The new VMware NSX portfolio enables organizations to connect, secure and operate an edge-to-edge architecture and delivers networking and security services to applications and data wherever they reside. This week at Dell Technologies World, Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO, announced the new VMware NSX portfolio as part of the Virtual Cloud Network unveiling. The NSX networking and... Read more →
This week at Dell Technologies World, Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO, announced the new VMware NSX portfolio as part of the Virtual Cloud Network unveiling. The NSX networking and security portfolio provides consistent connectivity, integrated security, and the inherent automation to operate an end-to-end architecture that delivers applications and services everywhere. This innovative approach changes the way customers design and deliver services across their enterprises, and the NSX portfolio is the foundation upon which to build the Virtual Cloud Network. Leveraging the benefits of the cloud for the enterprise network is a fundamental shift from the past, where networking and security has relied on hardware-based appliances and features with limited automation abilities.
To support virtual cloud networking, organizations require a robust portfolio. Supporting our customers’ needs around any infrastructure, any cloud, any transport, any application, any platform, any device, we have been thinking about how we architect network elements that sit on top of those foundations. NSX has become a family brand to do just that from data center to cloud to branch Continue reading
During his Dell Technologies World keynote, Gelsinger detailed the company’s “vision for the future of networking.” That future looks like NSX.
To give hungry customers a high quality, gourmet AI experience new and exotic recipes are being constructed in a race to dream up ever more exciting and tasty concoctions from traditional software and hardware staples.
Over at Intel, AI is clearly the highlight of its current tasting menu. Intel has announced a new set of AI offerings that use associative memory learning and reasoning based on products from Saffron Technology, which Intel carried home from the market back in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.
Saffron adds an integrated software stack to the expanding portfolio of AI hardware, from traditional …
Intel Saffron AI: Faster Answers With Just A Hint Of Spice was written by James Cuff at The Next Platform.
GitKraken is a full-featured graphical Git client with support for multiple platforms. Given that I’m trying to live a multi-platform life, it made sense for me to give this a try and see whether it is worth making part of my (evolving and updated) multi-platform toolbelt. Along the way, though, I found that GitKraken doesn’t provide an RPM package for Fedora, and that the installation isn’t as straightforward as one might hope. I’m documenting the procedure here in the hope of helping others.
First, download the latest release of GitKraken. You can do this via the terminal with this command:
curl -LO https://release.gitkraken.com/linux/gitkraken-amd64.tar.gz
Extract the contents of the GitKraken download into its own directory under /opt using this command (you can use a different directory if you like, but I prefer to install third-party applications like this under /opt):
sudo tar -C /opt -xvf gitkraken-amd64.tar.gz
This will extract everything into /opt/gitkraken.
Next, you’ll create a symbolic link to an existing library to fix an error with GitKraken when running on Fedora (this is documented here):
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libcurl.so.4 /usr/lib64/libcurl-gnutls.so.4
Once this is done, you could just run Continue reading
Back at Interop Las Vegas in 2013, less than one year after VMware acquired Nicira, then VMware’s chief architect of networking Martin Casado stated what was probably the understatement of the decade: “it’s a very exciting time to be in networking.”
With the birth of software-defined networking, pioneered by folks like Casado, the industry entered into a transformation unlike anything we’ve seen since the invention of Ethernet. The entire industry — from fascinating start-ups to the big players — rushed to challenge networking’s historical operational model, leveraging the power of software to help move networking into the future. Customers have embraced this model, where they can not only provision networking components in minutes without the need to modify the application, but they can also deliver micro-segmentation and granular security to each individual workload. It’s become a huge part of the success story for our customers, our partners and VMware ourselves.
Since then, we have continued to build out the portfolio with Software-Defined WAN, multi-cloud networking, hybrid cloud connectivity and network operations management and visibility solutions. And this week at Dell Technologies World, our CEO Pat Gelsinger laid out the Virtual Cloud Network, our vision for a software-defined network architecture Continue reading
Chatbots – ingenious little bits of programming that have been making it possible for companies to automate the handling of queries, sales, and basic customer support. These bots are deployed through a number of different messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
And they have proven very popular. But, how secure is the tech? Lately, especially, there have been a lot of concerns raised. Say, for example, that I head out and use the Nordstrom app. I find the perfect pair of discounted sport shoes and want to buy them.
How safe am I entering my credit card details over the system? Or, more importantly, can chatbots be hacked?
Let's take a step back here for a second. Certainly, a chatbot is essentially just a program, and so, it makes sense that it could be hacked. But the danger is not likely to be any more than your local bank being hacked.
The same HTTPS protocols and metadata techniques used to provide security for the bank's site and messaging services can also secure the information transmitted via chatbots. The tech underlying the chatbot is similar, in fact, to your standard app, so it is not new.
