A Brief Look at VMware’s Three Cloud Approaches

I’m at VMworld 2017 this week (obviously, based on my tweets and blog posts), and in the general sessions Monday and yesterday VMware made a big deal about how VMware is approaching cloud computing and cloud services. However, as I’ve been talking to other attendees, it’s become clear to me that many people don’t understand the three-pronged approach VMware is taking.

I should start out by saying that this post hasn’t been officially reviewed by VMware (none of my stuff is) and may not align with the “approved” marketing approach, so keep that in mind. This is just me speaking.

As I see it, the three cloud approaches are as follows:

  1. Private cloud
  2. VMware Cloud on AWS
  3. VMware Cloud Services for native cloud workloads

The first option (private cloud) is, I think, pretty much self-explanatory. VMware is offering VMware Cloud Foundation to help streamline some of the infrastructure management in this space, and then the VMware SDDC stack (vSphere, vSAN, and NSX) are layered on top. Couple that with a cloud management platform/automation platform such as OpenStack (VIO would be a good option) or vRealize Automation, and you have a private cloud. (I’m glossing over a few details, but you Continue reading

Automation Tools in Building Network Automation Solutions Online Course

A network engineer interested in attending the Building Network Automation Solutions online course sent me this question:

Does the course cover only Ansible, or does it also cover other automation tools like Python?

The course focuses on how you’d build a network automation solution. Selecting the best tool for the job is obviously one of the major challenges, and so one of the self-study modules describes various automation tools and where you could use them to build a full-blown solution.

Read more ...

ReFS integrity is not on by default

I really don’t like the trend of filesystem authors to only care about filesystem integrity by default. How about having seat belt for your data integrity by default and let people turn it off if they want to compromise correctness for performance?

What I didn’t know is that ReFS integrity is not on by default. Only metadata integrity.

It’s also not visible or changeable in the UI (which is why I assumed they’d done the right thing), which is strange to me, this being Windows. No, you have to drop down into Microsoft’s crappy CLI.

How to check if it’s turned on.

Check files in one directory

PS E:\> Get-Item '*' | Get-FileIntegrity

FileName                       Enabled Enforced
--------                       ------- --------
E:\SomeDirectory               False   True
E:\SomeOtherDirectory          False   True
E:\SomeFile.txt                False   True
[...]

Fuck you, Microsoft.

Check recursively

Of course Get-Item doesn’t do recursion. Why would it? That would make sense.

PS E:\> Get-Children -Recurse 'E:\SomeDirectory' | Get-FileIntegrity

FileName                       Enabled Enforced
--------                       ------- --------
E:\SomeDirectory\foo.txt       False   True
[...]

How to enable it

Both commands are needed. The first command sets the new default for the root directory, and the second adds checksums to all existing files and directories.

PS E:\>  Continue reading

An Inside Look at the Docker Captains Program

Since launching the Docker Captains over a year ago, we’ve received a lot of questions: What is a Docker Captain? What do Captains do? How do I become a Captain? So who better to answer that than the Docker Captains themselves? At DockerCon Austin, we asked the Docker Captains to share their favorite thing about wearing the Captain’s hat.

What is a Captain?

Captains are Docker experts that are leaders in their communities, organizations or ecosystems. As Docker advocates, they are committed to sharing their knowledge and do so every chance they get!

What do Captains do?

Captains are advisors, ambassadors, coders, contributors, creators, tool builders, speakers, mentors, maintainers and super users and are required to be active stewards of Docker in order to remain in the program.

In addition to sharing their knowledge with the community, Captains provide insight and feedback to Docker. They have direct access to our technical teams, and are first to hear about and try upcoming features, product releases and big announcements.

What do Captains get? 

In return for their efforts, Captains get access to the existing captains community and Docker staff. They get ongoing training, private briefings and Slack chat channels where Captains Continue reading

BrandPost: Cloud Native – The Perfect Storm for Managed SD-WAN Services

We are excited to announce today that Silver Peak has joined MEF. With 130+ members, MEF’s new SD-WAN initiatives are intended to address implementation challenges and help service providers to accelerate managed SD-WAN service deployments. Some of this work involves defining SD-WAN use cases, and a key use case revolves around connecting distributed enterprises and users to cloud-hosted SaaS applications and IaaS.Enterprise CIOs continue to accelerate the pace of corporate digital transformation initiatives, often including plans to migrate enterprise applications to the cloud. Cloud-first is often the preferable choice for hosting new applications, enabling enterprises to securely connect users to applications from anywhere and across any type of WAN service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why You Should Attend AnsibleFest

AnsibleFest-SF-2017-Social-Image.png

It’s that time again! The time when automators from all over converge at the official event for all things Ansible — AnsibleFest San Francisco! Fresh off the heels from a packed house at AnsibleFest London in June, AnsibleFest San Francisco is shaping up to be the biggest AnsibleFest ever. With about a week before showtime, now’s the best time to start planning a trip to the “City by the Bay” for a fantastic event before it sells out.

To give a better idea of what to expect (and how to convince your manager to go), I’ve provided the top five reasons to go to AnsibleFest in San Francisco:

1. Expanded agenda and a session on Key Topics and Trends with Jim Whitehurst Red Hat CEO

We’ve heard your feedback, and listened: now more breakout sessions! We have made an unprecedented increase in sessions, up from 16 to 25, from customers, partners and the community. All session have been posted to the AnsibleFest agenda so you can see the better-than-ever lineup we have created.

