oVirt 4.2 Is Now Generally Available

We are delighted to announce the general availability of oVirt 4.2, as of December 19, 2017, for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4, CentOS Linux 7.4, or similar.

oVirt 4.2 is an altogether more powerful and flexible open source virtualization solution. The release is a major milestone for the project, encompassing over 1000 individual changes and a wide range of enhancements spanning storage, network, engine, user interface, and analytics.

What’s new in oVirt 4.2?

The big new features:

The Administration Portal has been redesigned using Patternfly, a widely adopted standard in web application design that promotes consistency and usability across IT applications. The result is a more intuitive and user-friendly user interface, featuring improved performance. Here is a screenshot of the Administration Portal dashboard:

A new VM Portal for non-admin users. Built with performance and ease of use in mind, the new VM portal delivers a more streamlined experience.

A High Performance VM type has been added to the existing "Server" and "Desktop" types. The new type enables administrators to easily optimize a VM for high performance workloads.

The oVirt Metrics Store is a real-time monitoring solution, providing complete infrastructure visibility for decision making Continue reading

Unique IPv6 Prefix Per Host – How Complex Do You Want IPv6 to Be?

In December 2017 IETF published RFC 8273 created by the v6ops working group (which means there must have been significant consensus within the working group that we need the solution and that it makes at least marginal sense).

The RFC specifies a mechanism by which the first-hop router allocates a unique /64 IPv6 prefix for every host attached to a subnet and uses unicast and multicast RA responses sent to unicast MAC addresses to give every host the impression that it’s the sole host on its own subnet.

The first thought of anyone even vaguely familiar with how complex IPv6 already is should be “WTF???” Unfortunately, there are good reasons we need this monstrosity.

Read more ...

Introduction to Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation

Today I am going to talk about another technology named as Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation which is generally used is many of the vendors like Juniper, Arista Networks and so on. Here in this article I am going to have discussion with respect to Arista Networks.

As i said, before i will start with the Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation, I would like to tell you guys that we have our own youtube channel for various network videos that can further help you guys to study further. I will going to add many more videos soon on the channel, Please subscribe to the channel for the study network related videos.

Subscribe us on Youtube: http://y2u.be/-5cF6JaNO68 

Now the question is what is Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation ?
A multi-chassis link aggregation group (MLAG) is a pair of links that terminate on two cooperating switches and appear as an ordinary link aggregation group (LAG). The cooperating switches are MLAG peer switches and communicate through an interface called a peer link. 

While the peer link’s primary purpose is exchanging MLAG control information between peer switches, it also carries data traffic from devices that are attached to only one MLAG peer and Continue reading

Introduction to Multi-chassis EtherChannel(MEC) in Cisco Switches

Today I am going to talk about the technology used in the enterprise or the datacenter environment for various vendors in the market. Starting from the Multi-chassis EtherChannel (MEC), Multi-chassis EtherChannel is generally used in the Cisco technology with the VSS.

Before I start with the Multichassis EtherChannel, I would like to tell you guys that we have our own youtube channel for various network videos that can further help you guys to study further. I will going to add many more videos soon on the channel, Please subscribe to the channel for the study network related videos.

Subscribe us on Youtube: http://y2u.be/-5cF6JaNO68 

Multi-Chassis EtherChannel
 Multi-chassis EtherChannel (MEC) is a Layer 2 multipathing technology. This form of EtherChannel  allows a connected node to terminate the EtherChannel across the two physical Cisco Catalyst 6500/6800 Series Switches that make up the VSS leading to creating simplified loop-free Layer 2 topology. 

Cisco’s Multi-chassis EtherChannel (MCEC) solution addresses the need for inter-chassis redundancy mechanisms, where a carrier wants to “dual home” a device to two upstream points of attachment (PoAs) for redundancy 

Fig 1.1- Multi-Chassis Ether-Channel with DSLAM in MPLS and VPLS environment

Terminology Tuesday Presents: Data Gravity

Data Gravity is a concept first coined by Dave McCrory to describe the tendency of data to attract more data, applications and services.  As you may have guessed from the name, this principle has many parallels to Newton’s Theory of Universal Gravitation.

 

The basic premise is that a singular piece of data isn’t meaningful but with more data (metadata as it’s generally called) additional context (and therefore more meaning) can be derived.  When all that data is bundled with more applications and services, one can harness a considerable amount of power as evidenced by today’s trends towards data and analytics.

 

For example, let’s take this piece of data: 0.  Although we know what zero means conceptually, we don’t have any way to determine how we should feel about it.  Without any context just knowing the number 0 is essentially worthless.  If, for instance you were to know the additional data of “inventory of toy Elmos” + [insert where you live] you’d know that you need to make an only order and ASAP.

 

Data for larger institutions is just like this, except the concept of “friction” plays a larger role.  Data Friction Continue reading

Bitcoin: In Crypto We Trust

Tim Wu, who coined "net neutrality", has written an op-ed on the New York Times called "The Bitcoin Boom: In Code We Trust". He is wrong is wrong about "code".

The wrong "trust"

Wu builds a big manifesto about how real-world institutions aren't can't be trusted. Certainly, this reflects the rhetoric from a vocal wing of Bitcoin fanatics, but it's not the Bitcoin manifesto.

