Chip powerhouse Broadcom recently announced its intention to acquire virtualization pioneer VMware for $61 billion. In light of Broadcom’s less than stellar track record with prior acquisitions (CA Technologies in 2018, and Symantec in 2019), VMware’s enterprise customers are understandably worried.“Following the purchases of CA and Symantec, Broadcom raised prices, decreased support, and stopped investing in innovation,” says Tracy Woo, senior analyst for Forrester. “VMware customers would be wise to have an exit plan,” she cautioned.IDC analyst Stephen Elliot sees it differently. Rather than advising VMware customers to identify the exits, Elliot believes customers should “double down” on their relationship with the vendor, moving towards a more strategic business partnership.To read this article in full, please click here
Nvidia kicked off its second GTC conference of the year with news that its H100 “Hopper” generation of GPUs is in full production, with global partners planning to roll out products and services in October and wide availability in the first quarter of 2023.Hopper features a number of innovations over Ampere, its predecessor architecture introduced in 2020. Most significant is the new Transformer engine. Transformers are widely-used deep learning models and the standard model of choice for natural language processing. Nvidia claims the H100 Transformer Engine can speed up neural networks by as much as six-fold over Ampere without losing accuracy.To read this article in full, please click here
On Linux, the apropos command helps identify commands related to some particular term. It can be helpful in finding commands you might want to use—especially when you can’t remember their names.For example, if you couldn’t remember the command to display a calendar or put your shell to sleep for a short period of time, you could try these commands:$ apropos calendar
cal (1) - display a calendar
$ apropos sleep
sleep (1) - delay for a specified amount of time
usleep (1) - sleep some number of microseconds
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Arm has introduced the next generation of its Neoverse high performance core technology, and Nvidia will be one of the first licensees to offer it out of the gate.Arm introduced the Neoverse N-Series processors for data center use in 2019, along with the Neoverse E-Series for edge computing and the Neoverse V-Series for high performance computing (HPC).For Neoverse V2, Arm is claiming higher per-thread performance at half the power consumption of its x86 competitors. Dermot O’Driscoll, vice president of product solutions at Arm, said on a conference call with journalists that the main aim of V2 is improved performance for cloud and single-thread workloads while balancing power consumption.To read this article in full, please click here
Organizations often use Azure AD Connect to maintain the relationship between their on-prem active directory and their Office 365/Azure cloud instance, and when doing this, it’s important that they build in redundancy with business continuity in mind.Recently our organization sought to make two meaningful changes to its sync relationship:
set up a non-domain-controller AD Connect server
configure the existing sync server as a standby for failover in the event of problems with the primary server
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Juniper Networks has expanded the features of its Apstra intent-based networking software to include broader configuration and multiprotocol support, and has added a new licensing scheme.The latest version of Apstra includes a feature called Freeform Reference Designs for designing data-center networks that support any protocol, topology or network domain. Data center reference designs are offered by all major data center players and typically feature validated, repeatable infrastructure system maps on how networked resources are configured.To read this article in full, please click here
Personally, I always try to avoid filenames with blanks, usually by filling those places where less blank-phobic people would use them with underscores or hyphens. The filenames are still easy to decipher, and I don’t have to trouble myself with enclosing them in quotes when I want to use them. As a result, some of my files look like this:locking-accts
Lost_World
I also rarely add .txt file extensions to the end of text files unless I plan to share them with my Windows system.Use quotes
When blanks in file names are preferable for any reason, however, there are several easy ways to work with them. To reference existing files, you can enclose the filenames in single or double quotes. In fact, you can make this easier by starting with a quote mark, typing as much of the filename as needed to differentiate it from other files and then pressing the tab key to initiate filename completion. For example, typing the portion of a filename as shown in the example below and then pressing tab should add the rest of the filename to the “file n” beginning:To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has broadened the scope of Cisco SD-WAN software by growing its reach and security, and expanding its support for deploying multi-region WAN fabric.The idea behind the new features is to help manage the complexity and security of connecting to cloud resources from the edge of the network, said JP Shukla, director, product management, in Cisco’s Enterprise Cloud & SD-WAN group. “They want to connect these users as reliably and securely as these users would be in an office environment,” he said.
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Nvidia has released performance data for its forthcoming Hopper generation of GPUs, and the initial benchmarks are tremendous.The metrics are based on MLPerf Inference v2.1, an industry-standard benchmark that analyzes the performance of inferencing tasks using a machine-learning model against new data.Nvidia claims its Hopper-based H100 Tensor Core GPUs delivered up to 4.5x greater performance than its previous A100 Ampere GPUs. (Read more about Hopper: Nvidia unveils a new GPU architecture designed for AI data centers) It’s a remarkable jump in just one generation. For comparison, CPU benchmarks often grow 5% to 10% from one generation to the next. To read this article in full, please click here
A test using an Intel-based laptop and a Broadcom-based Wi-Fi 7 access point topped the 5Gbps mark for the first time, according to Intel. The company said this week that the test represents an important milestone in Wi-Fi 7 development.According to Intel, this was the industry’s first cross-vendor Wi-Fi 7 demonstration, which is critical for a standard that will cover equipment produced by a myriad of different vendors, all of which has to work together seamlessly.Wi-Fi 7, also known as 802.11be, introduces a host of new features to the venerable Wi-Fi standard, using the 6GHz spectrum to provide the possibility of much wider—up to 320MHz—channels for vastly increased throughput, multilink operation for much more efficient use of available spectrum, and 4K QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) data modulation.To read this article in full, please click here
Vulnerabilities on battery units for medical infusion pump devices made by Baxter could allow for network access, DoS and man-in-the-middle attacks, highlighting IoT security issues and the need to properly decommission equipment, security firm Rapid7 reports.
