The Benefits of a Proper Development Environment
I’ve had a number of folks approach me about the topic of development environments, so I figured it was worth a blog post.
Maybe you’re curious what a development environment is, or perhaps you’re working through the challenge of developing code on one platform, and deploying on another. Maybe you already have a development environment - like a virtual machine - but you aren’t happy with your workflow, and feel it could use some upgrades.
If any of the above apply to you, this post should be useful to you.
A Continuous Integration Story
Imagine yourself as a member of a software development team. You’re all working on the MegaAwesome project, which aims to solve global warming, world hunger, and basically anything wrong on this earth. With such high aspirations, it is important to put a process in place that ensures maximum developer efficiency, while maintaining an uncompromisingly high level of quality.
Any mature software development team will leverage version control like Git to ensure changes to the codebase are properly tracked and managed. They will also likely leverage some kind of continuous integration, or build server like Jenkins to run automated static code analysis (i.e. PEP8) or unit Continue reading
The Benefits of a Proper Development Environment
I’ve had a number of folks approach me about the topic of development environments, so I figured it was worth a blog post. Maybe you’re curious what a development environment is, or perhaps you’re working through the challenge of developing code on one platform, and deploying on another. Maybe you already have a development environment - like a virtual machine - but you aren’t happy with your workflow, and feel it could use some upgrades.The Benefits of a Proper Development Environment
I’ve had a number of folks approach me about the topic of development environments, so I figured it was worth a blog post. Maybe you’re curious what a development environment is, or perhaps you’re working through the challenge of developing code on one platform, and deploying on another. Maybe you already have a development environment - like a virtual machine - but you aren’t happy with your workflow, and feel it could use some upgrades.Network Namespaces: The New Access Layer
When considering containers and how they connect to the physical network, it may be easy to assume that this paradigm is identical to the connectivity model of virtual machines. However, the advent of container technology has really started to popularize some concepts and new terminology that you may not be familiar with, especially if you’re new to the way linux handles network resources.
What is a Namespace?
It’s important to understand this concept, because containers are NOT simply “miniature virtual machines”, and understanding namespaces is very important to conceptualizing the way a host will allocate various system resources for container workloads.
Generally, namespaces are a mechanism by which a Linux system can isolate and provide abstractions for system resources. These could be filesystem, process, or network resources, just to name a few.
The man page on linux namespaces goes into quite a bit of detail on the various types of namespaces. For instance, mount namespaces provide a mechanism to isolate the view that different processes have of the filesystem hierarchy. Process namespaces allow for process-level isolation, meaning that two processes in separate process namespaces can have the same PID. Network namespaces - the focus of this particular post - allow Continue reading
Network Namespaces: The New Access Layer
When considering containers and how they connect to the physical network, it may be easy to assume that this paradigm is identical to the connectivity model of virtual machines. However, the advent of container technology has really started to popularize some concepts and new terminology that you may not be familiar with, especially if you’re new to the way linux handles network resources.
What is a Namespace?
It’s important to understand this concept, because containers are NOT simply “miniature virtual machines”, and understanding namespaces is very important to conceptualizing the way a host will allocate various system resources for container workloads.
Generally, namespaces are a mechanism by which a Linux system can isolate and provide abstractions for system resources. These could be filesystem, process, or network resources, just to name a few.
The man page on linux namespaces goes into quite a bit of detail on the various types of namespaces. For instance, mount namespaces provide a mechanism to isolate the view that different processes have of the filesystem hierarchy. Process namespaces allow for process-level isolation, meaning that two processes in separate process namespaces can have the same PID. Network namespaces - the focus of this particular post - allow Continue reading
Network Namespaces: The New Access Layer
When considering containers and how they connect to the physical network, it may be easy to assume that this paradigm is identical to the connectivity model of virtual machines. However, the advent of container technology has really started to popularize some concepts and new terminology that you may not be familiar with, especially if you’re new to the way linux handles network resources. What is a Namespace? It’s important to understand this concept, because containers are NOT simply “miniature virtual machines”, and understanding namespaces is very important to conceptualizing the way a host will allocate various system resources for container workloads.Network Namespaces: The New Access Layer
When considering containers and how they connect to the physical network, it may be easy to assume that this paradigm is identical to the connectivity model of virtual machines. However, the advent of container technology has really started to popularize some concepts and new terminology that you may not be familiar with, especially if you’re new to the way linux handles network resources. What is a Namespace? It’s important to understand this concept, because containers are NOT simply “miniature virtual machines”, and understanding namespaces is very important to conceptualizing the way a host will allocate various system resources for container workloads.Network Automation: Be Bold!
