Why Networks Are Evolving Toward Leaf-Spine Architectures
A brief overview of the benefits of leaf-spine designs, where they're commonly deployed today, and why you might choose to pursue one.
A quote from an Ex-Googler
I really like this paragraph, because almost everyone wants to imitate google. Why? well, the answer to that questions seems to be what everyone is missing!
Google’s solutions were built for scale that basically doesn’t exist outside of a maybe a handful of companies with a trillion dollar valuation. It’s foolish to assume that their solutions are better. They’re just more scalable. But they are actually very feature-poor. There’s a tradeoff there. We should not be imitating what Google did without thinking about why they did it. Sometimes the “whys” will apply to us, sometimes they won’t
The quote comes from Cloud Field Day 4, from Ben Sigelman of LightStep.
Thanks to Tom over at networkingnerd.net for the entire post!
/Kim
Network Automation with Ansible for Undergraduate Students
Last year’s experiment generated so much interest that I decided to repeat it this year: if you’re an undergraduate or Master's student and manage to persuade us that you’re motivated enough to automate the **** out of everything, you’ll get a free seat in Ansible for Networking Engineers online course.
Interested? Check out the details, and apply before October 1st.
Too old? Please spread the word ;)
Starting a new series: AWS ABCs
I'd be lying if I said that since starting my new job at Amazon Web Services (AWS), I wasn't looking forward to writing about all the new things I was going to learn. Obviously there's the technology and services that make up the platform itself. But there's also the architectural best practices, the design patterns, and answers to questions like “how does moving to the cloud improve my performance/security/reliability?” Admittedly, I have a lot to learn.AWS ABCs — Logging Into a New EC2 Instance
Ok, you've just launched an Amazon EC2 instance (ie, a virtual machine) and you're ready to login and get to work. Just once teeeensy problem though… you have no idea how to actually connect to the instance!
This post will walk through how to log into brand new Linux/BSD and Windows instances (the steps are slightly different for different OS families).
Unifying Big Data And Machine Learning, Cisco Style
It doesn’t take a machine learning algorithm to predict that server makers are trying to cash in on the machine learning revolution at the major nexus points on the global Internet. …
Unifying Big Data And Machine Learning, Cisco Style was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at .
Nutanix Wins $20-Plus Million Deal With Defense Agency
The deal, which closed in Q4 fiscal 2018, is the largest deal in the company’s history.
California’s bad IoT law
California has passed an IoT security bill, awaiting the governor's signature/veto. It’s a typically bad bill based on a superficial understanding of cybersecurity/hacking that will do little improve security, while doing a lot to impose costs and harm innovation.It’s based on the misconception of adding security features. It’s like dieting, where people insist you should eat more kale, which does little to address the problem you are pigging out on potato chips. The key to dieting is not eating more but eating less. The same is true of cybersecurity, where the point is not to add “security features” but to remove “insecure features”. For IoT devices, that means removing listening ports and cross-site/injection issues in web management. Adding features is typical “magic pill” or “silver bullet” thinking that we spend much of our time in infosec fighting against.
We don’t want arbitrary features like firewall and anti-virus added to these products. It’ll just increase the attack surface making things worse. The one possible exception to this is “patchability”: some IoT devices can’t be patched, and that is a problem. But even here, it’s complicated. Even if IoT devices are patchable in theory there is no guarantee vendors will Continue reading
Cisco’s New UCS Server Supports Google’s Kubeflow, Other ML Tools
Deep learning requires software tools to make sense of the data. To that end Cisco is working with software providers and other technology companies to validate machine learning tools on top of the new server.
Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson Score AT&T 5G Contracts
For Samsung, winning AT&T’s business is another feather in its cap. The vendor has been gaining more business with U.S. operators.
AT&T Plots Its Commercial Deployment of Project AirGig
The company says it's in discussions with unnamed technology suppliers for equipment to deliver internet over power lines.
For Whom The Dell Toils
It has been nearly five years since Michael Dell lined up $24 billion in cash to take the IT company that bears his name private, and it has been nearly four years since Dell announced its mammoth $67 billion deal to acquire enterprise storage maker EMC and its server virtualization minion, VMware. …
For Whom The Dell Toils was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at .
AT&T Changes Its Tune on 5G Fixed Wireless
The operator will use Samsung and CommScope gear in the 3.5 GHz CBRS spectrum band to deliver fixed wireless. It will start with LTE and migrate to 5G.
Think Like an Engineer, not a Cheerleader
When you see a chart like this—
—you probably think if I were staking my career on technologies, I would want to jump from the older technology to the new just at the point where that adoption curve starts to really drive upward.
Going back many years, I recognize this s-curve. It was used for FDDI, ATM, Banyan Vines, Novell Netware, and just about every new technology that has ever entered the market.
TL;DR
- There are technology jump points where an entire market will move from one technology to another
- From a career perspective, it is sometimes wise to jump to a new technology when at the early stages of such a jump
- However, there are risks invovled, such as hidden costs that prevent the jump from occurring
- Hence, you need to be cautious and thoughtful when considering jumping to a new technology
The problem with this curve, Continue reading
Time-Saving Techniques for Deploying and Managing Kubernetes Applications
DevOps teams face a steep learning curve with best practices related to deploying, running, and managing the lifecycle of a containerized application.