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Start with Business Requirements, not Technology

This is the feedback I got from someone who used ExpertExpress to discuss the evolution of their data center:

The session has greatly simplified what had appeared to be a complex and difficult undertaking for us. Great to get fresh ideas on how we could best approach our requirements and with the existing equipment we have. Very much looking forward to putting into practice what we discussed.

And here’s what Nicola Modena (the expert working with the customer) replied:

As I told you, the problem is usually to map the architectures and solutions that are found in books, whitepapers, and validated designs into customer’s own reality, then to divide the architecture into independent functional layers, and most importantly to always start from requirements and not technology.

A really good summary of what ipSpace.net is all about ;) Thank you, Nicola!

Network Labs Using Nested Virtualization in the Cloud

Many open-source network simulation and emulation tools use full virtualization technologies like VMware, QEMU/KVM, or VirtualBox. These technologies require hardware support for virtualization such as Intel’s VT-x and AMD’s AMD-V. To gain direct access to this hardware support, researchers usually run network emulation test beds on their own PCs or servers but could not take advantage of the inexpensive and flexible computing services offered by cloud providers like Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, or Microsoft Azure.

Creative Commons copyright: From http://d203algebra.wikispaces.com/Exponential+Functions-Target+D-Modeling+Data-Investigations

By August 2017, most of the major cloud service providers announced support for nested virtualization. In the cloud context, Nested Virtualization is an advanced feature aimed at enterprises, but it is also very useful for building network emulation test beds. I’ve written about nested virtualization for servers before but, until recently, I was limited to running nested virtual machines on my own PC. Now that the major cloud providers support nested virtualization, I can build more complex network emulation scenarios using cloud servers.

This post will discuss the cloud service providers that support nested virtualization and how this feature supports open source networking simulation and emulation in the cloud.

Cloud service providers support for nested virtualization

The cloud service providers Continue reading

Off the Cuff – Microsoft Aquires GitHub

On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced it will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion.  What does this acquisition mean for developers, the projects that use GitHub, and the online community surrounding it?  Listen is as Network Collective discusses with this acquisition means for Microsoft, GitHub, and the many projects and developers that rely on GitHub.

Alistair Woodman
Guest
Russ White
Host
Donald Sharp
Host
Eyvonne Sharp
Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post Off the Cuff – Microsoft Aquires GitHub appeared first on Network Collective.

Automation critical to scalable network security

Securing the business network has been and continues to be one of the top initiatives for engineers. Suffering a breach can have catastrophic consequences to a business, including lawsuits, fines, and brand damage from which some companies never recover.To combat this, security professionals have deployed a number of security tools, including next-generation firewalls (NGFW) such as Cisco’s Firepower, which is one of the most widely deployed in the industry. Managing firewalls becomes increasingly difficult Managing a product like Firepower has become increasingly difficult, though, because the speed at which changes need to be made has increased. Digital businesses operate at a pace never seen before in the business world, and the infrastructure teams need to keep up. If they can’t operate at this accelerated pace, the business will suffer. And firewall rules continue to grow in number and complexity, making it nearly impossible to update them manually.To read this article in full, please click here

Automation critical to scalable network security

Securing the business network has been and continues to be one of the top initiatives for engineers. Suffering a breach can have catastrophic consequences to a business, including lawsuits, fines, and brand damage from which some companies never recover.To combat this, security professionals have deployed a number of security tools, including next-generation firewalls (NGFW) such as Cisco’s Firepower, which is one of the most widely deployed in the industry. Managing firewalls becomes increasingly difficult Managing a product like Firepower has become increasingly difficult, though, because the speed at which changes need to be made has increased. Digital businesses operate at a pace never seen before in the business world, and the infrastructure teams need to keep up. If they can’t operate at this accelerated pace, the business will suffer. And firewall rules continue to grow in number and complexity, making it nearly impossible to update them manually.To read this article in full, please click here

End-to-end data, analytics key to solving application performance problems

As someone who used to work in corporate IT, I can attest to the fact that in general, workers and IT are at odds most of the time. Part of the problem is the tools that IT uses has never provided the right information to help the technical people understand what the user is experiencing.That is why help desks are often referred to as “the no help desk” or “helpless desk” by the internal employees. Users call the help desk when an application isn’t performing the way it should, and IT is looking at a dashboard where everything is green and indicates things should be working.Traditional network management tools don’t provide the right information The main reason for this mismatch is that traditional network management tends to look at the IT environment through the lens of infrastructure instead of what the user experiences. Looking at specific infrastructure components doesn’t provide any view of the end-to-end environment, leading to a false sense of how things are running.To read this article in full, please click here

ISOC has goals at TNC18

This week is TNC18, the largest European research and education networking conference, which is being held at the Lerkendal Stadium in Trondheim, Norway – the home of current Norwegian Football Champions Rosenborg BK. Of course we’re actually in a conference centre underneath one of the grandstands and not on the pitch, but this is still a premier event that brings together managers, network engineers, and researchers from R&E networks in Europe and the rest of the world.

The Internet Society is not only one of the conference sponsors, but has a significant role in the programme as well. Our colleague Karen O’Donoghue on Monday spoke about NRENs and IoT Security in the ‘What’s Coming Next In Privacy Innovation‘ session, where she’s discussing the security and privacy challenges of burgeoning numbers of IoT devices and how these will impact R&E communities. ISOC is encouraging the development of best practices through the Online Trust Alliance’s IoT Security & Privacy Trust Framework, and this is a good opportunity to discuss how the NREN community can take the lead in adopting good operational practice.

Karen will also be talking about Time and Security during the ‘Security‘ session on Tuesday. Continue reading