Getting Started: Visit Us at AnsibleFest!

Hello, and welcome to another Getting Started blog post… though this one is a bit different. I’d like to tell you about AnsibleFest 2018 in Austin, TX, where for the first time there will be a dedicated Getting Started section at this annual event!

Participants who visit our area will be able to meet some members of the Getting Started team as well as attend presentations. The scheduled talks include Ansible Essentials (similar to the monthly webinars) and Writing Your First Playbook, based on our most popular blog post.

In addition to the two scheduled talks each day, there will also be a lounge area where attendees can ask questions and get answers from Ansible experts in person! Come stop by to learn about what makes Ansible different, how it works, and get a quick overview of Ansible Tower. No experience is required, which means this is going to be a great chance for you or perhaps a teammate who is new to Ansible to learn about it from the ground up.

Make sure to register soon so that we can see you in Austin this October!

Using DevOps to Simplify Disaster Recovery

Valley-Free Routing

Reading academic articles about Internet-wide routing challenges you might stumble upon valley-free routing – a pretty important concept with applications in WAN and data center routing design.

If you’re interested in the academic discussions, you’ll find a pretty exhaustive list of papers on this topic in the Informative References section of RFC 7908; here’s the over-simplified version.

BiB 053: Mode.net’s Cloud Private Network For Your SD-WAN

Mode briefed Ethan Banks about their cloud private network. Whoa! Thought Mode was an SD-WAN company? Not quite. Mode partners with several SD-WAN platforms so that it's easy to stand up a tunnel from your SD-WAN forwarders to Mode's private network. That makes Mode a network alternative to private MPLS that integrates with your SD-WAN fabric.

The post BiB 053: Mode.net’s Cloud Private Network For Your SD-WAN appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Worth Reading: VMWare wants to rearchitect your containers

One of the compelling advantages that Pivotal Container Service (PKS) has exhibited over the other container platforms in which VMware has invested, is that it promises to be an implementation of “plain vanilla Kubernetes,” requiring nothing special and no exclusive treatment from developers. —Scott M. Fulton III @The New Stack

Episode 34 – MPLS Part 3 – Traffic Engineering

Traffic engineering is one of the most complex topics in network design and operation. Join us in this episode of the Network Collective as we discuss the concepts and tradeoffs in traffic engineering using MPLS.

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 Episode 34 – MPLS Part 3 – Traffic Engineering appeared first on Network Collective.

IDG Contributor Network: What’s wrong with Cisco running SD-WAN on your routers?

Cisco’s announcement earlier this month that it will add the Viptela SD-WAN technology to the IOS XE software running the ISR/ASR routers will be a mixed blessing for enterprises.On the one hand, it brings SD-WAN migration closer to Cisco customers. On the other hand, two preliminary indicators —  one-on-one conversations and Cisco’s refusal to participate in an SD-WAN test —  suggest enterprises should expect reduced throughput if they enable the SD-WAN capabilities on their routers.Cisco’s easy migration to SD-WAN By including the SD-WAN code with IOS XE, Cisco will provide a migration path for the more than one million ISR/ASR edge routers in the field. There’s been a lot of conversation as to whether or not SD-WAN is going to kill the router performance. Delivering SD-WAN code on the ISRs is Cisco’s answer: routers are here to stay but they’ll morph into SD-WAN appliances.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What’s wrong with Cisco running SD-WAN on your routers?

Cisco’s announcement earlier this month that it will add the Viptela SD-WAN technology to the IOS XE software running the ISR/ASR routers will be a mixed blessing for enterprises. On the one hand, it brings SD-WAN migration closer to Cisco customers. On the other hand, two preliminary indicators —  one-on-one conversations and Cisco’s refusal to participate in an SD-WAN test —  suggest enterprises should expect reduced throughput if they enable the SD-WAN capabilities on their routers.Cisco’s easy migration to SD-WAN By including the SD-WAN code with IOS XE, Cisco will provide a migration path for the more than one million ISR/ASR edge routers in the field. There’s been a lot of conversation as to whether or not SD-WAN is going to kill the router performance. Delivering SD-WAN code on the ISRs is Cisco’s answer: routers are here to stay but they’ll morph into SD-WAN appliances.To read this article in full, please click here

Ciena Buys DonRiver to Boost Blue Planet Portfolio

A DonRiver team of specialized OSS software, integration, and consulting experts will form a specialized services group within the Blue Planet Organization.

Europe Embraces Network Virtualization, Time Zones Become a Pain Point

There seem to be a lot more European vendors, emerging from anonymity, that are having success in network virtualization.

Research: DNSSEC in the Wild

The DNS system is, unfortunately, rife with holes like Swiss Cheese; man-in-the-middle attacks can easily negate the operation of TLS and web site security. To resolve these problems, the IETF and the DNS community standardized a set of cryptographic extensions to cryptographically sign all DNS records. These signatures rely on public/private key pairs that are transitively signed (forming a signature chain) from individual subdomains through the Top Level Domain (TLD). Now that these standards are in place, how heavily is DNSSEC being used in the wild? How much safer are we from man-in-the-middle attacks against TLS and other transport encryption mechanisms?

Three researchers published an article in Winter ;login; describing their research into answering this question (membership and login required to read the original article). The result? While more than 90% of the TLDs in DNS are DNSEC enabled, DNSSEC is still not widely deployed or used. To make matter worse, where it is deployed, it isn’t well deployed. The article mentions two specific problems that appear to plague DNSSEC implementations.

First, on the server side, a number of Continue reading

Welcome, WP Engine!

