Real world use cases for NSX and Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading PaaS solution for enterprise customers today, providing a fast way to convert their ideas from conception to production. This is achieved by providing a platform to run their code in any cloud and any language taking care of all the infrastructure “stuff” for them.

From building the container image, compiling it with the required runtime , deploying it in a highly available mode and connecting it to the required services, PCF allows dev shops to concentrate on developing their code.

While the platform is providing developers with the most simplified experience conceivable, under the hood there are many moving parts that make that happen and plumbing all these parts can be complex. That’s where customers are really enjoying the power of VMware’s SDDC, and the glue between the PaaS and SDDC layers is NSX, it is the enabler that makes it all work.

In this blog post I detail some of the main uses cases customers have already deployed NSX for PCF on top of vSphere and how PCF and NSX are much better together in the real world.

The use cases customers are deploying with NSX for PCF are varied and ill Continue reading

What is hybrid cloud computing?

Hybrid cloud: Many believe it’s the eventual state that most businesses will operate in – some infrastructure resources on premises, others in the public cloud. Others believe it's a term that has been muddled by varied definitions from a range of vendors, diminishing the term to now be vague and nebulous.So, what does hybrid cloud really mean and how can users implement it?What is hybrid cloud computing? While there is no one single agreed-upon definition of hybrid cloud computing, perhaps the closest we have is from the National Institutes for Standards in Technology (NIST):(Hybrid) cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability.. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: 10 Layers of Container Security

Containers provide an easy way to package applications and deliver them seamlessly from development to test to production. This helps ensure consistency across a variety of environments, including physical servers, virtual machines (VMs), or private or public clouds. These benefits are leading organizations to rapidly adopt containers in order to easily develop and manage the applications that add business value. —Daniel Oh @ Opensource

The post Worth Reading: 10 Layers of Container Security appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Container-Relevant Kernel Developments

This is a liveblog of a Black Belt track session at DockerCon EU in Copenhagen. The session is named “Container-Relevant Kernel Developments,” and the presenter is Tycho Andersen.

Andersen first presents a disclaimer that the presentation is mostly a brain dump, and the he’s not personally responsible for a lot of the work presented here. In fact, all of the work Andersen will talk about is not yet merged upstream in the Linux kernel, and he doesn’t expect that they will be accepted upstream and see availability for average users.

The first technology Andersen talks about IMA (Integrity Management Association, I think?), which prevents user space from even opening files if they have been tampered with or modified in some fashion that violates policy. IMA is also responsible for allowing the Linux kernel to take advantage of a system’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

Pertinent to containers, Andersen talks about work that’s happening within the kernel development community around namespacing IMA. There are a number of challenges here, not all of which have been addressed or resolved yet, and Andersen refers attendees to the Linux Kernel mailing list (LKML) for more information.

Next, Andersen talks about the Linux audit log. Continue reading

Decoding LACP Port State

It’s frustrating when the output to a show command gives exactly the information needed, but in a format which is unintelligible. So it is with the Partner Port State field in the NXOS show lacp neighbor interface command which reports the partner port state as a hexadecimal value. To help with LACP troubleshooting, here’s a quick breakdown of the port states reported on by LACP, and how they might be seen in Junos OS and NXOS.

LACP Port State

The LACP port state (also known as the actor state) field is a single byte, each bit of which is a flag indicating a particular status. In this table, mux (i.e. a multiplexer) refers to the logical unit which aggregates the links into a single logical transmitter/receiver.

The meaning of each bit is as follows:

Bit Name Meaning
0 LACP_Activity Device intends to transmit periodically in order to find potential members for the aggregate. This is toggled by mode active in the channel-group configuration on the member interfaces.
1 = Active, 0 = Passive.
1 LACP_Timeout Length of the LACP timeout.
1 = Short Timeout, 0 = Long Timeout
2 Aggregation Will allow the link to be aggregated.
1 = Continue reading

LinuxKit Deep Dive

This is a liveblog of the DockerCon EU session titled “LinuxKit Deep Dive”. The speakers are Justin Cormack and Rolf Neugebauer, both with Docker, and this session is part of the “Black Belt” track here at DockerCon.

