Cisco’s network certification lineup underwent a major overhaul last year, and one of the big changes is that specialization options appear at the professional level with the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP).Before Cisco rearchitected its certifications, there were 10 concentrations associated with Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Cisco’s foundational certification. As of last year, the CCNA no longer has different tracks. It’s focused on networking fundamentals, and there’s only one exam.To read this article in full, please click here
IBM is keeping the faith for Unix just like it is for mainframes. It has announced a new Unix-based server, the IBM Power E1080, the first in a family that is based on the POWER10 processor.IBM announced the POWER10 processor last year. Designed on a 7nm process, it is expected to deliver up to a three-fold improvement in capacity and processor energy efficiency within the same power envelope as IBM POWER9.It features a new technology called Memory Inception that supports multi-petabyte memory clusters for massive memory-intensive workloads along with end-to-end memory encryption with quadruple the number of AES encryption engines per core compared to IBM POWER9.To read this article in full, please click here
The Linux sleep and wait commands allow you to run commands at a chosen pace or capture and display the exit status of a task after waiting for it to finish. Sleep simply inserts a timed pause between commands. Wait, on the other hand, waits until a process completes before notifying you that it has finished.Sleep The sleep command pauses for a specified time. It’s generally used in a script, but works on the command line as well. In the example below, sleep pauses a minute between the two date commands.$ date; sleep 60; date Wed Sep 8 12:10:40 PM EDT 2021 Wed Sep 8 12:11:40 PM EDT 2021 Summarizing your command-line usage on Linux The sleep command takes the numeric argument as the number of seconds. You can, however, ask it to sleep for various amounts of time by adding another character to the argument: 1m = 1 minute 2h = 2 hours 3d = 3 days $ date; sleep 1m; date Wed Sep 8 12:16:38 PM EDT 2021 Wed Sep 8 12:17:38 PM EDT 2021 In fact, you can sleep for less than a second if you need.To read this article in full, please click here
Amazon Web Services and NetApp have teamed up to tie NetApp’s on-prem storage and its proprietary OS for storage-disk arrays to AWS’s managed file-storage service, FSx.Called Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, the service provides things like capacity scaling, maintenance, and updates so on-prem staff doesn’t have to. Performance management with automatic tiering between local storage and fully elastic AWS storage is provided by AWS as well. Learn about backup and recovery: Backup vs. archive: Why it’s important to know the difference How to pick an off-site data-backup method Tape vs. disk storage: Why isn’t tape dead yet? The correct levels of backup save time, bandwidth, space This is not a new area for AWS, which offers two similar services for Windows File Server and the Lustre HPC file-storage system. FSx for Windows File Server is a native Windows file system that offers Windows file storage in the cloud, while FSx for Lustre offers scalable, high-performance storage for HPC applications.To read this article in full, please click here
Something happened back in 1991 that dramatically changed the future of computing. Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-American software engineer, released the Linux kernel and the second version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). A good portion of the technology we use today would not be what it is had this not happened.It all started on August 25th of that year when Torvalds announced in a usenet post that he was working on a free OS and that it would be ready within a few months. He also said it "won't be big and professional like gnu," but that wasn't exactly how things turned out!The GPL The beauty of the Gnu GPL was that, instead of restricting what users can do with the Linux kernel, it maximized their rights. Richard Stallman, GNU founder, referred to these rights as the "four freedoms." They include the freedom to run, copy, study/improve and distribute. This was akin to turning the function of a license inside out.To read this article in full, please click here
There are quite a few shells on Linux system and more that can be easily added. This post examines some of the more popular shells, how they differ and the files that contribute to their configuration.The default shell on most Linux systems is bash. Unless you make an effort, any user accounts added to the system will be assigned bash as their login shell. Bash has been around since 1989 and was meant to replace the Bourne shell (sh). In fact, if you take a look at /bin/sh, you'll probably find that it's nothing more than a symbolic link to /bin/bash.$ ls -l /bin/sh lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4 Jan 25 2021 /bin/sh -> bash Summarizing your command-line usage on Linux Popular Shells Some of the best and most popular shells include:To read this article in full, please click here