We’ve had the tremendous pleasure of working with WP Engine for nearly 5 years, starting when both companies employed less than 100 people in total. From the beginning, we noticed striking similarities between our two companies—both were founded in 2010, both are incredibly passionate about their customers’ success, and both strive to make their technology as simple and accessible as possible. Fast forward to 2018: with WP Engine already leveraging Cloudflare for DNS, thousands of mutual WP Engine and Cloudflare customers, and millions of WordPress websites already protected behind Cloudflare, it was a no-brainer to formally partner together.

Today, we are thrilled to announce WP Engine as a Cloudflare partner! The joint offering, Global Edge Security powered by Cloudflare, integrates WP Engine’s platform with Cloudflare’s managed web application firewall (WAF), advanced distributed denial of service mitigation (DDoS), SSL/TLS encryption, and CDN across a global edge network to deliver the world’s most secure and scalable digital experience on WordPress today.

We couldn’t be more excited about our opportunity to collaborate with WP Engine to deploy business-critical security and CDN edge services to Enterprises and SMBs globally.

IDG Contributor Network: The rise of EVPN in the modern data center

Over the last few years, I have been sprawled in so many technologies that I have forgotten where my roots began in the world of data center. Therefore, I decided to delve deeper into what’s prevalent and headed straight to Ivan Pepelnjak's Ethernet VPN (EVPN) webinar hosted by Dinesh Dutt.I knew of the distinguished Dinesh since he was the chief scientist at Cumulus Networks, and for me, he is a leader in this field. Before reading his book on EVPN, I decided to give Dinesh a call to exchange our views about the beginning of EVPN. We talked about the practicalities and limitations of the data center. Here is an excerpt from our discussion.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The rise of EVPN in the modern data center

Over the last few years, I have been sprawled in so many technologies that I have forgotten where my roots began in the world of data center. Therefore, I decided to delve deeper into what’s prevalent and headed straight to Ivan Pepelnjak EVPN webinar hosted by Dinesh Dutt.I knew of the distinguished Dinesh since he was the chief scientist at Cumulus Networks and for me; he is a leader in this field. Before reading his book on EVPN, I decided to give Dinesh a call to exchange our views about the beginning of EVPN. We talked about the practicalities and limitations of the data center. Here is an excerpt from our discussion.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The rise of EVPN in the modern data center

Over the last few years, I have been sprawled in so many technologies that I have forgotten where my roots began in the world of data center. Therefore, I decided to delve deeper into what’s prevalent and headed straight to Ivan Pepelnjak EVPN webinar hosted by Dinesh Dutt.I knew of the distinguished Dinesh since he was the chief scientist at Cumulus Networks and for me; he is a leader in this field. Before reading his book on EVPN, I decided to give Dinesh a call to exchange our views about the beginning of EVPN. We talked about the practicalities and limitations of the data center. Here is an excerpt from our discussion.To read this article in full, please click here

Vapor IO Takes Control of Project Volutus, Secures Series C

The Project Volutus joint venture with Crown Castle will now be fully under control of Vapor IO, which will now handle the deployment and service management through its Kinetic Edge platform.

We’ve Added a New Microsoft Certification Course to Our Video Library!

Considering Windows Server 2016 MCSA Certification? In this helpful course, get the details about Windows Server 2016 70-741 exam, in the MCSA certification.

Why You Should Watch

In this course we will perform tasks related to the networking features and functionalities available in Windows Server 2016. Students should have familiarity with implementing and managing DNS, DHCP, and IPAM, as well as deploying remote access solutions such as VPN and RADIUS, managing DFS and branch cache solutions, configuring high performance network features and functionality, and implementing Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions, such as Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) and Network Controller.

What You’ll Learn

This course will cover the following exam topics:

• Implement a Domain Name System (DNS)
• Implement DHCP and IPAM
• Implement Network Connectivity and Remote Access Solutions
• Implement an Advanced Network Infrastructure

About The Instructor

Melissa Hallock has been in the IT field since 1996 when she first began working with hardware. While working on a Bachelor of Applied Science in Networking, she landed her first IT job in a Forbe’s top 100 growing companies as a LAN Technician and worked with all things Microsoft. Later she migrated to Linux and Mac operating systems. Having always worked in an Continue reading

Cisco SVP Romanski Joins PE Firm Siris Capital

Romanski is the third high-level Cisco executive to leave the company in the past month.

IDG Contributor Network: We need innovation to help escape from the cloud-services land of Oz

Welcome to Agility City! Let me set the scene.In the castle, the Wonderful Wizard orchestrates networks in beautiful and powerful ways. Point-to-point tunnel connections are heralded as “architectural wonders,” which decades ago were called bridges with disdain.Meanwhile, The Wicked Witch of the West brews a primordial potion of complexity that is hidden behind curtains of automated provisioning. Packets of information are heavily laden with unnecessary information and double encryption.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] It almost makes you want Dorothy Gale to appear and click her ruby slippers - “There's no place like home. There's no place like home.” If only we start talking about true networking and not orchestration of bridges.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: We need innovation to help escape from the cloud-services land of Oz

Welcome to Agility City! Let me set the scene.In the castle, the Wonderful Wizard orchestrates networks in beautiful and powerful ways. Point-to-point tunnel connections are heralded as “architectural wonders,” which decades ago were called bridges with disdain.Meanwhile, The Wicked Witch of the West brews a primordial potion of complexity that is hidden behind curtains of automated provisioning. Packets of information are heavily laden with unnecessary information and double encryption.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] It almost makes you want Dorothy Gale to appear and click her ruby slippers - “There's no place like home. There's no place like home.” If only we start talking about true networking and not orchestration of bridges.To read this article in full, please click here