The main difference here, Continue reading
Chatbots – ingenious little bits of programming that have been making it possible for companies to automate the handling of queries, sales, and basic customer support. These bots are deployed through a number of different messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
And they have proven very popular. But, how secure is the tech? Lately, especially, there have been a lot of concerns raised. Say, for example, that I head out and use the Nordstrom app. I find the perfect pair of discounted sport shoes and want to buy them.
How safe am I entering my credit card details over the system? Or, more importantly, can chatbots be hacked?
Let's take a step back here for a second. Certainly, a chatbot is essentially just a program, and so, it makes sense that it could be hacked. But the danger is not likely to be any more than your local bank being hacked.
The same HTTPS protocols and metadata techniques used to provide security for the bank's site and messaging services can also secure the information transmitted via chatbots. The tech underlying the chatbot is similar, in fact, to your standard app, so it is not new.
The main difference here, Continue reading
Azure accelerated networking: SmartNICs in the public cloud Firestone et al., NSDI’18
We’re still on the ‘beyond CPUs’ theme today, with a great paper from Microsoft detailing their use of FPGAs to accelerate networking in Azure. Microsoft have been doing this since 2015, and hence this paper also serves as a wonderful experience report documenting the thought processes that led to an FPGA-based design, and lessons learned transitioning an all-software team to include hardware components.
There’s another reminder here too of the scale at which cloud vendors operate, which makes doing a project like this viable. The bulk purchase of FPGAs keeps their cost low, and the scale of the project makes the development investment worthwhile.
One question we are often asked is if FPGAs are ready to serve as SmartNICs more broadly outside Microsoft… We’ve observed that necessary tooling, basic IP blocks, and general support have dramatically improved over the last few years. But this would still be a daunting task for a new team… The scale of Azure is large enough to justify the massive development efforts — we achieved a level of performance and efficiency simply not possible with CPUs, and programmability far beyond an ASIC, Continue reading
At Interop ITX, network pioneer Radia Perlman talks about Ethernet, STP, and recites her famous poem.
In furthering our mission to bring S.O.U.L. to networking through Simple, Open, Untethered, Linux-based networking solutions, and just on the heels of our Cumulus NetQ 1.3 announcement around simplifying container networking and operations, today we continue the mission to advance web-scale networking in the digital age with our release of Cumulus Linux 3.6. Our focus has been to help organizations move towards a modern world of simplification, flexibility and scale — where complex applications reside on standardized infrastructure that is automated, repeatable and scalable. We see a world of agility built upon cloud principles; of converged administrative teams where sysadmins can manage the network and network admins can manage systems.
In this release of Cumulus Linux 3.6, we are not only driving network efficiency and simplicity, but also expanding our solution set to include data center interconnect (DCI) use cases. Additionally, to help organizations adopt these web-scale principles in networking, we are enhancing our portfolio by adding popular networking capabilities to the open Linux platform. These include:
From Continue reading
Michael Dell told Dell Technologies World attendees to use software, data, AI, and IoT to remain relevant.
In early 2017 I posted about my (evolving) multi-platform toolbelt, describing some of the applications, standards, and services that I use across my Linux and macOS systems. In this post, I’d like to provide an updated review of that toolbelt.
Visual Studio Code: I switched from Sublime Text to Visual Studio Code during my latest migration to Fedora 27 on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Since I’m also planning on expanding my coding skills with Golang, I felt that Visual Studio Code would be a better choice than Sublime Text. I’m still generating the majority of my content in Markdown (MultiMarkdown is the flavor that I generally use), and I’ve found Visual Studio Code to be pretty decent as a Markdown editor.
IMAP/SMTP: I’ve standardized on using IMAP/SMTP for all my e-mail accounts, which gives me quite a bit of flexibility in clients and OSes. It’s very likely I’ve pretty much standardized on Thunderbird (which supports OS X, Linux, and Windows).
Unison: This cross-platform file synchronization tool helps keep my files in sync across my macOS and Linux systems.
Dropbox: Dropbox gives me access to non-confidential files from any of my devices or platforms (macOS, iOS, and Linux).
To address mounting US user concerns, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have introduced the Consumer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-provider Network Transgressions (CONSENT) Act. (They have also introduced legislation to increase transparency and consumer privacy protection, though the text is not yet public.) While the Internet Society is weary of a reactionary regulatory trend and would rather see proactive anticipatory movement towards stronger privacy protections, we are supportive of legislation, like the CLOUD Act, that puts more control over how data is used in consumers’ hands, and moves towards a more user-centric Internet.
Currently, US users often have to go through an extensive and complicated process to opt out of data usage practices. Some may not even be aware that those options exist. Opt-out processes make data collection the “default” setting and weaken consumers’ ability to really consent to data handling practices.
The CONSENT Act, however, would require “edge-providers” (defined by the Act as persons that provide a service over the Internet) to notify users when they subscribe, establish an account, purchase, or begin receiving service if their data will be collected. This would make significant gains for user trust, as it would increase transparency at Continue reading