Microsoft Azure Networking Slide Deck Is Ready

After a few weeks of venting my frustrations on Twitter I finally completed Microsoft Azure Networking slide deck last week and published the related demos on GitHub.

I will use the slide deck in a day-long workshop in Zurich (Switzerland) on June 12th and run a series of live webinar sessions in autumn. If you’re a (paid) subscriber you can already download the slides and it would be great if you’d have time to attend the Zurich workshop – it’s infinitely better to discuss interesting challenges face-to-face than to type questions in a virtual classroom.

RPCValet: NI-driven tail-aware balancing of µs-scale RPCs

RPCValet: NI-driven tail-aware balancing of µs-scale RPCs Daglis et al., ASPLOS’19

Last week we learned about the [increased tail-latency sensitivity of microservices based applications with high RPC fan-outs. Seer uses estimates of queue depths to mitigate latency spikes on the order of 10-100ms, in conjunction with a cluster manager. Today’s paper choice, RPCValet, operates at latencies 3 orders of magnitude lower, targeting reduction in tail latency for services that themselves have service times on the order of a small number of µs (e.g., the average service time for memcached is approximately 2µs).

The net result of rapid advancements in the networking world is that inter-tier communications latency will approach the fundamental lower bound of speed-of-light propagation in the foreseeable future. The focus of optimization hence will completely shift to efficiently handling RPCs at the endpoints as soon as they are delivered from the network.

Furthermore, the evaluation shows that “RPCValet leaves no significant room for improvement” when compared against the theoretical ideal (it comes within 3-15%). So what we have here is a glimpse of the limits for low-latency RPCs under load. When it’s no longer physically possible to go meaningfully faster, further application-level performance Continue reading

Cloudflare architecture and how BPF eats the world

Cloudflare architecture and how BPF eats the world

Recently at Netdev 0x13, the Conference on Linux Networking in Prague, I gave a short talk titled "Linux at Cloudflare". The talk ended up being mostly about BPF. It seems, no matter the question - BPF is the answer.

Here is a transcript of a slightly adjusted version of that talk.

Cloudflare architecture and how BPF eats the world

At Cloudflare we run Linux on our servers. We operate two categories of data centers: large "Core" data centers, processing logs, analyzing attacks, computing analytics, and the "Edge" server fleet, delivering customer content from 180 locations across the world.

In this talk, we will focus on the "Edge" servers. It's here where we use the newest Linux features, optimize for performance and care deeply about DoS resilience.

Cloudflare architecture and how BPF eats the world

Our edge service is special due to our network configuration - we are extensively using anycast routing. Anycast means that the same set of IP addresses are announced by all our data centers.

This design has great advantages. First, it guarantees the optimal speed for end users. No matter where you are located, you will always reach the closest data center. Then, anycast helps us to spread out DoS traffic. During attacks each of the locations receives a small fraction of Continue reading

Join Cloudflare & Yandex at our Moscow meetup! Присоединяйтесь к митапу в Москве!

Join Cloudflare & Yandex at our Moscow meetup! Присоединяйтесь к митапу в Москве!
Photo by Serge Kutuzov / Unsplash
Join Cloudflare & Yandex at our Moscow meetup! Присоединяйтесь к митапу в Москве!

Are you based in Moscow? Cloudflare is partnering with Yandex to produce a meetup this month in Yandex's Moscow headquarters.  We would love to invite you to join us to learn about the newest in the Internet industry. You'll join Cloudflare's users, stakeholders from the tech community, and Engineers and Product Managers from both Cloudflare and Yandex.

Cloudflare Moscow Meetup

Tuesday, May 30, 2019: 18:00 - 22:00

Location: Yandex - Ulitsa L'va Tolstogo, 16, Moskva, Russia, 119021

Talks will include "Performance and scalability at Cloudflare”, "Security at Yandex Cloud", and "Edge computing".

Speakers will include Evgeny Sidorov, Information Security Engineer at Yandex, Ivan Babrou, Performance Engineer at Cloudflare, Alex Cruz Farmer, Product Manager for Firewall at Cloudflare, and Olga Skobeleva, Solutions Engineer at Cloudflare.

Agenda:

18:00 - 19:00 - Registration and welcome cocktail

19:00 - 19:10 - Cloudflare overview

19:10 - 19:40 - Performance and scalability at Cloudflare

19:40 - 20:10 - Security at Yandex Cloud

20:10 - 20:40 - Cloudflare security solutions and industry security trends

20:40 - 21:10 - Edge computing

Q&A

The talks will be followed by food, drinks, and networking.

View Event Details & Register Here »

We'll Continue reading

Your Guide to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU

Following on the heels of DockerCon SF, the team is packing their bags and heading to Barcelona for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU from May 20- 23. Docker employees, community members and Docker captains will be there speaking about and demonstrating Docker and Kubernetes.

Stop by Booth G14 to learn more about our Docker Kubernetes Services (DKS), which is part of the recently announced Docker Enterprise 3.0. Docker Enterprise 3.0 is the only container platform that provides a simple and integrated desktop-to-cloud experience for both Docker and Kubernetes.