Storage will never be as fast as system memory--that’s just the nature of system architecture. But thanks to NVMe (nonvolatile memory express), SSDs can deliver such blazingly fast performance, the penalty of “going to disk” tends to be miniscule.NVMe encompasses a family of specifications for how software talks to storage. It works over a number of transport methods, including PCI Express, RDMA, and TCP. Storage arrays that support the NVMe standard are the sports cars of storage, exposing super-fast storage media more directly and efficiently than any other mainstream method allows.To read this article in full, please click here
German data center hardware giant Schneider Electric is the latest OEM to jump on the on-demand leasing program hardware, in this case the company’s American Power Conversion line of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).The primary beneficiaries are channel partners, but the user comes out ahead as well. This is similar to the on-premises leasing model used by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, Lenovo, Cisco, and more. Rather than make a massive up-front purchase, you lease the gear and pay monthly for actual use.The deal is for channel partners to pair APC Smart-UPS solutions with its monitoring and dispatch services to create their own service offering. Schneider says this partnership will allow channel partners to offer more visibility and front-end maintenance across their customers’ dispersed UPS systems.To read this article in full, please click here
AMD likes to crow about how its Epyc server processors can encrypt the content of virtal machines while they’re in operation so they are secure and isolated, preventing other VMs on the processor from accessing the encrypted contents.Well, researchers from the Technical University of Berlin have found a weakness in that feature, known as Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), and published a theoretical attack that defeats the protection.The paper ”One Glitch to Rule Them All: Fault Injection Attacks Against AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization” details how the researchers succeeded in mounting a voltage fault-injection attack.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s 4Q and year-end financial reports highlight growth in many categories that are important to enterprise customers including wireless, campus switching, routing and security products.CEO Chuck Robbins said that the company’s fourth quarter boasts the strongest product-order growth rate the company has seen in over a decade, citing a 30% product order growth year on year, and more than 17% order growth versus pre-COVID Q4 fiscal 19 product bookings.The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2021 “In Q4, we saw double-digit revenue growth in campus switching, Catalyst 9000, high-end routing, wireless, and in our Zero Trust solutions, along with strength in our security endpoint portfolio. We also had a very strong adoption of our Acacia optical solutions,” Robbins said.To read this article in full, please click here
Even in the midst of the pandemic, revenues from SD-WAN grew 18.5% from 2019 to 2020, and is expected to grow another 26.5% this year, according to IDC.In the research firm’s forthcoming Worldwide SD-WAN Infrastructure Forecast, IDC projects compound annual growth of 18.9% through 2025, when total revenues will top $7 billion.SD-WAN buyers guide: Key questions to ask vendors “We expected to see a significant drop due to the pandemic, dragging the growth rate down to at least single digits,” said Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks at IDC, but the rise of cloud computing and the need to connect enterprises to cloud-based resources including video conferencing applications offset the slowdown caused by a newly remote workforce. To read this article in full, please click here
Pay-per-use hardware models such as HPE GreenLake and Dell Apex are designed to deliver cloud-like pricing structures and flexible capacity to on-premises data centers. And interest is growing as enterprises look for alternatives to buying equipment outright for workloads that aren’t a fit for public-cloud environments.The concept of pay-per-use hardware has been around for more than a decade, but the buzz around it is growing, said Daniel Bowers, a former senior research director at Gartner. “There’s been a resurgence of interest in this for about four years, driven a lot by HPE and its GreenLake program.”To read this article in full, please click here
Pay-per-use hardware models such as HPE GreenLake and Dell Apex are designed to deliver cloud-like pricing structures and flexible capacity to on-premises data centers. And interest is growing as enterprises look for alternatives to buying equipment outright for workloads that aren’t a fit for public-cloud environments.The concept of pay-per-use hardware has been around for more than a decade, but the buzz around it is growing, said Daniel Bowers, a former senior research director at Gartner. “There’s been a resurgence of interest in this for about four years, driven a lot by HPE and its GreenLake program.”To read this article in full, please click here
