D2C231: Cloud Repatriation: Can Workloads Ever Come Home Again?
Cloud repatriation: Is it a good idea? Guest Marino Wijay, an OSI and networking open source advocate, joins hosts Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance to discuss the recent interest in cloud repatriation. They cover the intricacies of moving workloads from the cloud back to on-premises or edge environments, and question if it is possible to... Read more »From Skepticism to Standing Room Only: Liquid Cooling’s Breakout Year
A look back at 2023: The analysts were right. All eyes focused on liquid cooling to meet the greater server densities and higher compute performance of modern data centers.Juniper Networks Announces AI-Native Networking Platform
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.LangChain Support for Workers AI, Vectorize and D1
During Developer Week, we announced LangChain support for Cloudflare Workers. Langchain is an open-source framework that allows developers to create powerful AI workflows by combining different models, providers, and plugins using a declarative API — and it dovetails perfectly with Workers for creating full stack, AI-powered applications.
Since then, we’ve been working with the LangChain team on deeper integration of many tools across Cloudflare’s developer platform and are excited to share what we’ve been up to.
Today, we’re announcing five new key integrations with LangChain:
- Workers AI Chat Models: This allows you to use Workers AI text generation to power your chat model within your LangChain.js application.
- Workers AI Instruct Models: This allows you to use Workers AI models fine-tuned for instruct use-cases, such as Mistral and CodeLlama, inside your Langchain.js application.
- Text Embeddings Models: If you’re working with text embeddings, you can now use Workers AI text embeddings with LangChain.js.
- Vectorize Vector Store: When working with a Vector database and LangChain.js, you now have the option of using Vectorize, Cloudflare’s powerful vector database.
- Cloudflare D1-Backed Chat Memory: For longer-term persistence across chat sessions, you can swap out LangChain’s default Continue reading
Precedence of Ansible Extra Variables
I stay as far away from Ansible as possible these days and use it only as a workflow engine to generate device configurations from Jinja2 templates and push them to lab devices. Still, I manage to trigger unexpected behavior even in these simple scenarios.
Ansible has a complex system of variable (fact) precedence, which mostly makes sense considering the dozen places where a variable value might be specified (or overwritten). Ansible documentation also clearly states that the extra variables (specified on the command line with the -e keyword) have the highest precedence.
Now consider these simple playbooks. In the first one, we’ll set a fact (variable) and then print it out:
Precedence of Ansible Extra Variables
I stay as far away from Ansible as possible these days and use it only as a workflow engine to generate device configurations from Jinja2 templates and push them to lab devices. Still, I manage to trigger unexpected behavior even in these simple scenarios.
Ansible has a complex system of variable (fact) precedence, which mostly makes sense considering the dozen places where a variable value might be specified (or overwritten). Ansible documentation also clearly states that the extra variables (specified on the command line with the -e keyword) have the highest precedence.
Now consider these simple playbooks. In the first one, we’ll set a fact (variable) and then print it out:
NX-OS Forwarding Constructs For VXLAN/EVPN
In this post we will look at the forwarding constructs in NX-OS in the context of VXLAN and EVPN. Having knowledge of the forwarding constructs helps both with understanding of the protocols, but also to assist in troubleshooting. BRKDCN-3040 from Cisco Live has a nice overview of the components involved:
There are components that are platform independent (PI) and platform dependent (PD). Below I’ll explain what each component does:
- ARP – Information from ARP requests/responses is needed to build adjacencies. The information learned from ARP is used to populate IP address field in RT2 and hence also to populate the ARP suppression cache.
- IPv6 ND – ND fills the role of ARP, but for IPv6.
- Adjacency Manager – Resolves directly attached hosts MAC addresses.
- Host Mobility Manager – Tracks the endpoints and their movements.
- L2FM – The Layer2 Forwarding Manager. A platform dependent component that programs ASICs for L2 forwarding. Keeps track of MAC addresses, their placement and moves, and synchronizes this information across ASICS, line cards, and vPC peers when vPC is in use.
- MFDM – Multicast Forwarding Database Manager. A platform dependent component that programs ASICs with information to perform multicast forwarding.
- L2RIB – The component that handles Continue reading
NetFlow data and its fields vs packet capture
The post NetFlow data and its fields vs packet capture appeared first on Noction.
Hull and cabin
When it comes to working with steel it is a bit outside my comfort zone so I got the professionals in to do the blacking of the hull and a few different things to the cabin shell.
ICANN Launches 10-Year, $200 Million Program to Expand and Protect Internet Ecosystem
The grant program will support the next phase of global Internet growth and will emphasize digital inclusivity.BGP Labs: Override Neighbor AS Number in AS Path
When I described the need to turn off the BGP AS-path loop prevention logic in scenarios where a Service Provider expects a customer to reuse the same AS number across multiple sites, someone quipped, “but that should be fixed by the Service Provider, not offloaded to the customer.”
Not surprisingly, there’s a nerd knob for that (AS override), and you can practice it in the next BGP lab exercise: Fix AS-Path in Environments Reusing BGP AS Numbers.
BGP Labs: Override Neighbor AS Number in AS Path
When I described the need to turn off the BGP AS-path loop prevention logic in scenarios where a Service Provider expects a customer to reuse the same AS number across multiple sites, someone quipped, “but that should be fixed by the Service Provider, not offloaded to the customer.”
Not surprisingly, there’s a nerd knob for that (AS override), and you can practice it in the next BGP lab exercise: Fix AS-Path in Environments Reusing BGP AS Numbers.
Understanding SASE Architecture
SASE converges the functions of network and security point solutions into a unified, global, cloud-native service. Such capabilities provide enterprises with a number of benefits.Tech Bytes: Building An Automation-Ready Service Catalog With NetOrca (Sponsored)
Let’s say you’ve built a set of automations for your network infrastructure, and now you want teams or departments within your organization to use those automations. Our Tech Bytes sponsor NetOrca offers a service catalog that provides a simple front-end to make it easy for internal customers to come and consume those capabilities you’ve worked... Read more »NB464: Juniper Begins AI Push Into The Data Center; VMware Customers Confront Higher Prices
This week we discuss new products from Juniper including synthetic testing software for its Mist wireless networks and its first step toward integrating its Apstra data center software with AI. VMware clarifies its product strategy as customers face rising prices, and undersea cables in the Red Sea face potential threats. Nokia and Chinese mobile device... Read more »Understanding Why Contact Center Agent Empowerment is Critical to a Great Customer Experience
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.AI Drives the Ethernet and InfiniBand Switch Market
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?VPP Python API
About this series
Ever since I first saw VPP - the Vector Packet Processor - I have been deeply impressed with its performance and versatility. For those of us who have used Cisco IOS/XR devices, like the classic ASR (aggregation service router), VPP will look and feel quite familiar as many of the approaches are shared between the two.
You’ll hear me talk about VPP being API centric, with no configuration persistence, and that’s by
design. However, there is this also a CLI utility called vppctl, right, so what gives? In truth,
the CLI is used a lot by folks to configure their dataplane, but it really was always meant to be
a debug utility. There’s a whole wealth of programmability that is not exposed via the CLI at all,
and the VPP community develops and maintains an elaborate set of tools to allow external programs
to (re)configure the dataplane. One such tool is my own [vppcfg] which takes a YAML specification that describes the dataplane configuration, and applies it
safely to a running VPP instance.
Introduction
In case you’re interested in writing your own automation, this article is for you! I’ll provide a deep dive into Continue reading