Options. Everyone needs options. Whenever I travel somewhere with my wife, Christine, even if it’s for a weekend, she needs to check a bag. When I ask her why, she says, “A girl needs options,” hence the oversize luggage.While it’s been easy for someone like my wife to have options, network engineers have never really had the same luxury. Network switches were typically built with fixed functionality, so an organization would need to purchase a wide range of equipment to meet all their needs. Network professionals need greater flexibility from the network
Recently, the chip manufacturers have been building more programmable, flexible products. One of the examples of this is the Cavium XPliant processor that is the silicon that powers Arista’s 7160 switch. Another example is the Barefoot Networks Tofino processor. In addition to being one of the most scenic places on the planet, Tofino is a powerful system on a chip with a fully programmable parser and pipeline. The chip supports 256x 25 Gig-E Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) at speeds of 1, 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gig-E.To read this article in full, please click here
Many if not most large enterprises run hybrid computing environments and are looking for management software flexible enough to run in and manage assets across private and public clouds.Against this backdrop, BMC has rebuilt its venerable IT service-management product suite to run on a range of cloud platforms while incorporating machine learning to enhance predictive-analysis capabilities.[ Now see who's developing quantum computers.]
The BMC Helix Cognitive Service Management is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that runs on Amazon Web Services as well as BMC's own cloud. It will be available for Azure in the fourth quarter and for Google Public Cloud at the end of the year or beginning of next year, BMC said.To read this article in full, please click here
Sometimes, confirmation of the obvious can be really important. At least, that’s how I felt when I saw a new Bain & Company report, Cybersecurity Is the Key to Unlocking Demand in IoT. According to the consulting firm’s survey, 45 percent of Internet of Things (IoT) buyers say “concerns about security remain a significant barrier and are hindering the adoption of IoT devices.” Worries over IoT security are hardly news, of course. I’ve been writing about them here on Network World for a while, and a quick internet search for IoT security rains down more than a million hits.To read this article in full, please click here
The terms software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are often used interchangeably, which is incorrect. In a sense, the two are tied together as companies start using NFV as part of their SDN plans but that doesn’t have to be the case.Enterprises could maintain their current network architecture and shift to NFV or they could roll out an SDN and never leverage the benefits of NFV, so it’s important to understand what each is and the benefits of both.[ For more on SDN see where SDN is going and learn the difference between SDN and NFV. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
What is software-defined Networking
SDNs are a fundamentally different way to think about networks. Technically, SDNs can be defined as the separation of the management, control and data-forwarding planes of networks. Many people, including technical individuals read that definition and say, “So what?”, but the separation of these planes has a profound impact on networks and enables things that have never been done before.To read this article in full, please click here
When Windows Server 2019 is released this fall, the updates will include features that enterprises can use to leverage software-defined networking (SDN).SDN for Windows Server 2019 has a number of components that have attracted the attention of early adopters including security and compliance, disaster recovery and cusiness continuity, and multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud[ For more on SDN see where SDN is going and learn the difference between SDN and NFV. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
Virtual-network peering
The new virtual networking peering functionality in Windows Server 2019 allows enterprises to peer their own virtual networks in the same cloud region through the backbone network. This provides the ability for virtual networks to appear as a single network. To read this article in full, please click here
During the late 20th century, industrial technology providers focused on delivering complete, turnkey solutions by themselves. The thought was that to effectively address highly specialized and complex environments, a vertically integrated approach would produce a better outcome.Today, that mindset has drastically shifted.The accelerated pace of technology innovation has driven end customers to question this single-vendor model. Now, customers are increasingly embracing the open model involving multiple partners developing solutions based on open standards and the latest technology. Such solutions are typically better future-proofed, more cost effective and agile.To read this article in full, please click here
