Archive

Category Archives for "Networking"

Build Resilient, Secure Microservices with Microsegmentation

About 10 to 12 years ago, the world of software experienced a shift in the architectural aspects of enterprise applications. Architects and software builders started moving away from the giant, tightly coupled, monolithic applications deployed in the private data centers to a more microservices-oriented architecture hosted in public cloud infrastructure. The inherent distributed nature of microservices is a new security challenge in the public cloud. Over the last decade, despite the growing adoption of microservices-oriented architecture for building scalable, autonomous, and robust enterprise applications, organizations often struggle to protect against this new attack surface in the cloud compared to the traditional data centers. It includes concerns around multitenancy and lack of visibility and control over the infrastructure, as well as the operational environment. This architectural shift makes meeting security goals harder, especially with the paramount emphasis placed on faster container-based deployments. The purpose of this article is to understand what microsegmentation is and how it can empower software architects, DevOps engineers, and IT security architects to build secure and resilient microservices. Specifically, I’ll discuss the network security challenges associated with the popular container orchestration mechanism Kubernetes, and I will illustrate the value of microsegmentation to prevent lateral movement when a Continue reading

Interconnecting GNS3 Virtual Machines – Video

GNS3 co-founder and developer Jeremy Grossman and networking instructor David Bombal talk with Ethan Banks about how separate GNS3 VMs communicate. You can listen to the full episode, “Heavy Networking 556: The State Of GNS3 For Network Labs,” by clicking this link. Heavy Networking is part of the Packet Pushers network of technical podcasts, including […]

The post Interconnecting GNS3 Virtual Machines – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Automation Win: Chatops-Based Security

It’s amazing how quickly you can deploy new functionality once you have a solid foundation in place. In his latest blog post Adrian Giacometti described how he implemented a security solution that allows network operators to block source IP addresses (identified by security tools) across dozens of firewalls using a bot listening to a Slack channel.

Would you be surprised if I told you we covered similar topics in our automation course? ?

Automation Win: Chatops-Based Security

It’s amazing how quickly you can deploy new functionality once you have a solid foundation in place. In his latest blog post Adrian Giacometti described how he implemented a security solution that allows network operators to block source IP addresses (identified by security tools) across dozens of firewalls using a bot listening to a Slack channel.

Would you be surprised if I told you we covered similar topics in our automation course? 😇

Automating responses to scripts on Linux using expect and autoexpect

The Linux expect command takes script writing to an entirely new level. Instead of automating processes, it automates running and responding to other scripts. In other words, you can write a script that asks how you are and then create an expect script that both runs it and tells it that you're ok.Here's the bash script:#!/bin/bash echo "How are you doing?" read ans [Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Here's the expect script that provides the response to the query:#!/usr/bin/expect set timeout -1 spawn ./ask # ask is name of script to be run expect "How are you doing?\r" send -- "ok\r" expect eof When you run the script, you should see this:To read this article in full, please click here

Network Break 315: Pluralsight Sold For $3.5 Billion; Dent NOS Hitchhikes To The Edge

This week's Network Break discusses the jaw-dropping $3.5 billion purchase of Pluralsight; welcomes a new network OS to life, the universe, and everything; debates whether ICANN was cautious or tardy in implementing DNSSEC for gTLD name servers, catches up on the SolarWinds hack, and more tech conversation.

The post Network Break 315: Pluralsight Sold For $3.5 Billion; Dent NOS Hitchhikes To The Edge appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Protecting Workloads with Global Network Backing Using Site Recovery Manager

Many thanks to Dimitri Desmidt from VMware, NSBU for providing the Design details of Multi-Location and Federation.

Preface

Starting NSX-T version 3.0.2 workloads with NSX-T global network backing (L2 stretched segment) can be protected and recovered using Site Recovery Manager (SRM). More details on Multi-Locations with Federation are available here.

Note: This post does not contain the installation and configuration details of NSX-T federation, vSphere Replication and Site Recovery Manager. Hence, it is necessary to meet the following pre-requisite to achieve the goal of protecting workloads with global segments using SRM.

Pre-requisite

  • Understanding of NSX-T Federation and its configuration is necessary.
  • Understanding the installation and configuration of vSphere Replication and Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is necessary.

