Technology Short Take #45
Welcome to Technology Short Take #45. As usual, I’ve gathered a collection of links to various articles pertaining to data center-related technologies for your enjoyment. Here’s hoping you find something useful!
Networking
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Cormac Hogan has a list of a few useful NSX troubleshooting tips.
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If you’re not really a networking pro and need a “gentle” introduction to VXLAN, this post might be a good place to start.
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Also along those lines—perhaps you’re a VMware administrator who wants to branch into networking with NSX, or you’re a networking guru who needs to learn more about how this NSX stuff works. vBrownBag has been running a VCP-NV series covering various objectives from the VCP-NV exam. Check them out–objective 1, objective 2, objective 3, and objective 4 have been posted so far.
Servers/Hardware
- I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: In a few years time (let’s say 3-5 years), Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions) will be regarded as important if not more important than the virtualization extensions. What is Intel SGX, you ask? See here, here, and here for a breakdown of the SGX design objectives. Let’s be real—the ability for an Continue reading
Good Ansible News, Everyone
There are lots of great things happening at Ansible (and we aren't just talking about the new coffee in the breakroom). We've had a great summer with the hiring a bunch of new Ansible team members, the release of Ansible 1.7.2 and Ansible Tower 2.0. Fall is shaping up to be even better.
-- Inforworld names Ansible one of The best open source data center and cloud software companies.
Continue readingAnsible: 2015 SD Times Company to Watch
We are proud to announce that Ansible has been named a SD Times Company to Watch for 2015.
Continue readingAnnouncing Docker Global Hack Day #2
DockerCon Europe is sold out! But wait…
Here, at Docker HQ, since the announcement of DockerCon Europe 2014, we have been sprinting to keep up with the overwhelming response and today, we must inform you that the conference is sold out. Tickets went faster than expected so we want to give you one last opportunity to attend.
Today, we are super excited to announce Docker Global Hack Day #2 on October 30th! The prize will be full conference passes including roundtrip airfare for all members of the winning team. Last year, the event was a big success, and we expect this year to be even more awesome with more cities and more hackers around the world involved!
The San Francisco edition will kickoff with talks by Ben Golub, CEO of Docker, and Solomon Hykes, Founder and CTO of Docker, who will demonstrate the power and new features of Docker 1.3 and how they facilitate the creation of distributed applications. The agenda will include a number of Docker customers who are building their next generation of applications based upon our open platform. In addition, the event will have a surprise announcement to the community. The talks and demo will be Continue reading
InfoWorld Bossies 2014
Today we are proud to announce that Docker was named a winner of the InfoWorld Bossies 2014 in two categories:
- The best open source application development tools
- The best open source data center and cloud software
We would like to thank our community and our partners for this award, as Docker would not exist without you!
Thank you!
Docker Hub Official Repos: Announcing Language Stacks
With Docker containers fast becoming the standard for building blocks for distributed apps, we’re working with the Docker community to make it easier for users to quickly code and assemble their projects. Official Repos, publicly downloadable for free from the Docker Hub Registry, are curated images informed by user feedback and best practices. They represent a focused community effort to provide great base images for applications, so developers and sysadmins can focus on building new features and functionality while minimizing repetitive work on commodity scaffolding and plumbing.
At DockerCon last June, we announced the first batch of Official Repos which covered many standard tools like OS distributions, web servers, and databases. At the time, we had several organizations join us to curate Official Repos for their particular project, including Fedora, CentOS, and Canonical. And the community responded enthusiastically as well: in the three months since they launched, Official Repos have so grown in popularity that they now account for almost 20% of all image downloads.
Parlez-vous…?
Based on the search queries on the Docker Hub Registry and discussions with many of you, we determined that the community wants pre-built stacks of their favorite programming languages. Specifically, developers Continue reading
Closing Comments on Old Posts
One of the great things about this site is the interaction I enjoy with readers. It’s always great to get comments from readers about how an article was informative, answered a question, or helped solve a problem. Knowing that what I’ve written here is helpful to others is a very large part of why I’ve been writing here for over 9 years.
Until today, I’ve left comments (and sometimes trackbacks) open on very old blog posts. Just the other day I received a comment on a 4 year old article where a reader was sharing another way to solve the same problem. Unfortunately, that has to change. Comment spam on the site has grown considerably over the last few months, despite the use of a number of plugins to help address the issue. It’s no longer just an annoyance; it’s now a problem.
As a result, starting today, all blog posts more than 3 years old will automatically have their comments and trackbacks closed. I hate to do it—really I do—but I don’t see any other solution to the increasing blog spam.
I hope that this does not adversely impact my readers’ ability to interact with me, but it is Continue reading
Closing Comments on Old Posts
One of the great things about this site is the interaction I enjoy with readers. It’s always great to get comments from readers about how an article was informative, answered a question, or helped solve a problem. Knowing that what I’ve written here is helpful to others is a very large part of why I’ve been writing here for over 9 years.