2. All Ansible, all the time

Of course, we realize that Red Hat Summit is the company’s flagship event (I’ve been to seven of them), but Summit Continue reading

Worth Reading: ROI is not a cybersecurity concept

In the cybersecurity community, much time is spent trying to speak the language of business, in order to communicate to business leaders our problems. One way we do this is trying to adapt the concept of “return on investment” or “ROI” to explain why they need to spend more money. Stop doing this. It’s nonsense. ROI is a concept pushed by vendors in order to justify why you should pay money for their snake oil security products. Don’t play the vendor’s game. —Robert Graham @Errata Security

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VMware’s Platform Revolves Around ESXi, Except Where It Can’t

Building a platform is hard enough, and there are very few companies that can build something that scales, supports a diversity of applications, and, in the case of either cloud providers or software or whole system sellers, can be suitable for tens of thousands, much less hundreds of thousands or millions, of customers.

But if building a platform is hard, keeping it relevant is even harder, and those companies who demonstrate the ability to adapt quickly and to move to new ground while holding old ground are the ones that get to make money and wield influence in the datacenter. …

VMware’s Platform Revolves Around ESXi, Except Where It Can’t was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

BGP Persistent Oscillation

After Daniel Walton visited the History of Networking at the Network Collective, I went back and poked at BGP permanent route oscillations just to refresh my memory. Since I spent the time, I thought it was worth a post, with some observations. When working with networking problems, it is always wise to begin with a network, so…

For those who are interested, I’m pretty much following RFC3345 in this explanation.

There are two BGP route reflectors here, in two different clusters, labeled A and D. The metric for each link is listed on the links between the RR clients, B, C, and E, and the RRs; the cost of the link between the RRs is 1. A single route, 2001:db8:3e8:100::/64 is being advertised in with an AS path of the same length from three different eBGP peering points, each with a different MED. E is receiving the route with a MED of 0, C with a MED of 1, and B with a MED of 10.

Starting with A, walk through one cycle of the persistent oscillation. At A there are two routes—

edge MED IGP Cost
C    1   4
B    10  5 (BEST)

When A runs the bestpath calculation, Continue reading

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  • Grokking the System Design Interview is an interactive course that explains the Large Scale Distributed System Design problems in detail. System Continue reading

AI and IoT: Like peanut butter and chocolate?

If you had to take a guess, what would you name as the two most prominent trends in technology right now? Like most people, I feel pretty confident in choosing artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), not necessarily in that order.But in a rare convergence, in turns out these two trends are even hotter together. In fact, the new hotness is the combination of AI and IoT, manifesting itself in a wide variety of form and implementations in locations around the world.IBM’s Watson wants to bring ‘cognitive computing’ to IoT At IBM, for example, the company opened a Watson Internet of Things headquarters in Munich, Germany, earlier this year. The lab pairs IBM with partners such as BMW, Bosch and Ricoh. The goal, per the company’s Watson IoT website, is to marry cognitive computing (the Watson AI platform) to vast arrays of IoT sensors. The company quotes an IDC report that claims IBM and Watson “can demonstrate the power of cognitive analytics in the IoT."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Is it time to build an anti-DDoS alliance?

A functional “anti-DOS alliance” is only feasible if SP”s are ready to commit to specific frugal investments. These ‘ prudent commitments’ will not require millions of dollars in anti-DOS technology. The commitments will require a change of the SP’s attitude and approach to DOS. It moved from a model that “I’m island on my own” mentality to a model where the SP see their business, network, and services as part of a global interconnection system. This interconnected system requires security collaboration to push back against the DOS Storm that threatens their business. We can break this “change of attitude into three actionable changes which will Clear the Path for an SP anti-DOS alliance. —Barry Greene @Senki

The post Worth Reading: Is it time to build an anti-DDoS alliance? appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Demand for server specialists increases, but talent pool is small

Almost two-thirds of organizations surveyed say recruiting for jobs in data center and server management is becoming increasingly difficult because of the skills needed, both in traditional servers and converged infrastructure.The findings come from a worldwide survey by 451 Research for its Voice of the Enterprise: Servers and Converged Infrastructure, Organizational Dynamics study (registration required). It found that IT shops have concerns about the long-term costs of using public cloud, and that is causing many IT shops to pull back on their cloud movement and even expand on their on-premises infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Demand for server specialists increases, but talent pool is small

Almost two-thirds of organizations surveyed say recruiting for jobs in data center and server management is becoming increasingly difficult because of the skills needed, both in traditional servers and converged infrastructure.The findings come from a worldwide survey by 451 Research for its Voice of the Enterprise: Servers and Converged Infrastructure, Organizational Dynamics study (registration required). It found that IT shops have concerns about the long-term costs of using public cloud, and that is causing many IT shops to pull back on their cloud movement and even expand on their on-premises infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to use the motd file to get Linux users to pay attention

It seems only decades ago that I was commonly sending out notices to my users by editing the /etc/motd file on the servers I managed. I would tell them about planned outages, system upgrades, new tools and who would be covering for me during my very rare vacations.Somewhere along the stretch of time since, message of the day files seem to have faded from common usage — maybe overwhelmed by an excess of system messages, emailed alerts, texts, and other notices that have taken over, the /etc/motd file has. Or maybe not.+ Also on Network World: Half a dozen clever Linux command line tricks + The truth is the /etc/motd file on quite a number of Linux systems has simply become part of a larger configuration of messages that are fed to users when they log in. And even if your /etc/motd file is empty or doesn’t exist at all, login messages are being delivered when someone logs into a server via a terminal window — and you have more control over what those messages are telling your users than you might realize.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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