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Data center network monitoring best practices part 3: Modernizing tooling

Implementing your strategy using modern tooling

In the previous two posts we discussed gathering metrics for long term trend analysis and then combining it with event-based alerts for actionable results. In order to combine these two elements, we need strong network monitoring tooling that allows us to overlay these activities into an effective solution.

Understanding drawbacks of older network monitoring tooling

The legacy approach to monitoring is to deploy a monitoring server that periodically polls your network devices via Simple Network Management Protocol. SNMP is a very old protocol, originally developed in 1988. While some things do get better with age, computer protocols are rarely one of them. SNMP has been showing its age in many ways.

Inflexibility

SNMP uses data structures called MIBs to exchange information. These MIBs are often proprietary, and difficult to modify and extend to cover new and interesting metrics.

Polling vs event driven

Polling doesn’t offer enough granularity to catch all events. For instance, even if you check disk utilization once every five minutes, you may go over threshold and back in between intervals and never know.

An inefficient protocol

SNMP’s polling design is a “call and response” protocol, this means the monitoring server will Continue reading

WannaCry Makes Me Want to Cry!

As I read about the WannaCry ransomware attack, my brain is racing with thoughts about the causes and effects of this global incident.  Here’s my two cents:1.      Ransomware continues to be a growth business, and a bit of work can provide a serious return.  The FBI estimated that Ransomware payments topped $1 billion in 2016, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw 100% year-over-year growth. 2.      For those of us who’ve been in cybersecurity for a while, WannaCry brings back memories of the Internet worms we saw back in the 2000s (i.e. Code Red, Conficker, MSBlast, Nimda, etc.).  Once one person on a network was infected, WannaCry simply went out and infected other vulnerable systems on the network.  I knew that worm techniques would come back but I always thought they’d be used as a smokescreen for other attacks.  Looks like Ransomware and Internet worms can be as compatible as chocolate and peanut butter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WannaCry makes me want to cry!

As I read about the WannaCry ransomware attack, my brain is racing with thoughts about the causes and effects of this global incident. Here are my two cents:1. Ransomware continues to be a growth business, and a bit of work can provide a serious return. The FBI estimated that ransomware payments topped $1 billion in 2016, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw 100 percent year-over-year growth. 2. For those of us who’ve been in cybersecurity for a while, WannaCry brings back memories of the internet worms we saw back in the 2000s (i.e. Code Red, Conficker, MSBlast, Nimda, etc.). Once one person on a network was infected, WannaCry simply went out and infected other vulnerable systems on the network. I knew that worm techniques would come back, but I always thought they’d be used as a smokescreen for other attacks. Looks like ransomware and internet worms can be as compatible as chocolate and peanut butter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WannaCry makes me want to cry!

As I read about the WannaCry ransomware attack, my brain is racing with thoughts about the causes and effects of this global incident. Here are my two cents:1. Ransomware continues to be a growth business, and a bit of work can provide a serious return. The FBI estimated that ransomware payments topped $1 billion in 2016, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw 100 percent year-over-year growth. 2. For those of us who’ve been in cybersecurity for a while, WannaCry brings back memories of the internet worms we saw back in the 2000s (i.e. Code Red, Conficker, MSBlast, Nimda, etc.). Once one person on a network was infected, WannaCry simply went out and infected other vulnerable systems on the network. I knew that worm techniques would come back, but I always thought they’d be used as a smokescreen for other attacks. Looks like ransomware and internet worms can be as compatible as chocolate and peanut butter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why WannaCry won’t change anything

The tally of damage from the WannaCry ransomware attack keeps growing, but it’s still not even close to bad enough to force real changes in cybersecurity. According to The New York Times, more than 200,000 machines in more than 150 countries around the world have been infected, but the responses being discussed still center around patches and passwords, updates and antivirus, backups and contingency plans. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why WannaCry won’t change anything

The tally of damage from the WannaCry ransomware attack keeps growing, but it’s still not even close to bad enough to force real changes in cybersecurity. According to The New York Times, more than 200,000 machines in more than 150 countries around the world have been infected, but the responses being discussed still center around patches and passwords, updates and antivirus, backups and contingency plans. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Shadow Brokers announce monthly data dump service

The Shadow Brokers are back once again, offering buyers not just exploits, but also “compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean nukes and missile programs.”Seemingly capitalizing on the success of WannaCry ransomware, which used EternalBlue and DoublePulsar – tools developed by the NSA’s Equation Group – the Shadow Brokers want to sell new exploits every month to people who pay a membership fee.The hacking group dubbed its new monthly subscription model “TheShadowBrokers Data Dump of the Month;” the service kicks off in June. The Shadow Brokers claim not to care what Data Dump of the Month service members do with the exploits. The group teased:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Shadow Brokers announce monthly data dump service