So what is LinuxKit? It’s a toolkit, part of the Moby Project, that is used for building secure, portable, and lean operating systems for containers. It uses the moby tooling to build system images. LinuxKit uses YAML files to describe the complete system, and these files are consumed by moby to assemble the boot image and verify the signature. On top of that is containerD, which runs on-boot containers, service containers, and shutdown containers. Think of on-boot and shutdown containers as one-time containers that perform some task, either when the system is booting or shutting down (respectively).

LinuxKit was first announced and open sourced in April 2017 at DockerCon in Austin. Major additions since it was announced include:

  • arm64 support
  • Improved Kubernetes support
  • Linux containers on Windows (LCOW) preview support
  • Improved platform support (Azure, packet.net, IBM Bluemix, AWS, GCP, VMware, Hyper-V, etc.)
  • Multi-arch build system
  • Fully immutable system images
  • Namespace sharing
  • Support for the latest Linux kernels

After reviewing the changes Continue reading

Keep IoT under your hat … your hardhat, that is

My wife is an architect, and she sometimes wears a hardhat to job sites. I’ve always thought her bright white hardhat was super cool, but it turns out her model is hopelessly behind the times.When is a hat more than just a hat? That’s because the latest hardhats are no longer just simple combinations of hard plastic and a shock-absorbing suspension so you don’t get knocked out if you walk into an exposed beam or something. The once-humble hardhat has now been upgraded to include Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities.Also on Network World: 5 things to think about for industrial IoT readiness Michigan-based startup GuardHat Inc. has created an IoT hardhat that includes a beacon designed to continuously transmit data to a safety control center. The idea is for the system to use Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity to track each worker’s location for safety and worker management issues. Most important, GuardHat is built to be able to send alerts to the control center with the hat’s (and hopefully the worker’s) precise location — within 1 meter —  after a fall or other safety incident. (A built-in accelerometer can detect falls, and there’s also an SOS button to summon Continue reading

35% off SanDisk 256GB iXpand Base for iPhone charging and backup – Deal Alert

Here's something you probably didn't know existed. With SanDisk's iXpand iPhone base, you'll never have to worry about losing your memories again. Every time you charge your iPhone with the iXpand Base, it automatically backs up your photos, videos and contacts. The iXpand Base offers plenty of room to save your files in their original quality with no worry about recurring monthly fees for Internet-based storage. Designed for everyday use with a soft rubber top, a sturdy base, and a wrap-around groove to keep your Apple Lightning to USB cable tidy. Its typical list price has been discounted, for now, to $129.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud Native: Upgrading a Workflow Engine or Orchestrator

On a train this morning, I read Ivan Pepelnjak’s Twitter stream (because what else is there to do whilst relaxing with a coffee?), I came across this blog post on upgrading virtual-appliances.

Couldn’t agree more with the approach, but what about upgrading a workflow engine or orchestrator? I’ll call this entity a ‘wfeo’ just to make typing this article easier.

The perceived turmoil in undertaking this kind of an upgrade task is enough to make new born babies cry. Fear not. Any half decent wfeo contains it’s gubbins (workflows, drivers, logic, data) in a portable and logical data structure.

Taking StackStorm as an example, each integration (official parlance; ‘pack’), is arranged into a set of directories.
Within each directory are more directories with special names and a set of files like READMEs, configuration schemas and pack information. These top level directories that contain the pack, are portable between install bases of StackStorm giving us the power to easily clone installations, repair logic in case of a troubled upgrade and install logic freshly for new installations.

As with any platform, some syntax might change so always read the release notes for the platform and packs.

Ivan’s point is that you Continue reading

Getting With The Program On Software Defined Networks

If the profit margins are under pressure among the switch and router makers of the world, their chief financial officers can probably place a lot of the blame on Nick McKeown and his several partners throughout the years. And if McKeown is right about what is happening as the network software is increasingly disaggregated from the hardware – what is called software defined networking – they will either have to adapt or be relegated to the dustbins of history.

McKeown cut his teeth after university in the late 1980s at Hewlett Packard Labs in Bristol, England, one of the hotbeds …

Getting With The Program On Software Defined Networks was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Rock Stars, Builders, and Janitors: You’re Doing it Wrong

This is a liveblog of the session titled “Rock Stars, Builders, and Janitors: You’re Doing it Wrong”. The speaker is Alice Goldfuss (@alicegoldfuss) from GitHub. This session is part of the “Transform” track at DockerCon; I’m attending it because I think that cultural and operational transformation is key for companies to successfully embrace new technologies like containers and fully maximize the benefits of these technologies. (There’s probably a blog post in that sentence.)