In the eternal words of Yogi Berra, “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.” So how does this sage advice apply to the new world of application performance and hybrid IT?As the pace of application migration to the cloud continues to accelerate, enterprise networking teams have turned to hybrid and SD-WANs as practical solutions to open up more localized internet access and direct routing to the cloud. So the theory goes that by deploying broadband and internet connections at the edge of the network, users can bypass the MPLS bottlenecks and avoid transiting the centralized data center internet egress points.So with the proliferation of hybrid and SD-WAN deployments, which according to most analysts is well past the tipping point and going mainstream, why is it that enterprise IT teams are still struggling with cloud application performance? User frustration with the performance of applications like Office 365, Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, and others is only growing, rather than waning.To read this article in full, please click here
After years of shrinking sales, the server market is suddenly hot, very hot. According to the latest figures from IDC, worldwide server shipments increased 20.7% year over year to 2.7 million units in Q1 of 2018, and revenue rose 38.6%.This is the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, and it’s being driven by a number of factors. They include a marketwide enterprise refresh cycle, strong demand from cloud service providers, increased use of servers as the core building blocks for software-defined infrastructure, broad demand for newer CPUs, and growing deployments of next-generation workloads.Average selling prices (ASP) increased during the quarter due to richer configurations and increased component costs. The increased ASPs also contributed to revenue growth. Volume server revenue grew by 40.9%, to $15.9 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 34%, to $1.7 billion, and high-end systems grew 20.1%, to $1.2 billion.To read this article in full, please click here
CIOs everywhere are faced with a common question: do we have the right infrastructure for our business today and tomorrow? The question is complicated since there is no right answer – even though the major public cloud providers would say otherwise.Most large companies have hybrid infrastructures, comprising internal data centers, private clouds and at least one public cloud service. Increasingly, companies are using more than one public cloud service, as each one has something different to offer and prices are always changing. These choices provide needed flexibility and the potential for carving out the perfect environment for a company’s multifarious needs.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco this week broadened its server family with a high-density box aimed at handling compute intensive data center workloads and distributed edge computing environments.The Cisco C-Series C4200 multinode rack server is a 2RU box comprised of the C4200 chassis and C125 server nodes which Cisco says brings up to 128% higher processor core density and 33% more memory compared to its existing two-socket UCS M5 rack servers. The C4200 chassis can house up to four server nodes.[ Now see who's developing quantum computers.]
“As computing demand shifts from large, traditional data centers to include smaller, more distributed environments at the edge, the ability to mix form factors seamlessly in ‘micro data centers,’ and to manage and automate operations from the cloud becomes vitally important,” wrote Kaustubh Das, Cisco vice president of strategy and product development, storage in its Computing Systems Product Group in a blog about the new server.To read this article in full, please click here
It’s a good thing AMD had the sense not to rub Intel’s nose in the Meltdown/Spectre vulnerability, because it would be getting it right back for this one: Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Safety in Germany have published a paper detailing how to compromise a virtual machine encrypted by AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV).The news is a bit of a downer for AMD, since it just added Cisco to its list of customers for the EPYC processor. Cisco announced today plans to use EPYC in its density-optimized Cisco UCS C4200 Series Rack Server Chassis and the Cisco UCS C125 M5 Rack Server Node.To read this article in full, please click here
Open source has taken over the server side of things, but admins are doing a terrible job of keeping the software patched and up to date.Black Duck Software, a developer of auditing software for open-source security, has released its annual Open Source Security and Risk Analysis, which finds enterprise open source to be full of security vulnerabilities and compliance issues.[ For more on IoT security see our corporate guide to addressing IoT security concerns. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
According to the study, open-source components were found in 96% of the applications the company scanned last year, with an average of 257 instances of open source code in each application.To read this article in full, please click here
Across a variety of industries, corporate IT and operations teams are rapidly deploying IoT to meet core business objectives. The aim of these deployments can vary greatly, from monitoring device health, to reducing operating costs, and increasing production volume. Yet there are a number of other areas throughout an organization, with initiatives of equal importance, where stakeholders have yet to leverage the value of connected device data to achieve their goals. One such example is the C-level. While generally not designed with executives in mind, IoT technology can provide value to the C-level that’s on par with the advantages their IT and operations counterparts stand to gain.To read this article in full, please click here
