Does Hyperconverged Infrastructure Save Money?

Hyperconverged infrastructure vendors always tout the technology's cost efficiency, arguing that HCI reduces costs because it requires less administrative burden. In this video, Keith Townsend, principal at The CTO Advisor and Interop ITX infrastructure chair, examines whether hyperconvergence really costs less than traditional three-tier IT infrastructure.

Fat Fingers Strike Again…

Level3 had a pretty bad bad-hair-day just a day before Pete Lumbis talked about Continuous Integration on the Building Network Automation Solutions online course (yes, it was a great lead-in for Pete).

According to messages circulating on mailing lists it was all caused by a fumbled configuration attempt. My wild guess: someone deleting the wrong route map, causing routes that should have been tagged with no-export escape into the wider Internet.

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Deadline of Feb 1 for Nominations for Public Interest Registry (.ORG Operator) Board of Directors

Would you be interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nominations deadline is 23:00 UTC on Thursday, February 1, 2018.

More information about the positions and the required qualifications can be found at: https://www.internetsociety.org/pir/call-for-nominations/

As noted on that page:

The Internet Society is now accepting nominations for the Board of Directors of the Public Interest Registry (PIR). PIR’s business is to manage the international registry of .org, .ngo, and .ong domain names, as well as associated Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

In 2018 there are three positions opening on the PIR Board. Two directors will serve a 3-year term that begins mid-year 2018 and expires mid-year 2021. One director will fill a vacant seat as soon as practical and serve until mid-year 2020.

If you are interested in being considered as a candidate, please see the form to submit toward the bottom of the call for nominations page.

The post Deadline of Feb 1 for Nominations for Public Interest Registry (.ORG Operator) Board of Directors Continue reading

Forget the CES hype, IoT is all about industry

This week the gadget industry descends up on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). And as in the previous few years, 2018’s CES is chock-full of smart devices of every stripe. Some seem very cool, others unutterably silly, and a tiny percentage might be actually useful. A few will find market success, and many more will never actually hit the market at all.In addition to all the new product previews, this year’s CES is full of summits, seminars, presentations and other sessions devoted to helping consumer products companies make, sell, deploy and monetize everything from smart cars and smart homes to smart cities.To read this article in full, please click here

Docker for Mac with Kubernetes

Docker Community Edition

You heard about it at DockerCon Europe and now it is here: we are proud to announce that Docker for Mac with beta Kubernetes support is now publicly available as part of the Edge release channel. We hope you are as excited as we are!

With this release you can now run a single node Kubernetes cluster right on your Mac and use both kubectl commands and docker commands to control your containers.

First, a few things to keep in mind:

  • Docker for Mac required
    Kubernetes features are only accessible on macOS for now; Docker for Windows and Docker Enterprise Edition betas will follow at a later date. If you need to install a new copy of Docker for Mac you can download it from the Docker Store.
  • Edge channel required
    Kubernetes support is still considered experimental with this release, so to enable the download and use of Kubernetes components you must be on the Edge channel. The Docker for Mac version should be 17.12.0-ce-mac45 or later after updating.
  • Already using other Kubernetes tools?
    If you are already running a version of kubectl pointed at another environment, for example minikube, you will want to follow the activation Continue reading

Hyperconverged secondary storage market heats up

There’s no question that the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has had a huge impact on simplifying technology deployments. Nutantix solutions, Cisco HyperFlex and HPE Simplivity have been widely adopted and have changed the face of the data center.HCI was initially considered niche to simplify the deployment of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), but it has seen increased adoption for other workloads. One use case for HCI that has flown under the radar is secondary storage. Late last year, I profiled Cohesity, the vendor that has been leading the emerging hyperconverged secondary storage market.To read this article in full, please click here

Accelerate Network Automation with Aggregate Resources

One of the major networking features in Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.4 was the addition of aggregate resources to the networking modules. The Ansible networking team recently talked about this at the Ask an Expert webinar in November.

What are Aggregate Resources?

Simply put, aggregate resources are a better way to iterate (or loop) without the need to execute each task one by one. That is, you can now “aggregate” a collection as a single task instead of a collection of discrete loops.