Limitations

SRM is not currently supported with Federation with VM Tags, Segment Ports, or Segment Ports Tags. As mentioned in the Design Guide for Multi-Locations here:

  • Currently recovered VMs via SRM does not recover their NSX VM Tags.
  • Recovered VMs will receive new Segment Ports on the new LM.
  • If the Federation Security is based on VM Tags, Segment Ports or Segment Ports Tags then the recovered compute VMs in another location (London in our example here) do not have their Continue reading

Give The Network Designer That Came Before You A Break

When you take over a network as a technical lead, you often run into design elements that make you do a spit-take. They did WHAT? Really? Were they...stupid? Clueless? Stupid AND clueless? Maybe they were, but I argue that you should give those humans that came before you a break. You weren't there. You don't know what constraints they were operating under. Since you don't know those things, it's hard to pass fair judgement. Unfair judgement? Oh, yeah. All day long, and you can even feel righteous while doing so. Super smug.

The post Give The Network Designer That Came Before You A Break appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Understanding GNS3 Appliances – Video

The labbing tool GNS3 has a capability called “appliances” but it may not mean what you think it means. GNS3 co-founder and developer Jeremy Grossman and networking instructor David Bombal talk with Ethan Banks about what appliances mean in the context of this software. You can listen to the full episode, “Heavy Networking 556: The […]

The post Understanding GNS3 Appliances – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Tech Bytes: SD-WAN Helps Medical Imaging Company Get The Picture Faster (Sponsored)

This Tech Bytes podcast explores how SimonMed, a medical imaging company, turned to an SD-WAN deployment from Silver Peak to reduce image delivery time from minutes to seconds, improve performance of VoIP, and begin a migration from expensive MPLS circuits.

The post Tech Bytes: SD-WAN Helps Medical Imaging Company Get The Picture Faster (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Webinars in 2021

After deciding to take a slightly longer coffee break I went through the list of outstanding projects trying to figure out which ones I could complete in first half of 2021, which ones I’ll get to “eventually” and what’s a lost cause.

Guest Speakers

Irena is telling me that I should stop inviting guest speakers – our calendar is full until June 2021. Here’s what we have planned and what we got done at the time of the last update (January 30, 2021).

The Week in Internet News: U.K. Investigating Google Chrome’s Privacy Push

No more cookies: Google’s Chrome browser has announced a plan to replace tracking cookies with a system that shares less information with advertisers, but the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is worried that more user privacy would have a “significant impact” on news websites and on the digital advertising market, the BBC reports. The agency has warned that publishers’ profits could drop if they no longer run personalized advertisements.

A vulgar display of content: The Chinese National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications has fined short video app Douyin, a sister app to TikTok, for spreading “obscene, pornographic and vulgar information,” the South China Morning Post says. The app was fined “tens of thousands of yuan,” the regulator said. Regulators said they received more than 900 reports related to pornographic and vulgar content on Douyin in the past year.

The sports car Internet: Gigabit Internet service is coming to rural Kansas and Missouri with funding from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, FlatlandKC.org reports. The site compared gigabit speeds to a fast sports car. The FCC has selected 180 winning bidders to receive $9.2 billion in funding to provide increased Internet access to 5.2 million Continue reading

IT specialist Atos makes bid for DXC

IT outsourcing giant Atos has put in a bid to acquire DXC Technology, which would give the French IT giant a big foot in the door to the U.S. market.The rumor first ran last week on Reuters, which put the purchase price at $10.1 billion. Atos issued a rather short statement confirming the talks, but did not confirm the rumored price. It said there was no certainty of an outcome and further announcements would be made “when appropriate.”For its part, DXC said it had indeed received an offer from Atos, again without mentioning the price, and said it would be “evaluating the proposal.”To read this article in full, please click here

IT specialist Atos makes bid for DXC

IT outsourcing giant Atos has put in a bid to acquire DXC Technology, which would give the French IT giant a big foot in the door to the U.S. market.The rumor first ran last week on Reuters, which put the purchase price at $10.1 billion. Atos issued a rather short statement confirming the talks, but did not confirm the rumored price. It said there was no certainty of an outcome and further announcements would be made “when appropriate.”For its part, DXC said it had indeed received an offer from Atos, again without mentioning the price, and said it would be “evaluating the proposal.”To read this article in full, please click here