Gartner report: Worldwide server sales revenue increases 16%

The drive toward the cloud is lifting all boats. The need for capacity and new servers combined to lift the server market in the third quarter, with more growth to come, especially for the “white box” vendors.Gartner reported worldwide server revenue grew by a very impressive 16 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2017, while unit shipments grew by 5.1 percent. That gulf between revenue and units means more higher-end, more decked-out servers are being sold than cheap, commodity hardware.Also on Network World: REVIEW: How rack servers from HPE, Dell and IBM stack up It helps that in recent months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell EMC and Lenovo have all released new hardware, which is helping to drive sales as enterprises refresh their on-premises hardware. So all told, the third quarter was marked by new hardware and continued growth of the cloud.To read this article in full, please click here

Red Hat Ansible Automation recognized with 2017 Editor’s Choice Award from Virtualization & Cloud Review

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Each year the contributing editors at Virtualization & Cloud Review roundup products they love, from what they rely on every day to the innovative tech products they're excited to see. This year, enterprise IT watcher and analyst Dan Kusnetzky selected us for our framework, which makes it easier for enterprises to monitor, manage and automate their physical, virtual and cloud resources. Our community also gets a shout out from Dan, noting our 3,000 contributors worldwide. They're a testament to our dedicated community, contributing to the project and enabling the monitoring, management and automation of Windows, Linux and more.

Thank you to our community and Red Hat for driving organizations to transform to automated enterprises. Read about all of the winners here.

Do We Really Need a New BGP?

From time to time, I run across (yet another) article about why BGP is so bad, and how it needs to be replaced. This one, for instance, is a recent example.

It seems the easiest way to solvet this problem is finding new people—ones who don’t make mistakes—to work on BGP configuration, building IRR databases, and deciding what should be included in BGP? Ivan points out how hopeless of a situation this is going to be, however. As Ivan says, you cannot solve people problems with technology. You can hint in the right direction, and you can try to make things a little more sane, and a little less complex, but people cannot be fixed with technology. Given we cannot fix the people problem, would replacing BGP itself really help? Is there anything we could do to make things better?

To understand the answer to these questions, it is important to tear down a major misconception about BGP. The misconception?

BGP is a routing protocol.

BGP was not designed to be a routing protocol. It was designed to provide a loop free path through a series of independently operated networks, each with its own policy and business goals. In the Continue reading

BrandPost: Putting VNFs to work

Network functions virtualization (NFV) makes it possible to replace traditional dedicated customer premise equipment with software in the form of virtual network functions (VNFs), running on standardized hardware. Despite the confusing acronym overlap of NFV and VNF, the technology is intended to vastly simplify enterprise wide area networking.Virtualization and Cloud Review describes NFV as a younger cousin to software-defined networking: “Like SDN, NFV is fundamentally about the shift from proprietary hardware-based solutions to more open, software-based substitutes,” David Ramel explains.To read this article in full, please click here

Explain the Cloud Like I’m 10

“Todd, can you explain ‘The Cloud’? What is it?” I was asked this question at lunch by Joe, a fellow tour member on a recent trip Linda (my wife) and I took to France.

It was not a question I was expecting on vacation, but with many years of experience as a programmer, a lot of it spent in cloud computing, it’s a question I should have been able to knock out of the park.

Except I didn’t. My answer stank. I hemmed and hawed. I stuttered and sputtered. I could tell that nothing I said was making any sense. I gave a horrible answer, and it has haunted me ever since.

While talking, I noticed a lot of other people at the table were interested in my answer as well. It seemed a lot of smart people were confused about the cloud.

When I got back home I did a lot of research. I was trying to redeem myself by finding the perfect book to recommend. I couldn't find one! So I decided to write Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10. It's the answer I wish I'd given Joe in Continue reading

Big changes coming for the application delivery controller market

Application delivery controllers (ADCs) have long been a critical piece of infrastructure.  They sit between applications and infrastructure and are the only piece of technology that can speak the language of both applications and networks. I have often characterized the ADC as the “Rosetta Stone” of the data center, as it’s the key to being able to translate application speak to the network and vice versa.IT is undergoing a rapid modernization process, and things such as software-defined everything, the cloud, containers and other initiatives are having a profound impact on infrastructure.Also on Network World: Enterprise network trends to watch 2018 To understand how these trends are impacting ADCs, I recently conducted an Application Delivery Controller Survey to get a pulse of IT professionals who work with ADCs. The demographics of the survey were 100 U.S.-based respondents across a variety of industry verticals and company sizes and is an accurate representation of the current opinions of ADCs with respect to IT modernization.To read this article in full, please click here

