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

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

#FuerzaMexico: A way to help Mexico Earthquake victims

#FuerzaMexico: A way to help Mexico Earthquake victims

#FuerzaMexico: A way to help Mexico Earthquake victims Photo Credit: United Nations Photo (Flickr)

On September 19, 1985 Mexico City was hit with the most damaging earthquake in its history. Yesterday -exactly 32 years later- Mexico’s capital and neighbouring areas were hit again by a large earthquake that caused significant damage. While the scale of the destruction is still being assessed, countless people passed away and the lives of many have been disrupted. Today, many heroes are on the streets focusing on recovery and relief.

We at Cloudflare want to make it easy for people to help out those affected in central Mexico. The Mexico Earthquake app will allow visitors to your site to donate to one of the charities helping those impacted.

#FuerzaMexico: A way to help Mexico Earthquake victims

The Mexico Earthquake App takes two clicks to install and requires no code change. The charities listed are two well respected organizations that are on the ground helping people now.


If you wanted to add your own custom list of charities for disaster relief or other causes, feel free to fork the source of this app and make your own.

#FuerzaMéxico: Una manera de apoyar a los damnificados del SismoMX

El 19 de septiembre de 1985 la Ciudad de México fue afectada por Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Why chipmakers are taking IoT security Into their own hands

While much of the talk about the Internet of Things today concerns the economic growth and impending social change being fostered by it, IoT investors and enthusiast alike are increasingly turning their attention towards network security. One critical aspect of this security-debate, keeping the microchips which essentially “run” our connected society secure, is getting the much-needed attention it deserves for the first time.So what exactly are chipmakers doing to keep their products, and the IoT-at-large, secure? Are our networks still vulnerable to the kinds of botnet attacks which rocked the world as recently as a few months ago, and can they even really be secured? A quick dive into the world of chipmakers shows just how seriously today’s top innovators are taking the issue of IoT security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: When evaluating SD-WAN, look beyond the features table

Like many IT products, SD-WAN products can sound insanely alike. Sit through presentations and read through the literature and then ask yourself what’s the practical difference between each vendor’s implementation? It can be difficult question to answer even for people in the business of answering those questions.A common approach for an initial cut in an evaluation process is to reduce the product list by focusing on features. By creating a table of specific product specifications, assigning a weighted scoring, many of my customer have come up with a score and by extension a tool for eliminating some products from their selection process.Such an approach while valuable in some respects, is insufficient even for an initial cut. There are too many elements to a purchase that are not measured by a features table. Or, there might be important unfamiliar features that you forget to include in the table.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: When evaluating SD-WAN, look beyond the features table

Like many IT products, SD-WAN products can sound insanely alike. Sit through presentations and read through the literature and then ask yourself what’s the practical difference between each vendor’s implementation? It can be difficult question to answer even for people in the business of answering those questions.A common approach for an initial cut in an evaluation process is to reduce the product list by focusing on features. By creating a table of specific product specifications, assigning a weighted scoring, many of my customer have come up with a score and by extension a tool for eliminating some products from their selection process.Such an approach while valuable in some respects, is insufficient even for an initial cut. There are too many elements to a purchase that are not measured by a features table. Or, there might be important unfamiliar features that you forget to include in the table.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista Any Cloud Networking – Our Next Frontier

Arista Any Cloud Networking - Our Next Frontier

The modern cloud networking world is vastly different from traditional enterprise IT, and the gap is getting wider everyday. How does one truly scale across millions of machines and workloads globally? A decade ago, Arista pioneered the new software driven networking era and the same challenges now exist not only across the LAN intra-datacenters but also inter-datacenters via wide area networks (WANS). Although we have never promoted “SD-LAN” nor understood the “SD-WAN” hype, Arista has redefined software driven networking and pioneered the convergence between LANs and WANS.

Arista Any Cloud Networking – Our Next Frontier

Arista Any Cloud Networking - Our Next Frontier

The modern cloud networking world is vastly different from traditional enterprise IT, and the gap is getting wider everyday. How does one truly scale across millions of machines and workloads globally? A decade ago, Arista pioneered the new software driven networking era and the same challenges now exist not only across the LAN intra-datacenters but also inter-datacenters via wide area networks (WANS). Although we have never promoted “SD-LAN” nor understood the “SD-WAN” hype, Arista has redefined software driven networking and pioneered the convergence between LANs and WANS.

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