Porting Ansible Network Playbooks with New Connection Plugins

The Ansible Networking Team is excited about the release of Ansible 2.5. Back in February, I wrote about new Networking Features in Ansible 2.5, and one of the biggest areas of feedback was around the network_cli connection plugin. For more background on this connection plugin, please refer to the previous blog post. 

In this post, I convert existing networking playbooks that use connection: local to use connection: network_cli. Please note that the passwords are in plain text for demonstration purposes only. Refer to the following Ansible Networking documentation page recommendation for using Ansible Vault for secure password storage and usage.

To demonstrate, let’s use an existing GitHub repository with working playbooks using the legacy connection local method. NOTE: The connection local method will continue to be supported for quite some time, and has not been announced as deprecated yet. This repository has several examples using Ansible and NAPALM but we are highlighting the Ansible Playbooks in this post.  The GitHub repository can be found here. 

Example 1 - Backing Up a Configuration

Networking platforms use their specific *_config platform module for easy backups within Ansible. For this playbook we are running the Ansible Playbook Continue reading

Worth Reading: DevOps and component chaos

Modern software development is trending more toward a componentized approach because developers would rather assemble something using a variety of well-built pieces of third-party code than reinvent the wheel every time they create something new. The approach has done wonders for speed and agility, but it’s increasing a lot of enterprise attack surfaces because too few organizations are keeping up with the vulnerabilities these components pose. —Ericka Chickowski @Dark Reading

Why Enterprise IT Customers Are Stupid

There are many ways that buyers of Enterprise IT are stupid. Mostly its bad leadership and poor management that leads to poor decisions and processes like ITIL. Sometimes its pride preventing you from admitting failure, or the allure of a free steak lunch (putting one over your salary owner by paying for it with overpriced […]

Cray’s Ever-Expanding Compute For HPC

With choice comes complexity, and the Cambrian explosion in compute options is only going to make this harder even if it is a much more satisfying intellectual and financial challenge. This added complexity is worth it because companies will be able to more closely align the hardware to the applications. This is why search engine giant Google has been driving compute diversity and why supercomputer maker Cray has been looking forward to it as well.

This expanding of the compute ecosystem is also necessary because big jumps in raw compute performance for general purpose processors are possible as they were …

Cray’s Ever-Expanding Compute For HPC was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Is Facebook looking to build its own data center chips?

A job posting on Facebook has led to speculation that the company is building a team to design its own semiconductors, thus ending their reliance on Intel. If so, it would be another step in the trend of major firms building their own silicon.Bloomberg was the first to note a job opening, titled “Manager, ASIC Development,” that sought a manager to help build an "end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization." There is also an opening for an “ASIC & FPGA Design Engineer,” which seems an unusual position for a social network website to need.To read this article in full, please click here

Is Facebook looking to build its own data center chips?

A job posting on Facebook has led to speculation that the company is building a team to design its own semiconductors, thus ending their reliance on Intel. If so, it would be another step in the trend of major firms building their own silicon.Bloomberg was the first to note a job opening, titled “Manager, ASIC Development,” that sought a manager to help build an "end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization." There is also an opening for an “ASIC & FPGA Design Engineer,” which seems an unusual position for a social network website to need.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cultivating an app-first mentality in enterprise network management

Today’s enterprise relies heavily on applications for just about every business function, making it critical for administrators to have full visibility into networks to better manage traffic and application usage. With MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) networks, this level of visibility is virtually impossible because those networks weren’t designed with an application-first mentality, but that is changing with the implementation of software-defined networks (SDN).Often, administrators don’t even know what apps are on their network or they know only what traffic comes in and out of their firewall/proxy servers. SDN, which replaces most network hardware with software-based controls, is providing transparency that administrators never had before, allowing them to steer application traffic to achieve the best performance.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cultivating an app-first mentality in enterprise network management

Today’s enterprise relies heavily on applications for just about every business function, making it critical for administrators to have full visibility into networks to better manage traffic and application usage. With MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) networks, this level of visibility is virtually impossible because those networks weren’t designed with an application-first mentality, but that is changing with the implementation of software-defined networks (SDN).Often, administrators don’t even know what apps are on their network or they know only what traffic comes in and out of their firewall/proxy servers. SDN, which replaces most network hardware with software-based controls, is providing transparency that administrators never had before, allowing them to steer application traffic to achieve the best performance.To read this article in full, please click here

How White Box Networking is Channeling Trader Joe’s

2018 is a particularly good time to be in the disaggregated networking business. Truth is, it’s never been better – either for the vendors or for the enterprise network managers themselves. The market for network innovation has finally sorted itself out after a long wander through the desert of academic SDN piety, and the hardware that disaggregated Linux-based NOS software runs on is now world class – same ASICs and hardware the legacy guys use, probably even the same power cords if you look close enough.

So where does Trader Joe’s – a highly successful retail food store innovator in the US – possibly come into this equation? Two words: value proposition. While white box NOS vendors like Pica8 did not deliberately set out to emulate the basic business values of Trader Joe’s, it turns out that, well, we basically did.  The mapping is eerily similar.

Higher quality at lower cost? Check.

A focus on service and responsiveness? Double check.

Using the same product sources as their larger competitors but without brand-name labels? Triple check.

And, finally, having absolutely everything you need to make a great meal/network without burying you under unnecessary options that make your head spin? Quadruple Continue reading

How White Box Networking is Channeling Trader Joe’s

2018 is a particularly good time to be in the disaggregated networking business. Truth is, it’s never been better – either for the vendors or for the enterprise network managers themselves. The market for network innovation has finally sorted itself out after a long wander through the desert of academic SDN piety, and the hardware that disaggregated Linux-based NOS software runs on is now world class – same ASICs and hardware the legacy guys use, probably even the same power cords if you look close enough.

So where does Trader Joe’s – a highly successful retail food store innovator in the US – possibly come into this equation? Two words: value proposition. While white box NOS vendors like Pica8 did not deliberately set out to emulate the basic business values of Trader Joe’s, it turns out that, well, we basically did.  The mapping is eerily similar.

Higher quality at lower cost? Check.

A focus on service and responsiveness? Double check.

Using the same product sources as their larger competitors but without brand-name labels? Triple check.

And, finally, having absolutely everything you need to make a great meal/network without burying you under unnecessary options that make your head spin? Quadruple Continue reading

1 year and 3 months working at Cloudflare: How is it going so far?

1 year and 3 months working at Cloudflare: How is it going so far?

This post is inspired by a very good blog post from one of my colleague in the US, which I really appreciated as I was a newcomer to the company. It was great to see what it is like working for Cloudflare after one year and to learn from the lessons she had learnt.

I'll try to do the same in three parts. Beginning with how my on-boarding went, my first customer experiences and finally what is my day-to-day life at Cloudflare. These writings only reflect my personal feelings and thoughts. The experience is different for each and every newcomer to Cloudflare.

Chapter 1 - On-boarding, being impressed and filling the (big) knowledge gaps.


Before I joined Cloudflare, I was working as a Security Consultant in Paris, France. I never had the opportunity to move abroad to speak English (me.englishLevel = 0), I never had any reason to live outside of France and was at the same time looking for another Job. Perfect then!

When I saw the job posting, I immediately applied as I knew the company well, the mindset and the products Cloudflare provided. It took me 6 months to get the offer probably because Continue reading

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