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In Chicago on October 26? Come think about SD-WAN with me.

On October 26, 2016 at 5:30p, I’m speaking to a couple of Chicago-based MeetUp groups banding together to hear me discuss implementing SD-WAN. Sign up here. Or here.

The talk will be held at Cisco Systems Building – SkylineATS, 9501 Technology Blvd. 3rd Floor, Rosemont, IL.

This SD-WAN discussion is aimed at network engineers and other technologists who need to understand and recommend technology solutions for their organizations, as well as those who need to make the silly things vendors sell us actually work.

My goal is to make sure you’ve got plenty to think about as you explore SD-WAN. The talk will take away some of the, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

I’ll cover the following.

• An overview of what SD-WAN really is.
• Integrating WAN optimization and SD-WAN.
• Managing existing private WAN contracts.
• Managing your own internal SLAs.
• Relating SD-WAN to XaaS you might be using.
• Considerations for multi-tenant environments.
• Handling deep packet inspection requirements.
• Leveraging TDM and other non-Ethernet circuits.
• Bandwidth scaling.
• WAN circuit design recommendations.
• Integration with your existing routing domain.
• A list of SD-WAN vendors & their products.

I hope to see you there.

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Presenting Technical Topics To Technical People

Fred writes, “I’ve got a conference coming up in December that I’ve been invited to speak at. This is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime. However, having never done it, I’m looking for some tips on how to get started.”

Q: What’s the best way to find a topic that is new enough to be interesting, but relevant enough to be useful?

People go to conferences hoping, among other things, to gather information that they didn’t have before. What that is will vary by audience member. Designers, architects, and C-levels who are trying to stay ahead of the curve will want to know about the future — what tech is coming and the likely impact to their business and operations. Engineers and operations — the people down in the blood and guts of IT — will be more interested in hard skills.

By “hard,” I don’t mean difficult. I mean useful tools and techniques that they can bring back to their job with them and put to use.

• When addressing a technical audience, the most engaging talks will be technical ones that go into specifics. The catch here is that most talks are in the 30 to 60 minute range. Continue reading

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Slack. Less Bad Than The Rest.

A topic I complain about with some regularity is my inability to keep up with incoming messages. I’m too busy creating something for someone else to consume to bother trying to keep up. That’s the way of things. If I successfully keep up with all the input, I never achieve useful output.

In this world of message misery, Slack is my friend. I find that Slack is better at managing input than most other forms of communication.

As Slack groups form (I’m in 8 now), it allows me to interact with people in a private or semi-private manner in a way that’s less intrusive than Google Hangouts or an iMessages chat room.

Slack groups are far better for me than e-mail. I have a passionate dislike for e-mail, although I’ve gotten better at managing it with process and tools. E-mail remains useful to me because it’s the lowest common denominator of communications. If nothing else works, then I can probably send the person an e-mail.

At the moment, Slack is the “least worst” way to manage communication for me.

• I can mute as well as tune notifications. I often mute entire channels that do not require real-time interaction. I can also set do not disturb times. I can also Continue reading

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Interview: Dr. Pat McCarthy Of The Giant Magellan Telescope

On the Citizens of Tech Podcast #43, we interviewed Dr. Patrick McCarthy of the Giant Magellan Telescope project, currently under construction in Chile.

The GMT is in a new class of “extremely large telescopes.” Featuring a custom glass formulation, seven asymmetric mirrors being polished in Arizona, and software that will correct in real-time for atmospheric distortion and physical alignment, the GMT will gather images too dim for us to have ever seen before.

Among the anticipated advances is the ability to see planets orbiting distant stars, allowing us to get that planet’s spectrographic signature. That data will help us find planets with the chemical signatures of life. We’ll also be able to look ever further back in time as we observe across light years, clarifying our understanding of the universe’s opening moments.

Pat was an outstanding spokesman for the GMT, clearly explaining the project’s worth to science, construction challenges, and relation to other extremely large telescope projects. He also helped us understand the pros and cons of terrestrial vs. space-based telescopes.

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MacBook Battery Replacement Requires Admin Credentials?

Over the weekend, I investigated the possibility of Apple replacing the tired battery in my four year old rMBP13. Yes, they can do it. It’s $199 for that particular model. But they also require an admin-level username and password for the device. Here’s an excerpt from the chat session.

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Apple support rep:

What is the Admin Name and password for your Mac?

Me:

Will not share. Definitely should not be required for a battery replacement.

Apple support rep:

It is required. When the Mac goes to the repair depot that is required. You can remove that information so there is just an automatic log in. And you can set it up again when you get it back. We do not ask for any information that is not required.

Me:

Okay, then we’re done here. Thanks very much for your help!

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An automatic log in, while an improvement from a certain point of view, isn’t a fix. No, you don’t have to know the user/pass now to access the system now, but you’re still on the system with admin-level credentials. Anyone with admin equivalent credentials to the system can, with a minimum of effort, get into whatever part of the file system Continue reading

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Connecting Python To Slack For Testing And Development

The scripting language Python can retrieve information from or publish information into the messaging app Slack. This means you can write a program that puts info into Slack for you, or accepts your queries using Slack as the interface. This is useful if you spend a lot of time in Slack, as I do.

