A Peek Inside Facebook’s Server Fleet Upgrade

Having a proliferation of server makes and models over a span of years in the datacenter is not a huge deal for most enterprises. They cope with the diversity because they support a diversity of application and can kind of keep things isolated and, moreover, IT may be integral to their product or service, but it is usually not the actual product or service that they sell.

Not so with hyperscalers and cloud builders. For them, the IT is the product, and keeping things as monolithic and consistent as possible lowers the cost of goods purchased through higher volumes and …

A Peek Inside Facebook’s Server Fleet Upgrade was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Online Meetup Recap: Docker Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE)

Last week, we announced Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) and Docker Community Edition (CE) new and renamed versions of the Docker platform. Docker EE, supported by Docker Inc., is available on certified operating systems and cloud providers and runs certified Containers and Plugins from Docker Store. The Docker open source products are now Docker CE and we have adopted a new lifecycle and time-based versioning scheme for both Docker EE and CE.

Docker Community Edition

We asked product manager and release captain, Michael Friis to introduce Docker CE + EE to our online community. The meetup took place on Wednesday, March 8th and over 600 people RSVPed to hear Michael’s presentation live. He gave an overview of both editions and highlighted the big enhancements to the lifecycle, maintainability and upgradability of Docker.

In case you missed it, you can watch the recording and access Michael’s slides below.

 

 

Here are additional resources:

Missed the #docker CE + EE Online #meetup w/ @friism? Check out the video & slides here!
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IDG Contributor Network: Public cloud services sneak in through IT’s back door

“I’m a back door man, I’m a back door manThe CIO don’t know, but the users understand.”Well, maybe those aren’t the exact lyrics sung by Jim Morrison (or Howlin’ Wolf). Yet much of the information technology used by enterprises is first snuck in the back door by users rather than invited in the front door by the CIO.The personal computer was a prime example of back door technology. Back in the 1980s, while the IT department ran their mainframes and minicomputers, department managers were stuck tracking budgets and forecasts with adding machines and pads of paper. But a PC with spreadsheet software made those tasks much simpler and quicker. (By the way, you can still download and run original VisiCalc. Only 27,520 bytes!) A departmental budget could absorb the cost of several thousand dollars, and getting started was simple enough. Soon PCs were showing up everywhere.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Too lazy to fill out a March Madness bracket? Technology has you covered

Let’s say you can’t be bothered to fill out one of those basketball forms you’ll see floating around the office this week. You couldn’t care less but want to look like you care. Well, ESPN the website has just the feature for you: “Autofill a bracket.”Just don’t expect to win anything.Autofill comes in four different flavors, each guaranteed to produce a filled-in bracket form with one click, and each guaranteed to look nothing like the form filled out by your future office pool winner.The first option is called “chalk,” which is sports slang for picking the higher-seeded team. You don’t really need any technology to fill out a chalk bracket; just go with the higher seeded team in every single game until you’re done. You could do that with a pen, or pencil if pen seems intimidating. But we’ve already established that you’re lazy, so click chalk. (Spoiler alert: Villanova will be your winner because Villanova is the tournament’s top-seeded team.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

History!

The audio is a bit low on this video; it actually recorded a bit lower than this, and the process of amplifying made it poor quality. I’ve already separated the audio recorder from the camera; now I’m upgrading the mic, and playing with the settings on the recorder to make the audio better quality. I’m also playing with putting text and drawings on the side of the video, a concept I intend to use more often in the future.

So this is a bit of a play video, but with a somewhat serious topic: the importance of learning the history of network engineering. Some resources are included below.

A bit history of the Internet
Net Heads versus Bell Heads
On the History of the Shortest Path Problem
The Elements of Networking Style
Software Defined Networks has a great introductory section with a good bit of history

The post History! appeared first on 'net work.

BrandPost: How to develop mature DevOps practices

Every company must act like a software company these days. That's why DevOps is so critical to your success: DevOps methodologies help you get better software to your users, and build tighter feedback loops for more effective learning.If you’ve already undergone a DevOps transformation, you’re likely already seeing better cross-functional alignment and shared responsibility.  Hopefully you’re deploying software more frequently, recovering from failures faster, and dealing with far fewer security issues.Now it’s time to take your DevOps initiative to the next level to achieve greater control, predictability and flexibility. By continually improving, you make room for more experimentation and innovation, and can even retain top talent. (See the proof in Puppet’s annual State of DevOps Report.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s why Google Cloud support is now priced per person

One of the key messages out of Google Cloud Next last week: The company has gotten serious about serving enterprise customers in a way that meets their needs. A key component of that is a new set of support plans for customers of its cloud platform.Instead of paying one big support fee, businesses will pay per user for support privileges, based on how quickly they will get a response. The new plan replaces a set of monolithic tiers that required businesses to pay a flat fee per month plus a percentage of their monthly product usage. In the past, Google wasn't exactly known for its support capabilities, but that's something the company has changed in recent years. Google engineers originally believed they could create great technology that was self-service and easy to use, and that would be enough for business customers, said Dave Rensin, the company’s director of customer reliability engineering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Comments on the Wikileaks CIA Vault #7

The CIA didn’t remotely hack a TV. The docs are clear that they can update the software running on the TV using a USB drive. There’s no evidence of them doing so remotely over the Internet. If you aren’t afraid of the CIA breaking in an installing a listening device, then you should’t be afraid of the CIA installing listening software. —Errata Security

The post Worth Reading: Comments on the Wikileaks CIA Vault #7 appeared first on 'net work.

