Network environments have become so complex that companies such as systems integrators, equipment manufacturers and enterprise organizations feel compelled to test their configurations and equipment in lab environments before deployment. Performance test labs are used extensively for quality, proof of concept, customer support, and technical sales initiatives. Labs are the perfect place to see how well something performs before it’s put into a production environment.The primary challenge of running a test lab is the amount of time it takes to provision the test environments. A network lab infrastructure might include switches, routers, servers, virtual machines running on various server clusters, security services, cloud resources, software and so on. It takes considerable time to wire the configurations, physically build the desired test beds, login to each individual device and load the proper software configurations. Quite often, lab staffers spend more time on setup than they do on conducting actual tests.To read this article in full, please click here
Software skills are set to play a more prominent role in Cisco’s network engineering curriculum. The company is launching a new coding-focused certification track, as well as giving its existing certifications a major revamp to address software-defined networking (SDN), automation, the Internet of Things, and other emerging technologies that are changing the job requirements for today’s network professionals. "They’re not trying to turn network folks into developers, but they are certainly trying to make it easier for us to do our job," says Dan Groscost, solutions architect at Computer Design & Integration, an IT services firm based in New York, N.Y. Groscost holds a Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) certification, and he’s in the final stages of his Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Route/Switch certification. To read this article in full, please click here
Anyone unfortunate enough to fall victim to a burglary or natural disaster understands just how frustrating it feels to deal with insurance companies. We spend thousands of dollars each year to ensure our property will be reimbursed in case of an emergency, so why does it take so long to receive reimbursement when we need it most? If you’ve had a poor experience waiting weeks or months for your reimbursement, or if you want to rest assured that your claims will be paid out quickly in case of a future emergency, Lemonade has you covered with rates as low as $5 per month for renter’s insurance and $25 per month for homeowner’s insurance. To read this article in full, please click here
Success in business and education today starts with infrastructure modernization. In fact, my research has found that digitally-forward organizations spend more than twice what their non-digital counterparts spend on evolving their IT infrastructure. However, most of the focus from IT has been on upgrading the application and compute infrastructure with little thought given to a critical ingredient – the network. Organizations can only be as agile as the least agile component of their infrastructure, and for most companies, that’s the network.Manual processes plague network reliability
Legacy networks have outlived their useful life. The existing three+ tier architecture was designed for an era when network traffic was considered “best-effort,” where there was no way to guarantee performance or reserve bandwidth, and delivered non-mission-critical applications. Employees and educators ran applications locally, and the majority of critical data resided on workstations.To read this article in full, please click here
HPE and Dell EMC get all the attention when it comes to storage, but Hitachi Vantara sure is making a strong declaration with its new all-flash high performance storage system.The Virtual Storage Platform 5000, known by its codename Project Jupiter, was introduced during the opening keynote of the Hitachi Next 2019 conference, held last week in Las Vegas. Dan McConnell, senior vice president of product management for enterprise infrastructure at Hitachi Vantara, declared it the fastest NVMe array on the planet.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s network certification lineup is set for a major overhaul. The company is adding a new coding-focused track to its offerings, and it's continuing to streamline its core designations: Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), and Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE). To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
The multitail command can be very helpful whenever you want to watch activity on a number of files at the same time – especially log files. It works like a multi-windowed tail -f command. That is, it displays the bottoms of files and new lines as they are being added. While easy to use in general, multitail does provide some command-line and interactive options that you should be aware of before you start to use it routinely.Basic multitail-ing
The simplest use of multitail is to list the names of the files that you wish to watch on the command line. This command splits the screen horizontally (i.e., top and bottom), displaying the bottom of each of the files along with updates.To read this article in full, please click here
While 5G deployments are nascent, Cisco says it expects rapid future development of the mobile technology will be expand industrial IoT use cases.The IIoT includes a broad range of products from connected sensors, robots and machinery to vehicles, building automation, asset tracking and remote agriculture systems. And in the industrial networking realm there are wireless access technologies including low-power wide-area networks (LoRaWAN), Narrow Band-IoT and others.To read this article in full, please click here
Concern over escalating energy costs is among reasons liquid-cooling solutions could gain traction in the data-center.Schneider Electric, a major energy-management specialist, this month announced refreshed impetus to a collaboration conceived in 2014 with liquid-cooling specialists Iceotope. Now, technology solutions company Avnet has been brought into that collaboration.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
The three companies will develop chassis-level immersive liquid cooling for data centers, Schneider Electric says in a press release.Liquid-cooling systems submerge server components in a dielectric fluid as opposed to air-cooled systems which create ambient cooled air.To read this article in full, please click here
A newly discovered and serious flaw in the sudo command can, if exploited, enable users to run commands as root in spite of the fact that the syntax of the /etc/sudoers file specifically disallows them from doing so.Updating sudo to version 1.8.28 should address the problem, and Linux admins are encouraged to do so as soon as possible. [Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
How the flaw might be exploited depends on specific privileges granted in the /etc/sudoers file. A rule that allows a user to edit files as any user except root, for example, would actually allow that user to edit files as root as well. In this case, the flaw could lead to very serious problems.To read this article in full, please click here