The hard work of integrating Slack and Python has been done already. Slack offers an API, and there are at least two open source Python libraries that make leveraging these APIs in your Python code a simple task. I chose slacker after a bit of googling, but it’s not a preference borne of experience. The community seems to be behind slacker as opposed to Slack’s own python-slackclient, so I went that direction.

Steps

1. I’ll assume you’ve got Python installed already. My environment is Ubuntu Server 16.04 with Python 2.7.12.
2. Install the python package manger pip, if you don’t already have it.
   sudo apt install python-pip
3. Install the slacker python library.
   pip install slacker
4. Generate a testing and dev token at the Slack API web site.
   https://api.slack.com/web
   
5. The token will be everything required for authentication to your Slack group. Protect it Continue reading

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Chicagoans: TECHunplugged Is Coming October 27, 2016

TECHunplugged is a one-day event where end users, influencers and vendors come together to talk shop. At the Chicago event on October 27, 2016, I’ll be speaking on the following big idea.

How The Network Automation War Might Soon Be Won

Here’s the abstract I proposed to the TECHunplugged team.

Automation in the virtualization world is a long-established feature. A plethora of excellent tools exist to help stand up server infrastructure, operating systems, and applications. This has helped bring much of the IT stack together in a way that makes system deployment a repeatable, predictable task. By contrast, network automation is a struggling, emergent technology. Why is it that the automation of network provisioning has proven so challenging?

Ethan Banks, 20 year IT veteran and co-host of the Packet Pushers podcasts, will explain the network automation challenge from a practitioner’s point of view. He’ll also discuss recent advances in network automation tooling from both the open source and commercial software worlds. Network automation might feel rather behind other IT silos, but there’s significant progress that will change network operations sooner rather than later.

To set context, I’ll explain why automating the network is so hard.

• No standard way to describe a desired Continue reading

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For Your Ears: Citizens of Tech Podcast 40

In this show, we get into what expiration dates on packaged food and drugs really mean. How should you react when the date expires? If you assume, “Throw it out to be safe,” you’d be wrong.

We also chat about dealing with password expiration policies. They must be super complex and changed frequently, right? Maybe not. Super complex and frequently changed means hard to remember, which studies show can lead to less security, not more.

IBM has manufactured an artificial neuron, which isn’t so interesting by itself. We’ve been here before. The interesting bit is the material used to behave like a neuronal membrane. A genuine advance.

Microsoft has announced a smaller XBoxOne S, now with 4K capabilities. Just not gaming 4K capabilities.

Blackberry is on permanent deathwatch now, as they have begun the, “All else has failed, so let’s litigate,” phase of operations.

All that, plus our regular “Content I Like” and “Today I Learned” features.

Expiring Stochastic Passwords – Citizens of Tech 040

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Why You Finally Really Need IPv6

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PQ Show 89: Implementing EVPN for Enterprise DCI

This week, the Priority Queue gets into the weeds on EVPN with the specific use-case of DCI. Join Ethan Banks as he interviews double JNCIE Clay Haynes on setting up BGP adjacencies, creating EVPN address families, interpreting BGP output containing EVPN NLRIs, handling VTEPs, walking a packet through end to end, and useful commands to know. The post PQ Show 89: Implementing EVPN for Enterprise DCI appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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Datanauts 046: Business Critical Applications with Michael Webster

Designing for business critical applications takes some special consideration. On todays Datanauts, we define what a business critical application is, and then sort out how, exactly, to deal with them from an infrastructure perspective. Insert your earbuds to hear Michael Webster from Nutanix chat through this discussion with co-hosts Chris Wahl and Ethan Banks. The post Datanauts 046: Business Critical Applications with Michael Webster appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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Identifying Infrastructure Security Breaches

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I’ll See You At Cisco Live 2016 Las Vegas

I will be at Cisco Live 2016 in Las Vegas. So far, my calendar has me scheduled to attend some Tech Field Day presentations, visit with vendors, hang out in the Social Media Hub, and host a CloudGenix SD-WAN mixer event (free food and drink for all, plus fellow nerds to network with, just register). I hope to see you at CLUS. Come up and say "hi."

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Complexity – My Friend, My Enemy

Over my years of network engineering, I've learned that the fewer features you can implement while still achieving a business goal, the better. Why? Fewer features mean fewer things that can potentially go wrong. The less that goes wrong, the higher the network uptime.

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Rethinking The WAN

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Webinar – Challenges Delivering Apps The Modern Way

I'm hosting a webinar with Citrix about application deployment in the context of a modern data center -- containers, NFV, etc. They are bringing nerds, and I am going to ask them questions. There's a live demo at the end, so they've promised me. You should register and attend via http://bit.ly/1XSHvgU. The event is soon - Wednesday, June 22, 2016.

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DevOps: The Real Impact On IT Pros

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Should You Care About Cloud Native?

To hear vendors tell the story, every enterprise in the world will be running cloud native applications on hybrid cloud networks any second now. In fact, if you’re not already firing up those containers, your business is behind. I mean…gosh…you’re probably losing thousands of dollars each minute because you’re not agile enough. You’ll be doing massive layoffs before you’re done reading this article just to stay alive. Nonsense.

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Handling Criticism of Your Product

Members of the IT community at large sometimes find babies ugly, and express those opinions in public. That's how community works. We share knowledge, experience, and opinions. We agree. We disagree. We discuss. We speak through our microphones and keyboards, and it's all intended to be for the greater good. How should a vendor react?

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How Important Is Network Hardware?