Backing up configs with the Ansible NCLU module

With the release of Ansible 2.3 the Cumulus Linux NCLU module is now part of Ansible core. This means when you `apt-get install ansible`, you get the NCLU module pre-installed! This blog post will focus on using the NCLU module to backup and restore configs on Cumulus Linux. To read more about the NCLU module from its creator, Barry Peddycord, click here.

The consulting team uses Ansible very frequently when helping customers fully automate their data centers. A lot of our playbooks use the Ansible template module because it is very efficient and idempotent, and Cumulus Linux has been built with very robust reload capabilities for both networking and Quagga/FRR. This reload capability allows the box to perform a diff on either `etc/network/interfaces` or `etc/quagga/Quagga.conf` so when a flat-file is overridden with the template module, only the “diff” (or difference) is applied. This means if swp1-10 were already working and we added configuration for swp11-20, an ifreload will only add the additional config and be non-disruptive for swp1-10. This reload capability is imperative to data centers and our customers couldn’t live without it.

However, many customers also want to build configs with NCLU (or the net commands) when Continue reading

Using IoT to keep Mt. Washington hikers safe, predict weather

Weather on Mount Washington in New Hampshire can be biblical. On one occasion, I started an early-morning April ascent with fresh snow at the base. Mid-day we stripped to our base layer of clothing when the bright sun warmed the temperature to 60°F. At the peak elevation of 6,288 feet, dark clouds closed in, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. We ran for cover from lightning that had a very short distance to travel between the low clouds and the high peak to travel.After hiking the mountain a half-dozen times, in all seasons and all conditions, it’s interesting to learn how the Mount Washington Weather Observatory on the peak uses IoT to update weather conditions on this frequent hiker destination.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The calculus of service availability

The vast majority of software services and systems should aim for almost-perfect reliability rather than perfect reliability—that is, 99.999% or 99.99% rather than 100%—because users cannot tell the difference between a service being 100% available and less than “perfectly” available. There are many other systems in the path between user and service (laptop, home WiFi, ISP, the power grid . . .), and those systems collectively are far less than 100% available. Thus, the marginal difference between 99.99% and 100% gets lost in the noise of other unavailability, and the user receives no benefit from the enormous effort required to add that last fractional percent of availability. Notable exceptions to this rule include antilock brake control systems and pacemakers! —Ben Treynor, Mike Dahlin, Vivek Rau, Betsy Beyer @The Communications of the ACM

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Introducing VMware Skyline™

VMware Skyline™: an innovative support technology, developed entirely by VMware Engineering, that provides VMware technical support engineers with extreme visibility into your (customer’s) environment.

Customers with active support subscriptions install the VMware Skyline Collector, a standalone appliance that automatically and securely collects product usage data such as configuration, feature, and performance data.

It then listens for changes, events and patterns and analyzes the information using a robust rules and machine learning engine. The rules engine is where an ever-growing library of support intelligence, product knowledge, and logic is stored to analyze inbound streams of product information. Check out the video and the blog to learn more!

The post Introducing VMware Skyline™ appeared first on Network Virtualization.

IDG Contributor Network: 6 things IT executives must do to accelerate IoT adoption

Are you ready for the Internet of Things (IoT)? Despite its transformational potential, most organizations are not. In an era of rapid disruption and digital transformation, IT executives and managers must lead the charge. You must bridge the gap between technology, business, engineering and operations. You must be evangelists, teachers, facilitators and innovators. To succeed, I’ve listed six things you must do to accelerate IoT adoption within your organization.Increase your organization’s IoT IQ Start the journey by increasing awareness, knowledge and conversations around IoT throughout the organization. This can be done in several ways:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 6 things IT executives must do to accelerate IoT adoption

Are you ready for the Internet of Things (IoT)? Despite its transformational potential, most organizations are not. In an era of rapid disruption and digital transformation, IT executives and managers must lead the charge. You must bridge the gap between technology, business, engineering and operations. You must be evangelists, teachers, facilitators and innovators. To succeed, I’ve listed six things you must do to accelerate IoT adoption within your organization.Increase your organization’s IoT IQ Start the journey by increasing awareness, knowledge and conversations around IoT throughout the organization. This can be done in several ways:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Internet of Things goes to school

It appears research universities are a great place to test Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. That’s because they often comprise a microcosm of a wide variety of organizational and technical environments.Gordon Wishon, CIO of Arizona State University, explained the reasoning to Campus Technology this way:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Small Site Multihoming with DHCP and Direct Internet Access

Cisco recently (15.6.3M2 ) resolved CSCve61996, which makes it possible to fail internet access back and forth between two DHCP-managed interfaces in two different front-door VRFs attached to consumer-grade internet service.

Prior to the IOS fix there was a lot of weirdness with route configuration on DHCP interfaces assigned to VRFs.

I'm using a C891F-K9 for this example. The WAN interfaces are Gi0 and Fa8. They're in F-VRF's named ISP_A and ISP_B respectively:


First, create the F-VRFs and configure the interfaces:

 ip vrf ISP_A  
 ip vrf ISP_B  
   
 interface GigabitEthernet8  
  ip vrf forwarding ISP_A  
  ip dhcp client default-router distance 10  
  ip address dhcp  
 interface FastEthernet0  
  ip vrf forwarding ISP_B  
  ip dhcp client default-router distance 20  
  ip address dhcp

The distance commands above assign the AD of the DHCP-assigned default route. Without these directives the distance would be 254 in each VRF. They're modified here because we'll be using the distance to select the preferred internet path when both ISPs are available.

Next, let's keep track of whether or not the internet is working via each provider. In this case I'm pinging 8.8.8.8 via both paths, but this health check can be whatever makes sense for your situation. So, Continue reading

Kafka Wakes Up And Is Metamorphosed Into A Database

Sometimes a database is like a collection of wax tablets that you can stack and sort through to update, and these days, sometimes it is more like a river that has a shape defined by its geography but it is constantly changing and flowing and that flow, more than anything else, defines the information that drives the business. There is no time to persist it, organize it, and then query it.

In this case, embedding a database right in that stream makes good sense, and that is precisely what Confluent, the company that has commercialized Apache Kafka, which is a …

Kafka Wakes Up And Is Metamorphosed Into A Database was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: IoT needs a paradigm shift

Building IoT ventures from scratch by prototyping hardware devices and their backend systems as well as working for a large company that tries to sell IoT devices itself, we learned a lot about the pitfalls and problems concerning security in the IoT. Nearly every connected device out there proved to be vulnerable to attacks. Researchers showed that it’s possible to remotely take control over autonomous vehicles, implanted medical devices were manipulated, voting machines compromised and of course all sorts of other “smart” devices, like door locks, light bulbs, thermostats and the like. In Austria a hotel got threatened by hackers that their guests will be locked out of their rooms, if the hotel doesn’t pay ransom in bitcoins. —Martin Unger @CircleID

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Easy data storage services are like fast food

Recently I made the (unfortunate) decision to eat at a particular fast-food establishment. For the sake of this story, let’s call it Shmurger Shming.I didn’t eat at The Shming because the food tastes amazing. Nor did I choose to ingest those Shmurgers because I thought it was, in any way, healthy for me. In fact, I knew full well that eating them would cause not insignificant amounts of gastronomical distress.Which begs the question: Why, on this green Earth, would I make that decision? Why would I do that to myself?Simple. It was convenient, there was very little up-front investment (in time and money), and it was food. Technically. In other words, I was lazy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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