Network World

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The state of 5G in India: 5G services begin to roll out

With the government successfully concluding the 5G spectrum auction on 1 August 2022, the fifth-generation telecom services were rolled out in India on 1 October 2022 to the first 13 cities, which include Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, Gandhinagar, Ahemdabad, and Jamnagar. 5G will eventually be available nationwide. And Apple, Google, and Samsung have promised updates soon to their more recent phones to enable 5G service on them.In the August auction, the government mopped up a total of ₹1,50,173 crore (₹1,501.7 billion) through the auction that witnessed 40 rounds of bidding by four companies—Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Adani Data Networks—spread over seven days.To read this article in full, please click here

Dell launches mini HCI system for Azure Stack

Dell Technologies has aggressively promoted Azure Stack, Microsoft’s software package that allows enterprises to run a complete copy of the Azure cloud service within their own data center.Now it has introduced a  hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) system designed to support Azure Stack: a 1U server that allows organizations to start small with their deployment and grow.Formally known as Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, the single-node system is designed for customers with smaller data-center footprints, but is expandable to support AI/ML workloads.To read this article in full, please click here

Google launches VMs powered by newest Intel Xeon

Google Cloud announced new virtual machines as part of its cloud platform based on Intel’s newest Xeon Scalable processors.In addition to the new C3 virtual machine series, Google also announced it is deploying Infrastructure Processing Units (IPU), which are designed to intelligently route network traffic and take the load of network data processing off the CPU. The  company made the announcements at its Google Cloud Next ’22 conference held virtually.The IPU chip, formally known as the E2000, was co-designed by Google and Intel together and features 16 Arm Neoverse cores and 200GbE networking.C3 machine instances deliver performance gains of up to 20% over previous generation of C2 instances. They also benefit from a recent product launch called Hyperdisk, a block storage system that offers 80% higher IOPS per vCPU for data analytics and DBMS workloads when compared to other hyperscalers,To read this article in full, please click here

Using functions in bash to selectively run a group of Linux commands

Using a function in bash allows you to create something in Linux that works as if it were a script within a script. Whenever the data being processed matches a set of conditions, your script can call a function that does further processing.The format of a function is very straightforward. The syntax looks like this:<function_name> () { <commands> } You can also use the following format that uses the word "function" if you prefer:function <function_name> { <commands> } In fact, you can also create a function on a single line if the commands to be run are limited, but note the required “;” that follows the command(s):To read this article in full, please click here

Google Cloud adds networking, security features for enterprises

Google Cloud is rolling out new network and security features, including a service that provides Layer-7 security.The new offerings announced at Google Cloud Next also include firewall and web application-protection options aimed at advancing existing cloud connectivity and ensuring the security of cloud-based resources.“We are fundamentally enhancing our network fabric—which includes 35 regions, 106 zones and 173 network edge locations across 200-plus countries—and making it simpler and easier for organizations to migrate their existing workloads and modernize applications all while securing and making them easier to manage,” said Muninder Sambi, vice president and general manager of networking for Google Cloud.To read this article in full, please click here

Google Cloud service aims to ease mainframe migration

Google Cloud has extended its mainframe migration services to include a new option that enables parallel processing – customers can simultaneously run their mainframe workloads on prem and in the cloud, with the ultimate goal of moving those resources to the cloud.The new service, Dual Run for Google Cloud, is in preview status and lets customers run workloads on their existing mainframes and on Google Cloud concurrently without interrupting operations. Enterprises can then perform real-time testing and determine application performance and stability in the cloud. A large challenge with mainframe systems is the tight coupling of data to the application layer. Companies would have to stop an application for some period of time in order to move it, modernize it or transform it, according to Google.To read this article in full, please click here

How SASE might improve worker productivity and make CFOs happy

What justifies network spending?  Two things, according to CIOs.The first is the money to maintain the infrastructure that was justified by projects in the past. The other is money for new projects, and they must deliver benefits large enough to meet the CFO’s target return on investment.The top business justification for any new tech project is productivity improvement. My data says that only about two-thirds of workers in jobs that could be empowered by network improvement have actually been given optimal access to information. In some job classifications, only 40% of workers have been empowered. Mobile workers, ones who regularly operate away from offices, are often empowered only part of the time.To read this article in full, please click here

Intel details FPGA roadmap

Seven years after its $16.7 billion acquisition of FPGA maker Altera, Intel is expanding the technology it gained into new areas.While the primary use for an FPGA processor has been for smartNICs that offload tasks from server CPUs, Intel is now looking to broaden its application from the data center to remote, edge computing, and embedded systems.It’s not as if the Altera processors languished over the last several years, however. One major change is manufacturing. When Intel purchased Altera, its chips were made by TSMC. Now they are made by Intel, so hopefully that’s one less supply-chain headache to worry about.To read this article in full, please click here

Kyndryl, Microsoft tie mainframe to Azure cloud resources

Kyndryl and Microsoft have extended their existing partnership to include mainframe connectivity to cloud applications and workloads.The extension ties together Kyndryl’s zCloud mainframe service with Microsoft’s Power Platform, a low-code application and workflow-automation package that brings access to cloud services including  Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Teams.The aim is making it easier for organizations to access and integrate mainframe-based data with cloud-based resources and combine that data with other information to build new applications.Available now, the service is a way to access decades of data sitting on  mainframes, said Harish Grama, Kyndryl’s global practice leader for cloud. “The idea is to unleash data sitting on the mainframe, mine it, modernize it, and write new business applications on it," he said. "That data shouldn’t be trapped in legacy backends.”To read this article in full, please click here

