Microservices Network Architecture 101

A new god is rising in the world of application development – Microservices

The new god promises if not happiness in the next life, scalability, agility and fault tolerance in this life. At the heart of all this, is a simple, age-old axiom that is a key design goal of Unix: do one thing, and do it well. In the evolution of application architectures, single monolithic applications made way for client-server applications, which in turn made the way for microservices. The upending of the old world continues in data centers.

Communication is at the heart of this new religion (one popular theory of the etymology of the word religion is the word “religio” which means “to reconnect”). Every religion and every new technology introduces its own new vocabulary.

Microservices are no different!

In the domain of communications, the new lingo involves things such as MacVlan, IPVlan, Weave, Flannel and Swarm, to just name a few. What are they ? How are they connected ? Is IPVlan a new encapsulation format ? If it’s not a new encapsulation format, what is it ? If it is a new encapsulation format, how is it related to VxLAN ? Why were they invented ? Which one should I use ? What Continue reading

Microservices Network Architecture 101

A new god is rising in the world of application development – Microservices

The new god promises if not happiness in the next life, scalability, agility and fault tolerance in this life. At the heart of all this, is a simple, age-old axiom that is a key design goal of Unix: do one thing, and do it well. In the evolution of application architectures, single monolithic applications made way for client-server applications, which in turn made the way for microservices. The upending of the old world continues in data centers.

Communication is at the heart of this new religion (one popular theory of the etymology of the word religion is the word “religio” which means “to reconnect”). Every religion and every new technology introduces its own new vocabulary.

Microservices are no different!

In the domain of communications, the new lingo involves things such as MacVlan, IPVlan, Weave, Flannel and Swarm, to just name a few. What are they ? How are they connected ? Is IPVlan a new encapsulation format ? If it’s not a new encapsulation format, what is it ? If it is a new encapsulation format, how is it related to VxLAN ? Why were they invented ? Which one should I use ? What Continue reading

Linux for Network Admins: The Good stuff just got Better!

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he
is all. – Thomas Carlyle
The most satisfactory definition of man from the scientific point of view is probably Man the Tool-maker. – Kenneth Oakley

The Artist and the Scientist both agree that tools are an integral part of what it means to be human. Even human history is divided into ages based on the power and sophistication of the tools: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and now, Information Age. Our capabilities are enormously magnified by the tools we have at hand.

A server admin has the tools to manage 100,000 servers fairly easily, while the network admin struggles to manage a small fraction of that size of networking equipment. In the modern data center, where scale, agility and flexibility are part of its DNA, this lack of netadmin tools is a major hurdle in the operation of the data center. Subsequently, a big part of the transformation and turmoil in networking today is an attempt to get rid of this limitation.

Among the tools the server admin has at his or her disposal, automation is key.  It is impossible to manually manage devices at the Continue reading