NSX Year in Review: 2021
With 2022 just around the corner, we can’t help but look back at the past year. 2021 was one for the books, as the world continued to navigate the ups and downs of the pandemic and the new way of working. It was also a big year for NSX, with many firsts, releases, awards and events. Before we head into the new year, take a quick trip down memory lane with us for an NSX year in review and reminisce on all the news we shared this year:
January
Shared on YouTube
January, besides marking the start of the new year, was the month of the -tion’s on YouTube. Our top-viewed videos this month were the classic NSX Introduction, Micro-segmentation, Network Evolution, NSX-T Migration, and NSX-T Federation. Check out the videos and let us know in the comments if any of the information in these creations got your attention.
February
Introduced HCX 4.0
Roses are red, violets are blue. Have you heard? HCX 4.0 is new! This major release focused on providing enhanced visibility, reducing service downtime during upgrades, and simplifying the reconfiguration of NSX security policies post-migration. Since February, Continue reading
Automation 7. Running and Parsing MD-CLI Commands with pySROS Directly on Nokia Router or Remotely.
Hello my friend,
We are continuing studying the Python library pySROS, which Nokia recently published. With all our passion for the Model-Driven Automation, we know that still a lot of people use the CLI daily. As such, today we’ll take a look on how we can automate execution and processing of the output of CLI commands in Nokia SR OS devices.
I See 10 Years Old Kids Creating Tools in Python… Is That Late to Start?
It is not. In fact, it shows that the there are no barriers to start learning and using Python. People come to a programming and software development with different backgrounds and for different purposes. However, all of them are united by a single goal: how to do something more efficient. This something is in fact can be anything: starting from a simple data analysis to a complex web application to games and, of course, to a network automation. At our trainings we use Python a lot; however, we know that network engineers may have no background in software development, and, therefore, we teach you basics of Python syntax, semantic and architecture, so that you can use it for network automaton (and other purposes) Continue reading
EX3400 Disk Space and Upgrades
The Juniper EX3400 switch series is a decent access switch. But a Product Manager chose to save $0.50 on COGS by choosing a 2GB disk. That’s just not enough space to handle normal Junos upgrades. This has wasted untold engineer hours on busywork. I hope that person (A) got a bonus, and (B) is never allowed to under-spec hardware again.
Here’s some tips I’ve learnt for manual and automated upgrades for EX3400s.
Manual Upgrades
Search for “Juniper EX3400 disk space” and you’ll find plenty of people complaining about this, and some suggestions. Juniper KB31198 looks like a good place to start. But it starts with request system storage cleanup and request system snapshot delete snap*.
Those might work if you’re upgrading from 15.1X -> 18.2. Maybe if you’re lucky it will be enough for upgrades within the 18.4 train. But it almost certainly won’t work if you’re going from 18.4.x -> 20.2.x.
There have been PRs that are supposed to fix this, and they might help around the edges, but they don’t help a lot.
With certain version combinations, you could get away with copying the new verson to /mfs, and Continue reading
Upleveling Network Strategy and Embracing an Automation Factory Model
Network managers turning automation to support new, advanced capabilities, but they need an overarching strategy to drive the most transformational change.Pluribus Networks 2021 Year In Review
As we turn the page on 2021, while we still face challenges brought on by COVID-19, there is a sense that enterprises and economies are adapting to this new reality and finding their footing. I’m pleased to say that, despite all the constraints that make up this “new normal”, Pluribus excelled in 2021.
The post Pluribus Networks 2021 Year In Review appeared first on Pluribus Networks.
Pluribus Networks 2021 Year In Review
Dear Pluribus customers, partners and employees:
At this same time last year, I posted about how impressed I was with the progress Pluribus Networks had made in spite of 2020 being a year unlike any we’d ever experienced. As we turn the page on 2021, while we still face challenges brought on by COVID-19, there is a sense that enterprises and economies are adapting to this new reality and finding their footing. I’m pleased to say that, despite all the constraints that make up this “new normal”, Pluribus excelled in 2021.
From a technical standpoint alone, Pluribus had a banner year. We released version 6.1 of our Linux Netvisor® ONE network operating system (OS) and elevated our Adaptive Cloud Fabric to new heights to enable customers to build bigger, faster cloud networking fabrics with more services and even simpler operations. We also released version 6.2 of our UNUM Management Platform, which includes our powerful Fabric Manager GUI-based portal and Insight Analytics telemetry solution. The platform empowers NetOps teams with tools to provision services at cloud speed and resolve network performance issues in record time.
Additionally, we extended the Pluribus switch portfolio with support for multiple new Dell Continue reading
How to Get the Most Out of VMware NSX with Advanced Load Balancing
Switzerland never takes sides. Safeguarding its independence is one of the principal objectives of Swiss foreign policy. And Swiss neutrality, one of the main principles of this policy, dictates that Switzerland remain agnostic.
