Archive

Category Archives for "Networking"

Cheap Stuff is not Cheap

I have often fallen for the temptation of buying cheap instead of buying quality. This might be a saw, a drill, a lawnmower or just about anything imaginable. When I look at what professionals use I see them buying well-known and commercial grade products. For example, I wouldn’t expect to see my lawn care team buying a consumer lawnmower at Evil Big Box Store. They actually buy expensive commercial grade zero turn models that are roughly eight to ten times the cost of any mower I would consider.

My lawn care professionals mow lawns to make money, so what gives? Some might assume that these commercial grade products simply allow them to do their jobs faster. In nearly all cases, that is only half of the story. These products last much longer and hold up under the extremes of daily use. Their decks are heavy duty and the blades are less susceptible to being bent. The bottom line that these units mow faster AND they last longer. They spend less time in the shop and do the job they were purchased to do.

I find these quality issues with many consumer grade products. They’re basically cheap and disposable. The end result is Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: 6 AI ingredients every wireless networking strategy needs

Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. There’s broad consensus that AI is the next game-changing technology, poised to impact virtually every aspect of our lives in the coming years, from transportation to medical care to financial services. Gartner predicts that by 2020, AI will be pervasive in almost every new software product and service and the technology will be a top five investment priority for more than 30 percent of CIOs.An area where AI is already showing enormous value is wireless networking. The use of machine learning can transform WLANs into neural networks that simplify operations, expedite troubleshooting and provide unprecedented visibility into the user experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 6 AI ingredients every wireless networking strategy needs

Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. There’s broad consensus that AI is the next game-changing technology, poised to impact virtually every aspect of our lives in the coming years, from transportation to medical care to financial services. Gartner predicts that by 2020, AI will be pervasive in almost every new software product and service and the technology will be a top five investment priority for more than 30 percent of CIOs.An area where AI is already showing enormous value is wireless networking. The use of machine learning can transform WLANs into neural networks that simplify operations, expedite troubleshooting and provide unprecedented visibility into the user experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Western Digital plans 40TB drives, but it’s still not enough

Hard disk makers are using capacity as their chief bulwark against the rise of solid-state drives (SSDs), since they certainly can’t argue on performance, and Western Digital — the king of the hard drive vendors — has shown off a new technology that could lead to 40TB drives.Western Digital already has the largest-capacity drive on the market. It recently introduced a 14TB drive, filled with helium to reduce drag on the spinning platters. But thanks to a new technology called microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR), the company hopes to reach 40TB by 2025. The company promised engineering samples of drive by mid-2018.Also on Network World: Get ready for new storage technologies and media MAMR technology is a new method of cramming more data onto the disk. Western Digital’s chief rival, Seagate, is working on a competitive product called HAMR, or heat-assisted magnetic recording. I’ll leave it to propeller heads like AnandTech to explain the electrical engineering of it all. What matters to the end user is that it should ship sometime in 2019, and that’s after 13 years of research and development. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Western Digital plans 40TB drives, but it’s still not enough

Hard disk makers are using capacity as their chief bulwark against the rise of solid-state drives (SSDs), since they certainly can’t argue on performance, and Western Digital — the king of the hard drive vendors — has shown off a new technology that could lead to 40TB drives.Western Digital already has the largest-capacity drive on the market. It recently introduced a 14TB drive, filled with helium to reduce drag on the spinning platters. But thanks to a new technology called microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR), the company hopes to reach 40TB by 2025. The company promised engineering samples of drive by mid-2018.Also on Network World: Get ready for new storage technologies and media MAMR technology is a new method of cramming more data onto the disk. Western Digital’s chief rival, Seagate, is working on a competitive product called HAMR, or heat-assisted magnetic recording. I’ll leave it to propeller heads like AnandTech to explain the electrical engineering of it all. What matters to the end user is that it should ship sometime in 2019, and that’s after 13 years of research and development. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista EOS CloudVision

Arista EOS® CloudVision® provides a centralized point of visibility, configuration and control for Arista devices. The CloudVision controller is available as a virtual machine or physical appliance.


Fabric Visibility on Arista EOS Central describes how to use industry standard sFlow instrumentation in Arista switches to deliver real-time flow analytics. This article describes the steps needed to integrate flow analytics into CloudVision.

