Whether it is something as simple as what kind of coffee to order for your commute to the office, which route to take to avoid traffic, or in my case, whether to support the USA or England in the 2022 world cup group stage game, we all make a myriad of choices every day.
One of the most exciting announcements from the last AWS re:Invent was the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) Express functionality that uses the Scalable Reliable Datagram (SRD) protocol as the transport protocol for the overlay virtual networks. AWS claims ENA Express can push 25 Gbps over a single TCP flow and that SRD improves the tail latency (99.9 percentile) for high-throughput workloads by 85%.
Ignoring the “DPUs could change the network forever” blogosphere reactions (hint: they won’t), let’s see what could be happening behind the scenes and why SRD improves TCP throughput and tail latency.
One of the most exciting announcements from the last AWS re:Invent was the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) Express functionality that uses the Scalable Reliable Datagram (SRD) protocol as the transport protocol for the overlay virtual networks. AWS claims ENA Express can push 25 Gbps over a single TCP flow and that SRD improves the tail latency (99.9 percentile) for high-throughput workloads by 85%.
Ignoring the “DPUs could change the network forever” blogosphere reactions (hint: they won’t), let’s see what could be happening behind the scenes and why SRD improves TCP throughput and tail latency.
When choosing an underlay for an EVPN/VXAN network, the prevailing wisdom is that BGP is the best choice for the underlay routing protocol. And overall, I think that’s true. But OSPF can make a compelling underlay too, as it has a few logistical advantages over BGP in certain cases.
When building out EVPN/VXLAN networks, I like to break the build into four components. They are layers that are built one-by-one on top of each other.
This article is exclusively about the underlay portion. It’s a very simple routed network that has one job, and job only:
Provide routes to enable IP connectivity from any loopbacks on a device to any loopback on any other device.
That’s it.
In normal operation the routing table will be incredibly static. The only time the routing table would change is when a switch is added or removed, or a link goes down, or a switch is upgraded, etc. In regular operation it won’t change.
The underlay is important, but the underlay isn’t Continue reading
What can we learn from a Microsoft study of switch failures in its data centers? Hardware failures are more common that software failures, the law of large numbers can overwhelm your resiliency and redundancy planning, and open-source software can be admirably robust.
The post Thoughts On Switch Failures appeared first on Packet Pushers.
With the NSX 4.0.1.1 release, Migration Coordinator adds two game-changing features that help simplify workload migration in the case of lift and shift migration mode. These features build on top of the User Defined Topology mode of migration and add one more config mode. Folks familiar with the User Defined Topology will find the workflow very similar with the added benefit of simplified workload migration, leveraging HCX.
In this blog post, we will look at this new feature and how to take advantage of it. Please check out the resource links for more information on Migration Coordinator. We will start with a high-level overview before digging into the details.
Migration Coordinator was introduced with NSX-T 2.4 to enable customers to migrate from NSX for vSphere to NSX-T Data Center. It’s a free, fully supported tool that’s built into NSX-T Data Center. Migration Coordinator is flexible with multiple options enabling multiple ways to migrate based on customer requirements. The first release provided a way to migrate everything, including config, workloads, and hosts in place using the same hardware if the deployed topology matched the supported topologies. Starting with the NSX-T 3. Continue reading
Today's Full Stack Journey podcast welcomes software engineer Kat Morgan to discuss finding and following passion projects---which for Kat include KubeVirt and UOR Framework. Scott and Kat have a technical and entertaining conversation about how pursuing passion projects can inform, shape, and create career opportunities.
The post Full Stack Journey 073: Finding And Following Technical Passion Projects appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Large-scale cyber attacks on enterprises and governments make the headlines, but the impacts of cyberattacks can be felt acutely by small businesses that struggle to keep the lights on during normal times. In this blog, we’ll share new research on how small businesses, including those using our free services, have leveraged Cloudflare services to make their businesses more secure and resistant to disruption, along with a real story about how Cloudflare makes a tangible impact for small business customers.
Research has indicated that 43% of cyber attacks target small businesses [Source: Institute for Security and Technology, Blueprint for Ransomware Defense, 2022]. Small businesses face many of the same cybersecurity challenges as larger organizations, but with fewer resources to plan, design, and manage their IT systems and security protections. Most small businesses say they don’t have the personnel to address IT security adequately or appropriately [Source: Ponemon Institute, 2018 State of Cybersecurity in Small & Medium Size Businesses].
Your local florist, fitness studio, café, or pet shop is likely using a wide variety of cloud-based SaaS apps to stay open for customers, including online accounting software, booking systems, point-of-sale credit card readers, inventory management systems, content management Continue reading
Part of the magic of the Internet is in tens of thousands of networks connecting to each other all across the world in an effort to share information more efficiently. Cloudflare is a member of 279 Internet Exchanges (IX for short), but today we want to highlight one such dot on the global Internet map: the Montgomery, Alabama Internet Exchange, called MGMix. Thanks to the hard work of local leaders and the participation of dozens of networks (including Cloudflare), the Internet in Alabama works better today than it did before the IX launched.
Before we talk more about Alabama in particular, let's take a step back to understand the critical role that Internet Exchanges play in our global Internet. In a simple model of exchanging Internet traffic, one person is on their laptop and requests content on a website, uses a video conferencing application, or wants to securely connect to their workplace from home. The person, or “client” in technical terms, is generally using a traditional Internet Service Provider, who they pay to access everything on the Internet. On the other hand, whatever the user is trying to reach – the website, API endpoint, or security service – Continue reading