IBM’s 2018 Rollout Plan For Power9 Systems

In a way, the processor market started moving in slow motion through 2017 as server makers and their customers were awaiting a veritable cornucopia of processor options, something the industry has not seen in many a year. We have been predicting that there would be a Cambrian Explosion of compute, first in 2017, but it has taken a bit longer for many of these processors to come to market and it looks like 2018 might be the year.

This might be, in fact, the year when IBM’s Power RISC processors see a long-awaited resurgence, and frankly, if it doesn’t happen …

IBM’s 2018 Rollout Plan For Power9 Systems was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

The Network Architect

What’s the difference between a network architect and a network designer? What is network architecture and what is network design? These are questions I asked myself a couple of years ago and that I get asked frequently from others. The reason I wanted to write this post is to help people that want to be network architects understand what it is about. I also wanted to help people that are studying for the CCDE to get into the right mindset. If you go in to the practical with the mindset of a designer, you will fail. You need to think like an architect.

This post is not about if an architect is more advanced than a designer. They are both needed and often they are the same person. I work as both but my title is network architect. Some people use the title to indicate it’s a senior role although the role might not be heavily geared towards design.

So what does a network architect do? And how is that different from the network designer?

The network architect is the one that is fronting the business. What does this mean? The network architect is the one that is meeting stakeholders Continue reading

New Memory Challenges Legacy Approaches to HPC Code

From DRAM to NUMA to memory non-volatile, stacked, remote, or even phase change, the coming years will bring big changes to code developers on the world’s largest parallel supercomputers.

While these memory advancements can translate to major performance leaps, the code complexity these devices will create pose big challenges in terms of performance portability for legacy and newer codes alike.

While the programming side of the emerging memory story may not be as widely appealing as the hardware, work that people like Ron Brightwell, R&D manager at Sandia National Lab and head of numerous exascale programming efforts do to expose …

New Memory Challenges Legacy Approaches to HPC Code was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Top 5 From The Last 3 Months

 

In today’s day and age, content is king. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the deluge of information, especially in the tech space where change is constant. We’re aware that the struggle is real. To keep you up-to-date on the latest and greatest in networking, we’ve compiled a round-up blog of the top posts from the past few months.

 

VMware Closes Acquisition of VeloCloud Networks

 In December, VMware NSX completed its acquisition of VeloCloud Networks, bringing their industry-leading, cloud-delivered SD-WAN solution to our own growing software-based networking portfolio. The acquisition of VeloCloud significantly advances our strategy of enabling customers to run, manage, connect and secure any application on any cloud to any device. Learn all about the acquisition from SVP and GM, Networking and Security Business Unit Jeff Jennings.

VMware SDDC with NSX Expands to AWS

With VMware Cloud on AWS, customers can now leverage the best of both worlds – the leading compute, storage and network virtualization stack enabling enterprises for SDDC can now all be enabled with a click of a button on dedicated, elastic, bare-metal and highly available AWS infrastructure. Bonus: because it’s a managed service by VMware, customers can focus on the Continue reading

What is NFV and what are its cost, performance and scaling benefits?

Network functions virtualization (NFV) enables IT pros to modernize their networks with modular software running on standard server platforms.Over time, NFV will deliver high-performance networks with greater scalability, elasticity, and adaptability at reduced costs compared to networks built from traditional networking equipment.  NFV covers a wide range of network applications, but is driven primarily by new network requirements, including video, SD-WAN, Internet of Things and 5G.To read this article in full, please click here

What is NFV and what are its cost, performance and scaling benefits?

Network functions virtualization (NFV) enables IT pros to modernize their networks with modular software running on standard server platforms.Over time, NFV will deliver high-performance networks with greater scalability, elasticity, and adaptability at reduced costs compared to networks built from traditional networking equipment.  NFV covers a wide range of network applications, but is driven primarily by new network requirements, including video, SD-WAN, Internet of Things and 5G.To read this article in full, please click here

Help Make the Internet a Safer Place for Everyone

Ash Ball, a young person in Australia, is working to end cyberbullying as part of the Project Rockit team. Ball, one of the Internet Society’s  25 Under 25 awardees, says he believes that it’s important to empower the younger generation to step in when they see someone being harassed online.

That message is especially important today, which is Safer Internet Day, a call to action to make the Internet safer for everyone.

Linda Patiño is another 25 Under 25 awardee leading the charge. “I was a victim of online harassment, receiving kidnapping and rape threats,” she says. Patiño’s work with the Colombia-based organization Colnodo uses ICTs to promote Internet safety and gender equality. “A tool can be so harmful. I enter this world [of activism] so other girls know they are not alone, that we are creating things to help them get through this. Even though these tools have serious impacts, we are doing good change” in the world.

We all have the power to help make the Internet a more welcoming and accessible place, but Ash Ball and Linda Patiño show that it’s a Continue reading

History of Networking: Paul Vixie on the Origins of DNS

Paul Vixie joins us on the History of Networking to talk about the spread of the DNS system—like a virus through the body network. All those radios in the background at a bit of history; Paul is an Amateur Radio Operator of many years, though, like me, he is not as active as he used to be in this realm.

AMD lands Dell as its latest Epyc server processor customer

AMD scored a significant win in its efforts to retake ground in the data center with Dell announcing three new PowerEdge servers aimed at the usual high-performance workloads, like virtualized storage-area networks (VSAN), hybrid-cloud applications, dense virtualization, and big data analytics. The servers will run AMD's Epyc 7000 series processors.What’s interesting is that two of the three new Dell servers, the PowerEdge R6415 and R7415, are single-socket systems. Usually a single-socket server is a small tower stuck in a closet or under a desk and running as a file and print server or departmental server, not something running enterprise workloads. The R7425 is the only dual-socket server being introduced.To read this article in full, please click here

AMD lands Dell as its latest Epyc server processor customer

AMD scored a significant win in its efforts to retake ground in the data center with Dell announcing three new PowerEdge servers aimed at the usual high-performance workloads, like virtualized storage-area networks (VSAN), hybrid-cloud applications, dense virtualization, and big data analytics. The servers will run AMD's Epyc 7000 series processors.What’s interesting is that two of the three new Dell servers, the PowerEdge R6415 and R7415, are single-socket systems. Usually a single-socket server is a small tower stuck in a closet or under a desk and running as a file and print server or departmental server, not something running enterprise workloads. The R7425 is the only dual-socket server being introduced.To read this article in full, please click here

ANSIBLE COMMUNITY – 2017 YEAR IN REVIEW

2017 Community Post

It's time again for the annual Ansible community review. Let's start again, as we do every year, with a quick look at the numbers.

Debian Popcon

Debian’s Popularity Contest is an opt-in way for Debian users to share information about the software they’re running on their systems.

As with every year, caveats abound with this graph -- but even though it represents only a small sample of the Linux distro world, it’s useful because it’s one of the few places where we can see an apples-to-apples comparison of install bases of various automation tools. Because Ansible is agentless, we compare the Ansible package to the server packages of other configuration management tools. (Chef does not make a Debian package available for Chef server.)

We see that Ansible has continued its steady growth in 2017, increasing its user base here by approximately 50% in the past year.

GitHub Metrics

2017 was a busy year for Ansible on the GitHub front, and in 2017 we caught the notice of GitHub itself. Ansible now has its own top level topic for GitHub searches, and that search reveals over 5000 repositories of Ansible content. We also made the 2017 GitHub Octoverse report, placing Continue reading

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