Strong FBI Ties for Next Generation Quantum Computer

It is a good time to be the maker of a machine that excels in large-scale optimization problems for cybersecurity and defense. And it is even better to be the only maker of such a machine at a time when the need for a post-Moore’s Law system is in high demand.

We have already described the U.S. Department of Energy’s drive to place a novel architecture at the heart of one of the future exascale supercomputers, and we have also explored the range of options that might fall under that novel processing umbrella. From neuromorphic chips, deep learning PIM-based architectures, …

Strong FBI Ties for Next Generation Quantum Computer was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Get the data your business needs without paying high fees

The volume of data available to businesses is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by the year 2020. That’s a mind-boggling huge body of information, one that businesses can use to assess the effectiveness of marketing initiatives, to use as barometers for better performance, and to identify new optimization opportunities in all areas of operation.To make use of all that data, though, you need the right tools in place. And with the average salary for an experienced data analytics professional starting at $65,000 annually, smaller businesses may be at a disadvantage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WikiLeaks dump brings CIA spying powers into the spotlight

Has the CIA ever spied on you? That’s a key question swirling around the WikiLeaks document dump that allegedly details the U.S. agency's secret hacking tools. The documents themselves don't reveal much about who the CIA might have snooped on. But the agency certainly has the power to spy on foreigners outside the U.S., said Paul Pillar, a former deputy counterterrorism chief with the CIA. That's its job after all: to collect foreign intelligence. But even so, the CIA is pretty selective with its targets.   To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WikiLeaks dump brings CIA spying powers into the spotlight

Has the CIA ever spied on you? That’s a key question swirling around the WikiLeaks document dump that allegedly details the U.S. agency's secret hacking tools. The documents themselves don't reveal much about who the CIA might have snooped on. But the agency certainly has the power to spy on foreigners outside the U.S., said Paul Pillar, a former deputy counterterrorism chief with the CIA. That's its job after all: to collect foreign intelligence. But even so, the CIA is pretty selective with its targets.   To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Mirantis shifts again, will offer managed solutions based on open-source technologies

Mirantis is (or, as we will see, was) known as the pure play OpenStack vendor. The company focused on offering large organizations products and services that helped them leverage the open-source, OpenStack cloud computing platform to build their own clouds for internal or external use.Over time, however, there has been some doubt cast upon how much of a market opportunity there is for these sort of OpenStack service providers. The OpenStack ecosystem has been the source of much angst as consolidation, rationalization and unrealized hopes and dreams too their toll.Mirantis' 'evolution' Mirantis was not immune from these impacts and last year announced its intention to move away from a pure-play OpenStack strategy and become an organization that helped its customers build infrastructure solutions based on a number of different platforms, OpenStack included. At the time, there were rumors that Mirantis wasn’t seeing the return customers it had hoped for and that most of its deals were one-time gigs that didn’t really allow it to build a recurring, sustainable business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Native apps vs. mobile websites: A new battlefront opens

It’s one of the most challenging ongoing conflicts in mobile technology: native apps vs. mobile websites. Is it better to develop apps for specific mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android or instead turn to websites that are optimized for mobile browsing. Performance vs. flexibility Traditionally, the tradeoff has been that native apps can do more and perform faster because they can be tied more directly to the mobile operating system and the device hardware. Mobile web apps, on the other hand, are typically easier to develop and more flexible. You can build an app once, and it runs reasonably well everywhere—rather than have to develop multiple versions for every mobile OS. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GOP senator alleges password-hijack attempts after blasting WikiLeaks founder

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) Saturday claimed that hackers were trying to gain access to his personal and government-issued devices through bogus password-reset notifications.In a short flurry of Twitter messages, Sasse blamed the hacking attempts on his criticism of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, earlier in the week."Heads-up...I've been critical of Assange & WikiLeaks this week. So...big surprise: Am having multiple 'password reset' attempts right now," Sasse tweeted Saturday. The probing was hitting "basically every device, every platform, personal and govt," he added in a follow-up tweet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GOP senator alleges password-hijack attempts after blasting WikiLeaks founder

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) Saturday claimed that hackers were trying to gain access to his personal and government-issued devices through bogus password-reset notifications.In a short flurry of Twitter messages, Sasse blamed the hacking attempts on his criticism of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, earlier in the week."Heads-up...I've been critical of Assange & WikiLeaks this week. So...big surprise: Am having multiple 'password reset' attempts right now," Sasse tweeted Saturday. The probing was hitting "basically every device, every platform, personal and govt," he added in a follow-up tweet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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