Liveblog: Cloud Native Infrastructure

This is a liveblog of the HashiConf 2017 session titled “Cloud Native Infrastructure.” The speaker is Kris Nova, a Senior Developer Advocate at Microsoft. Kris, along with Justin Garrison, authored the O’Reilly Cloud Native Infrastructure book (more information here). As one of the last sessions (if not the last session) I’ll be able to attend, I’m looking forward to this session.

Kris is a self-confessed Linux lover, loves writing in Golang, is a Kubernetes maintainer, and works on Azure at Microsoft.

So, what is “cloud-native infrastructure”? To answer that, Nova first tries to answer “what is a cloud?” Nova breezes by that definition without going into any real detail (or any real definition), and proceeds to talk about what infrastructure is. Again, Nova breezes by that without providing any real definition or depth, and proceeds to ask “Why is infrastructure better in the cloud?” According to Nova, infrastructure is better in the cloud because management can be as simple as an HTTP request. The next few slides in Nova’s presentation compare the “traditional” ways of managing infrastructure (provisioning switches, patching cables, troubleshooting problems) are now, when infrastructure is in the cloud, as simple as a series Continue reading

HashiConf 2017 Wrap Up

HashiConf 2017 is a wrap for me, and as I’m sitting here at the airport lounge in Austin I’d thought I’d post links back to the liveblogs I published as well as a few thoughts on the conference overall.

Liveblogs

First, here are links to the liveblogs published during the event:

Closing Thoughts

I think it was a pretty good event. The venue (JW Marriott in Austin) seemed roughly appropriate for the number of attendees (around 800, I believe), although some additional seating during meal times would have been a good idea. The conference Wi-Fi was mostly OK, though it had its moments.

The quality of sessions varied; some sessions were very good; others, not so much (unfortunately). It would have been good to see a clearer breakdown of the sessions according to area/theme. They had 3 content tracks, but it wasn’t really clear to me if the tracks had any central theme. I, personally, bounced around all three tracks.

I did like the inclusion of high-top tables at the Continue reading

China Arms Upgraded Tianhe-2A Hybrid Supercomputer

As an economic powerhouse and with a rising military and political presence around the world, you would expect, given the inherent political nature of supercomputing, that China would have multiple and massive supercomputing centers as well as a desire to spread its risk and demonstrate its technical breadth by investing in many different kinds of capability class supercomputers.

And this is precisely what China is doing, including creating its own offload accelerator, based on digital signal processors. This Matrix2000 DSP accelerator, which was unveiled at the ISC16 supercomputing event last year and which is being created by the National University …

China Arms Upgraded Tianhe-2A Hybrid Supercomputer was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Docbook

Computers were first invented to do math, and they do it really well. But it didn’t take long for users to repurpose their futuristic calculators into fancy, dynamic typewriters. Now human-readable text drives computing, so it’s important to choose the right format for the text you write. DocBook is an XML schema. XML is an extensible markup language a lot like HTML. It’s truly ubiquitous, but you may know it by RSS or Atom, the Open Document formats of LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, Inkscape and the SVG file format, and much more. In fact, it’s safe to say that if you own a computer or mobile device, there’s XML on it. —Seth Kenlon @ Opensource

The post Worth Reading: Docbook appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Data and power could run over the same wireless network

Combining power to operate equipment, as well as delivering substantial data rates that are good enough for video — in the same piece of radio kit — is now obtainable, scientists say.The developing system works similar to how charging pads provide power to a toothbrush or a mobile phone without having to be connected through wires. However, in this case, the apparatus doesn’t need any physical contact with the device and data can be sent at the same time.Magnetic fields are being used to transmit power through the air, North Carolina State University researchers say in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data and power could run over the same wireless network

Combining power to operate equipment, as well as delivering substantial data rates that are good enough for video — in the same piece of radio kit — is now obtainable, scientists say.The developing system works similar to how charging pads provide power to a toothbrush or a mobile phone without having to be connected through wires. However, in this case, the apparatus doesn’t need any physical contact with the device and data can be sent at the same time.Magnetic fields are being used to transmit power through the air, North Carolina State University researchers say in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reaction: Networks are not cars or cell phones

The network engineering world has long emphasized the longevity of the hardware we buy; I have sat through many vendor presentations where the salesman says “this feature set makes our product future proof! You can buy with confidence knowing this product will not need to be replaced for another ten years…” Over at the Networking Nerd, Tom has an article posted supporting this view of networking equipment, entitled Network Longevity: Think Car, not iPhone.

It seems, to me, that these concepts of longevity have the entire situation precisely backwards. These ideas of “car length longevity” and “future proof hardware” are looking at the network from the perspective of an appliance, rather than from the perspective as a set of services. Let me put this in a little bit of context by considering two specific examples.