Loop Method

 

Aggregate Method

 

Loop Method (with_items:)

Aggregate Method (aggregate:)
  1. Connect via SSH or eAPI
  2. Execute eos_vlan module for VLAN1
  3. Execute eos_vlan module for VLAN2
  4. Execute eos_vlan module for VLAN3
  5. Execute eos_vlan module for VLAN4
    .
    .
    .
  6. Execute eos_vlan module for VLAN500
  7. Disconnect SSH
  8. Display Playbook Recap
  1. Connect via SSH or eAPI
  2. Execute eos_vlan module
    • Generate VLAN commands for entire set
    • Execute in one task
  3. Disconnect SSH
  4. Display Playbook Recap

503 steps

4 steps

Based on feedback from customers, partners and community members, this post provides more examples and more detail of this important new feature. The simplest way to showcase this is to compare the old way and the new way, and highlight the differences Continue reading

Worth Reading: Why the Full Time Job is Still Important

The new “rules” of the workplace are being defined as computers are frantically being programmed to take the lead in the workplace, when it comes to judgment and intuition. We humans need to be the idea generators, the motivators, the negotiators, and the trouble-shooters to fix computer errors, if we want to govern our emerging digital environments. In short, we need to get closer to our firms, be more tightly integrated and intimate with work performance than ever before… which means the role and tenure of the much-derided middle-manager in the Dilbert Cartoons could be taking on a whole new potential twist – and a whole new (potential) level of relevance. —Phil Fersht @ The Enterprise Irregulars

Cumulus content roundup: January

Got a New Year’s resolution for a data center revolution? We’ve got your back! The Cumulus content roundup is here to make sure you start out 2018 on the right foot. With a variety of blog posts, videos and networking resources at your disposal, you’ll find that upgrading your networking knowledge is an easily achievable goal (and much easier than starting a diet or going to the gym). Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone if you’ve already broken your resolution! It’s a time for new beginnings and looking to the future; let’s check out what’s in store.

Cumulus resources

Cumulus in the Cloud overview: What is Cumulus in the Cloud, and what can it do for you? In this video overview, let CTO JR Rivers walk you through the pre-built virtual data center and teach you all about the great Cumulus tech you can play with.

 
NCLU: Network Command Line Utility overview: There’s a new chapter in our how-to video series. This time, our highly qualified instructors will teach you the ins and outs of Cumulus Networks CLI, the Network Command Line Utility. Watch the tutorial to learn more.

 
Open networking drives forward with Cumulus Linux Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How network verification differs from monitoring, and what it’s good for

In a previous post I discussed network verification, a new area of technology that applies what is known as formal verification – mathematical analysis of a complex system to determine rigorously if it meets the end-to-end goal – to network infrastructure.But what is such verification good for and how is it different from today’s common practice, whereby nearly every organization monitors its network, typically by sampling ongoing flows, events or logs. Isn’t that enough to catch problems as the organization deploys changes?To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: How network verification differs from monitoring, and what it’s good for

In a previous post I discussed network verification, a new area of technology that applies what is known as formal verification – mathematical analysis of a complex system to determine rigorously if it meets the end-to-end goal – to network infrastructure.But what is such verification good for and how is it different from today’s common practice, whereby nearly every organization monitors its network, typically by sampling ongoing flows, events or logs. Isn’t that enough to catch problems as the organization deploys changes?To read this article in full, please click here

Section 10 Routing Loops

A (long) time ago, a reader asked me about RFC4456, section 10, which says:

Care should be taken to make sure that none of the BGP path attributes defined above can be modified through configuration when exchanging internal routing information between RRs and Clients and Non-Clients. Their modification could potentially result in routing loops. In addition, when a RR reflects a route, it SHOULD NOT modify the following path attributes: NEXT_HOP, AS_PATH, LOCAL_PREF, and MED. Their modification could potentially result in routing loops.

On first reading, this seems a little strange—how could modifying the next hop, Local Preference, or MED at a route reflector cause a routing loop? While contrived, the following network illustrates the principle.

Note the best path, from an IGP perspective, from C to E is through B, and the best path, from an IGP perspective, from B to D is through C. In this case, a route is advertised over eBGP from F towards E and D. These two eBGP speakers, in turn, advertise the route to their iBGP neighbors, B and C. Both B and C are route reflectors, so they both reflect the route on to A, which advertises the route to some other Continue reading

How Technology is Changing Music to fit Inside Streaming’s New Box

 

Technology shapes and forms. A Roman war chariot could still ride to battle on a modern road. Songs are typically about 3 minutes long because a 78rpm record held about three minutes of sound per side. So it shouldn't be a surprise streaming—a new technology for distributing music—pounds songs, business models, and production methods into new shapes fitting a new medium.

How would artists respond to near zero digital production costs, zero marginal distribution costs, and streaming's pay per play business model? Uniquely, as described in great detail in the podcast WS More or Less: Why Albums are Getting Longer.

Michael Jackson's Thriller album had nine tracks and runs at just over 42 minutes. Chris Brown released Heartbreak on a Full Moon, an album with 45 tracks and runs well over 2 hours. Albums are getting longer.

Why? You get what you measure.

1500 plays or streams of a track from a single album counts as a record sale. So the longer the album the fewer people have to listen to the whole thing to increase record sales. Record sales are how chart rankings are determined. Doing better in the charts gets you more exposure, which Continue reading

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