Cumulus community: giving back and giving thanks

It’s that time of year when people start to get a little sentimental. The seasons change, the new year starts to hurriedly approach, and it makes you want to think about all of the things you’re grateful for. And like a contagious laugh, it looks like some of us here at Cumulus have caught those feelings. We’ve got a lot to give thanks for, so let’s take a moment to reflect on the year so far and all the bounty it’s brought us. Here are some of the things Cumulus Networks is thankful for:

Our company’s continued growth

It’s been an eventful year for Cumulus as we’ve continued to push the boundaries of web-scale networking. So when we receive recognition for our hard work and vision, it means the world to us. This July, we were incredibly grateful to be included in Gartner’s 2017 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking in the “visionary” category. Creating a culture of visionaries is incredibly important to us, and it’s great to hear that other people are catching on as well. But the celebration doesn’t stop there. In addition to being recognized for our vision, we were also honored for our innovation this year. Continue reading

EnterpriseWeb Uses Metadata for VNF Onboarding

It provides a solution for everything that is replacing the OSS, said David Amzallag.

Why Linux can make you feel thankful or merely stuffed

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. While I’m looking forward to turkey, stuffing and pie, I’m also thankful to have been able to spend most of my career administering Unix and Linux systems. So, today’s post is going to focus on some of the things I’ve felt most thankful for and most gratified by over the span of more than 30 years with Unix and Linux.Also on Network World: 14 Linux apps that will change how you work There are many reasons why I came to appreciate Unix and then Linux and why they became such an important part of my life. These operating systems provided a focus and a career specialty that I've greatly enjoyed. I appreciate Linus Torvalds and the many thousands of developers who have contributed their time and energy into building a powerful, efficient and enjoyable operating system. I appreciate the many tools and commands that make them so easy to use and get my work done. And I appreciate the chances that I've had to share what I've learned with so many others. It's been fun, and it's been very rewarding.To read this article in full, please click here

Worth Reading: Amazon is the new Microsoft

Microsoft in the Bill Gates era was truly full of itself, pushing competitors around, crushing enemies and occasionally breaking the law as a bevy of anti-trust settlements show. Microsoft was the second most valuable company on Earth after ExxonMobil and seemed to feel it could get away with anything. … Today in the public cloud space Amazon is behaving much like Microsoft did in the 90s. They are hugely dominant with more than 70 percent of the cloud market and growing. According to Gartner Amazon Web Services (AWS) will soon have 80 percent of the public cloud market. — Robert Cringely

We need a more sustainable approach to Network Neutrality

Yesterday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai announced that in the FCC’s upcoming December 14 meeting they will vote to remove the Title II classification of Internet service providers.

As we outlined in our Policy Brief on Network Neutrality, the core principles of choice and transparency are fundamental to a free and open Internet that benefits users around the world. Simply put, users should be able to access the Internet content and services they choose without corporate or government interference.

Now is not the time to give up on these goals. Regardless of the action the FCC takes in the coming weeks, the Internet Society will continue to fight alongside allies around the world for our fundamental goal – to ensure an open Internet, characterized by access, choice and transparency for all users around the world.

Thus, we believe that strong rules are still needed – merely focusing on transparency is not enough to protect users’ access to an Open Internet.

We hope that the U.S. government can take a more sustainable approach to net neutrality; one that upholds the principles that are rooted in the Internet Society’s core values of a global and open Internet. Between Continue reading

History Of Networking – Roland Dobbins – DDoS

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 History Of Networking – Roland Dobbins – DDoS appeared first on Network Collective.

History Of Networking – Roland Dobbins – DDoS

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 History Of Networking – Roland Dobbins – DDoS appeared first on Network Collective.

Pre-Friday Deals: Amazon’s Highest Rated Tech Deals Under $25 – Deal Alert

If you need some practice buying stuff before the big day (Black Friday), Amazon has released a boat load of deals in these days leading up to it. What we've done here is simply filtered their list of current deals down to the tech categories we care about, and only the deals $25 or less with 4 or 5 star ratings.  Discounted USB cords, chargers, phone accessories, BlueTooth speakers, splitters, and other gadgets. Here it is: An impulse shopper's dream/nightmare. Note: Scroll down past the "featured deals" to where the lists really starts. Enjoy!To read this article in full, please click here

Marvell extends its reach in the data center with Cavium purchase

On Monday, Marvell Technology announced it intends to acquire embedded chip maker Cavium in a deal worth $6 billion. When it’s done, the combined company will have $3.4 billion in annual sales. That's hardly Intel territory, but their chips will be in practically every piece of equipment in your data center.There has been quite a bit of consolidation going on in the chip industry as every player gobbles up a competitor or complimentary vendor to give them a competitive advantage and diversification of products. Only Nvidia seems to be staying out of this, content to compete with what it has. And who can argue with the results? Certainly not its shareholders.To read this article in full, please click here

Marvell extends its reach in the data center with Cavium purchase

On Monday, Marvell Technology announced it intends to acquire embedded chip maker Cavium in a deal worth $6 billion. When it’s done, the combined company will have $3.4 billion in annual sales. That's hardly Intel territory, but their chips will be in practically every piece of equipment in your data center.There has been quite a bit of consolidation going on in the chip industry as every player gobbles up a competitor or complimentary vendor to give them a competitive advantage and diversification of products. Only Nvidia seems to be staying out of this, content to compete with what it has. And who can argue with the results? Certainly not its shareholders.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Drinking lead contaminated water? Better check your sensor

President Ronald Reagan once advised “trust, but verify” about nuclear disarmament. The same could be said about some official information on public health and safety issues. Remember Flint, Michigan?LeeAnne Walters is a mother of four in Flint, Michigan. She was alarmed when her entire family started losing clumps of hair and her twins kept breaking out in rashes, reported Mother Jones. The family was suffering from the effects of lead in Flint’s water supply. Frustrated with the city’s response, Walters contacted a manager at the EPA which helped unleash a chain of investigations into the crisis.To read this article in full, please click here

Will the end of net neutrality crush the Internet of Things?