In terms of cars, I have owned four in the last 31 years. I owned a Jeep Wrangler for 13 years, a second Jeep Wrangler for 8 years, and a third Jeep Wrangler for 9 years. I have recently switched to a Jeep Cherokee, which I’ve just about reached my first year driving.

What if I bought network equipment like I buy cars? What sort Continue reading

Worth Reading: WeChat spying revelations

It has long been known that due to WeChat keeping its servers inside China, the lack of legal protection of privacy data, and the control over companies by police, that WeChat data is not safe, and can, without protection, be accessed by police or other state actors more or less at will. This has naturally made people shy away from using WeChat for any more serious or political discussions. More and more court cases of people being prosecuted simply based on private chat messages to friends have further illustration this. At the same time, at the time of the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, it was shown that a ‘Trojan’ virus was being employed to surveil users remotely. —Safeguard Defenders @ China Change

The post Worth Reading: WeChat spying revelations appeared first on rule 11 reader.

HashiConf 2017 Day 2 Keynote

This is a liveblog of the day 2 keynote (general session) at HashiConf 2017 in Austin, TX. Speakers today will (apparently, based on the schedule) include someone from Amazon Web Services and Kelsey Hightower from Google.

The keynote starts off with a photo montage of attendees, sessions, and speakers from the previous day, focusing mostly on the evening party (a pretty traditional thing for most conferences). The photo montage is followed by a gentleman (he doesn’t identify himself) who kicks off the keynote by bringing out Seth Vargo, Director of Technical Advocacy at HashiCorp.

Vargo’s presentation is titled “The Ecological Impact of Compute,” and discusses the environmental impact of cloud computing and the pervasive use of computing/compute power around the world. Vargo presents statistics that show on-premises data centers actually consume more electricity than the mega-scale cloud providers, and that getting these people onto a cloud provider would actually reduce overall power consumption (and, by extension, environmental impacts related to power consumption). Toward the end of Vargo’s presentation, it starts to feel more like a sales pitch for Nomad couched in environmental awareness.

At this point, Vargo introduces Kelsey Hightower, Senior Developer Advocate from Google. Hightower’s talk is about “Hashinetes,” Continue reading

Get Familiar with Docker Enterprise Edition Client Bundles

Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) is the only Containers as a Service (CaaS) Platform for IT that manages and secures diverse applications across disparate infrastructure, both on-premises and in the cloud.

There’s a little mentioned big feature in Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) that seems to always bring smiles to the room once it’s displayed. Before I tell you about it, let me first describe the use case. You’re a sysadmin managing a Docker cluster and you have the following requirements:

  • Different individuals in your LDAP/AD need various levels of access to the containers/services in your cluster
  • Some users need to be able to go inside the running containers.
  • Some users just need to be able to see the logs
  • You do NOT want to give SSH access to each host in your cluster.

Now, how do you achieve this? The answer, or feature rather, is a client bundle. When you do a docker version command you will see two entries. The client portion of the engine is able to connect to a local server AND a remote once a client bundle is invoked.

Docker Enterprise Edition Client Bundles

What is a client bundle?

A client bundle is a group of certificates downloadable directly from the Docker Universal Continue reading

Episode 12 – The VAR Show

Value Added Resellers play a critical role as trusted adviser in the networking industry.  However, many customers don’t make the most of their VAR relationships.  In Episode 12, our hosts explore the VAR relationship with VAR engineers Zach Miller and Warren Jackson.  We explore the ups and downs VAR life for both resellers and customers.

 

Zach Miller
Guest
Warren Jackson
Guest
Jordan Martin
Co-Host
Eyvonne Sharp
Co-Host
Phil Gervasi
Co-Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post Episode 12 – The VAR Show appeared first on Network Collective.

Episode 12 – The VAR Show

Value Added Resellers play a critical role as trusted adviser in the networking industry.  However, many customers don’t make the most of their VAR relationships.  In Episode 12, our hosts explore the VAR relationship with VAR engineers Zach Miller and Warren Jackson.  We explore the ups and downs VAR life for both resellers and customers.

 

Zach Miller
Guest
Warren Jackson
Guest
Jordan Martin
Co-Host
Eyvonne Sharp
Co-Host
Phil Gervasi
Co-Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post Episode 12 – The VAR Show appeared first on Network Collective.

Report confirms on-premises data center spending declined

Just a month ago we had research that indicated on-premises data center investments were dropping in priority as companies moved to the cloud. Now a second report confirms this suspicion that companies are de-emphasizing their on-premises data centers in favor of the cloud.The numbers come from Synergy Research, which show that spending on traditional, non-cloud data center hardware and software dropped 18 percent between the second quarters of 2015 and 2017. During that same period, public cloud spending grew 35 percent. The overall market for data center equipment grew by 5 percent to a total of more than $30 billion. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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