Pay-per-use hardware models such as HPE GreenLake and Dell Apex are designed to deliver cloud-like pricing structures and flexible capacity to on-premises data centers. And interest is growing as enterprises look for alternatives to buying equipment outright for workloads that aren’t a fit for public-cloud environments.The concept of pay-per-use hardware has been around for more than a decade, but the buzz around it is growing, said Daniel Bowers, a former senior research director at Gartner. “There’s been a resurgence of interest in this for about four years, driven a lot by HPE and its GreenLake program.”To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco is looking to bolster its enterprise application management suite by buying cloud-based application-performance firm Epsagon for $500M.Founded in 2017, the Israel-based Epsagon develops cloud-based application monitoring software focused on scrutinizing cloud microservices and applications.The benefits of converged network and application performance management Businesses are adopting cloud-native technologies, microservices, and containerized components on a large scale while leveraging an extensive web of traditional components, third-party services and application programming interfaces, wrote Liz Centoni, Cisco’s chief strategy officer and general manager, applications, in a blog about the acquisition. To read this article in full, please click here
The business value of the network has never been higher, and this is driven by digital transformation as borne out businesses accelerating their digital initiatives by as much as seven years due to the pandemic. This is had a profound impact on the enterprise network as most of the enabling technologies such as cloud, mobility and IoT are network centric.This intense focus on digital transformation has exposed many flaws with legacy networks. They are rigid, require intensive manual processes, and lack the agility and intelligence to meet the demands of digital business. Organizations need to make network modernization a priority if they are to maximize their investments in other technologies. Here are five steps that all businesses should consider when modernizing the network.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series switches have become the switch of choice for many enterprises, including the environment that I work in, where Cisco Catalyst 9300 24- and 48-port switches running Gibraltar-16.12.3 code had become the standard for the access layer when more than 12 ports were needed.That was about two years ago, and a year or so after that we began receiving notifications from an onsite location that there were intermittent network outages and performance degradation at the site. This is an account of how we found workarounds to the problem until Cisco provided a permanent fix.The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2021 We started troubleshooting the issue and found the following syslog messages that we had never seen before:To read this article in full, please click here
With an eye toward reinforcing its cloud management business, Extreme Networks said it will acquire Ipanema’s SD-WAN business for about $73 million in cash.Ipanema and its SD-WAN business has been owned by France-based network orchestration firm Infovista since 2015 and has approximately 400 customers, mostly in Europe. Its cloud-managed SD-WAN platform is designed to deliver different workloads and applications securely across conventional wide-area networks and multicloud service providers, according to the company.To read this article in full, please click here
High-tech vendors continue to battle supply-chain problems and higher costs brought on by the current semiconductor shortage, according to statements made in the most recent round of earnings calls.As Network World reported in May, COVID-19 triggered an explosion of the global remote workforce, which created extraordinary demand for new tech gear. It also forced the shutdown of processor plants. Restarting those plants and renewing supply chains to their pre-pandemic state will be a lengthy process, industry leaders warn.To read this article in full, please click here
If you’ve been attacked by ransomware, a fully automated, high-speed disaster recovery is the way to successfully avoid paying the ransom. Recovery is the second step in the two-step process after getting rid of the malware as described here.There are three ways to affect a disaster recovery after a ransomware attack: a traditional recovery, an image-based recovery, or a cloud-based recovery. But the only way for most environments to afford automating a large-scale recovery is to recover in the cloud.How to protect backups from ransomware Traditional disaster recovery A traditional disaster recovery is one where you begin a traditional restore after you have suffered a loss—in this case, after you receive a ransom demand. It is still a traditional restore if you are restoring virtual machine images to a hypervisor platform such as VMware, Hyper-V, or KVM, or a hyperscaler such as AWS, Azure, or GCP. What makes it traditional is that you are waiting until the event happens to begin the restore. (As you will see later in this article, there are ways to restore the data before you need it.)To read this article in full, please click here