IT And The Exception Mentality

If you work in IT, you probably have a lot in common with other IT people. You work long hours. You have the attitude that every problem can be fixed. You understand technology well enough to know how processes and systems work. It’s fairly common in our line of work because the best IT people tend to think logically and want to solve issues. But there’s something else that I see a lot in IT people. We tend to focus on the exceptions to the rules.

Odd Thing Out

A perfectly good example of this is automation. We’ve slowly been building toward a future when software and scripting does the menial work of network administration and engineering. We’ve invested dollars and hours into making interfaces into systems that allow us to repeat tasks over and over again without intervention. We see it in other areas, like paperwork processing and auto manufacturing. There are those in IT, especially in networking, that resist that change.

If you pin them down on it, sometimes the answers are cut and dried. Loss of job, immaturity of software, and even unfamiliarity with programming are common replies. However, I’ve also heard a more common response growing Continue reading

Feedback: Data Center Interconnects

Got this feedback from a networking engineer watching the Data Center Interconnects webinar:

This webinar is an excellent overview regarding current DCI design challenges. I would highly recommend to watch it for anyone working in the networking and datacenter space. Sober networkers should watch it thoughtfully at least two times. L2 DCI fans should watch it once in a month, until reaching a solid grasp.

If only life would be as easy as that ;) Most people prefer to be blissfully ignorant of the infrastructure supporting their business, while at the same time pretending they know an awful lot about other people's jobs (see also: Dunning-Kruger effect)

Distributed consensus revised – Part III

Distributed consensus revised (part III) Howard, PhD thesis

With all the ground work laid, the second half of the thesis progressively generalises the Paxos algorithm: weakening the quorum intersection requirements; reusing intersections to allow decisions to be reached with fewer participants; weakening the value selection rules; and sharing phases to take best advantage of the generalisation.

The result of this thesis is a family of approaches to achieving distributed consensus, which generalise over the most popular existing algorithms such as Paxos and Fast Paxos.

Quorum intersection revised

Classic Paxos requires all quorums to intersect, but this turns out to be a stronger condition than is actually required to guarantee safety and progress.

Our first finding is that it is only necessary for phase one quorums and phase two quorums to intersect. There is no need to require that phase one quorums intersect with each other nor that phase two quorums intersect with each other.

This finding (‘revision A’) was also discussed in the Flexible Paxos paper that we’ve covered in a previous edition of The Morning Paper. So long as one quorum member is around to carry the learnings from phase one into phase two, we’re good (the thesis itself Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 7: Certifications

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Click here for our previous episode.

In a recent podcast, we talked with our friend Angelo Luciani from Nutanix about the value of being part of a community and what that can mean for your career. We continue along that train of thought in this podcast but pivot over to the topic industry certifications. Host Brian talks again to Nick Mitchell and Eric Pulvino, two of our consultants who’ve not only taken certifications throughout their career but worked on and helped to create our open networking certification. Listen as they discuss the value of them, if any, what works for certifications and what doesn’t, who should be taking certifications and more!

As Brian mentions in the podcast, we have a social game going on for 2019 where you can win some fun prizes. Part of the game includes some flash give-aways of free CCOMP certification exam registration and more!  Head over to our EPIC Year Game page to learn more or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so Continue reading

Cisco adds AMP to SD-WAN for ISR/ASR routers

Cisco has added support for Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) to its million-plus ISR/ASR edge routers, in an effort to reinforce branch and core network malware protection at across the SD-WAN.Cisco last year added its Viptela SD-WAN technology to the IOS XE version 16.9.1 software that runs its core ISR/ASR routers such as the ISR models 1000, 4000 and ASR 5000, in use by organizations worldwide. Cisco bought Viptela in 2017.  More about SD-WAN How to buy SD-WAN technology: Key questions to consider when selecting a supplier How to pick an off-site data-backup method SD-Branch: What it is and why you’ll need it What are the options for security SD-WAN? The release of Cisco IOS XE offered an instant upgrade path for creating cloud-controlled SD-WAN fabrics to connect distributed offices, people, devices and applications operating on the installed base, Cisco said. At the time Cisco said that Cisco SD-WAN on edge routers builds a secure virtual IP fabric by combining routing, segmentation, security, policy and orchestration.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco adds AMP to SD-WAN for ISR/ASR routers

Cisco has added support for Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) to its million-plus ISR/ASR edge routers, in an effort to reinforce branch and core network malware protection at across the SD-WAN.Cisco last year added its Viptela SD-WAN technology to the IOS XE version 16.9.1 software that runs its core ISR/ASR routers such as the ISR models 1000, 4000 and ASR 5000, in use by organizations worldwide. Cisco bought Viptela in 2017.  More about SD-WAN How to buy SD-WAN technology: Key questions to consider when selecting a supplier How to pick an off-site data-backup method SD-Branch: What it is and why you’ll need it What are the options for security SD-WAN? The release of Cisco IOS XE offered an instant upgrade path for creating cloud-controlled SD-WAN fabrics to connect distributed offices, people, devices and applications operating on the installed base, Cisco said. At the time Cisco said that Cisco SD-WAN on edge routers builds a secure virtual IP fabric by combining routing, segmentation, security, policy and orchestration.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Disaggregation Live Lesson

For those of you interested in the world of network disaggregation, the LiveLesson Dinesh Dutt and I recorded back in January is up on Safari Books Online as a “rough cut.” I’m not entirely certain when the official release will be available, but the rough cut versions are usually pretty good anyway. The one humorous mistake I see on the current page is the topic is listed as “travel.” Well, I do travel a lot, but I’ve never made a video on travel.

The rough cut is here.

