VMware recently released two important documents that should make their way on to your reading schedule. One is a 9-page paper from VMware that discusses different scenarios for setting up a DMZ in a virtualized environment. The other is a much larger read of 90 pages, co-authored by VMware and Cisco, and designed to help educate its readers about VMware installations in a Cisco networking environment. In the pa VMware recently released two important documents that should make their way on to your reading schedule. One is a 9-page paper from VMware that discusses different scenarios for setting up a DMZ in a virtualized environment. The other is a much larger read of 90 pages, co-authored by VMware and Cisco, and designed to help educate its readers about VMware installations in a Cisco networking environment.In the paper titled DMZ Virtualization with VMware Infrastructure, VMware attempts to provide information to enable you to configure a virtualized DMZ correctly and deploy it seamlessly. This is important because the biggest risk to a DMZ in a virtualized environment (as in a physical environment) is misconfiguration. So it becomes important to arm yourself with information such as this.The document states: As virtualization of network DMZs becomes more common, demand is increasing for information to help network security professionals understand and mitigate the risks associated with this practice. This paper provides detailed descriptions of three different virtualized DMZ configurations and identifies best practice approaches that enable secure deployment. VMware customer experience and independent analyst research demonstrate that it is possible to set up a DMZ in a virtualized environment that is as secure as a DMZ in a physical environment. However, some network security professionals are concerned that DMZ virtualization might decrease security. This is understandable, because virtualization involves new terminology and technology. Fortunately, as a network security professional, you already have the critical knowledge necessary to ensure the proper DMZ Virtualization with VMware Infrastructureconfiguration of a DMZ using virtual network infrastructure. Enforcement policies on a virtual network are the same as those on a physical network. Gartner research supports this view by suggesting that security risks primarily emanate from administrative misconfiguration and not from the virtual infrastructure.Click here to download DMZ Virtualization with VMware Infrastructure.As consumers continue to expand the level of server virtualization in their datacenters, one of the areas where questions often come up is around the impact of virtualization on the data center network. To answer those type of questions, team members from VMware and Cisco came together to write the following design guide for deploying VMware Infrastructure 3 in a Cisco network environment. The document takes a deep look into how networking and storage really work within the environment, and it also offers you design and best practices for deploying VI3 and VMware ESX in a Cisco network environment. It also provides details regarding the internal constructs of the ESX Server and their relation to external Cisco network devices. The document is intended for network architects, network engineers, and server administrators interested in understanding and deploying VMware ESX Server 3.x hosts in a Cisco datacenter environment. Click here to download and read the 90 page document, VMware Infrastructure 3 in a Cisco Network Environment. Software Development