I’ve had something on my mind concerning network automation, and I think it’s worth mentioning it here.
There’s been a lot of talk - including plenty from myself - about using tools like Ansible for creating network configuration files; that is, text files that contain configurations for network devices, usually a list of CLI commands. And this is a great first step, certainly if you’re new to network automation.
It’s really not that hard to generate configurations. You can do it in about five lines of Python, or you can stick with that Excel spreadsheet powered by macros (you know who you are). I challenge anyone to tell me that Ansible is better at generating config templates than Excel. The reality is that it’s not - and it’s hardly attempting to be.
So, for the sake of making a point, let’s say the generation mechanism doesn’t matter. Let’s concede that this is the wrong optimization to be making. The question becomes - what is the right optimization?
I think the bigger problem to address is that of treating our networks like fragile snowflakes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve logged into a device, and felt like I was Continue reading
Network Automation: Be Bold!
I’ve had something on my mind concerning network automation, and I think it’s worth mentioning it here.
There’s been a lot of talk - including plenty from myself - about using tools like Ansible for creating network configuration files; that is, text files that contain configurations for network devices, usually a list of CLI commands. And this is a great first step, certainly if you’re new to network automation.
It’s really not that hard to generate configurations. You can do it in about five lines of Python, or you can stick with that Excel spreadsheet powered by macros (you know who you are). I challenge anyone to tell me that Ansible is better at generating config templates than Excel. The reality is that it’s not - and it’s hardly attempting to be.
So, for the sake of making a point, let’s say the generation mechanism doesn’t matter. Let’s concede that this is the wrong optimization to be making. The question becomes - what is the right optimization?
I think the bigger problem to address is that of treating our networks like fragile snowflakes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve logged into a device, and felt like I was Continue reading
Network Automation: Be Bold!
I’ve had something on my mind concerning network automation, and I think it’s worth mentioning it here. There’s been a lot of talk - including plenty from myself - about using tools like Ansible for creating network configuration files; that is, text files that contain configurations for network devices, usually a list of CLI commands. And this is a great first step, certainly if you’re new to network automation.Network Automation: Be Bold!
I’ve had something on my mind concerning network automation, and I think it’s worth mentioning it here. There’s been a lot of talk - including plenty from myself - about using tools like Ansible for creating network configuration files; that is, text files that contain configurations for network devices, usually a list of CLI commands. And this is a great first step, certainly if you’re new to network automation.The Importance of Quality in Infrastructure Software
Infrastructure doesn’t matter.
That’s what we keep hearing, right? The ongoing effort to commoditize infrastructure has generated a lot of buzzwords and clickbait taglines, and this is one of the biggest.
IT infrastructure has had a long history of hero culture, and it’s easy to make the assumption - given how low many of these technologies sit in the stack - that we are the important snowflakes and that we run the whole show. The reality is that we don’t, and every time an application engineering team has to hold a series of meetings on how to properly work on the existing infrastructure, that is time spent not creating new features.
The reality is that the underlying infrastructure never stopped being important. The call to simplify these layers was never borne out of a desire to sweep the carpet out from beneath ones own feet. It was a call for help; application teams barely have time to meet the feature requirements laid out by the business, and having to deal with downtime or overbearing change management procedures makes a bad situation worse. The business is not measuring software project success by the number of challenges they overcame on our way Continue reading
The Importance of Quality in Infrastructure Software
Infrastructure doesn’t matter.
That’s what we keep hearing, right? The ongoing effort to commoditize infrastructure has generated a lot of buzzwords and clickbait taglines, and this is one of the biggest.
IT infrastructure has had a long history of hero culture, and it’s easy to make the assumption - given how low many of these technologies sit in the stack - that we are the important snowflakes and that we run the whole show. The reality is that we don’t, and every time an application engineering team has to hold a series of meetings on how to properly work on the existing infrastructure, that is time spent not creating new features.