Until today, I’ve left comments (and sometimes trackbacks) open on very old blog posts. Just the other day I received a comment on a 4 year old article where a reader was sharing another way to solve the same problem. Unfortunately, that has to change. Comment spam on the site has grown considerably over the last few months, despite the use of a number of plugins to help address the issue. It’s no longer just an annoyance; it’s now a problem.
As a result, starting today, all blog posts more than 3 years old will automatically have their comments and trackbacks closed. I hate to do it—really I do—but I don’t see any other solution to the increasing blog spam.
I hope that this does not adversely impact my readers’ ability to interact with me, but it is Continue reading
Report: Burrito Quest I
At Docker, we are lucky to be able to spend time exploring San Francisco, one of the world’s great cities in terms of culture, architecture and, of course, burritos. Forget about crabs or sourdough, what San Francisco does best is the burrito, that noble combination of beans, meat, cheese, salsa, and love, all in a convenient wrapper that let’s you eat it one-handed. And. like the City itself, the burrito is incredibly diverse. Do you prefer black beans or pintos? Are you a carnivore who craves the al pastor and the carne asada, or do you seek out the elusive perfect chile relleno burrito (the turducken of Mexico)?
So many options, so many questions. As an engineer-driven company, we needed to know the optimal solution. We had to know where to find the City’s finest burrito.
And so it came to be that Burrito Quest was born. We decided that once a month we would walk to another potential purveyor of the perfect burrito. In order to build a comprehensive test harness, we decided that each user would pursue their own story, be it a simple pollo or a bold lengua. or even a chili relleno, the turducken of Continue reading
Thinking About Intel Rack-Scale Architecture
You may have heard of Intel Rack-Scale Architecture (RSA), a new approach to designing data center hardware. This is an idea that was discussed extensively a couple of weeks ago at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2014 in San Francisco, which I had the opportunity to attend. (Disclaimer: Intel paid my travel and hotel expenses to attend IDF.)
Of course, IDF 2014 wasn’t the first time I’d heard of Intel RSA; it was also discussed last year. However, this year I had the chance to really dig into what Intel is trying to accomplish through Intel RSA—note that I’ll use “Intel RSA” instead of just “RSA” to avoid any confusion with the security company—and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and conclusions here.
Intel always seems to present Intel RSA as a single entity that is made up of a number of other technologies/efforts; specifically, Intel RSA is typically presented as:
- Disaggregation of the compute, memory, and storage capacity in a rack
- Silicon photonics as a low-latency, high-speed rack-scale fabric
- Some software that combines disaggregated hardware capacity over a rack-scale fabric to create “pooled systems”
When you look at Intel RSA this way—and this is the way that Continue reading
Thinking About Intel Rack-Scale Architecture
You may have heard of Intel Rack-Scale Architecture (RSA), a new approach to designing data center hardware. This is an idea that was discussed extensively a couple of weeks ago at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2014 in San Francisco, which I had the opportunity to attend. (Disclaimer: Intel paid my travel and hotel expenses to attend IDF.)
Of course, IDF 2014 wasn’t the first time I’d heard of Intel RSA; it was also discussed last year. However, this year I had the chance to really dig into what Intel is trying to accomplish through Intel RSA—note that I’ll use “Intel RSA” instead of just “RSA” to avoid any confusion with the security company—and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and conclusions here.
Intel always seems to present Intel RSA as a single entity that is made up of a number of other technologies/efforts; specifically, Intel RSA is typically presented as:
-
Disaggregation of the compute, memory, and storage capacity in a rack
-
Silicon photonics as a low-latency, high-speed rack-scale fabric
-
Some software that combines disaggregated hardware capacity over a rack-scale fabric to create “pooled systems”
When you look at Intel RSA this way—and this is the way that Continue reading
Docker Closes $40M Series C Led by Sequoia
Today is a great day for the Docker team and the whole Docker ecosystem.
We are pleased to announce that Docker has closed a $40M Series C funding round led by Sequoia Capital. In addition to giving us significant financial resources, Docker now has the insights and support of a board that includes Benchmark, Greylock, Sequoia, Trinity, and Jerry Yang.
This puts us in a great position to invest aggressively in the future of distributed applications. We’ll be able to significantly expand and build the Docker platform and our ecosystem of developers, contributors, and partners, while developing a broader set of solutions for enterprise users. We are also very fortunate that we’ll be gaining the counsel of Bill Coughran, who was the SVP of Engineering at Google for eight years prior to joining Sequoia, and who helped spearhead the extensive adoption of container-based technologies in Google’s infrastructure.
While the size, composition, and valuation of the round are great, they are really a lagging indicator of the amazing work done by the Docker team and community. They demonstrate the amazing impact our open source project is having. Our user community has grown exponentially into the millions and we have a constantly expanding network of contributors, Continue reading
