix N-Series flow-switches and Matrix X-Series routers for security, consisting of racks with 1,000 Gigabit Ethernet or 256 Ten Gigabit Ethernet network connections per rack. The Enterasys Matrix N-Series switch can find and prioritize about 1,000 virtual machines connected to a single Gigabit or 10 Gigabit Ethernet network interface.

Further advanced Dragon security for preventing and detecting intrusions, with network access control and security information management is included. This prevents unauthorized downloading or hosting illegal content thereby protecting the system against worms and viruses.

In a virtualization environment it is necessary to ensure continuity of operations during hardware failure or planned shut down of servers. Virtual disk storage on Storage Area Networks (SAN) enables virtual machines to migrate between servers in such cases. Enterasys Matrix N-Series switches enables this virtual machine mobility. Further Enterasys Netsight software gives an audit history of the virtual machine’s mobility and takes corrective action automatically.

Enterays software further makes managing the data center network easy by treating it as a whole rather than as a set of components. Granular Quality of Service (QoS) in the data center network is maintained using Layer 2 and Layer 3 mechanisms. Enterasys Matrix N-Series switches are able to separate each virtual machine in a network and control its voice, video and data conversations for different users and applications individually.

Enterasys Matrix N-Series switches and Matrix X-Series routers are capable of load-balancing in case of link, network or device failure, allow virtual server mobility and provide on-demand additional capacity making Enterasys Secure Networks reliable.

Enterasys Networks offers network security and is owned by The Gores Group and Tennenbaum Capital partners, LLC. The Gores group headquartered in Los Angeles, California is an investor in the technology and telecommunication sector while Santa Monica based Tennenbaum invests heavily in technology, healthcare and aerospace industries besides others.

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Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.