Command Module Deep Dive for Networks

Ansible-Blog-Network-Command-Module

Enterprise customers often ask the Ansible Network team about the most common use cases for network automation. For this blog post I want to talk about one of the most used (and most versatile) set of network modules: the command modules. The command modules let you run networking commands with Ansible, the same way a network engineer would type them on the command line. With Ansible, though, the output doesn’t just fly by the terminal window to be lost forever; it can be stored and used in subsequent tasks. It can also be captured in variables, parsed for use by other tasks, and stored in host variables for future reference.
Today we’re going to cover basic use of the network command modules, including retaining command output with the register parameter. We’ll also cover scaling to multiple network devices with hostvars and adding conditional requirements with the wait_for parameter and three related parameters: interval, retries, and match. The takeaway from this blog post is that any repeatable network operations task can be automated. Ansible is more than configuration management, it allows network operators the freedom to decouple themselves from routine tasks and save themselves time.

There are command modules Continue reading

PQ 150: HCI Networking With Big Switch’s Big Cloud Fabric (Sponsored)

One promise of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is ease of management. Break down the silos, put all the components into a unified whole displayed on a single pane of glass, and voila! Apps are served.

But networking hasn t been integrated as effectively into HCI as the other components of the IT stack. Networking, even in an HCI world, tends be difficult. And with the dynamic needs of HCI, networking just isn’t keeping up.

The days of standing up the network and letting it run are past, because a best effort, rough approximation of how the network should behave isn t something you have to settle for anymore.

Discussing integration of HCI with networking is Big Switch Networks, our sponsor for today s Priority Queue. Prashant Gandhi, Chief Product Officer at Big Switch, is our guest.

We talk about why “best-effort” networking isn’t suited for HCI, and look at HCI-specific operational issues and use cases including container networking and multi-tenancy.

For hands-on experience with Big Cloud Fabric, register for BSN Labs, a demo environment in the cloud that lets you experience the technical differentiation, management CLI, and GUI of Big Cloud Fabric.

Show Links:

Solution Brief: Scale Out Networking Continue reading

How mainframes put muscle behind autonomous data maintenance software

Before autonomous data correction software met the mainframe, a day in my life as a DBA looked like this:2 a.m. – Diagnose a critical maintenance utility failure for a panicked night operator, re-submit the REORG job, and head back to bed.8 a.m. – Leverage a database tool to pull pertinent data for an emergency report on an internal customer’s sales region.9 a.m. – Use various database tools and review performance-related data to improve data access for developers alarmed their application performance is slowly degrading.12 p.m. – As lunch approaches, identify where I can save data for a scheduled backup, having noticed unforeseen space problems, and successfully capture my backup.To read this article in full, please click here

How mainframes put muscle behind autonomous data maintenance software

Before autonomous data correction software met the mainframe, a day in my life as a DBA looked like this:2 a.m. – Diagnose a critical maintenance utility failure for a panicked night operator, re-submit the REORG job, and head back to bed.8 a.m. – Leverage a database tool to pull pertinent data for an emergency report on an internal customer’s sales region.9 a.m. – Use various database tools and review performance-related data to improve data access for developers alarmed their application performance is slowly degrading.12 p.m. – As lunch approaches, identify where I can save data for a scheduled backup, having noticed unforeseen space problems, and successfully capture my backup.To read this article in full, please click here

2018 Global Internet Report – Take our survey on the Future of the Internet

Last year, the Internet Society published a comprehensive study to better understand the forces of change that will shape the Internet over the next five to seven years: The 2017 Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future. By focusing attention on the significant potential of the Internet for innovation and sustainable development, but without denying or shirking the challenges it also introduces, the 2017 report has become a powerful tool in the global awareness and advocacy work of the Internet Society and its chapters.

We now want to work with you as our most important stakeholders on a new report that takes a closer look at one of those forces and how it may impact the future, namely Consolidation in the Internet Economy. Understood as growing forces of concentration, vertical and horizontal integration, and fewer opportunities for market entry and competition, this topic includes the impact of consolidating forces on all stakeholders as well as on the Internet’s underlying and evolving technology.