Get Involved with Open Source

Get involved in and learn more about some of the projects Docker has been working on with the Kubernetes community:

  • containerd – the core container runtime that was recently graduated from the CNCF and is in use by millions of users
  • Notary/TUF –  a project designed to address the key security challenge for enterprises working with containers
  • Docker Compose on Kubernetes – a recently open-sourced project that enables users to take a Docker Compose file and translates it into Kubernetes resources.

Also, there is an opportunity to join Docker and Microsoft in contributing to the Cloud Native Application Bundle (CNAB) specification – an Continue reading

Microsoft issues fixes for non-supported versions of Windows Server

Microsoft took the rare step of issuing security fixes for both the server and desktop versions of Windows that are long out of support, so you know this is serious.The vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) is in the Remote Desktop Services component built into all versions of Windows. RDP, formerly known as Terminal Services, itself is not vulnerable. CVE-2019-0708 is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction, meaning any future malware could self-propagate from one vulnerable machine to another.CVE-2019-0708 affects Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. It does not impact Microsoft’s newest operating systems; Windows 8 through 10 and Windows Server 2012 through 2019 are not affected.To read this article in full, please click here

Microsoft issues fixes for non-supported versions of Windows Server

Microsoft took the rare step of issuing security fixes for both the server and desktop versions of Windows that are long out of support, so you know this is serious.The vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) is in the Remote Desktop Services component built into all versions of Windows. RDP, formerly known as Terminal Services, itself is not vulnerable. CVE-2019-0708 is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction, meaning any future malware could self-propagate from one vulnerable machine to another.CVE-2019-0708 affects Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. It does not impact Microsoft’s newest operating systems; Windows 8 through 10 and Windows Server 2012 through 2019 are not affected.To read this article in full, please click here

HPE to buy Cray, offer HPC as a service

HPE has agreed to buy supercomputer-maker Cray for $1.3 billion, a deal that the companies say will bring their corporate customers high-performance computing as a service to help with analytics needed for artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also products supporting high-performance storage, compute and software.In addition to bringing HPC capabilities that can blend with and expand HPE’s current products, Cray brings with it customers in government and academia that might be interested in HPE’s existing portfolio as well.[ Now read: Who's developing quantum computers ] The companies say they expect to close the cash deal by the end of next April.To read this article in full, please click here

HPE to buy Cray, offer HPC as a service

HPE has agreed to buy supercomputer-maker Cray for $1.3 billion, a deal that the companies say will bring their corporate customers high-performance computing as a service to help with analytics needed for artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also products supporting high-performance storage, compute and software.In addition to bringing HPC capabilities that can blend with and expand HPE’s current products, Cray brings with it customers in government and academia that might be interested in HPE’s existing portfolio as well.[ Now read: Who's developing quantum computers ] The companies say they expect to close the cash deal by the end of next April.To read this article in full, please click here

Weekend Reads 051919

Another week, another devastating, industry-shaking, cybersecurity threat. This week’s is particularly haunting, though — the resurrected corpse of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, aptly known as ZombieLoad. —Another week, another devastating, industry-shaking, cybersecurity threat. This week’s is particularly haunting, though — the resurrected corpse of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, aptly known as ZombieLoad.

Today sees the publication of a range of closely related flaws named variously RIDL, Fallout, ZombieLoad, or Microarchitectural Data Sampling. The many names are a consequence of the several groups that discovered the different flaws. From the computer science department of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Helmholtz Center for Information Security, we have “Rogue In-Flight Data Load.” —Peter Bright

Academic researchers today disclosed details of the newest class of speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel processors that impacts all modern chips, including the chips used in Apple devices. —Swati Khandelwal

Researchers have discovered a severe vulnerability in Cisco products that could allow attackers to implant persistent backdoor on wide range devices used in enterprises and government networks, including routers, switches, and firewalls. —Mohit Kumar

Intel’s struggles to get its 10 nanometer processors out the door has forced the company to do some serious soul-searching. And while Continue reading

ngrok on Cumulus Linux

If you’ve landed on this page, you likely already have a good idea of what ngrok is and what it does. For those that don’t, the reader’s digest version is that it’s a simple way to securely tunnel to a device that sits behind a firewall/NAT device. It’s a slick implementation that is easy to install and allows a few different tunneling options. For the purpose of this blog, we’re using ssh and eliminating the need for port forwarding on the firewall.

Here are step-by-step instructions for turning up ngrok ssh services on Cumulus Linux. Note that these instructions work on the default VRF. You’ll need to take additional configuration steps to get this to work on Cumulus Linux with mgmt VRF enabled.

First, install the unzip package from the repo

Then wget the ngrok application, or optionally add the appropriate repo to your /etc/apt/sources.list and use apt to pull the package. You’ll obviously want to find the appropriate package for your switch (x86 or ARM).

If you don’t know the download link, navigate to https://dashboard.ngrok.com/get-started and copy the link address on the web link of the download section (right click the download link to snag the Continue reading

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