Troubleshooting: Half Split
The best models will support the second crucial skill required for troubleshooting: seeing the system as a set of problems to be solved. The problem/solution mindset is so critical in really understanding how networks really work, and hence how to troubleshoot them, that Ethan Banks and I are writing an entire book around this concept. The essential points are these—
- Understand the set of problems being solved
- Understand a wide theoretical set of solutions for this problem, including how each solution interacts with other problems and solutions, potential side effects of using each solution, and where the common faults lie in each solution
- Understand this implementation
of this solution
Having this kind of information in your head will help you pull in detail where needed to fill in the models of each system; just as you cannot keep all four of the primary systems in your head at once, you also cannot effectively troubleshoot without a reservoir of more detailed knowledge about each system, or the ready ability to absorb more information about each system as needed. Having a problem/solution mindset also helps keep you focused in troubleshooting.
So you have built models of each system, and you have learned Continue reading
NEC Partners with Dell EMC to Deliver SD-LAN
The technology is complementary to any WAN deployment.
Use a Zero Trust Approach to Protect Against WannaCry
Micro-segmentation with VMware NSX compartmentalizes the data center to contain the lateral spread of ransomware attacks such as WannaCry
On May 12 2017, reports began to appear of the WannaCry malware attacking organizations worldwide in one of the largest ransomware cyber incidents to date. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) has reported more than 200,000 attacks in over 150 countries and in 27, with the full scope of the attack yet to be determined. Victims include organizations from all verticals.
WannaCry targets Microsoft Windows machines, seizing control of computer systems through a critical vulnerability in Windows SMB. It also utilizes RDP as an attack vector for propagation. It encrypts seized systems and demands a ransom be paid before decrypting the system and giving back control. The threat propagates laterally to other systems on the network via SMB or RDP and then repeats the process. An initial analysis of WannaCry by the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) can be found here, with a detailed analysis from Malware Bytes here.
One foundational aspect of increasing cybersecurity hygiene in an organization to help mitigate such attacks from proliferating is enabling a least privilege (zero trust) model by embedding security directly into the data center network. The Continue reading
TM Forum Tool Targets Slow Digital Adoption by Operators
The Digital Maturity Model application takes five metrics into account.
Worth Reading: A simple start to project management
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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
The Role of Operational and Cognitive Analytics in SDN/NFV
Analytics is an essential element of the transformation to SDN.
RFC 1438 – Internet Engineering Task Force Statements Of Boredom (SOBs)
Its meant to be funny but its not.
The post RFC 1438 – Internet Engineering Task Force Statements Of Boredom (SOBs) appeared first on EtherealMind.
Data Center Networking Performance: New Apps Bring New Requirements
With machine learning, big data, cloud, and NFV initiatives invading the data center, there are implications for data center networking performance.