Instead, the word "trust" in the Bitcoin paper is much narrower, referring to how online merchants can't trust credit-cards (for example). When I bought school supplies for my niece when she studied in Canada, the online site wouldn't accept my U.S. credit card. They didn't trust my credit card. However, they trusted my Bitcoin, so I used that payment method instead, and succeeded in the purchase.

Real-world currencies like dollars are tethered to the real-world, which means no single transaction can be trusted, because "they" (the credit-card company, the courts, etc.) may decide to reverse the transaction. The manifesto behind Bitcoin is that a transaction cannot be reversed -- and thus, can always be trusted.

Deliberately confusing the micro-trust in a transaction and macro-trust in banks and governments is a sort of Continue reading

A Guide to Open Source for IT Practitioners

It’s easy to see that open source is changing the way people think about infrastructure. However, as the saying goes: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. As is normal, there will always be pockets of IT where active involvement in open source will just take some more time. I’ve worked on open source for a few years now, and I have always wanted to publish a post that focuses on a few key ideas that I wish I could tell every new entrant into the world of open source.

A Guide to Open Source for IT Practitioners

It’s easy to see that open source is changing the way people think about infrastructure. However, as the saying goes: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. As is normal, there will always be pockets of IT where active involvement in open source will just take some more time. I’ve worked on open source for a few years now, and I have always wanted to publish a post that focuses on a few key ideas that I wish I could tell every new entrant into the world of open source.

A Guide to Open Source for IT Practitioners

It’s easy to see that open source is changing the way people think about infrastructure. However, as the saying goes: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. As is normal, there will always be pockets of IT where active involvement in open source will just take some more time.

I’ve worked on open source for a few years now, and I have always wanted to publish a post that focuses on a few key ideas that I wish I could tell every new entrant into the world of open source. I feel like going in with the right expectations can really help any efforts here go much more smoothly. So if you’re accustomed to getting most if not all of your technology stack from a vendor, and you’re wondering about the open source craze, and trying to make sense of it all, this is for you. My goal with this post is to empower you to start getting out there and exploring the various communities behind the projects you may already have your eyes on.

Open Source is “Free as in Puppy”

Before some practical tips, I want to spend some time on expectations. This is crucially important Continue reading

A Guide to Open Source for IT Practitioners

It’s easy to see that open source is changing the way people think about infrastructure. However, as the saying goes: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. As is normal, there will always be pockets of IT where active involvement in open source will just take some more time.

I’ve worked on open source for a few years now, and I have always wanted to publish a post that focuses on a few key ideas that I wish I could tell every new entrant into the world of open source. I feel like going in with the right expectations can really help any efforts here go much more smoothly. So if you’re accustomed to getting most if not all of your technology stack from a vendor, and you’re wondering about the open source craze, and trying to make sense of it all, this is for you. My goal with this post is to empower you to start getting out there and exploring the various communities behind the projects you may already have your eyes on.

Open Source is “Free as in Puppy”

Before some practical tips, I want to spend some time on expectations. This is crucially important Continue reading

What is a hypervisor?

Hypervisors often get overlooked as a technology in favor of the flashier concept of virtualization, but you can’t get to the fun of virtualization until you understand what a hypervisor does within a computing system.While the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing may now seem like old hat within the IT infrastructure, that wasn’t always the case, and it is hypervisor technology that has helped drive innovation in the world of cloud computing.Hypervisor definition A hypervisor is a process that separates a computer’s operating system and applications from the underlying physical hardware. Usually done as software although embedded hypervisors can be created for things like mobile devices.To read this article in full, please click here

What is a hypervisor?

Hypervisors often get overlooked as a technology in favor of the flashier concept of virtualization, but you can’t get to the fun of virtualization until you understand what a hypervisor does within a computing system.While the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing may now seem like old hat within the IT infrastructure, that wasn’t always the case, and it is hypervisor technology that has helped drive innovation in the world of cloud computing.Hypervisor definition A hypervisor is a process that separates a computer’s operating system and applications from the underlying physical hardware. Usually done as software although embedded hypervisors can be created for things like mobile devices.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: SD-WAN: Why DIY + Co-Managed Approach is a Win-Win

The SD-WAN market continues to experience phenomenal growth. A September 2017 IDC SD-WAN survey highlights that 75 percent of U.S. enterprises plan to adopt an SD-WAN solution in the next two years. Enterprises are eager to embrace and deploy SD-WAN solutions because they provide many important benefits such as improving network and application performance and availability, reducing branch office complexity, lowering bandwidth and operational costs, and improving the performance of directly connecting users from branch locations to cloud-native applications.Today, enterprises implementing an SD-WAN solution can choose between a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach or selecting a managed SD-WAN service from a managed service provider (MSP). The DIY approach is appealing to enterprises that have in-house expertise in managing their WAN network environment and have invested the time to evaluate and select an SD-WAN solution that addresses their connectivity requirements. In this model, enterprises procure, own, deploy and manage the SD-WAN equipment, software and network connectivity in-house.To read this article in full, please click here