When it comes to uptime, not all cloud providers are created equal

The cloud is not just important; it's mission-critical for many companies. More and more IT and business leaders I talk to look at public cloud as a core component of their digital transformation strategies — using it as part of their hybrid cloud or public cloud implementation.That raises the bar on cloud reliability, as a cloud outage means important services are not available to the business. If this is a business-critical service, the company may not be able to operate while that key service is offline.Because of the growing importance of the cloud, it’s critical that buyers have visibility into the reliability number for the cloud providers. The challenge is the cloud providers don't disclose the disruptions in a consistent manner. In fact, some are confusing to the point where it’s difficult to glean any kind of meaningful conclusion.To read this article in full, please click here

When it comes to uptime, not all cloud providers are created equal

The cloud is not just important; it's mission-critical for many companies. More and more IT and business leaders I talk to look at public cloud as a core component of their digital transformation strategies — using it as part of their hybrid cloud or public cloud implementation.That raises the bar on cloud reliability, as a cloud outage means important services are not available to the business. If this is a business-critical service, the company may not be able to operate while that key service is offline.Because of the growing importance of the cloud, it’s critical that buyers have visibility into the reliability number for the cloud providers. The challenge is the cloud providers don't disclose the disruptions in a consistent manner. In fact, some are confusing to the point where it’s difficult to glean any kind of meaningful conclusion.To read this article in full, please click here

CLI Still Sucks for Automation

Using network CLI for automation has always been fragile. But it keeps surprising me with the way it breaks. This time, it was a combination of Ansible, Arista, replace: config and terminal length used as a config command.

The Problem

I often hang out in the NTC Slack channel. A user reported they were having a problem with Ansible and EOS. Basic changes worked, but when they used eos_config with the replace: config option, it just timed out. We knew basic authentication & connectivity was fine, it had to be something else.

But it made no sense, because these modules are widely used. What’s going on?

Background #1: Pagination

Some commands produce more than one screen’s worth of output - for example, show run can be hundreds of lines long. Most screens don’t have hundreds of lines, so pagination is used. The network Continue reading

CLI Still Sucks for Automation

Using network CLI for automation has always been fragile. But it keeps surprising me with the way it breaks. This time, it was a combination of Ansible, Arista, replace: config and terminal length used as a config command.

The Problem

I often hang out in the NTC Slack channel. A user reported they were having a problem with Ansible and EOS. Basic changes worked, but when they used eos_config with the replace: config option, it just timed out. We knew basic authentication & connectivity was fine, it had to be something else.

But it made no sense, because these modules are widely used. What’s going on?

Background #1: Pagination

Some commands produce more than one screen’s worth of output - for example, show run can be hundreds of lines long. Most screens don’t have hundreds of lines, so pagination is used. The network Continue reading

CLI Still Sucks for Automation

Using network CLI for automation has always been fragile. But it keeps surprising me with the way it breaks. This time, it was a combination of Ansible, Arista, replace: config and terminal length used as a config command.

The Problem

I often hang out in the NTC Slack channel. A user reported they were having a problem with Ansible and EOS. Basic changes worked, but when they used eos_config with the replace: config option, it just timed out. We knew basic authentication & connectivity was fine, it had to be something else.

But it made no sense, because these modules are widely used. What’s going on?

Background #1: Pagination

Some commands produce more than one screen’s worth of output - for example, show run can be hundreds of lines long. Most screens don’t have hundreds of lines, so pagination is used. The network Continue reading

What’s in a Container Platform?

Fresh off the heels of DockerCon and the announcement of Docker Enterprise 3.0, an end-to-end and dev-to-cloud container platform, I wanted to share some thoughts on what we mean when we say “complete container platform”.

Choice and Flexibility

A complete solution has to meet the needs of different kinds of applications and users – not just cloud native projects but legacy and brownfield applications on both Linux and Windows, too. At a high level, one of the goals of modernization – the leading reason organizations are adopting container platforms – is to rid ourselves of technical debt. Organizations want the freedom to create their apps based on the “right” stack and running in the “right” place, even though what’s “right” may vary from app to app. So the container platform running those applications should be flexible and open to support those needs, rather than rigidly tying application teams to a single OS or virtualization and cloud model.

High-Velocity Innovation

To deliver high velocity innovation your developers are a key constituent for the container platform. That means the container platform should extend to their environment, so that developers are building and testing on the same APIs that will be used Continue reading

History Of Networking – Pseudowires – Luca Martini

Luca Martini joins Network Collective to talk about his involvement in the creation and evolution of pseudowires in networking.
Luca Martini
Guest
Russ White
Host
Donald Sharp
Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post History Of Networking – Pseudowires – Luca Martini appeared first on Network Collective.

BrandPost: Q&A: Blue Planet’s Andy Youé Talks Network Visualization and Automation

Christine Keck, Analyst Relations Leader, Ciena Andy Youé, Vice President for Sales & Delivery, Ciena Blue Planet Ciena Blue Planet now operates as its own division within Ciena. This news was announced on December 13, 2018, as part of Ciena’s Fiscal 2018 earnings call, and the decision took effect in November at the start of Ciena’s new fiscal year. This move was made to allow Ciena to continue honing our focus and resources on addressing the high-growth market opportunity for intelligent software automation.To read this article in full, please click here

The first step toward ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi: a laser-radio transmitter

Leaping toward the next generation of wireless-based data communications, researchers say they are making progress extracting and sending data using semiconductor lasers that churn out radio signals across multiple frequencies all at the same time. Data could conceivably be transmitted hundreds of time faster than today’s traditional Radio Frequency (RF) wireless, engineers believe.It’s the “first laser-radio transmitter,” Harvard University proclaims of its invention in an article on its John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) website.To read this article in full, please click here

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