Why Is Network Automation such a Hot Topic?

This blog post was initially sent to subscribers of my SDN and Network Automation mailing list. Subscribe here.

One of my readers asked a very valid question when reading the Why Is Network Automation So Hard blog post:

Why was network automation 'invented' now? I have been working in the system development engineering for 13+ years and we have always used automation because we wanted to save time & effort for repeatable tasks.

He’s absolutely right. We had fully-automated ISP service in early 1990’s, and numerous service providers used network automation for decades.

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Capturing and enhancing in situ system observability for failure detection

Capturing and enhancing in situ system observability for failure detection Huang et al., OSDI’18

The central idea in this paper is simple and brilliant. The place where we have the most relevant information about the health of a process or thread is in the clients that call it. Today the state of the practice is to log and try to recover from a failed call at the client, while a totally separate failure detection infrastructure is responsible for figuring out whether or not things are working as desired. What Panorama does is turn clients into observers and reporters of the components they call, using these observations to determine component health. It works really well!

Panorama can easily integrate with popular distributed systems and detect all 15 real-world gray failures that we reproduced in less than 7s, whereas existing approaches detect only one of them in under 300s.

Panaroma is open source and available at https://github.com/ryanphuang/panorama.

Combating gray failures with multiple observers

Panaroma is primarily design to catch gray failures, in which components and systems offer degraded performance but typically don’t crash-stop. One example of such a failure is a ZooKeeper cluster that could no longer service write Continue reading

How to irregular cyber warfare

Somebody (@thegrugq) pointed me to this article on "Lessons on Irregular Cyber Warfare", citing the masters like Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, Mao, Che, and the usual characters. It tries to answer:
...as an insurgent, which is in a weaker power position vis-a-vis a stronger nation state; how does cyber warfare plays an integral part in the irregular cyber conflicts in the twenty-first century between nation-states and violent non-state actors or insurgencies
I thought I'd write a rebuttal.

None of these people provide any value. If you want to figure out cyber insurgency, then you want to focus on the technical "cyber" aspects, not "insurgency". I regularly read military articles about cyber written by those, like in the above article, which demonstrate little experience in cyber.

The chief technical lesson for the cyber insurgent is the Birthday Paradox. Let's say, hypothetically, you go to a party with 23 people total. What's the chance that any two people at the party have the same birthday? The answer is 50.7%. With a party of 75 people, the chance rises to 99.9% that two will have the same birthday.

The paradox is that your intuitive way of calculating Continue reading

Hands-on Learning Opportunities at DockerCon EU

 

The value of attending a conference is measured by how much you can learn and who you will meet. While DockerCon has you covered on both fronts. We know that everyone learns differently so the conference provides three options for you.

Workshops: Starting this year at DockerCon San Francisco, we introduced a track dedicated to workshops where technical experts deliver 2-hour deep dive sessions with hands-on tutorials to deepen your understanding of Docker technology, Kubernetes, Isito and solutions from our ecosystem partners. Included as part of your conference pass, you must pre-register for workshops to save your seat.  

Hands on Labs: I instructor-led isn’t your thing, check out the self-paced Hands-On Labs. Also included with our conference pass, Hands-On Labs are available at any time throughout the conference. Drop in between sessions or anytime – grab a seat and launch a tutorial. Docker moderators will be on hand to help answer questions.

Training: In addition, you can add official Docker training courses to your DockerCon schedule at a discounted rate. Come early to Barcelona for a 2 day training course led by Docker authorized instructors and designed specifically for your role in using containers. Each course features a variety Continue reading

The Ultimate Guide to Networking & Security Sessions & Activities at VMworld Europe

At VMworld 2017, we took the NSX show on the road and demonstrated our expanded capabilities and support for new use cases, locations, and clouds.

But a lot has changed in a year.

Earlier in 2018, we announced the expansion of the NSX family of products to include NSX Data Center (formerly NSX), NSX Cloud, AppDefense, NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud, and NSX Hybrid Connect. With the new portfolio, we’ve delivered on the Virtual Cloud Network vision of connecting and protecting applications and data, regardless of where they sit – from the data center, to the cloud, and the edge.

VMworld Europe

To help you learn about this vision, and the products that underpin it, we have a huge VMworld 2018 in store for you. There are over 50 dedicated networking and security sessions covering everything from the basics to super-technical deep dives.

Be sure to attend the showcase sessions:

As a bonus, you can hear from real customers about their experiences in the Customer Panel on NSX Data Center.

Below is a guide to all things Networking and Security at Continue reading

Open Switch Hardware’s Journey into the Linux and Kernel Community

You have read, heard and seen us talk about the benefits of Linux, open source and community. Here, here, and here… and I am pretty sure everywhere. This blog walks you through our journey of pushing Linux open switch ASICs into the Linux kernel and ecosystem. Before we begin, let me tell you that it has and continues to be a fun ride!

 

A quick historical recap on Linux networking

The Linux kernel has been doing network hardware offloads and acceleration for decades (Nics, smart-nics, wireless AP’s and many other places). Because of this, the kernel has had the infrastructure and the right abstractions to recognize and register a networking hardware device for decades. And this infrastructure has matured over time.

For hardware vendors, enabling their networking hardware for Linux just made it easier to take their hardware to new customers, objectives and industries. Today Linux enablement is the best way to get faster adoption of your hardware or faster marketing for your hardware. It has become a norm for hardware vendors to get their hardware ready for Linux first: getting their drivers in the upstream kernel and getting hardware tools ready for the Linux ecosystem.

Continue reading

We need to talk… about the state of internet governance

Pre IGF Speed Dating

In about a month, some of the key stakeholders in internet governance will come together in Paris and talk about the public policy challenges facing the internet in 2018 and beyond. They will do so at the Internet Governance Forum, a UN-supported platform that will meet for the thirteenth time this year.

The IGF traditionally brings different groups of stakeholders into a large conference centre, and provides for the opportunity for these different stakeholders to discuss: the idea being that understanding, consensus and collaboration will emerge between these different communities.

Join us for a pre-IGF stakeholder networking event on Tuesday, 16 October in Brussels.  Learn more and register!

Multistakeholderism: a vivid term with many meanings

The IGF model of multistakeholderism is one of a plethora of different approaches to engaging with actors beyond states in questions of global governance. Some rely more on governments, other processes rely on technical expertise, others have come and gone. Others, like the Internet Society, tend to refer to multistakeholder approaches, rather than one model.

Many observers tend to think this concept was invented by the internet community, but shaping (global) policy through direct engagement with stakeholders has been an integral Continue reading

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