Business-Driven Network Transformation
Understand business requirements before jumping into a network design in order to ensure they're aligned, networking expert says.
Typical EVPN BGP Routing Designs
As discussed in a previous blog post, IETF designed EVPN to be next-generation BGP-based VPN technology providing scalable layer-2 and layer-3 VPN functionality. EVPN was initially designed to be used with MPLS data plane and was later extended to use numerous data plane encapsulations, VXLAN being the most common one.
Design Requirements
Like any other BGP-based solution, EVPN uses BGP to transport endpoint reachability information (customer MAC and IP addresses and prefixes, flooding trees, and multi-attached segments), and relies on an underlying routing protocol to provide BGP next-hop reachability information.
Read more ...Towards a design philosophy for interoperable blockchain systems
Towards a design philosophy for interoperable blockchain systems Hardjono et al., arXiv 2018
Once upon a time there were networks and inter-networking, which let carefully managed groups of computers talk to each other. Then with a capital “I” came the Internet, with design principles that ultimately enabled devices all over the world to interoperate. Like many other people, I have often thought about the parallels between networks and blockchains, between the Internet, and something we might call ‘the Blockchain’ (capital ‘B’). In today’s paper choice, Hardjono et al. explore this relationship, seeing what we can learn from the design principles of the Internet, and what it might take to create an interoperable blockchain infrastructure. Some of these lessons are embodied in the MIT Tradecoin project.
We argue that if blockchain technology seeks to be a fundamental component of the future global distributed network of commerce and value, then its architecture must also satisfy the same fundamental goals of the Internet architecture.
The design philosophy of the Internet
This section of the paper is a précis of ‘The design philosophy of the DARPA Internet protocols’ from SIGCOMM 1988. The top three fundamental goals for the Internet as conceived Continue reading
Mellanox Brings Hyperscaler Capabilities to the Masses With Private Cloud Framework
The 25G Ethernet network infrastructure integrates with cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure software stacks from vendors including VMware, Nutanix, Red Hat, and Microsoft.
Windows Updates and Ansible
Welcome to the fourth installment of our Windows-centric Getting Started Series!
One of the duties of most IT departments is keeping systems up to date. In this post we’re taking a quick look at using Ansible to manage updates on your Windows nodes. Starting with a small example of six Windows machines, we’ll show an example of a play against those hosts. We’ll share the full example at the end.
Updates, Updates, Updates...
Managing Windows updates is something that can be understood and customized quickly with Ansible. Below is a small-scale example of running updates on hosts with some flexibility in what gets updated in the process. The example here is assuming a domain exists and the hosts are being passed domain credentials. If you’re looking to test this example, be sure to read Bianca’s earlier Getting Started post on connecting to a Windows host.
Because this example is running against exclusively Windows machines, the information needed to connect can be included in the inventory file:
[all:vars]
ansible_connection: winrm
ansible_user: administrator
ansible_password: This-Should-Be-a-Password!
For Example
The example hosts include three groups of servers, two in each group. There are terminal servers, application servers, and directory servers. For the purposes of Continue reading
Cultural Challenges Pose Roadblocks for Operator Digital Transformation
Unless the TM Forum spends more time on the cultural challenges, most operators will continue to struggle to make meaningful strides toward the holy grail of becoming bona fide Digital Service Providers.
The Virtual Cloud Network Demystified
Introduction
Welcome to Summer 2018! It’s been nearly one month now since our CEO Pat Gelsinger announced the Virtual Cloud Network vision at Dell Technologies world in Las Vegas. Essentially the reveal (in my personal opinion) was focused on raising awareness that VMware has now delivered to the market what many of you have heard for quite some time now as “the vision” for networking and security, whereas NSX has become an integral part of many various parts of your business:
Enter stage left, the Virtual Cloud Network. VCN builds upon the fundamentals you’re already familiar with from NSX—these include (but are not limited to) integrated security, consistent connectivity, and inherit automation, but really focuses on tying together an end-to-end architecture that allows our customers to deliver applications and services everywhere. Our customers have asked and we have listened… the demand for any infrastructure, any cloud, any transport, any device, and any application has drastically changed the landscape and technologies associated with building/architecting and having a modern enterprise network.
We’ve been quite busy over the past month with lots of interest coming from partners and customers wondering what this really means. Well today the wait Continue reading
Shipping Faulty, Expensive and Incomplete products as Digital Transformation
Silicon Valley has rules about shipping faulty, incomplete products for the first version. If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. – Reid Hoffman Many companies, including Enterprise IT vendors, take this as a way to charge high prices while they finish the product. Executives readily convince […]
ZTE in Limbo as White House Moves Ahead With Trade Restrictions in China
President Trump’s tweets and White House policy statements keep the telecom equipment maker in a constant state of uncertainty.
Is OpenStack Used by Enterprises, or Is It Mainly for Service Providers?
It depends whether an enterprise uses ‘Wall Street IT’ versus ‘webscale IT.’
Containerd Revamped for More Direct Kubernetes CRI Integration
The new specification merges what was an extra step that was previously required to eliminate a possible stability- and efficiency-impacting “hop.”
Introversion – When you believe thats something wrong with you, the world becomes terrifying
Being an introvert at school is about survival until you can escape.