The reality is that the underlying infrastructure never stopped being important. The call to simplify these layers was never borne out of a desire to sweep the carpet out from beneath ones own feet. It was a call for help; application teams barely have time to meet the feature requirements laid out by the business, and having to deal with downtime or overbearing change management procedures makes a bad situation worse. The business is not measuring software project success by the number of challenges they overcame on our way Continue reading
The Importance of Quality in Infrastructure Software
Infrastructure doesn’t matter. That’s what we keep hearing, right? The ongoing effort to commoditize infrastructure has generated a lot of buzzwords and clickbait taglines, and this is one of the biggest. IT infrastructure has had a long history of hero culture, and it’s easy to make the assumption - given how low many of these technologies sit in the stack - that we are the important snowflakes and that we run the whole show.The Importance of Quality in Infrastructure Software
Infrastructure doesn’t matter. That’s what we keep hearing, right? The ongoing effort to commoditize infrastructure has generated a lot of buzzwords and clickbait taglines, and this is one of the biggest. IT infrastructure has had a long history of hero culture, and it’s easy to make the assumption - given how low many of these technologies sit in the stack - that we are the important snowflakes and that we run the whole show.Docker for NetOps
I have been spending this week in Silicon Valley at Network Field Day 10. One of the announcements struck a chord with me, as this year has marked some significant career changes for me: specifically an uptake in involvement with containers and software development.
My good friend Brent Salisbury once wrote about the idea of using Golang for Network Operations tooling. While I’ve continued (and will continue) to build my Python skillset, I’ve also been getting more and more experience with Golang and with some of the great software projects created by it, such as Docker, and Kubernetes.
Fundamentally, the concept of application of containers is not that new, and admittedly, network engineers have not been required to think of them. I mean network operations is only now getting accustomed to delivering network services in form factors like virtual machines. It’s important to remember that solutions like Docker have provided application developers with an consistent format for packaging what they produce. In network operations, we can take advantage of this same tooling - instead of asking our network vendors to make sure Python is installed on our switches, we need them only to support Docker.
“Docker is in the Network! Continue reading
Docker for NetOps
I have been spending this week in Silicon Valley at Network Field Day 10. One of the announcements struck a chord with me, as this year has marked some significant career changes for me: specifically an uptake in involvement with containers and software development.
My good friend Brent Salisbury once wrote about the idea of using Golang for Network Operations tooling. While I’ve continued (and will continue) to build my Python skillset, I’ve also been getting more and more experience with Golang and with some of the great software projects created by it, such as Docker, and Kubernetes.
Brent has also more recently written about using Docker to build network tools, and I’d like to use this post to say I agree with this sentiment. Network Operations can really do more with container technology to accelerate what has traditionally been a pretty stagnant silo.
Fundamentally, the concept of application of containers is not that new, and admittedly, network engineers have not been required to think of them. I mean network operations is only now getting accustomed to delivering network services in form factors like virtual machines. It’s important to remember that solutions like Docker have provided application developers with Continue reading
Docker for NetOps
I have been spending this week in Silicon Valley at Network Field Day 10. One of the announcements struck a chord with me, as this year has marked some significant career changes for me: specifically an uptake in involvement with containers and software development. My good friend Brent Salisbury once wrote about the idea of using Golang for Network Operations tooling. While I’ve continued (and will continue) to build my Python skillset, I’ve also been getting more and more experience with Golang and with some of the great software projects created by it, such as Docker, and Kubernetes.Docker for NetOps
I have been spending this week in Silicon Valley at Network Field Day 10. One of the announcements struck a chord with me, as this year has marked some significant career changes for me: specifically an uptake in involvement with containers and software development. My good friend Brent Salisbury once wrote about the idea of using Golang for Network Operations tooling. While I’ve continued (and will continue) to build my Python skillset, I’ve also been getting more and more experience with Golang and with some of the great software projects created by it, such as Docker, and Kubernetes.Using Vagrant with CumulusVX
Cumulus recently announced their CumulusVX platform, which is a virtualized instance of their operating system typically found on network switches. They’ve provided a few options to run this, and in this blog post, I’ll be exploring the use of Vagrant to set up a topology with Cumulus virtual devices.
Brief Review of Vagrant
In software development, there is a very crucial need to consistently and repeatably set up development and test environments. We’ve had the “but it worked on my laptop” problem for a while, and anything to simplify the environment set up and ensure that everyone is on the same page will help prevent it.
Vagrant is a tool aimed at doing exactly this. By providing a simple CLI interface on top of your favorite hypervisor (i.e. Virtualbox) you can distribute Vagrantfiles, which are essentially smally Ruby scripts, and they provide the logic needed to set up the environment the way you want it. In addition, it can call external automation tools like Ansible and Puppet to go one step further, and actually interact with the operating system itself to perform tasks like installing and configuring software.
What we get out of a tool like Vagrant is a Continue reading