Today on the Datanauts podcast, we review the state of Ethernet fabrics in 2018.

Between 2010 and 2012, before SDN became the new marketing hotness, it seemed like vendors were churning out Ethernet fabric products for the data center. Everyone had at least one fabric, and some had two or three.

As time has marched on, many of those Ethernet fabrics have dropped off the map. To catch us up and review what Ethernet fabric means today is Stefan Fouant. Stefan is the Chief Architect at Copper River Technologies, a Juniper Ambassador, a quadruple JNCIE, and author of the book Day One: Junos Fusion Data Center Up and Running.

We look at the status of Ethernet fabric protocols such as TRILL and SPB. We also dig into BGP EVPN, the latest hot fabric.

We also discuss the characteristics of a fabric, look at reasons why a fabric might make sense in your data center, and explore inter-fabric connectivity.

Show Links:

Day One: Junos Fusion Data Center Up and Running – Stefan Fouant

Shortest Path First – Stefan Fouant’s blog

Stefan Fouant on Twitter

Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) – IETF

Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) – Wikipedia

BGP MPLS-Based Continue reading

Take a Network Break! Its the virtual stroopwafel edition this week. Drew is on annual leave and travelling to Amsterdam, don t panic he will be back next week with bags of virtual stroopwaffel s. Mike Fratto is c-hosting to keep the show flowing. 

Microsoft buys a bunch of new developer friends, Arista get some P4 & Tofino, Micron is embroiled in US-China politics to balance ZTE, Huawei is No2 Enterprise networking vendor, Fortinet buys Bradford Networks and more.

Sponsor: InterOptic

InterOptic offers high-performance, high-quality optics at a fraction of the cost. If you’re not doing optics correctly, you’re going to pay for it upfront (and then later too). Don’t be fooled by lesser optics. The difference between generic third-party and brand-equivalent optics matters.

Show Links

Microsoft Buys GitHub for $7.5 Billion Andreessen Horowitz

So Pigs Do Fly: Microsoft Acquires GitHub– Redmonk

Arista Announces New Multi-function Platform for Cloud Networking – Arista

Link: Micron Says It s Being Investigated by Chinese Regulatory Agents – Yahoo

Link: Trump strikes deal with Chinese telecom company ZTE amid trade talks – Axios – 

Link: Cloud computing sticker shock is now a monthly occurrence at many companies | ZDNet – 

Link: Continue reading

Juniper Appformix is a telemetry platform thats multi-vendor, cross layer, built-in machine learning and
with fancy visualisation. Its designed simplify operations and closed-loop automation.  In the era of multi-cloud, we need tools that run on-prem or in cloud and support OpenStack, K8s, VMware, Azure, Google, Amazon networks with integration into virtual machines, containers, overlay networks and physical devices.

The ability to draw data from a wide range of sources creates data flood that can overwhelm you. Appformix has machine learning and a range of automation functions to simplify and organise this diverse data flood. The increasing complexity of networks as the the edge of the network expands in multiple dimensions – on and off premises, virtual edge, overlay networks as well the physical devices must all operate in cahoots.

Appformix is automating this operational load so you aren’t getting calls at 2am. Thats a very fine thing.

Sumeet Singh, VP/GM for Juniper AppFormix, kicks off the discussion with a quick intro to Appformix, we cover the key features and the approach of the product before we move into use cases and what customers are using today. Surprisingly, this includes WAN operations in addition to DC/Cloud.

• Start Here: Use cases on network automation and Continue reading

One promise of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is ease of management. Break down the silos, put all the components into a unified whole displayed on a single pane of glass, and voila! Apps are served.

But networking hasn t been integrated as effectively into HCI as the other components of the IT stack. Networking, even in an HCI world, tends be difficult. And with the dynamic needs of HCI, networking just isn’t keeping up.

The days of standing up the network and letting it run are past, because a best effort, rough approximation of how the network should behave isn t something you have to settle for anymore.

Discussing integration of HCI with networking is Big Switch Networks, our sponsor for today s Priority Queue. Prashant Gandhi, Chief Product Officer at Big Switch, is our guest.

