The Eternal Cost Savings of Netflix’s Internal Spot Market

Netflix used their internal spot market to save 92% on video encoding costs. The story of how is told by Dave Hahn in his now annual A Day in the Life of a Netflix Engineer. Netflix first talked about their spot market in a pair of articles published in 2015: Creating Your Own EC2 Spot Market Part 1 and Part 2.

The idea is simple:

• Netflix runs out of three AWS regions and uses hundreds of thousands of EC2 instances; many are underutilized at various parts in the day.

• Video encoding is 70% of Netflix’s computing needs, running on 300,000 CPUs in over 1000 different autoscaling groups.

• So why not create a spot market to process video encoding?

As background, Dave explained the video encoding process:

Postpone Inbox Procrastination

I’ve recently admitted to myself that my ineptitude with my inbox is due largely to procrastination. That is, I can’t face the task that a particular inbox message presents, and thus I ignore the message. With this admission comes a desire to reach inbox zero each and every day. I don’t like my productivity squashed by ineptitude. I must overcome!

But how?

1. Getting to inbox zero each day is, first of all, an important goal. In other words, I really want to be at inbox zero each day. I don’t want to leave items hanging around for the next day. Therefore, among all my tasks, I have to prioritize inbox management.
2. I filter messages heavily. I use Gmail, and have begun digging into the filtering system. At the moment, I have 27 rules that route messages to folders. Those rules are covering several dozen PR agencies, newsletters, and auto-notifiers. This helps me to focus when I’m working on my inbox, making it much easier to evaluate and react to messages depending on the folder they were routed to.
3. I unsubscribe from uninteresting lists. Because I work in media, I receive pitches everyday from PR firms who don’t know me, but Continue reading

Postpone Inbox Procrastination

I’ve recently admitted to myself that my ineptitude with my inbox is due largely to procrastination. That is, I can’t face the task that a particular inbox message presents, and thus I ignore the message. With this admission comes a desire to reach inbox zero each and every day. I don’t like my productivity squashed by ineptitude. I must overcome!

But how?

1. Getting to inbox zero each day is, first of all, an important goal. In other words, I really want to be at inbox zero each day. I don’t want to leave items hanging around for the next day. Therefore, among all my tasks, I have to prioritize inbox management.
2. I filter messages heavily. I use Gmail, and have begun digging into the filtering system. At the moment, I have 27 rules that route messages to folders. Those rules are covering several dozen PR agencies, newsletters, and auto-notifiers. This helps me to focus when I’m working on my inbox, making it much easier to evaluate and react to messages depending on the folder they were routed to.
3. I unsubscribe from uninteresting lists. Because I work in media, I receive pitches everyday from PR firms who don’t know me, but Continue reading

Worth Reading: Big Four Shift Open Source Licensing

The GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2) is arguably the most important open-source license for one reason: It’s the license Linux uses. On November 27, three Linux-using technology powers, Facebook, Google, and IBM, and the major Linux distributor Red Hat announced they would extend additional rights to help companies who’ve made GPLv2 open-source license compliance errors and mistakes. —Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols @ ZDNetThe GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2) is arguably the most important open-source license for one reason: It’s the license Linux uses. On November 27, three Linux-using technology powers, Facebook, Google, and IBM, and the major Linux distributor Red Hat announced they would extend additional rights to help companies who’ve made GPLv2 open-source license compliance errors and mistakes. —Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols @ ZDNet

When POSIX I/O Meets Exascale, Do the Old Rules Apply?

We’ve all grown up in a world of digital filing cabinets. POSIX I/O has enabled code portability and extraordinary advances in computation, but it is limited by its design and the way it mirrors the paper offices that it has replaced.

The POSIX API and its implementation assumes that we know roughly where our data is, that accessing it is reasonably quick and that all versions of the data are the same. As we move to exascale, we need to let go of this model and embrace a sea of data and a very different way of handling it.