Using a series of commands to copy a file to multiple locations or a number of files to a single location can be time-consuming, but there are options to speed up the process. This post explains some of them.Multiple commands like these can to copy a single file to a series of directories on your system:$ cp myfile dir1
$ cp myfile dir2
$ cp myfile dir3
One way to make the task easier is typing the first command and then repeat the command by only specifying the needed changes. This method relies on whether the file or directory names are similar enough to substitute only some portion of the names.
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Two years after it was it was acquire by Cisco, ThousandEyes' intelligent network software is now at the heart of the networking giant’s strategy to predict and fix network problems before they cause trouble.When it bought the compnay, Cisco acquired its cloud-based software package that analyzed everything from performance of local and wide-area networks to ISP, cloud, and collaboration-application performance to the health of the internet. Its cloud, enterprise, and endpoint-agent technology has been integrated in one fashion or another across Cisco’s core product lines such as its Catalyst, Nexus switches, and now that technology is part of Cisco's latest effort: predictive networking.To read this article in full, please click here
The reliability of services delivered by ISPs, cloud providers and conferencing services (such as unified communications-as-a-service) is critical for enterprise organizations. ThousandEyes monitors how providers are handling any performance challenges and provides Network World with a weekly roundup of interesting events that impact service delivery. Read on to see the latest analysis, and stop back next week for another update. Additional details available here.Internet report for October 23-29
ThousandEyes reported 221 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of October 23-29. That’s up from 163 the week prior, an increase of 36%. Specific to the U.S., there were 103 outages. That's up from 75 outages the week prior, an increase of 37%. Here’s a breakdown by category:To read this article in full, please click here
There are quite a few exit codes used on Linux systems, though no listing you can display when you’re feeling curious. In fact, you won’t see the numeric codes unless you specifically ask for them.Instead, you will see a textual description of the problem you encountered—such as “No such file or directory”—in a context like this:$ bin/runme
bash: bin/runme: No such file or directory
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If you want to see the numeric exit code, you can use the echo $? command. The error message will tell you that there is no “runme” script in your bin directory. The echo $? command will respond with only a number.To read this article in full, please click here
Microsoft has announced a major update to its Windows Server licensing program, which in part was driven by threats of legal action by the European Union.The most notable change is adding the option of licensing Windows Server based on virtual cores in addition to the current option of paying based on the number of physical processor cores in host machines.
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“Today, Windows Server is licensed by physical core, which means customers must have access to the physical server hardware to ensure that they have enough Windows Server licenses to cover all physical cores in the machine,” wrote Nicole Dezen, Microsoft’s chief partner officer, in a blog post.To read this article in full, please click here
The National Spectrum Management Association this week warned the Federal Communications Commission that Wi-Fi 6E could cause potentially dangerous interference in networks used by first responders, utilities and others if the FCC doesn’t perform“real-world testing on its automated frequency control systems.NSMA argued in an open letter to the commission that testing facilities are already available, specifically at the Idaho National Labs spectrum test bed, and that such studies should be peer-reviewed and transparent.
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“Twenty-two times a year, we build a data center right down at the edge,” said Ed Green, head of commercial technology at McLaren Racing, a British motor racing team based in Surrey, England.For McLaren, the edge is wherever in the world the company’s Formula 1 racing team is competing. An IT setup at each racing site links the entire team, including mechanics, engineers, crew members, and the drivers of McLaren’s two Formula 1 racecars.
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The US government has banned AMD and Nvidia from exporting chips used to support artificial intelligence work to China.The ban affects Nvidia’s A100 chips, often deployed in data centers to speed up the training of machine learning models, and its forthcoming H100 chip, while AMD has also received new license requirements that will stop its MI250 advanced AI chip from being exported to China.In a filing with the SEC, Nvidia said: “The US government has imposed a new license requirement, effective immediately, for any future export to China (including Hong Kong) and Russia of the Company’s A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuit.”To read this article in full, please click here
The US government has banned AMD and Nvidia from exporting chips used to support artificial intelligence work to China.The ban affects Nvidia’s A100 chips, often deployed in data centers to speed up the training of machine learning models, and its forthcoming H100 chip, while AMD has also received new license requirements that will stop its MI250 advanced AI chip from being exported to China.In a filing with the SEC, Nvidia said: “The US government has imposed a new license requirement, effective immediately, for any future export to China (including Hong Kong) and Russia of the Company’s A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuit.”To read this article in full, please click here