We talk about why “best-effort” networking isn’t suited for HCI, and look at HCI-specific operational issues and use cases including container networking and multi-tenancy.

For hands-on experience with Big Cloud Fabric, register for BSN Labs, a demo environment in the cloud that lets you experience the technical differentiation, management CLI, and GUI of Big Cloud Fabric.

Show Links:

Solution Brief: Scale Out Networking Continue reading

The robotic production facilities on board the Datanauts’ dreadnought cruiser are really great at making scout drones for identifying rich mineral deposits. Sadly, our probe production numbers are fairly low right now, because every single build is done by hand.

Blasphemy! We need a way to simply define the end state of our drone creation and then let an orchestration engine handle all of the building. Plus, if the design changes, we need to make sure all of the existing drones are retrofitted to take advantage of the new improvements! What can be done?!

Our guest today is Ned Bellavance. We pick Ned’s brain about infrastructure as code and his hands-on experience with HashiCorp’s Terraform.

Find Out More About Terraform

• Datanauts Episode 71 with Mitchell Hashimoto
  http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/datanauts-071-everything-code-hashicorp/
• Datanauts Episode 92 with Brett Johnson
  http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/datanauts-092-microsoft-mcsa-lab-creation-chef/
• Hashicorp Training
  https://www.hashicorp.com/training

Follow Ned Bellavance

• Ned’s Courses On PluralSight
  https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/edward-bellavance
• Ned’s Blog
  https://nedinthecloud.com/
• The Buffer Overflow Podcast
  https://www.anexinet.com/resources/podcasts/buffer-overflow/
• The Anexipod Podcast
  https://www.anexinet.com/resources/podcasts/anexipod/

Take a Network Break! The Trump administration proposes sanctions on a portion of Chinese tech imports, the FBI advises router reboots to help thwart the VPNFilter malware, and Huawei completes a 200Gbps backbone network in Spain.

CenturyLink becomes certified on Cisco Meraki to compete with resellers, OpenStack matures, and network engineers decry an ITU proposal to speed IPv6 deployments in emerging countries.

Apstra extends its network orchestration coverage, Cisco wrestles with how to sell cloud, VMware posts a positive financial quarter, and AT&T tests an all-weather communications drone called a Flying COW.

Get links to all these stories just after our sponsor message.

Sponsor: Couchdrop

Couchdrop provides Secure Copy Protocol,or SCP and Rsync to Dropbox, Box and other cloud storage providers. Find out more at Couchdrop.io.

Show Links:

White House announces tariffs, investment restrictions on China over intellectual property abuse – Axios

Donald Trump to hit US$50 billion of Chinese imports with 25 per cent tariffs and restrict investment in US hi-tech industries – South China Morning Post

Sen. Warner warns against ZTE deal – Axios

Huawei and Orange Spain finalize the construction of 200 Gbps Backbone Network – Huawei Press Center

Foreign Cyber Actors Target Home and Office Continue reading

On today’s Weekly Show the Packet Pushers jump on the live grenade that is the debate over the value of IT certifications.

Spurred by Greg’s blog about giving up his CCIE status, this episode looks at the value of technology certifications such as the CCIE and others.

Greg and guests Mike Fryar, Chris Kluka, and Jeremy Filliben discuss the benefits and limits of professional certifications, the differences between certifications and actual skills, whether certifications represent a standardized body of knowledge or just a set of instructions, and how the industry might better foster learning.

Sponsor: InterOptic

InterOptic offers high-performance, high-quality optics at a fraction of the cost. Find out more at InterOptic.com, and if you re attending Interop 2018 in Vegas, stop by the InterOptic booth to learn how they can help you spec the right optics for your network.

Sponsor: Cumulus Networks

The Cumulus Linux network OS is simple, open, untethered Linux that can run on more than 70 hardware platforms and help you transition from your legacy infrastructure. Cumulus Networks is Web-scale networking for the digital age. Go to cumulusnetworks.com to find out more.

Show Links:

Quitting My CCIE Status – Greg Ferro

Jeremy Filliben.com