The Shadow Brokers are back once again, offering buyers not just exploits, but also “compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean nukes and missile programs.”Seemingly capitalizing on the success of WannaCry ransomware, which used EternalBlue and DoublePulsar – tools developed by the NSA’s Equation Group – the Shadow Brokers want to sell new exploits every month to people who pay a membership fee.The hacking group dubbed its new monthly subscription model “TheShadowBrokers Data Dump of the Month;” the service kicks off in June. The Shadow Brokers claim not to care what Data Dump of the Month service members do with the exploits. The group teased:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

I Will Be Presenting For the First Time at CLUS 2017!

Well, it looks like another major item will get struck from my bucket list this year. I’ve been accepted to present at Cisco Live in Las Vegas this summer! ?

This session is designed to walk through an enterprise network and look at how EIGRP can be engineered with purpose to best suit the needs of the different areas of the network. I will focus a lot on stability and scaling EIGRP and will show the audience how, where, and when to leverage common EIGRP features such as summarization, fast timers, BFD, and wide metrics. Before getting into the nuts and bolts, I will be doing a bit of a level-set on certain EIGRP features such as queries, going active, summarization, and support for flexible network hierarchies. I will round out the session by talking about how EIGRP has been optimized for use in Cisco’s Intelligent WAN (IWAN) solution and even touch on a not-so-commonly seen application of EIGRP: EIGRP Over-The-Top. The full session agenda looks like this:

I’m actually inheriting this session from a fellow CPOC engineer, Steve Moore who, un-coincidentally, is the same S. Moore whose name is on the EIGRP RFC. Steve will be presenting a sister session Continue reading

HPE shows off The Machine prototype without memistors

In 2004, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's Kirk Bresniker set out to make radical changes to computer architecture with The Machine and drew out the first concept design on a whiteboard.At the time Bresniker, now chief architect at HP Labs, wanted to build a system that could drive computing into the future. The goal was to build a computer that used cutting-edge technologies like memristors and photonics.It's been an arduous journey, but HPE on Tuesday finally showed a prototype of The Machine at a lab in Fort Collins, Colorado.It's not close to what the company envisioned with The Machine when it was first announced in 2014 but follows the same principle of pushing computing into memory subsystems. The system breaks the limitations tied to conventional PC and server architecture in which memory is a bottleneck.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE shows off The Machine prototype without memistors

In 2004, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's Kirk Bresniker set out to make radical changes to computer architecture with The Machine and drew out the first concept design on a whiteboard.At the time Bresniker, now chief architect at HP Labs, wanted to build a system that could drive computing into the future. The goal was to build a computer that used cutting-edge technologies like memristors and photonics.It's been an arduous journey, but HPE on Tuesday finally showed a prototype of The Machine at a lab in Fort Collins, Colorado.It's not close to what the company envisioned with The Machine when it was first announced in 2014 but follows the same principle of pushing computing into memory subsystems. The system breaks the limitations tied to conventional PC and server architecture in which memory is a bottleneck.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE shows off The Machine prototype without memristors

In 2004, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's Kirk Bresniker set out to make radical changes to computer architecture with The Machine and drew out the first concept design on a whiteboard.At the time Bresniker, now chief architect at HP Labs, wanted to build a system that could drive computing into the future. The goal was to build a computer that used cutting-edge technologies like memristors and photonics.It's been an arduous journey, but HPE on Tuesday finally showed a prototype of The Machine at a lab in Fort Collins, Colorado.It's not close to what the company envisioned with The Machine when it was first announced in 2014 but follows the same principle of pushing computing into memory subsystems. The system breaks the limitations tied to conventional PC and server architecture in which memory is a bottleneck.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE shows off The Machine prototype without memristors

In 2004, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's Kirk Bresniker set out to make radical changes to computer architecture with The Machine and drew out the first concept design on a whiteboard.At the time Bresniker, now chief architect at HP Labs, wanted to build a system that could drive computing into the future. The goal was to build a computer that used cutting-edge technologies like memristors and photonics.It's been an arduous journey, but HPE on Tuesday finally showed a prototype of The Machine at a lab in Fort Collins, Colorado.It's not close to what the company envisioned with The Machine when it was first announced in 2014 but follows the same principle of pushing computing into memory subsystems. The system breaks the limitations tied to conventional PC and server architecture in which memory is a bottleneck.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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