IDG Contributor Network: 11 ways to stabilize your infrastructure

What do you do if you’re struggling with infrastructure and stability? Maybe you’re a startup with no time for infrastructure. Maybe you’re a business that is reluctant to invest, with an IT gap that is hard to close. The stress, the worry and the escalation calls can keep you up at night – and then beat you down the next day.To regain your balance, first take a deep breath. Then consider these 11 steps to help you better align the people, processes and technology around your IT infrastructure: Reduce IT complexity. In a recent survey of 800 CIOs, more than three out of four say increased IT complexity could make it impossible to manage digital performance. Indeed, a single web transaction may now cross an average of 35 different technology systems, up from 22 five years ago. Is that sustainable? If you’re unable to handle your current level of complexity, review your operations, peel back the layers and make sure you’re building from a solid foundation. Delegate. Assign members of your team to key activities. Make sure they are enabled and understand they have authority to solve problems. It sounds simple, but many entry-level IT professionals worry that Continue reading

Automated Troubleshooting with Pulover’s Macro Creator

How Microsoft can enable the internet of things

As the Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon continues to grow, Microsoft has responded by contributing two new editions of Windows 10 – Core and Enterprise –  that are aimed at radically different parts of the devices and systems market.Here's how Windows 10 IoT is used today, and where it might be going in the future.Windows 10 IoT Core The Core edition is a barebones Windows kernel that has been stripped down significantly in order to run on low-power hardware. It is not a full version of Windows, but it is enough to light up the hardware and run whatever application is being designed for that board. This version of Windows 10 has no shell and essentially supports only universal apps – those coded to run in the managed environment of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and NOT traditional x86 or x64 apps. This OS version supports a maximum of 256MB of RAM and 2GB of device storage and can run on the x86 chip platform or the ARM platform for low-power devices.To read this article in full, please click here

Streaming Telemetry Standards: So Many to Choose From

Continuing the Streaming Telemetry saga, let’s focus on presentation formats and transport mechanisms.

I already mentioned three presentation formats: XML (used by NETCONF), JSON (used by RESTCONF) and Protocol Buffers (used by gRPC). Two of them are text-based, the third one (Protocol Buffers) is binary encoding not unlike ASN.1 BER used by SNMP. That can’t be good in a JSON-hyped world, right?

Rough Guide to IETF 101: Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an increasingly hot buzzword around the Internet industry and the broader technology and innovation business arenas. We are often asked what the IETF is doing in relation to IoT and in this short Rough Guide to IETF 101 post I’d like to highlight some of the relevant sessions scheduled during the upcoming IETF 101 meeting in London. Also check out the IETF Journal IoT Category, the IETF IoT page, the IETF IoT Directorate, the Internet Society’s IoT page, or the Online Trust Alliance IoT page for more details about many of these topics. See also this recent article in the IETF Journal: Internet of Things: Standards and Guidance from the IETF.

The IETF Hackathon, held the weekend preceding the main IETF meeting (17-18 March), will include at least four projects directly related to IoT, with the possibility of more being added. More information is on the Hackathon wiki.

• Firmware Updates for Internet of Things
• Semantic Interoperability (WISHI – Workshop on IoT Semantic/Hypermedia Interoperability) Test Event
• 6LoRITT: 6LoWPAN Interoperability Testing Sessions (plugtest) with the F-Interop Testing Platform
• Measuring leakage from IoT with a MITM (“man in the middle”) proxy

Continue reading

InfoVista Builds Application-Centric SD-WAN With Two Partnerships

Leveraging different hardware ingredients to achieve this, InfoVista partnered with ZTE and Nuage Networks.

Want to Learn More About SD-WAN? Register for Our SD-WAN 101 Webinar Series

No other technology in recent history has experienced the growth rate that SD-WAN currently possesses. The buzz is high, the benefits are numerous, and its strategic position in digital transformation is critical. Enterprises are changing their legacy networks and dramatically improving the way they do business, offering next-generation technology today because of SD-WAN.

You May Be Wondering:

• What makes SD-WAN different than a WAN?
• Why is it so important to the network fabric of today’s businesses?
• Why is it so transformative?
• How can it help me and my business?

If you’ve asked these questions and want to understand SD-WAN better and determine if it’s a good fit for your business, sign up for our VeloCloud SD-WAN 101 webinar. Choose the date that works best for you!

This webinar will provide you with the essential information you’ll need to understand SD-WAN. You’ll learn how to leverage SD-WAN to improve and optimize your existing network to meet your business needs. And, you’ll gain a clear understanding of next steps in determining your path forward with SD-WAN.

Register today: http://www.velocloud.com/sd-wan-resources/webinars/sd-wan-101

The post Want to Learn More About SD-WAN? Register for Our SD-WAN 101 Webinar Series appeared first on Network Virtualization.