We have selected this theme because findings from last year’s report, and developments since its release, indicated increasing concerns about a growing concentration of power in the Internet Economy. They point to market and technical forces that may be Continue reading

Dynamic control flow in large-scale machine learning

Dynamic control flow in large-scale machine learning Yu et al., EuroSys’18

(If you don’t have ACM Digital Library access, the paper can be accessed either by following the link above directly from The Morning Paper blog site).

In 2016 the Google Brain team published a paper giving an overview of TensorFlow, “TensorFlow: a system for large-scale machine learning.” This paper is a follow-up, taking a much deeper look at how TensorFlow supports dynamic control flow, including extending automatic differentiation to control flow constructs.

Embedding control flow within the dataflow graph

With a wide range of machine learning models in use, and rapid exploration of new techniques, a machine learning system needs to be expressive and flexible to support both research and production use cases. Given the ever larger models and training sets, a machine learning system also needs to be scalable. These means both using individual devices efficiently (anything from phones to custom ASCIs in datacenters), and also supporting parallel execution over multiple devices.

Both the building blocks of machine learning and the architectures built up using these blocks have been changing rapidly. This pace appears likely to continue. Therefore, rather than defining RNNs, MoEs Continue reading

Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Integration With NSX-T Data Center: A lab study with Tips

Contributions from: Alka Gupta, Prasad Kalpurekkal

Pivotal Container Service (PKS) aims to simplify how enterprises deploy, run and manage Kubernetes clusters on any cloud. For detailed documentation of PKS installation and configuration, go here. For details on configuring PKS with NSX-T Data Center, go here.

Every enterprise wants to run containers in production. However, primary questions being asked are: “How do I get Kubernetes to work in my data center? How do I simplify deployment of Kubernets clusters? What about Networking and Security? ”

PKS answers these questions with a feature set tailored to the requirements of the enterprises.  Read about PKS features in detail here.

One of the features PKS offers is tight integration with NSX-T Data Center, enabling advanced networking and security for container based emerging application architectures, just as it does for traditional 3-tier apps. In these environments, NSX-T Data Center provides Layer 3 container networking and advanced networking services such as built-in load balancing, micro-segmentation, multi-tenancy, central visibility with a central SDN controller, network topology choices and more. We demonstrated this at the Network Field Day 17 which you can see here.

In this blog, we call out the work done at VMware Global Solutions Partner lab on configuring Pivotal Continue reading

Worth Reading: A new report on defending against botnets

On May 11, 2017, the President issued Executive Order (EO) 13800, “Strengthening the Cybersecurity ofFederal Networks and Critical Infrastructure,” calling for “resilience against botnets and otherautomated, distributed threats.”1 The President directed the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretaryof Homeland Security to “lead an open and transparent process to identify and promote action byappropriate stakeholders” with the goal of “dramatically reducing threats perpetrated by automatedand distributed attacks (e.g., botnets).”

Introducing “Kernel of Truth” — a Cumulus Networks podcast!

There’s no doubt that we’re in the gilded age of podcasts. Anyone you ask has at least one or two podcasts that they love to listen to and won’t stop talking about! But you’re probably tired of hearing that one friend repeat every single episode of “This American Life.” You need a new, engaging show that focuses on thought leadership and the topics in data center networking that you care about. Something to liven up your commute and make a long work day fly by. Something to help you stay up to date and relevant in your networking  knowledge, hear about real examples of innovation in the data center and turn you into a super star employee that shoots up the career ladder. If that’s what you’ve been looking for, your search is finally over.

Seven years ago, Cumulus Networks took the world by storm and rocked the data center. Today, we’re giving the podcasting world a healthy dose of Cumulus goodness — introducing the official Cumulus Networks podcast, “Kernel of Truth!”

Why are we starting a podcast? In addition to wanting to share our thoughts and insight about all things networking, including automation, disaggregation, data center interconnect Continue reading

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