Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For February 16th, 2018

Hey, it's HighScalability time: 

 

Snow? Last march of the faeries? Nope. It's 1218 of Shooting Star drones forming the Olympic symbol. *chills*

 

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  • 63.2%: Americans with one and only one cable provider; $1.5 billion: spend on chip startups last year; $7.5 billion: Uber sales; $4.5 billion: Uber loss; 180 TFLOPS: computation accessible via the TensorFlow programming model from a Google Cloud VM; 10x: computational capabilities of the human brain than previously thought; 10 million: went live on Facebook sharing 47% more Live videos than the previous year; 1.7 million: HQ players during Superbowl; 1/400: power to perform public-key encryption; 8 bit: custom CPU build from scratch; $8,500: daily take from mining Monero with your botnet; 10,000: datasets shared on Kaggle; 41%: NVIDIA revenue growth; 14x: real world 4G LTE vs. 5G Continue reading

Requests for Cisco Catalyst 9300 are up … what’s the intent?

My project engineering staff has been getting more and more information requests for Cisco’s new line of Catalyst 9000 switches, especially the 9300 switch. That has me wondering why.Cisco touts the Catalyst 9300 Series as the next generation of the industry's most widely deployed stackable switching platform that’s built for security, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing. It’s part of a line of network switches that form the foundation for Cisco's Software-Defined Access, its leading enterprise architecture.One reason for the increased interest could be Cisco’s recently announced new intent-based networking system. Cisco believes that by adopting an intent-based approach, networks will be able to deliver a solution that introduces an onslaught of applications and devices that provide greater efficiency and address new security threats.To read this article in full, please click here

Requests for Cisco Catalyst 9300 are up … what’s the intent?

My project engineering staff has been getting more and more information requests for Cisco’s new line of Catalyst 9000 switches, especially the 9300 switch. That has me wondering why.Cisco touts the Catalyst 9300 Series as the next generation of the industry's most widely deployed stackable switching platform that’s built for security, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing. It’s part of a line of network switches that form the foundation for Cisco's Software-Defined Access, its leading enterprise architecture.One reason for the increased interest could be Cisco’s recently announced new intent-based networking system. Cisco believes that by adopting an intent-based approach, networks will be able to deliver a solution that introduces an onslaught of applications and devices that provide greater efficiency and address new security threats.To read this article in full, please click here

Making Alexa Tech Demos Useful

Technology always marches on. People want to see the latest gadgets doing amazing things, whether it be flying electric cars or telepathic eyeglasses. Our society is obsessed with the Jetsons and the look of the future. That’s why we’re developing so many devices to help us get there. But it’s time for IT to reconsider how they are using one of them for a purpose far from the original idea.

Speaking For The People

By all accounts, the Amazon Echo is a masterful device. It’s a smart speaker that connects to an Amazon service that offers you a wider variety of software programs, called skills, to enhance what you can do with it. I have several of these devices that were either given out as conference attendance gifts or obtained from other giveaways.

I find the Echo speaker a fascinating thing. It’s a good speaker. It can play music through my phone or other Bluetooth-connected devices. But, I don’t really use it for that purpose. Instead, I use the skills to do all kinds of other things. I play Jeopardy! frequently. I listen to news briefings and NPR on a regular basis. I get weather forecasts. My son uses Continue reading

Cisco CEO: “We are still only on the front end” of a new version of the network

Fresh off a positive earnings call that saw Cisco report $11.9 billion in revenue for the 2Q 2018 — a 3 percent increase from the same quarter in 2017 and the first time in 6 quarters the company reported year-over-year sales increases — CEO Chuck Robbins has a lot to crow about.  First of all, the company's most strategic new direction: The Network. Intuitive, more commonly known as intent-based networking is rapidly finding acceptance amongst customers, Robbins said.+RELATED: Getting grounded in intent-based networking; What is intent-based networking?+To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco CEO: “We are still only on the front end” of a new version of the network