Few investment opportunities are as lucrative as real estate. By buying low, renovating, and selling when the time is right, investors have the potential to make millions of dollars in profit. Unfortunately, this practice is typically reserved for the ultra-wealthy since buying a single property let alone building a real estate portfolio requires more than most of us have lying around. The good news for the 99% is that financial tech company, DiversyFund, is on a mission to change that. With DiversyFund, anyone can participate in building a diversified real estate portfolio, and all you need is $500 to get started. To read this article in full, please click here
In this day and age, demands on networks are coming from a variety of sources, internal end-users, external customers and via changes in the application architecture. Such demands put pressure on traditional architectures.To deal effectively with these demands requires the network domain to become more dynamic. For this, we must embrace digital transformation. However, current methods are delaying this much-needed transition. One major pain point that networks suffer from is the necessity to dispense with manual working, which lacks fabric wide automation. This must be addressed if organizations are to implement new products and services ahead of the competition.To read this article in full, please click here
The hybrid cloud and hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) markets have become an important discussion as more and more companies are looking at cloud as an operating model. This also means more new products set to hit the market to support the growth in Hybrid Cloud and HCI adoption, which will raise a series of questions for enterprises as to which solutions and tools it will adopt, consume and use to deploy workloads, both on-prem and utilizing public cloud infrastructure. As digital transformation, customer experience, and business outcomes take center stage, we are seeing the infrastructure itself become an enabler, but where the infrastructure is placed has been more fluid. With hyperscalers like AWS moving workloads on-prem, and IT vendors like Cisco, Dell/VMware, and HPE (who traditionally built solutions for on-prem), ramping up offerings for the cloud, we have most certainly reached a tipping point. The phase we are now entering is the phase where infrastructure moves to the background and the market shifts to the need for compute that is charged on an ‘as used,’ or consumption model. To read this article in full, please click here
This is the first installment of a multi-part blog series that will provide an overview of how technology is dramatically reshaping the healthcare industry and how the wide area network (WAN) can significantly affect innovation acceleration and customer satisfaction in this sector.Like many other industries, the healthcare industry is also undergoing a digital transformation. And, despite being always considered “behind the times” in leveraging information technology, the delivery of healthcare services is becoming more and more modern and data-driven each day. The evolution in data, mobile and cloud technologies is driving healthcare providers to shift from a provider-driven toward a patient-centric business model. Patients today have the same expectations of healthcare providers as they have of any retailer or any other product or service, and they want healthcare on their own schedule and even on-demand.To read this article in full, please click here
Data-hungry technology trends such as IoT, smart vehicles, drone deliveries, smart cities and Industry 4.0 are increasing the demand for fast, always-on edge computing. One solution that has emerged to bring the network closer to the applications generating and end users consuming that data is the micro data center.The micro data center sector is a new space filled with more noise than signal. If you go hunting for a micro data center for your business you’ll find everything from suitcase-sized computing stacks that replace a server closet to modular enclosures delivered by semi-trucks to larger units that reside at the foot of cell towers to dedicated edge data centers with standardized designs that can spring up wherever there’s demand and where real estate or access rights are available, including easements, rooftops and industrial sites.To read this article in full, please click here
Data-hungry technology trends such as IoT, smart vehicles, drone deliveries, smart cities and Industry 4.0 are increasing the demand for fast, always-on edge computing. One solution that has emerged to bring the network closer to the applications generating and end users consuming that data is the micro data center.The micro data center sector is a new space filled with more noise than signal. If you go hunting for a micro data center for your business you’ll find everything from suitcase-sized computing stacks that replace a server closet to modular enclosures delivered by semi-trucks to larger units that reside at the foot of cell towers to dedicated edge data centers with standardized designs that can spring up wherever there’s demand and where real estate or access rights are available, including easements, rooftops and industrial sites.To read this article in full, please click here
Like many traditional industries that have long-standing, tried-and-true methods of operation, the oil-and-gas sector hasn’t been the quickest to embrace IoT technology – despite having had instrumentation on drilling rigs, pipelines and refining facilities for decades, the extraction industry has only recently begun to work with modern IoT.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn, but mastering it allows you to build apps and games or even take advantage of neural networks for deep learning. But first, you’ll need to learn the basics of Python, and this $34.99 bundle has exactly what you need to do so.The Complete Python Certification Bootcamp Bundle contains 12 courses on the different ways that Python is employed. If you’re new to Python and coding in general, the first course you should take is From 0 to 1: Learn Python Programming - Easy As Pie. This course will teach you how to write Python code, auto-generate spreadsheets with xlsxwriter, scrape websites with Beautiful Soup, and more. You can hone your skills even further with The Python Mega Course, which will teach you how to build real-world applications such as an interactive web-based financial chart.To read this article in full, please click here
There have been significant changes in wide-area networks over the past few years, none more important than software-defined WAN or SD-WAN, which is changing how network pros think about optimizing the use of connectivity that is as varied as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), frame relay and even DSL.What is SD-WAN?
As the name states, software-defined wide-area networks use software to control the connectivity, management and services between data centers and remote branches or cloud instances. Like its bigger technology brother, software-defined networking, SD-WAN decouples the control plane from the data plane.To read this article in full, please click here