Goldfuss starts out by asking the audience some questions about what they’ve been doing for the last 3 months, and then informs the attendees that they are, in fact, part of the problem.

Goldfuss now digs into the meat of the presentation by covering some terminology. First, what is a rock star? They’re the idea person, the innovator. They’re curious, open-minded, iterating faster, and always looking for the new things and the new ideas. They’re important to our companies, but they do have some weaknesses. They get bored easily, they have no patience for maintenance, and they’re not used to thinking about end user experience. Thus, according to Goldfuss, you can’t have a team of only rock stars.

Next, Goldfuss talks aboutbuilders. Builders Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: 4 things reshaping IoT for the future

For many Internet of Things observers, the IoT’s dizzying embracing and subsequent reshaping of modern business and cultural standards seems like it happened only yesterday. Yet the IoT is moving ever faster, developing at an astonishing rate and continuously reinventing itself. So what’s the next step in the long-line of IoT innovation, and how can eager investors cash in on tomorrow’s IoT fad today?Those used to the ever-changing nature of the IoT will know by now that it’s constantly changing, but will also be aware that innovation in certain areas matters much more than gradual developments elsewhere. A quick review of the 4 things reshaping the IoT’s future the most shows which industries will be most vital towards its development and offers an alluring glance of what the IoT of tomorrow will look like:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Knows No One Wants To Manage The Management Stack

The highly distributed and increasingly cloud-based nature of the modern IT environment is adding to the complexity that organizations have to deal with, particularly in terms of managing their infrastructures. Mobility, the internet of things, new development paradigms, containerization, more distributed applications, data analytics and multi-cloud deployments are all conspiring to create even more challenges in what is an already complicated management scenario for enterprises facing cost and time constraints.

At a time when speed and scalability are imperative and human errors can be costly, the answer to many of these challenges may lie in the cloud. That’s the …

Cisco Knows No One Wants To Manage The Management Stack was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

DockerCon EU 2017 Day 1 Keynote

This is a liveblog of the day 1 keynote/general session at DockerCon EU 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Prior to the start of the keynote, attendees are “entertained” by occasional clips of some Monty Python-esque production.

At 9:02, the lights go down and another clip appears, the first of several cliups that depict life “without Docker” and then again “with Docker” (where everything is better, of course). It’s humorous and a good introduction to the general session.

Steve Singh, CEO of Docker, now takes the stage to kick off the general session. Singh thanks the attendees for their time, discusses the growth of the Docker community and the Docker ecosystem, welcomes new members of the community (including himself), and positions Docker less as a container company and more as a platform company. (Singh comes to Docker from SAP, following SAP’s acquisition of Concur.) Singh pontificates for a few moments about his background, the changes occurring in the industry, and the “center stage front-row” seat that Docker has to witness—and affect/shape—these changes.

Singh pivots after a few minutes to talk about Docker growth in terms of specific metrics (21 million Docker hosts, for example). This allows him to return to the Continue reading

Docker Platform and Moby Project add Kubernetes

Today we’re announcing that the Docker platform is integrating support for Kubernetes so that Docker customers and developers have the option to use both Kubernetes and Swarm to orchestrate container workloads. Register for beta access and check out the detailed blog posts to learn how we’re bringing Kubernetes to:

Docker is a platform that sits between apps and infrastructure. By building apps on Docker, developers and IT operations get freedom and flexibility. That’s because Docker runs everywhere that enterprises deploy apps: on-prem (including on IBM mainframes, enterprise Linux and Windows) and in the cloud. Once an application is containerized, it’s easy to re-build, re-deploy and move around, or even run in hybrid setups that straddle on-prem and cloud infrastructure.

The Docker platform is composed of many components, assembled in four layers:

  • The containerd industry-standard container runtime implementing the OCI standards
  • Swarm orchestration that transforms a group of nodes into a distributed system
  • Docker Community Edition providing developers a simple workflow to build and ship container applications, with features like application composition, image build and management
  • Docker Enterprise Edition, to manage an end Continue reading
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