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Category Archives for "Networking"

Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus: Part 2

This post is part two of three in a series looking at the joint presentations made by Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus at Networking Field Day 17, in February 2018. More specifically, this post looks at what part Ixia has to play in the deployment of an Ethernet switch fabric built using Mellanox switches and running Cumulus Linux as the Network Operating System (NOS).

Cumulus/Mellanox/Ixia Logos

Ixia

What confused me most about a presentation from Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus about Ethernet fabrics was to figure out what role Ixia would be playing in the disaggregated model. Mellanox makes the switch hardware and Cumulus makes the switch software, so Ixia fits, well, where exactly?

IxNetwork

IxNetwork is billed as an end-to-end validation solution which in many ways undersells what it’s all about. Rather than being just more traffic-generating test equipment, IxNetwork can emulate multiple switch and server devices so that a single piece of test hardware can be connected to what it believes is a large existing infrastructure, and that hardware’s behavior and resiliency can be validated. In the demo topology, IxNetwork connects to a physical Mellanox Spectrum switch running Cumulus Linux, emulating connected servers as well as an entire leaf/switch EVPN/VXLAN fabric, attached Continue reading

Using Sales People for Tech Support is Expensive

First published in Human Infrastructure Magazine in Oct 2017. When something goes wrong with a product, your first stop is likely to be tech support. Those painfully expensive maintenance agreements that you pay for every year get you access to ‘world class’ support services. ORLY? Hopefully the problems occur after you bought and deployed the […]

We’ve Added a New Microsoft Administration Course to Our Video Library!

Considering Windows Server 2016? In this helpful course, get the details about Windows Server 2016 basic functionality and features that we use as administrators on almost a daily basis.

 


Why You Should Watch:

If you are interested in Administering Windows Server 2016 and need to know the basics, this is where you start! This course covers all the basic aspects of utilities you will use as a system administrator, how to get to them, and how they work.


What You’ll Learn:

This course covers installation methods, service packs, troubleshooting, basic features of Active directory, data storage, remote services, network monitoring, reliability and availability, permissions, security, and virtualization.


About the Instructor:

Melissa Hallock has been in the IT field since 1996 when she first began working with hardware. While working on a Bachelor of Applied Science in Networking, she landed her first IT job in a Forbe’s top 100 growing companies as a LAN Technician and worked with all things Microsoft. Later she migrated to Linux and Mac operating systems. Having always worked in an education setting as a tech, she decided to start teaching and began teaching at the second largest private college in Michigan. She quickly became the Continue reading

What is DNS and how does it work?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the foundations of the internet, yet most people outside of networking probably don’t realize they use it every day to do their jobs, check their email or waste time on their smartphones.At its most basic, DNS is a directory of names that match with numbers. The numbers, in this case are IP addresses, which computers use to communicate with each other. Most descriptions of DNS use the analogy of a phone book, which is fine for people over the age of 30 who know what a phone book is.[ Don’t miss customer reviews of top remote access tools and see the most powerful IoT companies . | Get daily insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] If you’re under 30, think of DNS like your smartphone’s contact list, which matches people’s names with their phone numbers and email addresses. Then multiply that contact list by everyone else on the planet.To read this article in full, please click here

What is DNS and how does it work?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the foundations of the internet, yet most people outside of networking probably don’t realize they use it every day to do their jobs, check their email or waste time on their smartphones.At its most basic, DNS is a directory of names that match with numbers. The numbers, in this case are IP addresses, which computers use to communicate with each other. Most descriptions of DNS use the analogy of a phone book, which is fine for people over the age of 30 who know what a phone book is.[ Don’t miss customer reviews of top remote access tools and see the most powerful IoT companies . | Get daily insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] If you’re under 30, think of DNS like your smartphone’s contact list, which matches people’s names with their phone numbers and email addresses. Then multiply that contact list by everyone else on the planet.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: It’s time for SD-WAN to grow up

2018 has already been hailed as the “Year of SD-WAN” and while the promises of this technology are undoubtedly appealing to most enterprises, it’s equally important to understand its potential shortcomings.The “Death of the Router” has been largely exaggerated by those trying to market their “silver bullet” solutions that still lack basic routing capabilities. While there’s no doubt that years of technical debt have added some unnecessary functionality to the modern router, it’s worth acknowledging that there are many “table-stakes” features leveraged that need to exist in any SD-WAN solution that is meant to replace those boring routers.I’d like to highlight some often-missed considerations drawn from hard lessons learned by SD-WAN early adopters. Specific names and details have been left out to protect both the guilty and innocent.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: It’s time for SD-WAN to grow up

2018 has already been hailed as the “Year of SD-WAN” and while the promises of this technology are undoubtedly appealing to most enterprises, it’s equally important to understand its potential shortcomings.The “Death of the Router” has been largely exaggerated by those trying to market their “silver bullet” solutions that still lack basic routing capabilities. While there’s no doubt that years of technical debt have added some unnecessary functionality to the modern router, it’s worth acknowledging that there are many “table-stakes” features leveraged that need to exist in any SD-WAN solution that is meant to replace those boring routers.I’d like to highlight some often-missed considerations drawn from hard lessons learned by SD-WAN early adopters. Specific names and details have been left out to protect both the guilty and innocent.To read this article in full, please click here

The Larger Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Question: Is this really what we signed up for?

Mark Zuckerburg’s testimony before the US Congress today and the flood of news about the privacy breach at Facebook and revelations that the company mishandled the data of millions of people has me asking:

Is this really what we signed up for?

It is clear that we are not in control of our online information nor do we really have any idea how it is bought, sold, or used.

For some of us, signing up for a social network like Facebook was about staying in touch with our kids and friends. For others, it was an easy way to reach new customers, or gather a community behind a social project. Yes, many of us figured out that our information was being used to serve up ‘relevant’ ads: as a matter of fact, that seems pretty standard in today’s online world. But that’s only a small part of a much bigger picture.

In the past few weeks we have found out – yet again – that information about ourselves, and our friends and contacts was used far beyond what we intended. We have been profiled, pigeon-holed, politically manipulated, and played like pawns in someone else’s chess game. I’d challenge you to Continue reading

Datanauts 129: Automation And Security In AWS

Today the Datanauts explore three key concepts to make cloud management and operations more bearable: automation, understanding new services and capabilities, and security.

Our guest is Kenneth Hui, Technical Marketing Engineer at Rubrik. Ken blogs at Cloud Architect Musings. While our conversation focuses primarily on AWS, many of the principles discussed will apply to any cloud platform.

In part one we parse automation, infrastructure-as-code, and DevOps to understand how these concepts are related, how they differ, and why culture and human behavior matter more than labels.

Part two explores the latest offerings in AWS including serverless, container support, and machine learning.

Part three tackles cloud security essentials including encryption, not exposing S3 buckets, and best practices.

Show Links:

Infrastructure as Code: A Reason to Smile – Thoughtworks.com

DevOps Culture (Part 1) – IT Revolution

The AWS Love/Hate Relationship with Data Gravity – Cloud Architect Musings

Data Encryption in the Cloud, Part 1: Why You Should Care – Cloud Architect Musings

Last Week In AWS – Newsletter

Unsecured server exposed thousands of FedEx customer records – ZDNet

Vault Project – Vault.io

AWS Blogs – Amazon

AWS Security – Amazon

AWS Security Best Practices – Amazon

AWS Faragate – Continue reading

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