Report: Price of flash memory to drop faster, further in Q4

Back in August, TrendForce Research predicted that due to an oversupply in NAND flash memory, the price of SSDs could drop by 5% to 10% in the third quarter.Since then, the economy has only worsened and the oversupply has continued, and while TrendForce hasn't reported the Q3 actuals, it's now predicting 15% to 20% drop in NAND flash prices in the fourth quarter on top of the Q3 drop..TrendForce says buyers of NAND flash memory—vendors that make SSDs but don’t manufacture their own memory—have reduced their NAND inventory and cut back on new purchases in the second half of the year. Meanwhile makers of memory drastically reduced prices to boost sales. Now TrendForce predicts that before the end of the year, suppliers will be selling memory at a loss and reduce production.To read this article in full, please click here

Using bash options to change the behavior of scripts

Bash provides a large number of options that can be used to control the behavior of bash scripts. This post examines some of the more useful ones and explains how to display which options are in use and which are not.Exiting when an error occurs If you want a bash script to exit soon as it encounters an error—any error at all—in your scripts, you can add the set -o errexit option. If your script contains a syntax error, tries to read a file that doesn’t exist, attempts to append to a file when you don’t have permission to do so, or misuses a command in some way, the script will end abruptly. Here is a simple example:#!/bin/bash set -o errexit tail NoSuchFile echo -n “Enter text to be appended> “ read txt echo $txt >> NoSuchFile Try to run this script, and you’ll see this:To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco tightens its SD-WAN integration with Microsoft Azure

Cisco continues to build tighter SD-WAN integration with the leading cloud service providers to better tie together widely distributed resources.This week Cisco and Microsoft extended their SD-WAN/Microsoft Azure integration to enable building single or multiple overlays on top of Microsoft’s backbone to interconnect enterprise sites worldwide, and to connect sites to workloads running inside Azure, similar to an arrangement Cisco has with Google Cloud.To read this article in full, please click here

What is a network switch, and how does it work?

Modern networks are critical for any enterprise. Networks deliver business applications, multimedia messages and key data to end users around the world. A fundamental element that networks have in common is the network switch, which helps connect devices for the purpose of sharing resources within a local area network (LAN).What is a network switch? A network switch is a physical device that operates at the Data Link layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model -- Layer 2. It takes in packets sent by devices that are connected to its physical ports, and forwards them to the devices the packets are intended to reach. Switches can also operate at the Network Layer (Layer 3) where routing occurs.To read this article in full, please click here

Aryaka rolls out cloud-based web gateway for SASE-focused WAN offering

Long-time WAN provider Aryaka today released a version of its Zero Trust WAN product that incorporates a new Secure Web Gateway and Firewall-as-a-Service as it works toward a SASE-enabled WAN offering.The idea is to provide a much more updated version of WAN to enterprise customers-– where SD-WAN traditionally lived in a box in branch offices, the pandemic and the evolving SASE model prompted a more flexible rethink. Now, Aryaka’s latest model is an entirely cloud-based offering, routing secure traffic to branch offices or remote employees while being able to employ robust security technologies via Aryaka’s own cloud.To read this article in full, please click here

VMware embraces DPUs to stretch the use of CPUs

While it is clearly early in the game, VMware has made a bunch of moves recently to ensure that DPUs and the smartNICs they enable are an equal part of enterprise networking environments of the future.VMware is a leading proponent of using digital processing units to free-up server CPU cycles by offloading networking, security, storage, and other processes in order to rapidly and efficiently supporting edge- and cloud-based workloads.Competitors—and partners in some cases—including Intel, Nvidia, AWS, and AMD, also have plans to more tightly integrate DPU-based devices into in firewalls, gateways, enterprise load balancing, and storage-offload applications.To read this article in full, please click here

Used servers: Bargain or too good to be true?

Enterprise IT teams are always on the lookout for ways to save money or gain operational efficiencies. One approach is to purchase used data center equipment such as servers, rather than investing in brand new systems and paying top dollar.There’s no shortage of resellers who cater to this market. Some equipment resellers specifically target gear from hyperscalers, because the hyperscalers replace their hardware at a fast pace, and the equipment they turnover can be more powerful than what most enterprises use today.Those in the business of selling used equipment say demand for their offerings is high.To read this article in full, please click here

The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2022

Networking vendors have a lot on their plate. They need to innovate in areas like automation, AIOps, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), secure access service edge (SASE), visibility, and multi-cloud management.They must respond to customer preferences for subscription models and network as-a-service (NaaS) offerings. In a recent survey, IDC reported that 61% of organizations worldwide were interested in shifting to consumption-based models for IT investments rather than capital intensive purchases.To read this article in full, please click here

SambaNova ships second-generation AI systems

SambaNova Systems is now shipping the second-generation of its DataScale systems specifically built for AI and machine learning.You may not have heard of SambaNova, a startup led by ex-Oracle/Sun hardware executives and Stanford professors, but its work is likely familiar. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was an early adopter of DataScale and used the systems in its COVID-19 antiviral compound and therapeutic research in 2020.“Our systems were deployed in supercomputers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which were then used by various parties for the research and development of COVID-19 antiviral compound and therapeutics,” said Marshall Choy, SambaNova’s senior vice president for products. “So, yes, they were a small part of that. As bad as the pandemic was, at least we got to do something good through it.”To read this article in full, please click here

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