Worth Reading: Drilling down into the Ethernet switching market

Cisco has always bragged that it doesn’t play in markets where it doesn’t command a 65 percent market share and a 65 percent operating margin, but you won’t hear the new top brass at Cisco saying that. The reason is simple: That ain’t ever gonna happen again. —Timothy Prickett Morgan @The Next Platform

Video Series: Modernizing Java Apps for Developers Part 1

Moving a monolithic application to a modern cloud architecture can be difficult and often result in a greenfield development effort. However, it is possible to move towards a cloud architecture using Docker Enterprise Edition with no code changes and gain portability, security and efficiency in the process.

Containerizing a monolithic application is a great starting point for modernizing application architecture.In many cases this can be done with no code changes at all.  From there, breaking down the application into smaller components makes it easier to deploy updates, introduce new components and manage scale.

This new video series covers modernization for Java applications. It walks through the process of evolving a N-tier Java application to a distributed application running across multiple containers. Docker provides the platform that plugs in and manages all the components into a coherent architecture.

This  series does not cover a full re-architecture to microservices. Shifting to a full microservices approach isn’t right for all applications, and the daunting task of a full rewrite of a monolithic application can be a massive endeavor that takes years to pay-off. Especially if what you have works. This series uses a feature driven approach. I select key features to update, in order to fix Continue reading

VMware Investor Strikes Back Against Dell Technologies Reverse Merger Talk

Red Hat, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, Tanium, and Rubrik are better acquisition targets, the investor group says.

Ethernet Switch Sales Rebound

Headcount: The Latest in Hirings, Firings, and Retirings — March 12, 2018

Palo Alto loses exec to Apstra; CenturyLink speeds up retirement of CEO; Nokia names new president of global services.

Sprint Slashes 500 Jobs in Move to Divert Spend to Network, Sales

The layoffs will be completed over the next four weeks.

Broadcom Accelerates Move Back to U.S. as Part of Qualcomm Quest

Intel worries about a combined Broadcom-Qualcomm.

Low Latency Networking

Low latency is coming to a network near you. In fact, it’s probably coming to your network, whether or not you realize it.

While bandwidth has always been the primary measure of a network, and cross sectional or non-contending bandwidth for data center fabrics, further research and reflection has taught large scale network operators that latency is actually much more of a killer for application performance than lack of bandwidth—and not only latency, but its close cousin, jitter. Why is this?

To understand, it is useful to return to an example given by Tanenbaum in his book Computer Networks. He includes a humorous example of calculating the bandwidth of a station wagon full of VHS tapes, with each tape containing the maximum amount of data possible. For those young folks out there who didn’t understand a single word in that last sentence, think of an overnight delivery box from your favorite shipping service. Now stuff the box full of high density solid state storage of some kind, and ship it. You can calculate the bandwidth of the box by multiplying the number of devices you can stuff in there by the capacity of each device, and then dividing by roughly Continue reading

AT&T Touts Cross-Vendor OpenROADM Success

The next step is to integrate with SDN controller as part of ECOMP.

Nutanix’s Second Acquisition This Month Is Cloud App Monitoring Startup Netsil

The purchase will make container management native to Nutanix’s software stack.

‘Slingshot’ Cyber Espionage Campaign Hacks Routers

Deprecating TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on api.cloudflare.com

On June 4, Cloudflare will be dropping support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on api.cloudflare.com. Additionally, the dashboard will be moved from www.cloudflare.com/a to dash.cloudflare.com and will require a browser that supports TLS 1.2 or higher.

No changes will be made to customer traffic that is proxied through our network, though you may decide to enforce a minimum version for your own traffic. We will soon expose TLS analytics that indicate the percent of connections to your sites using TLS 1.0-1.3, and controls to set a specific minimum version. Currently, you may enforce version 1.2 or higher using the Require Modern TLS setting.

Prior to June 4, API calls made with TLS 1.0 or 1.1 will have warning messages inserted into responses and dashboard users will see a banner encouraging you to upgrade your browser. Additional details on these changes, and a complete schedule of planned events can be found in the timeline below.

Background

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is the protocol used on the web today to encrypt HTTPS connections. Version 1.0 was standardized almost 20 years ago as the successor to SSL Continue reading

GETTING STARTED: UPGRADING ANSIBLE TOWER

Thanks for checking out the Getting Started series! This quick tutorial lists the basic steps needed to perform an upgrade of Red Hat Ansible Tower in a standalone configuration. Specifically, we'll be upgrading Ansible Tower 3.1.0 to the latest (as of this writing) version 3.2.2 in a few simple steps. There are some things you’ll need to keep in mind while upgrading (e.g., editing the inventory file appropriately), and a description will be offered with each example.

Upgrading is Easy

The steps to upgrading are similar to installing Ansible Tower. The original inventory file from the install should already have the hostnames and variables you'll be using, so it's suggested that you work from your current install's inventory file to populate the upgrade file.

Your older inventory file may have some different lines than the newer upgrade version, due to updated configuration options or added features. In this example, the difference between the 3.1.0 and the 3.2.2 inventory files is the added ability to enable isolated key generation for clustered installs. See below for a side-by-side comparison: