Nonblocking versus Noncontending

“We use a nonblocking fabric…”

Probably not. Nonblocking is a word that is thrown around a lot, particularly in the world of spine and leaf fabric design—but, just like calling a Clos a spine and leaf, we tend to misuse the word nonblocking in ways that are unhelpful. Hence, it is time for a short explanation of the two concepts that might help clear up the confusion. To get there, we need a network—preferably a spine and leaf like the one shown below.

Based on the design of this fabric, is it nonblocking? It would certainly seem so at first blush. Assume every link is 10g, just to make the math easy, and ignore the ToR to server links, as these are not technically a part of the fabric itself. Assume the following four 10g flows are set up—

  • B through [X1,Y1,Z2] towards A
  • C through [X1,Y2,Z2] towards A
  • D through [X1,Y3,Z2] towards A
  • E through [X1,Y4,Z2] towards A

As there are four different paths between these four servers (B through E) and Z2, which serves as the ToR for A, all 40g of traffic can be delivered through the fabric without dropping or queuing a single packet (assuming, of Continue reading

Early Benchmarks on Argonne’s New Knights Landing Supercomputer

We are heading into International Supercomputing Conference week (ISC) and as such, there are several new items of interest from the HPC side of the house.

As far as supercomputer architectures go for mid-2017, we can expect to see a lot of new machines with Intel’s Knights Landing architecture, perhaps a scattered few finally adding Nvidia K80 GPUs as an upgrade from older generation accelerators (for those who are not holding out for Volta with NVlink ala the Summit supercomputer), and of course, it all remains to be seen what happens with the Tianhe-2 and Sunway machines in China in …

Early Benchmarks on Argonne’s New Knights Landing Supercomputer was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Rethinking Disruption: Who Are You Competing Against?

Few words are more terrifying to enterprise organizations than disruption.The reasons are obvious. Uber disrupted transportation and left traditional providers in shambles. In lodging and hospitality, Airbnb did much the same. And for on premise technology, the cloud has given way to a virtual onslaught of software-as-service (SaaS) products that continue to devour the bottom line.In short, disruption kills.Or does it?Late last month, Polycom announced a partnership with video and web conferencing service Zoom. The response has been almost universal shock. Industry observers, in particular, have called into question the sanity of partnering with a business that — at least on the surface — seems bent on taking over the very space Polycom depends on to survive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Skyport Systems plugs the agility, security gaps of hybrid cloud

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe.As organizations move more of their infrastructure to the cloud, they are ending up with hybrid cloud applications. Part of the application runs in the traditional data center, and part runs in a cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform. In addition, organizations often need to connect SaaS services to resources that continue to reside inside their datacenters.Applications that run in this mode typically use a connecting software gateway between the data center component and the cloud component, for example, Mule ESB or OneSaaS. This gateway allows the components to share data and work together seamlessly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Skyport Systems plugs the agility, security gaps of hybrid cloud

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe.As organizations move more of their infrastructure to the cloud, they are ending up with hybrid cloud applications. Part of the application runs in the traditional data center, and part runs in a cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform. In addition, organizations often need to connect SaaS services to resources that continue to reside inside their datacenters.Applications that run in this mode typically use a connecting software gateway between the data center component and the cloud component, for example, Mule ESB or OneSaaS. This gateway allows the components to share data and work together seamlessly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Data migrations without the migraines

Whether or not you work in the IT department, you have likely experienced the pain of migrating from one system to another. When you buy a new laptop, or a new phone, you’re faced with having to backup and replicate your old data to your new system, or start from scratch with none of the files you might need on your new device.Imagine this problem at enterprise scale. Moving terabytes of data is a daunting task that also requires planning and downtime when IT has to add a new storage system,  upgrade or replacement. Just like with our smartphones, the old system likely still has some value, but since data can’t move easily from one system to the other, the equipment we’re leaving behind often remains as a backup to the backup copy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Processing Logs in Real Time with Naiad

You have lots of components in your datacenter producing logs (about 13,000 service instances in the datacenter logs studied for this paper). The authors assume a unique Id is assigned to every request entering the system, and that this is propagated on service requests, leading to log records with metadata such as… —The Morning Paper

The post Worth Reading: Processing Logs in Real Time with Naiad appeared first on rule 11 reader.