Big changes coming for the application delivery controller market

Application delivery controllers (ADCs) have long been a critical piece of infrastructure.  They sit between applications and infrastructure and are the only piece of technology that can speak the language of both applications and networks. I have often characterized the ADC as the “Rosetta Stone” of the data center, as it’s the key to being able to translate application speak to the network and vice versa.IT is undergoing a rapid modernization process, and things such as software-defined everything, the cloud, containers and other initiatives are having a profound impact on infrastructure.Also on Network World: Enterprise network trends to watch 2018 To understand how these trends are impacting ADCs, I recently conducted an Application Delivery Controller Survey to get a pulse of IT professionals who work with ADCs. The demographics of the survey were 100 U.S.-based respondents across a variety of industry verticals and company sizes and is an accurate representation of the current opinions of ADCs with respect to IT modernization.To read this article in full, please click here

Worth Reading: MEC the Future

If there’s anything our industry is good at, it’s creating ever new hype cycles and continuing to fall into the same traps of overestimating what they can do for mankind as a whole, or at least for network operators. And now comes MEC… Multi-access Edge Computing, formerly known as Mobile Edge Computing, and it’s all the rave. To be honest, it’s been around for a while. Up till now it was mostly tied to mobile, in general and 5G specifically, but according to some people it has such potential that it was worth being renamed (keeping the same acronym) and rolled into the topologies of networks of all kinds. So why the hype, and is it real this time? —Andreas Hegers @ ECI

IDG Contributor Network: The rise of modular plug terminated links

A modular plug terminated link (MPTL) is nothing more than an Ethernet cable that is terminated with a female socket (jack) on one side and a male plug on the other, whereas a standard permanent link is terminated with sockets on both sides of the cable. Simple, right? Wrong.Installing is one thing, testing is another The name modular plug terminated link is new, but the practice of installing LAN cabling with a socket on one side and a plug on the other goes back to the beginning of twisted pair cabling. An MPTL makes perfect sense to anyone who wants to connect a networked device by plugging the cable directly into the device. Installers of IP security cameras have been doing this since the advent of IP CCTV.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The rise of modular plug terminated links

A modular plug terminated link (MPTL) is nothing more than an Ethernet cable that is terminated with a female socket (jack) on one side and a male plug on the other, whereas a standard permanent link is terminated with sockets on both sides of the cable. Simple, right? Wrong.Installing is one thing, testing is another The name modular plug terminated link is new, but the practice of installing LAN cabling with a socket on one side and a plug on the other goes back to the beginning of twisted pair cabling. An MPTL makes perfect sense to anyone who wants to connect a networked device by plugging the cable directly into the device. Installers of IP security cameras have been doing this since the advent of IP CCTV.To read this article in full, please click here

Happy Automating to All!

Ansible-Holiday-2017

We're pretty busy working on features and updates during the year, but we wanted to have a little fun with playbooks again this holiday season. Last year we created the festive playbook and this year we're celebratating with "naughty or nice" cow-back output plugins. If your playbook completes successfully you'll be greeted by this friendly holiday cow...

But if your playbook fails...it just might get a visit from Krampus!

The "nice" plugin can be found here and the "naughty" plugin can be found here. Special thanks to our Senior Engineering Manager James Laska for the "nice" callback plugin!

We wish you many successful playbooks this season and happy automating to all! 

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IDG Contributor Network: ‘A (Networking) Christmas Carol’

Our story begins on a cold Christmas Eve in 1966, five minutes after my uncle stopped by our house to show off his new analog car phone. He worked for IBM at the time, and I can still remember him opening the door of his car Vanna White-style to reveal the status symbol inside.We’ve all been visited by old, curmudgeonly RF. As networking professionals, we know the joys of RF present, and there are enough predictions articles this time of year to get us excited about the future.If networking were A Christmas Carol, it might go something like this.The ghost of RF past The first of the RF spirits takes us to the 1980s, when cellular, WiFi and automotive connectivity were young and innocent. RF was so old you could see it, hanging in the air like a damp, grey fog.To read this article in full, please click here

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