IDG Contributor Network: Say goodbye to spring cleaning

As spring finally rolls around and the frost melts away (except here in New England), the change in seasons not only brings us ultraviolet B-induced vitamin D, but also shines some healthy sunlight on the clutter the long winter leaves behind in its wake, including both at home and in the data center. With spring, comes an opportunity to reevaluate data center cleaning habits and question whether a more practical, day-to-day strategy would benefit data center managers in the long run.Instead of enduring the spring cleaning process in the data center, data center managers should rethink their current cleaning strategy, which often leads to seasonal operational overhauls, and instead consider a new and more efficient method that benefits from granular operational data and analytics. So, with the spring solstice upon us, here are a few tips to enable data center managers to reap the advantages of “year-round cleaning” rather than looking for that old and tired broom.To read this article in full, please click here

Rock your network with S.O.U.L — the Cumulus Networks difference

Since our inception, Cumulus Networks has strived to propel the industry forward with innovative products, unmatched service and a transformative worldview. As the company has grown and as our products have been optimized, we feel we’re at a place that is truly exciting, both for us and for our customers. So today, you may ask, how does Cumulus Networks now fit in to the industry environment, needs and zeitgeist as the innovators of open networking? I’m happy you asked. Let’s start from the beginning.

Restrictive networking is holding back digital transformation

CIO Magazine recently predicted that by 2020 there will be 4.1 billion internet users with 26.3 billion networked devices. This will cause data center traffic to jump 330%! Every industry is feeling the pressure to deliver innovative digital experiences to these network hungry consumers. This digital disruption is real — where speed, quality and agility mean everything to businesses. In fact, 40% of CEOs rank digital transformation as their top imperative, according to a recent Economist Intelligence Unit survey.

This means the vitality of the network is of the utmost importance to support the applications that we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Without a fast, agile Continue reading

Check Out Our New CompTIA A+ Course

This course covers the CompTIA 220-902 exam objectives. It is ideal for technical support personnel, help desk technicians, computer technicians, junior system administrators and anyone looking to build the necessary skill set required to achieve the CompTIA A+ certification.


 

This course is taught by Phillip Inshanally and is 4 hours and 20 minutes long. Interested in watching? All Access Pass members can view this course by logging into their INE streaming account. For those who are not All Access Pass members, you can purchase this course at ine.com.

About The Instructor:
Phillip has been in the IT Industry for over 17 years and gained much experience consulting, designing, planning, implementing and documenting various network environments. Phillip has worked on deployments for local and global backbone projects with multiple networks on an enterprise and ISP level. Throughout his career, Phillip has also had the opportunity to work with many protocols including: Cisco PAR, Cisco BNG, OSPF, OSPFv3, EIGRP, EIGRPv6, ISIS, BGP, L2VPN, MPLS L3VPN, VPLS, QoS,GPON, E1, ADSL,SHDSL, Switching, DMVPN, IPSEC, VMAN, EAPS,REP, and ERPS.

BrandPost: When SMBs Go to the Cloud, On-Premises IT Infrastructure Is Still Necessary

Cloud technology has been incredibly beneficial for organizations of every size and type. However, as the use of cloud increases, some common misperceptions are setting the stage for substantial operational problems in the future. The first misperception, and perhaps the most notable, is the belief held by many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) utilizing cloud services that they don’t have to worry about their on-premises IT equipment and ensure it is housed in a reliable and protected physical environment.The reality is that ignoring your IT infrastructure and the physical hardware that supports it is as risky for SMBs that are heavily cloud dependent as it is for those with on-premises solutions. The primary reason is that the network infrastructure to support the cloud will have substantial demands for new features/capabilities, increased bandwidth, reliability, and scalability. Similar to traditional IT architectures, the cloud also requires more than a 1990s wiring closet or a section of the break room for IT hardware. You need a modern physical infrastructure to ensure your critical network and IT hardware are highly reliable, have effective thermal management, and can scale up to meet your needs for new cloud services.To read this article in full, Continue reading

IBM launches private IoT analytics cloud platform

IBM has launched the latest effort to bring the nature of the cloud to the on-premises data center with Cloud Private for Data. It's an integrated data science, engineering and development platform designed to help companies gain insights from data sources such IoT, online commerce, and mobile data.Cloud Private for Data builds on IBM Cloud Private, a private cloud platform IBM introduced in November that brought Kubernetes into the data center. Cloud Private for Data expands on that greatly, adding IBM Streams for data ingestion, IBM Data Science Experience, Information Analyzer, Information Governance Catalogue, Data Stage, Db2, and Db2 Warehouse. All run on the Kubernetes platform, allowing services to be deployed “in minutes,” IBM claimed, and to scale up or down automatically as needed.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM launches private IoT analytics cloud platform