Hailed as the Switzerland of load balancers, VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi) doesn’t take sides either. It is environment-agnostic. Designed to save you from costly re-platforming, retooling, and retraining, Avi offers the same great user experience regardless of the number or types of underlying infrastructure that support your apps. So you get a consistent experience, across any cloud, every time. The Avi platform enables a fast, scalable, and secure application delivery experience.
Network Automation and Advanced Load Balancing: Better Together
Customers invest in VMware NSX to achieve network automation and deploy a software-defined data center (SDDC) or private cloud that is programmable. However, they have historically used either the native NSX load balancer or legacy load balancers such as F5 or Citrix. Neither solution is adequate for the level of automation — and the enterprise-grade load balancing functions — that customers hope to enjoy with NSX.
Customers deploying VMware NSX-T need an integrated, automation-driven, multi-cloud application services solution. Avi integrates with NSX-T, simplifies Day 0 deployments, Continue reading
Zero Trust with Zero Visibility Can’t Stop Ransomware
The real goal of zero trust isn't necessarily to prevent every breach—it's to limit the movement of malware within the network and thus limit the damage it can do.In 2021, the Internet went for TikTok, space and beyond
The years come and go, Internet traffic continues to grow (at least so far and with some ‘help’ from the pandemic), and Internet applications, be they websites, IoT devices or mobile apps, continue to evolve throughout the year, depending on if they attract human beings.
We’ll have a more broad Internet traffic-related Year in Review 2021 in the next few days (you can check the 2020 one here), but for now, let’s focus on the most popular domains this year according to our data on Cloudflare Radar and those domains’ changes in our popularity ranking. With Alexa.com going away, if you need a domain ranking, you can get it from Cloudflare.
We’ll focus on space (NASA and SpaceX flew higher), e-commerce (Amazon and Taobao rule), and social media (TikTok ‘danced’ to take the crown from Facebook). We’ll also take a little ‘bite’ on video streaming wars. Netflix is a Squid Game of its own and January 2021 was at the highest in our ranking — probably lockdown and pandemic-related.
Chat domains (WhatsApp, what else) will also be present and, of course, the less established metaverse domains of sorts ( Continue reading
How Fortinet Stitches Together An Intelligent LAN
Fortinet customers can leverage AI/ML and a simplified NAC solution to get a more performant and secure LAN at both the core and edge. Here's how.
The post How Fortinet Stitches Together An Intelligent LAN appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Network Modeling: Automating Mikrotik RouterOS CHR Containerlab images
Introduction
In a previous post, we talked about using Containerlab and ZeroTier to provide remote access to a lab instance. One of the things that was glossed over was creating the Containerlab images. As part of building the images, Containerlab ready Mikrotik RouterOS images are available on Docker Hub.
Containerlab images
Containerlab currently supports 2 different kinds of images: pre-built containers and VMs packaged as containers.
Presently, only a handful of NOS vendors provide pre-built containers (Nokia’s SR Linux, Juniper cRPD, Arista cEOS, Cumulus VX, and SONIC VS).
The other option utilizes vrnetlab and is essentially a QEMU VM packaged in a Docker container. The more traditional network operating systems are currently supported via this method. This includes operating systems like Mikrotik RouterOS, Juniper vMX, Nokia SROS, and many more.
Building Mikrotik RouterOS containers
Containerlab provides a nice and easy way to build Containerlab ready Docker images. The process is fairly simple.
Setting it up
Containerlab uses a custom fork of vrnetlab that sets things up so that the images built will work with Containerlab. That repository can be found on Github. The first step is to clone that repository.
The next step is to download the Continue reading
BGP YANG Model and Configuration
The post BGP YANG Model and Configuration appeared first on Noction.
Linux sound devices are a mess
It started with a pretty simple requirement: I just want to know which sound card is which.
Background about the setup
I sometimes play around with amateur radios. Very often I connect them to computers to play around. E.g. JS8Call, FT8, SSTV, AX.25, and some other things.
This normally works very well. I just connect radio control over a serial port, and the audio using a cheap USB audio dongle. Sometimes the radio has USB support and delivers both a serial control port and an audio interface over the same cable.
The problem
So what if I connect two radios at the same time? How do I know which sound card, and which serial port, is which?
Both serial ports (/dev/ttyUSB<n>) and audio device numbers and
names depend on the order that the devices were detected, or plugged
in, which is not stable.
The fix for serial ports
Serial ports are relatively easy. You just tell udev to create some consistent symlinks based on the serial number of the USB device.
For example here’s the setup for a raspberry pi that sees various radios at various times (with some serial numbers obscured) Continue reading