Everyone talks about the excitement of collecting reams of Internet of Things (IoT) data and performing Herculean statistical gyrations on them. IoT data management and analytics are very important: this is how we can accomplish predictive maintenance on factory assets, help robots interact better with humans, and get cars to drive themselves more safely than my 17 year old son behind the wheel.The wise know that IoT data management is relatively easy to implement, but successfully accomplishing IoT device management for heterogeneous devices in-bulk is like navigating your canoe past the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis.What makes great IoT device management?To read this article in full, please click here
GPU market leader Nvidia holds several GPU Technology Conferences (GTC) annually around the globe. It seems every show has some sort of major announcement where the company is pushing the limits of GPU computing and creating more options for customers. For example, at GTC San Jose, the company announced its NVSwitch architecture, which connects up to 16 GPUs over a single fabric, creating one massive, virtual GPU. This week at GTC Taiwan, it announced its HGX-2 server platform, which is a reference architecture enabling other server manufacturers to build their own systems. The DGX-2 server announced at GTC San Jose is built on the HGX-2 architecture.To read this article in full, please click here
We’ve covered networking on our home planet. But what happens when we send signals where no man has gone before?Space networking is two-way communication between base stations on Earth, and unmanned space probes, planetary rovers, orbital satellites or manned spacecraft. These radio signals bring back messages, images and scientific discoveries. Someday they’ll be used to communicate between colonies on Earth and the moon or Mars.Of course, we can’t just “call” Mars. Networking in outer space is vastly different from what we experience on Earth.Communications travel at the speed of light. This means that it can take 20 minutes or more for a radio signal to reach a Martian planetary rover. It’s like going back to dial-up.To read this article in full, please click here
The emergence of data-heavy applications such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has upped the enterprise storage ante. Combined with the data in apps used daily to run the business, the limits of storage are being stretched.Yet having to continually procure storage capacity doesn’t make sense; forward-looking CIOs and IT decision makers must future-proof their investments. Here’s what to consider.
Performance
Digital business will constantly evolve, meaning organizations will need to deploy applications and services as business needs change or new objectives emerge.To read this article in full, please click here
Without an agile, flexible, and secure network infrastructure, organizations are in danger of falling behind competitors. That’s why many organizations are seeking to transform their businesses with cloud computing and hybrid cloud environments that are more adaptive and flexible. Software-defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) can ease that path, but it requires automation along with intelligence that understands and can even predict what users and organizations want and need to do.Digital transformation has quickly moved beyond hype to become one of the top business imperatives. “Digital transformation is forcing companies to be agile and move with speed, and the network needs to be equally agile and fast,” writes industry analyst Zeus Kerravala. “The separation of control and data planes enables control to be abstracted away from the device and centralized so a network administrator can issue a change that is propagated instantly across the entire network.”To read this article in full, please click here
It’s no secret that the public Internet is a quagmire of latency and packet loss problems. No wonder, many of clients are reluctant to trust Internet-based SD-WANs with VoIP and business-critical applications. After all, how can an SD-WAN running over Internet provide a predictable user experience if the underlying transport is so unpredictable?To answer that question, SD-WAN Experts recently evaluated the performance and stability of long-distance Internet connections. Our goal: to determine the source of the Internet's performance problems by measuring variability and latency in the last and middle miles.What we found was by swapping out the Internet core for a managed middle mile makes an enormous difference. Case in point is Amazon. The latency and variation between our AWS workloads was significantly better across Amazon’s network than the public Internet (see figure). Why that’s the case and how we tested is explained below and in greater depth from this post on our site.To read this article in full, please click here
The Internet of Things (IoT) era has arrived, and over the next few years, billions of devices will be connected to company networks. How many? ZK Research has forecast that by 2022, there will be 80 billion connected devices. (Note: I am an employee of ZK Research.) ZK Research
Given many network managers struggle running today's networks, adding orders of magnitude more devices certainly won’t make life better. Even if it seems IoT may be a few years off, it’s critical that network professionals start prepping their network now.To read this article in full, please click here