IBM has launched the latest effort to bring the nature of the cloud to the on-premises data center with Cloud Private for Data. It's an integrated data science, engineering and development platform designed to help companies gain insights from data sources such IoT, online commerce, and mobile data.Cloud Private for Data builds on IBM Cloud Private, a private cloud platform IBM introduced in November that brought Kubernetes into the data center. Cloud Private for Data expands on that greatly, adding IBM Streams for data ingestion, IBM Data Science Experience, Information Analyzer, Information Governance Catalogue, Data Stage, Db2, and Db2 Warehouse. All run on the Kubernetes platform, allowing services to be deployed “in minutes,” IBM claimed, and to scale up or down automatically as needed.To read this article in full, please click here

Interop ITX, Dell Technologies World, and Spousetivities

Spousetivities will be present at two additional events this year—in fact, these events are only about 6 weeks away! Both Dell Technologies World and Interop ITX are in Las Vegas the last week of April (both starting April 30), and Spousetivities is running events for both conferences.

<aside>In case you’re wondering why I blog about Spousetivities, it’s not only because my wife runs it (seriously). It’s primarily because I’m committed to supporting families, marriages, and relationships in the IT industry. IT companies ask a lot of their employees—often asking employees to give up evenings and/or weekends, or setting unfair expectations on employee responsiveness via email/Slack/IM during off-hours—so a program that enables spouses and/or significant others to join IT employees during a conference helps provide a little bit of balance, in my view.</aside>

Here’s a look at what’s planned during these two IT conferences:

  • On Monday, April 30, there’s a full-day tour of Death Valley planned. This event is leaving the Mirage at 8:00 am and includes photo opportunities at Dante’s View and Zabriskie Point, a scenic drive through the Artist’s Pallet, and a stop at Bad Water Basin—the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere!

  • On Tuesday, May 1, Spousetivities Continue reading

Huawei jumps into intent-based networks

The concept of intent-based networks (IBN) has been around for the better part of half a decade, but it’s really only come into its down in the past couple of years. The vision of a “self-driving” network had appeal but was largely science fiction.However, over the past couple of years, we have seen this vision turn into reality with several networking vendors coming to market with products that work. Many of the use cases are still fairly basic, but the foundation has now been laid and intent is where the new battleground for networking vendors will be fought.To read this article in full, please click here

Huawei jumps into intent-based networks

The concept of intent-based networks (IBN) has been around for the better part of half a decade, but it’s really only come into its down in the past couple of years. The vision of a “self-driving” network had appeal but was largely science fiction.However, over the past couple of years, we have seen this vision turn into reality with several networking vendors coming to market with products that work. Many of the use cases are still fairly basic, but the foundation has now been laid and intent is where the new battleground for networking vendors will be fought.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud vs. data center: How to know what’s right for your organization

It wasn’t that long ago that Amazon CTO Werner Vogels routinely said that any strategy that included on-premises data centers and the public cloud was really just a path to public cloud. Yet today, AWS touts architectures that include both.Microsoft has gone a step further with Azure Stack so that the public cloud vs. data center experience is as seamless as possible for its customers. Google, meanwhile, continues to invest in technologies that admit that some services will stay in private data centers (but you might as well make nice APIs for them, while also making it easier for on-premises business logic to consume public cloud services).To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud vs. data center: How to know what’s right for your organization

It wasn’t that long ago that Amazon CTO Werner Vogels routinely said that any strategy that included on-premises data centers and the public cloud was really just a path to public cloud. Yet today, AWS touts architectures that include both.Microsoft has gone a step further with Azure Stack so that the public cloud vs. data center experience is as seamless as possible for its customers. Google, meanwhile, continues to invest in technologies that admit that some services will stay in private data centers (but you might as well make nice APIs for them, while also making it easier for on-premises business logic to consume public cloud services).To read this article in full, please click here

A Reference Architecture for NVMe over Fabrics

Cavium has raised its profile over the past several years as one of the pioneers in developing Arm-based systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) for servers, rolling out multiple generations of its ThunderX chips in hope of pushing Arm’s low-power architecture make gains in a datacenter environment that for years has been dominated by Intel and its x86-based Xeons.

However, like similar chip makers, Cavium didn’t start with the Arm server chips, but instead built to that point atop a broad array of products for other areas of the datacenter, including adapters, controllers, switches and MIPS-based processors for networking and storage devices. …

A Reference Architecture for NVMe over Fabrics was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

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