Fresh off a positive earnings call that saw Cisco report $11.9 billion in revenue for the 2Q 2018 – a 3 percent increase from the same quarter in 2017 and the first time in 6 quarters the company reported year-over-year sales increases – CEO Chuck Robbins has a lot to crow about.  First of all, the company's most strategic new direction: The Network. Intuitive, more commonly known as intent-based networking is rapidly finding acceptance amongst customers, Robbins said.+RELATED: Getting grounded in intent-based networking; What is intent-based networking?+To read this article in full, please click here

[Video] Configure Data Center Devices with PowerShell

PowerShell started as a tool to automate Windows servers. It was picked up by VMware (and others) as a platform on which they built their own solutions (PowerCLI and PowerNSX)… but did you know you can use it to configure data center infrastructure, including NX-OS switches, SAN networks, and Cisco UCS?

In the Configuring Data Center Devices with PowerShell video, Mitja Robas described how to do that, and provided source code for all his examples.

You’ll need at least free ipSpace.net subscription to watch the video.

Loop: Plays in the future, items in the past

Ansible-Feature-Spotlight

Welcome to another episode of Feature Spotlight. In today's post, we'll quickly cover the loop keyword being introduced in Ansible 2.5.

Everyone knows the with_* syntax in playbooks.

For example:

- name: Test that with_list works with a list
  ping:
    data: ''
  with_list:
    - 'Hello World'
    - 'Olá Mundo'

In Ansible 2.5, we're introducing loop as a shorter, simpler keyword for playbooks.

Example:

- name: Test that loop works with a manual list
  ping:
    data: ''
  loop:
    - 'Hello World'
    - 'Olá Mundo'

It's a very minute change, and can easily be overlooked when skimming a playbook! However, when writing many lines of tasks in a playbook, why not save some potential muscle fatigue?

Let's be real, even if a playbook accomplishes a whole lot in 10 lines, that's still ten lines!

All joking aside, we wanted to make things simpler. It's much easier to remember loop than with_items or with_list.

The question after this very well may be, "What happens to with_first_found or with_dict or .... etc, etc, etc?

Well the idea here is to abstract out some of the magic that with_* really is.

Example:

- name: Test that loop works with a list via the list  Continue reading

Musical Chairs Playing Tetris

February 20, 2018: This blog has been amended since it was originally published on February 15, 2018. This version removes the association with the APT group responsible for the Night Dragon campaign that we had incorrectly made. We thank the research team at Palo Alto […]

Musical Chairs Playing Tetris

Introduction ASERT has discovered new command-and-control infrastructure controlled by the APT actors behind the Musical Chairs campaign.  The security research community has associated these actors with significant campaigns in the past, including the pivotal Night Dragon campaign reported on by McAfee in 2011.  The actors […]

What is a Linux ‘oops’?

If you check the processes running on your Linux systems, you might be curious about one called "kerneloops." And that’s “kernel oops,” not “kerne loops” just in case you didn’t parse that correctly.Put very bluntly, an “oops” is a deviation from correct behavior on the part of the Linux kernel. Did you do something wrong? Probably not. But something did. And the process that did something wrong has probably at least just been summarily knocked off the CPU. At worst, the kernel may have panicked and abruptly shut the system down.For the record, “oops” is NOT an acronym. It doesn’t stand for something like “object-oriented programming and systems” or “out of procedural specs”; it actually means “oops” like you just dropped your glass of wine or stepped on your cat. Oops! The plural of "oops" is "oopses."To read this article in full, please click here

What is a Linux “oops”?

If you check the processes running on your Linux systems, you might be curious about one called "kerneloops". And that’s “kernel oops”, not “kerne loops” just in case you didn’t parse that correctly. Put very bluntly, an “oops” is a deviation from correct behavior on the part of the Linux kernel. Did you do something wrong? Probably not. But something did. And the process that did something wrong has probably at least just been summarily knocked off the CPU. At worst, the kernel may have panicked and abruptly shut the system down.For the record, “oops” is NOT an acronym. It doesn’t stand for something like “object-oriented programming and systems” or “out of procedural specs”; it actually means “oops” like you just dropped your glass of wine or stepped on your cat. Oops! The plural of "oops" os "oopses".To read this article in full, please click here