It was hardly a surprise, but this week Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai made it all but official: He announced a plan to scrap Obama-era net neutrality rules.Since Republicans hold a 3-2 edge at the FCC, Pai’s plan is virtually certain to pass — despite lobbying efforts and court challenges from just about every internet constituency apart from big internet service providers (ISPs). "The Restoring Internet Freedom Order," as it’s cynically called, will very likely upend the current rules classifying internet service as a public utility and prohibiting carriers from slowing or blocking certain types of traffic.To read this article in full, please click here

Releasing AddThis on Cloudflare Apps: Making Disciplined Product Design Decisions

This is a guest post by Emily Schwartz, Product Manager for the AddThis team at Oracle. With a background in digital media that has spanned across NPR, WaPo Labs, Trove, and others, Emily cares deeply about helping publishers leverage data and technology for success.

The Process of Paring Down

When our team learned about the opportunity to build an AddThis app on Cloudflare Apps, I was ready to pounce. Building for distribution platforms is a core part of our business and product strategy, and I knew AddThis could bring a lot to the table for Cloudflare users. With a media background in my pocket, I understand the necessity of making content easily and quickly distributable -- and I wanted to get our tools in front of new users so we could learn more about the critical needs of publishers, merchants, and website owners.

The decision to build was the easy part. What to build was the challenging part.

With time and resources tight, I knew building an app that offered our full suite of website tools wouldn’t be immediately feasible—or even make sense. Share buttons, follow buttons, related posts, list building, link promotion, and tip jar are all Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How to better manage mixed data center environments

According to Gartner, more than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud over the next five years. Many research firms point to hybrid cloud as a fastest-growing segment, including MarketsandMarkets, which predicts that demand will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent through 2019, outpacing the IT market overall.There’s no question that cloud technologies have improved time to market, lowered operational and capital expenditures, and provided organizations with the ability to dynamically adjust provisioning to meet changing needs globally. And yet, as many businesses shift from on-premise, private clouds to public or hybrid models, a myriad of technical questions and business concerns come into play as compute, network and storage resources are further virtualized.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: How to better manage mixed data center environments

According to Gartner, more than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud over the next five years. Many research firms point to hybrid cloud as a fastest-growing segment, including MarketsandMarkets, which predicts that demand will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent through 2019, outpacing the IT market overall.There’s no question that cloud technologies have improved time to market, lowered operational and capital expenditures, and provided organizations with the ability to dynamically adjust provisioning to meet changing needs globally. And yet, as many businesses shift from on-premise, private clouds to public or hybrid models, a myriad of technical questions and business concerns come into play as compute, network and storage resources are further virtualized.To read this article in full, please click here

How IT Pros Can Prepare For Cyber Monday Madness

Let’s Pretend We Run Distributed Storage over a Thick Yellow Cable

One of my friends wanted to design a nice-and-easy layer-3 leaf-and-spine fabric for a new data center, and got blindsided by a hyperconverged vendor. Here’s what he wrote:

We wanted to have a spine/leaf L3 topology for an NSX deployment but can’t do that because the Nutanix servers require L2 between their nodes so they can be in the same cluster.

I wanted to check his claims, but Nutanix doesn’t publish their documentation (I would consider that a red flag), so I’m assuming he’s right until someone proves otherwise (note: whitepaper is not a proof of anything ;).

Route Filtering Technique: IP Prefix Lists

Securing Native Cloud Workloads with VMware NSX Cloud Blog Series – Part 1: Getting Started

Introduction

As businesses evaluate their applications in the constantly evolving world of IT, new strategies are emerging for delivery. These strategies include keeping applications on-premises or moving them to one or more public cloud providers.

These public clouds come with their own networking and security constructs and policy management. This results in a new set of technology siloes that increases expense, complexity and risk:

This blog series will discuss the challenges of providing consistent networking and security policies for native cloud workloads, the value of VMware NSX Cloud, and walk through the process of securing and connecting applications running natively in the public cloud.

VMware NSX Cloud

VMware’s strategy is to enable businesses to create and deliver applications. To support new delivery strategies, VMware NSX Cloud provides consistent networking and security for native applications running in multiple public and private clouds. Utilizing a single management console and a common application programming interface, VMware NSX Cloud offers numerous benefits:

• Unified Micro-Segmentation Security Policies – VMware NSX Cloud provides control over East-West traffic between native workloads running in public clouds. Security policies are defined once and applied to native workloads. These policies are supported in multiple AWS accounts, regions, and VPCs. Policies are Continue reading

Securing Native Cloud Workloads with VMware NSX Cloud Blog Series – Part 1: Getting Started

Introduction As businesses evaluate their applications in the constantly evolving world of IT, new strategies are emerging for delivery. These strategies include keeping applications on-premises or moving them to one or more public cloud providers. These public clouds come with their own networking and security constructs and policy management. This results in a new set of... Read more →