How to decommission a data center

About the only thing harder than building a data center is dismantling one, because the potential for disruption of business is much greater when shutting down a data center than constructing one.The recent decommissioning of the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reveals just how complicated the process can be. More than 40 people were involved with the project, including staff from ORNL, supercomputer manufacturer Cray, and external subcontractors. Electricians were required to safely shut down the 9 megawatt-capacity system, and Cray staff was on hand to disassemble and recycle Titan’s electronics and its metal components and cabinets. A separate crew handled the cooling system. In the end, 350 tons of equipment and 10,800 pounds of refrigerant were removed from the site.To read this article in full, please click here

Video: The Need for Network Layers

After identifying some of the challenges every network solution must address (part 1, part 2, part 3) we tried to tackle an interesting question: “how do you implement this whole spaghetti mess in a somewhat-reliable and structured way?

The Roman Empire had an answer more than 2000 years ago: divide-and-conquer (aka “eating the elephant one bite at a time”). These days we call it layering and abstractions.

In the Need for Network Layers video I listed all the challenges we have to address, and then described how you could group them in meaningful modules (called networking layers).

You need free ipSpace.net subscription to watch the video, or a paid ipSpace.net subscriptions to watch the whole webinar.

Even more amazing papers at VLDB 2019 (that I didn’t have space to cover yet)

We’ve been covering papers from VLDB 2019 for the last three weeks, and next week it will be time to mix things up again. There were so many interesting papers at the conference this year though that I haven’t been able to cover nearly as many as I would like. So today’s post is a short summary of things that caught my eye that I haven’t covered so far. A few of these might make it onto The Morning Paper in weeks to come, you never know!

Industry papers

  • Tunable consistency in MongoDB. MongoDB is an important database, and this paper explains the tunable (per-operation) consistency models that MongoDB provides and how they are implemented under the covers. I really do want to cover this one at some point, along with Implementation of cluster-wide logical clock and causal consistency in MongoDB from SIGMOD 2019.
  • We hear a lot from Google and Microsoft about their cloud platforms, but not quite so much from the other key industry players. So it’s great to see some papers from Alibaba and Tencent here. AliGraph covers Alibaba’s distributed graph engine supporting the development of new GNN applications. Their dataset has about 7B edges… Meanwhile, AnalyticDB Continue reading

New in Docker Hub: Personal Access Tokens

The Docker Hub access token list view.
The Hub token list view.

On the heels of our recent update on image tag details, the Docker Hub team is excited to share the availability of personal access tokens (PATs) as an alternative way to authenticate into Docker Hub.

Already available as part of Docker Trusted Registry, personal access tokens can now be used as a substitute for your password in Docker Hub, especially for integrating your Hub account with other tools. You’ll be able to leverage these tokens for authenticating your Hub account from the Docker CLI – either from Docker Desktop or Docker Engine

docker login --username <username>

When you’re prompted for a password, enter your token instead.

The advantage of using tokens is the ability to create and manage multiple tokens at once so you can generate different tokens for each integration – and revoke them independently at any time.

Create and Manage Personal Access Tokens in Docker Hub 

Personal access tokens are created and managed in your Account Settings.

From here, you can:

  • Create new access tokens
  • Modify existing tokens
  • Delete access tokens
The creating an access token screen in Docker Hub.
Creating an access token in Docker Hub.

Note that the actual token is only shown once, at the time Continue reading

Backup the data in AWS Elastic Block Store

A recent Amazon outage resulted in a small number of customers losing production data stored in their accounts. This, of course, led to typical anti-cloud comments that follows such events. The reality is that these customers data loss had nothing to do with cloud and everything to do with them not understanding the storage they were using and backing it up.Over Labor Day weekend there was a power outage in one of the availability zones in the AWS US-East-1 region.  Backup generators came on, but quickly failed for unknown reasons. Customers’ Elastic Block Store (EBS) data is replicated among multiple servers, but the outage affected multiple servers. While the bulk of data stored in EBS was fine or was able to be easily recovered after outage, .5 percent of the data could not be recovered. Customers among the .5 percent who did not have a backup of their EBS data actually lost data.To read this article in full, please click here

How To Network To Get A Mental Health Research Job

Once you have received all of the education you need in order to get a mental health research job, the next thing you have to do is look for a job that you are most suited for. Depending on your education and your interest, a mental health research job ranges from being an actual researcher to a data analyst to a facility manager to a research moderator who monitors the way the research is being conducted. Oftentimes, it takes a great deal of networking and effort on your part to get the right mental health research job that you desire. Here are a few ways to network to help you find your dream job in this very special field.

3 Ways to Get a Mental Health Research Job

Take an Internship

Sometimes you can work as an unpaid intern in a mental health research facility while still getting your formal education. The benefit of this is the experience you’ll receive, as well as possible class credit and professional references.

In other cases, once you have your degree and take all the necessary tests, you may be able to secure a paid internship or an entry level job in mental health Continue reading

When Diverse Network ASICs Meet A Unifying Operating System

It has been two decades since Juniper Networks, then the big upstart rival to Cisco Systems and others as the dot-com boom was rising towards its crescendo several years hence, took FreeBSD Unix and turned it into a network operating system that spanned both routers and switches.