In …

When POSIX I/O Meets Exascale, Do the Old Rules Apply? was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Network Break 164: Amazon Reinvent Highlights; Server Revenues Jump

Cloudera Puffs Up Analytics Database For Clouds

In many ways, public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform can be the great equalizers, giving enterprises access to computing and storage resources that they may not have the money to be able to bring into their on-premises environments. Given the new compute-intensive workloads like data analytics and machine learning, and the benefits they can bring to modern businesses, this access to cloud-based platforms is increasingly critical to large enterprises.

Cloudera for several years has been pushing its software offerings – such as Data Science Workbench, Analytic DB, Operational DB, and Enterprise Data Hub – …

Cloudera Puffs Up Analytics Database For Clouds was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Need Stocking Stuffers? See Amazon’s Highest Rated Tech Deals Under $25 – Deal Alert

This month, you'll probably need to buy stocking stuffers and cheap little gadgety things for co-workers, extended family members, or to fill in gaps last-minute when you find yourself asking, "Did I buy enough?".  Amazon has deals running every day, so we've filtered their list of active deals down to just the tech categories, and only the deals $25 or less with 4 or 5 star ratings.  Discounted USB cords, chargers, phone accessories, BlueTooth speakers, splitters, and other gadgets. Here it is: An impulse shopper's dream/nightmare. (Note: When you get to Amazon's page, scroll down past their "featured" deals to where the filtered list begins).To read this article in full, please click here

The First Albanian Network Operators Forum

On Tuesday, 14 November 2017, Albanian Internet Service Providers gathered in central Tirana for the first Albanian Network Operators Forum (ALNOF). The event was organized by RASH, the Albanian Academic Network, and NaMeX, the Internet Exchange Point based in Rome, Italy, with the goal of bringing Albanian ISPs together to discuss their common issues. The Internet Society sponsored the event.

The main topics on the agenda were Interconnection and Networking Community. Albania is one of the only countries in Europe that doesn’t have a neutral Internet Exchange Point: Internet traffic from one Albanian ISP to another sometimes crosses many borders and reaches Amsterdam, London, or Copenhagen before returning to Albania. RASH and NaMeX presented their partnership to create ANIX, the first neutral Internet Exchange Point in Albania, and MIXP presented its experience of the Internet Exchange Point in Montenegro. The session was completed by presentations on PeeringDB, the Facebook network, and IPv6.

As for the Networking Community topic, Albania is a small country where many people running network infrastructure operations know each other, but there is no actual “community” of ISPs. This session included presentations by two organizations that are committed to develop networking communities: Continue reading

Office 365 phishing examples | Salted Hash Ep 10

Salted Hash looks at recent Office 365 phishing examples, discussing why they work and what can be done about them.

IDG Contributor Network: The network 3.0

During the past three decades, we have seen a monumental growth in networking technology. From RFC-1163, which describes the beginnings of BGP in 1989 to the cloud and software defined networks of today, our voracious appetite for bandwidth and services have begun to outpace the networking industry’s ability to deliver.I remember when I had my first “broadband” – and I use that term loosely – circuit installed at my house. It was a 128kbps ISDN line from my local telco. Since it was 1996, I was riding high compared to everyone else using 28.8 kpbs modems to access the internet. Today I have a 1Gbps connection that allows me to stream 4k video from multiple providers. In roughly 20 years, my consumption of bandwidth has increased 8000%!To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The network 3.0

During the past three decades, we have seen a monumental growth in networking technology. From RFC-1163, which describes the beginnings of BGP in 1989 to the cloud and software defined networks of today, our voracious appetite for bandwidth and services have begun to outpace the networking industry’s ability to deliver.I remember when I had my first “broadband” – and I use that term loosely – circuit installed at my house. It was a 128kbps ISDN line from my local telco. Since it was 1996, I was riding high compared to everyone else using 28.8 kpbs modems to access the internet. Today I have a 1Gbps connection that allows me to stream 4k video from multiple providers. In roughly 20 years, my consumption of bandwidth has increased 8000%!To read this article in full, please click here