Log into the CloudVision node and run the following cvp_install_fabricview.sh script as root:
#!/bin/sh
# Install Fabric View on CloudVision Portal (CVP)

VER=`wget -qO - http://inmon.com/products/sFlow-RT/latest.txt`
wget http://www.inmon.com/products/sFlow-RT/sflow-rt-$VER.noarch.rpm
rpm --nodeps -ivh sflow-rt-$VER.noarch.rpm
/usr/local/sflow-rt/get-app.sh sflow-rt fabric-view

ln -s /cvpi/jdk/bin/java /usr/bin/java

sed -i '/^# http.hostname=/s/^# //' /usr/local/sflow-rt/conf.d/sflow-rt.conf
echo "http.html.redirect=./app/fabric-view/html/" >> /usr/local/sflow-rt/conf.d/sflow-rt.conf

cat <<EOT > /etc/nginx/conf.d/locations/sflow-rt.https.conf
location /sflow-rt/ {
auth_request /aeris/auth;
proxy_buffering off;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For \$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Prefix /sflow-rt/;
proxy_set_header Host \$host;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8008/;
proxy_redirect ~^http://[^/]+(/.+)\$ /sflow-rt\$1;
}
EOT

systemctl restart nginx.service

firewall-cmd --zone public --add-port=6343/udp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

systemctl enable sflow-rt.service
systemctl start sflow-rt.service

wget http://www.inmon.com/products/sFlow-RT/cvp-eapi-topology.py
chmod +x cvp-eapi-topology.py

echo "configure and run cvp-eapi-topology.py"
Edit the cvp-api-topology.py script to Continue reading

Real world use cases for NSX and Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading PaaS solution for enterprise customers today, providing a fast way to convert their ideas from conception to production. This is achieved by providing a platform to run their code in any cloud and any language taking care of all the infrastructure “stuff” for them.

From building the container image, compiling it with the required runtime , deploying it in a highly available mode and connecting it to the required services, PCF allows dev shops to concentrate on developing their code.

While the platform is providing developers with the most simplified experience conceivable, under the hood there are many moving parts that make that happen and plumbing all these parts can be complex. That’s where customers are really enjoying the power of VMware’s SDDC, and the glue between the PaaS and SDDC layers is NSX, it is the enabler that makes it all work.

In this blog post I detail some of the main uses cases customers have already deployed NSX for PCF on top of vSphere and how PCF and NSX are much better together in the real world.

The use cases customers are deploying with NSX for PCF are varied and ill Continue reading

What is hybrid cloud computing?

Hybrid cloud: Many believe it’s the eventual state that most businesses will operate in – some infrastructure resources on premises, others in the public cloud. Others believe it's a term that has been muddled by varied definitions from a range of vendors, diminishing the term to now be vague and nebulous.So, what does hybrid cloud really mean and how can users implement it?What is hybrid cloud computing? While there is no one single agreed-upon definition of hybrid cloud computing, perhaps the closest we have is from the National Institutes for Standards in Technology (NIST):(Hybrid) cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability.. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Decoding LACP Port State

It’s frustrating when the output to a show command gives exactly the information needed, but in a format which is unintelligible. So it is with the Partner Port State field in the NXOS show lacp neighbor interface command which reports the partner port state as a hexadecimal value. To help with LACP troubleshooting, here’s a quick breakdown of the port states reported on by LACP, and how they might be seen in Junos OS and NXOS.

LACP Port State

The LACP port state (also known as the actor state) field is a single byte, each bit of which is a flag indicating a particular status. In this table, mux (i.e. a multiplexer) refers to the logical unit which aggregates the links into a single logical transmitter/receiver.

The meaning of each bit is as follows:

Bit Name Meaning
0 LACP_Activity Device intends to transmit periodically in order to find potential members for the aggregate. This is toggled by mode active in the channel-group configuration on the member interfaces.
1 = Active, 0 = Passive.
1 LACP_Timeout Length of the LACP timeout.
1 = Short Timeout, 0 = Long Timeout
2 Aggregation Will allow the link to be aggregated.
1 = Continue reading

Keep IoT under your hat … your hardhat, that is

My wife is an architect, and she sometimes wears a hardhat to job sites. I’ve always thought her bright white hardhat was super cool, but it turns out her model is hopelessly behind the times.When is a hat more than just a hat? That’s because the latest hardhats are no longer just simple combinations of hard plastic and a shock-absorbing suspension so you don’t get knocked out if you walk into an exposed beam or something. The once-humble hardhat has now been upgraded to include Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities.Also on Network World: 5 things to think about for industrial IoT readiness Michigan-based startup GuardHat Inc. has created an IoT hardhat that includes a beacon designed to continuously transmit data to a safety control center. The idea is for the system to use Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity to track each worker’s location for safety and worker management issues. Most important, GuardHat is built to be able to send alerts to the control center with the hat’s (and hopefully the worker’s) precise location — within 1 meter —  after a fall or other safety incident. (A built-in accelerometer can detect falls, and there’s also an SOS button to summon Continue reading

35% off SanDisk 256GB iXpand Base for iPhone charging and backup – Deal Alert

Here's something you probably didn't know existed. With SanDisk's iXpand iPhone base, you'll never have to worry about losing your memories again. Every time you charge your iPhone with the iXpand Base, it automatically backs up your photos, videos and contacts. The iXpand Base offers plenty of room to save your files in their original quality with no worry about recurring monthly fees for Internet-based storage. Designed for everyday use with a soft rubber top, a sturdy base, and a wrap-around groove to keep your Apple Lightning to USB cable tidy. Its typical list price has been discounted, for now, to $129.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here