When Diverse Network ASICs Meet A Unifying Operating System was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Deutsche Telekom Taps VMware for Disaster Recovery

VMware's vCloud Availability will power Deutsche Telekom's Dynamic Services for Infrastructure...

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One Service Mesh To Tie Google Anthos Together

Public clouds bring a lot of advantages to enterprises, such as more flexibility and scalability for their many of their workloads, a way to avoid expensive capital costs by using someone else’s infrastructure and having someone else manage it all, and the ability to pay only for the resources they use.

One Service Mesh To Tie Google Anthos Together was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Splunk Bumps Up VC Fund, Plunks Out New Pricing Tiers

Splunk unveils data-to-everything platform, a VC arm, and new partner initiatives, to "remove the...

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Microsoft Gifts Semmle to GitHub, Plans $40B Stock Buyback

Semmle’s semantic code analysis engine allows developers and security teams to discover and track...

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IPv6 Buzz 035: Selling Your IPv4 Addresses For Fun And Profit

Your IPv4 addresses are a financial asset because the market for v4 address space is rising. The question is, for how long? Guest Lee Howard joins the IPv6 Buzz podcast crew to discuss the financial implications of selling IPv4 addresses. They also discuss the performance and operational benefits of moving to IPv6.

The post IPv6 Buzz 035: Selling Your IPv4 Addresses For Fun And Profit appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Datadog Rebuffs Cisco’s $7B Offer, Fetches $648M in Its IPO

Despite a reported $7 billion buyout attempt by Cisco, Datadog raised $648 million in its IPO...

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Verizon Goes to 11 With Mobile 5G Launch in New York City

Verizon is deploying its 5G service in New York City on Sept. 26. The move brings all four...

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How Wiley Education Services Empowers Students with Docker Enterprise

We sat down recently with our customer, Wiley Education Services, to find out how Docker Enterprise helps them connect with and empower higher education students. Wiley Education Services (WES) is a division of Wiley Publishing that delivers online services to over 60 higher education institutions.

We spoke with Blaine Helmick, Senior Manager of Systems Engineering about innovation and technology in education. Read on to learn more about Wiley, or watch the short video interview with Blaine:

On Wiley’s Mission…

Our mission at Wiley Education Services is empowering people, to connect people to their futures. We serve over 60 higher education partners around the world, and our role is to connect you to our higher education partners when you’re looking for a degree and you’re frankly looking to change your life. 

On the Innovation at a 200 Year Old Company… 

Wiley has been around for over 200 years. One of the really amazing things about being in an organization that’s been around that long is that you have to have a culture of innovation at your core.

Technology like Docker has really empowered our business because it allows us to innovate, and it allows us to experiment. That’s critical because Continue reading

IoT Privacy for Policymakers: Solutions Need Informed Discussion

The consumer Internet of Things market is growing exponentially – one prediction suggests that people will be using 25 billion connected devices by 2021. These new products promise innovation and convenience, but they can also erode privacy boundaries and expose consumers to risk without their knowledge or consent. Is that a good bargain?

The policy brief “IoT Privacy for Policymakers” explores this question and more.

Do consumers have enough information and choice to make meaningful decisions? Do vendors and service providers have the opportunity and incentive to bring privacy-enhancing innovations to the market? Can the downsides of IoT be mitigated through policy actions – and if so, how?

IoT Privacy for Policymakers” explains the scope and nature of IoT privacy and the issues it raises. As ever, those issues are multi-party. They cross the boundaries of jurisdictions and sectoral regulations. There are no single-stakeholder solutions, so a multistakeholder approach is needed. Solutions need informed discussion that includes consumer rights, economic incentives, technical options, and regulatory measures. This paper is a positive step in that direction.

The policy brief also includes a “how to” on implementing Privacy by Design and four Guiding Principles and Recommendations:

BrandPost: A Network for All Edges: Why SD-WAN, SDP, and the Application Edge Must Converge in the Cloud

The software-defined movement keeps marching on. Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is redefining the branch edge by displacing legacy technologies like MPLS, WAN optimizers, and routers. Software-defined Perimeter (SDP) is displacing whole network access via mobile VPN with secure and optimized access from any device to specific applications in physical and cloud datacenters. These seem like unrelated developments, despite the “software-defined” buzz, because enterprise IT thinks about physical locations, mobile users, and applications separately. Each enterprise edge, location, person, or application is usually served by different technologies and often by different teams.To read this article in full, please click here

Arcadia Power Can Help You Go Green & Lower Your Power Bill

We only have one planet, and using clean, renewable energy resources is perhaps the easiest way to preserve and maintain our future. Luckily, clean energy farms generate far more power than ever before, so whether you want to ensure a cleaner tomorrow, or if you just want to save money on your power bill, you can do so with Arcadia Power. Arcadia Power is a platform that makes it easy for homeowners and renters to choose renewable energy. All you have to do is sign up with Arcadia Power and connect your utility bill. It’ll hunt down ways to connect you to clean energy farms near you. Best of all, you might save money on your utility bill if clean energy is cheaper in your area. And did we mention that signing up with Arcadia Power is free? To read this article in full, please click here