5 Hot Enterprise Backup and Recovery Vendors

The Future of Network Interfaces

Enterprise network trends to watch 2018

What's going to shake things up in 2018? IT pros will have their hands full with technologies that have been hyped for some time and are now ripe for adoption, including software-defined WAN, hybrid cloud computing, hyperconvergence, and Internet of Things. See below for our collection of enterprise picks, predictions and prognostications.Why 2018 will be the year of the WAN Thinkstock Software-defined WAN technology is sweeping across the industry, growing from an emerging technology in 2017 to become mainstream in 2018. As SD-WAN deployments become ubiquitous for organizations with remote offices, more big changes will come. Check it out.To read this article in full, please click here

Enterprise network trends to watch 2018

What's going to shake things up in 2018? IT pros will have their hands full with technologies that have been hyped for some time and are now ripe for adoption, including software-defined WAN, hybrid cloud computing, hyperconvergence, and Internet of Things. See below for our collection of enterprise picks, predictions and prognostications.Why 2018 will be the year of the WAN Thinkstock Software-defined WAN technology is sweeping across the industry, growing from an emerging technology in 2017 to become mainstream in 2018. As SD-WAN deployments become ubiquitous for organizations with remote offices, more big changes will come. Check it out.To read this article in full, please click here

Enterprise network trends to watch

What's going to shake things up in 2018? IT pros will have their hands full with technologies that have been hyped for some time and are now ripe for adoption, including software-defined WAN, hybrid cloud computing, hyperconvergence, and Internet of Things. See below for our collection of enterprise picks, predictions and prognostications.Why 2018 will be the year of the WAN Thinkstock Software-defined WAN technology is sweeping across the industry, growing from an emerging technology in 2017 to become mainstream in 2018. As SD-WAN deployments become ubiquitous for organizations with remote offices, more big changes will come. Check it out.To read this article in full, please click here

Enterprise network trends to watch

What's going to shake things up in 2018? IT pros will have their hands full with technologies that have been hyped for some time and are now ripe for adoption, including software-defined WAN, hybrid cloud computing, hyperconvergence, and Internet of Things. See below for our collection of enterprise picks, predictions and prognostications.Why 2018 will be the year of the WAN Thinkstock Software-defined WAN technology is sweeping across the industry, growing from an emerging technology in 2017 to become mainstream in 2018. As SD-WAN deployments become ubiquitous for organizations with remote offices, more big changes will come. Check it out.To read this article in full, please click here

LVM Configuration the Easy Way

Now oVirt features a simple way to prevent a host from scanning and then activating logical volumes that are not required directly by the host. In particular, the solution addresses logical volumes on shared storage managed by oVirt, and logical volumes created by a guest in oVirt raw volumes. Why is a solution required? Because scanning and activating other logical volumes may cause data corruption, slow boot, and other issues.

The solution is configuring an LVM filter on each host, which allows LVM on a host to scan only the logical volumes required directly by the host. To achieve this, we have introduced a vdsm-tool command, config-lvm-filter, that will configure the host for you.

The new command, vdsm-tool config-lvm-filter analyzes the current LVM configuration to decide whether a filter should be configured. Then, if the LVM filter has yet to be configured, the command generates an LVM filter option for this host, and adds the option to the LVM configuration.

Scenario 1: An Unconfigured Host

On a host yet to be configured, the command automatically configures the LVM once the user confirms the operation:

# vdsm-tool config-lvm-filter
Analyzing host...
Found these mounted logical volumes on this host:

  logical volume:  /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_home
   Continue reading

Simplifying ipSpace.net Products

When I started my ipSpace.net project life was simple: I had a few webinars, and you could register for the live sessions. After a while I started adding recordings, subscriptions, bundles, roadmaps (and tracks), books… and a few years later workshops and online courses.

As you can imagine, the whole thing became a hard-to-navigate mess. Right now you can buy almost 70 different products on ipSpace.net. Time for a cleanup.