South Korean web hosting company infected by Erebus ransomware

Nayana, a web hosting company in South Korea, suffered a ransomware attack over the weekend which resulted in more than a hundred Linux servers and thousands of websites being infected with Erebus ransomware. The initial ransom amount was astronomically high.Yesterday, I came across the news that a South Korean web hosting company had been infected by ransomware, but it was extremely short on details. The ransomware was Erebus; the attack occurred on Saturday and thousands of sites were reportedly infected.Today, Aju Business Daily provided more details. Nayana reportedly said 153 of its Linux servers were infected with Erebus. In turn, about 3,400 sites on the web hosting company’s servers were also infected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

South Korean web hosting company infected by Erebus ransomware

Nayana, a web hosting company in South Korea, suffered a ransomware attack over the weekend which resulted in more than a hundred Linux servers and thousands of websites being infected with Erebus ransomware. The initial ransom amount was astronomically high.Yesterday, I came across the news that a South Korean web hosting company had been infected by ransomware, but it was extremely short on details. The ransomware was Erebus; the attack occurred on Saturday and thousands of sites were reportedly infected.Today, Aju Business Daily provided more details. Nayana reportedly said 153 of its Linux servers were infected with Erebus. In turn, about 3,400 sites on the web hosting company’s servers were also infected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE, Hedvig announce hybrid cloud storage partnership

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has partnered with a software-defined storage startup to create a hybrid cloud storage platform customized for HPE servers. HPE and Hedvig, started by a former Amazon and Facebook engineer credited with creating the Cassandra database, announced that HPE will offer Hedvig’s software-defined storage with HPE’s Apollo 4200 servers to create a distributed storage platform.+ Also on Network World: Software-defined storage: Users reveal the best (and worst) features + The platform is available in 48- and 96-terabyte configurations. They are aimed at enterprises deploying private, hybrid and multi-data center clouds. Hedvig also said the combination supports private cloud storage for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and other hypervisors. The storage platform also supports hybrid cloud storage services running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE, Hedvig announce hybrid cloud storage partnership

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has partnered with a software-defined storage startup to create a hybrid cloud storage platform customized for HPE servers. HPE and Hedvig, started by a former Amazon and Facebook engineer credited with creating the Cassandra database, announced that HPE will offer Hedvig’s software-defined storage with HPE’s Apollo 4200 servers to create a distributed storage platform.+ Also on Network World: Software-defined storage: Users reveal the best (and worst) features + The platform is available in 48- and 96-terabyte configurations. They are aimed at enterprises deploying private, hybrid and multi-data center clouds. Hedvig also said the combination supports private cloud storage for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and other hypervisors. The storage platform also supports hybrid cloud storage services running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

White boxes crushing the traditional server market

It may not come as much of a surprise, but the latest numbers from International Data Corp. make it official: The server market is cratering. According to IDC, server vendor revenue plummeted 4.6 percent year over year the first quarter of 2017.The pain was widespread, IDC said, with market leader HPE seeing revenue drop 15.8 percent year over year to $2.9 billion. Number two vendor Dell was the only bright spot, notching 4.7 percent year-over-year growth to $2.4 billion (the growth may have come from Dell’s purchase of EMC’s data center business). But Cisco revenues fell 3 percent to $825 million, IBM dropped a whopping 34.7 percent to $745 million, and Lenovo tumbled 16.5 percent to $727 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

White boxes crushing the traditional server market

It may not come as much of a surprise, but the latest numbers from International Data Corp. make it official: The server market is cratering. According to IDC, server vendor revenue plummeted 4.6 percent year over year the first quarter of 2017.The pain was widespread, IDC said, with market leader HPE seeing revenue drop 15.8 percent year over year to $2.9 billion. Number two vendor Dell was the only bright spot, notching 4.7 percent year-over-year growth to $2.4 billion (the growth may have come from Dell’s purchase of EMC’s data center business). But Cisco revenues fell 3 percent to $825 million, IBM dropped a whopping 34.7 percent to $745 million, and Lenovo tumbled 16.5 percent to $727 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

32% off Horizon Zero Dawn For PlayStation 4 – Deal Alert

How have machines dominated this world, and what is their purpose? What happened to the civilization here before? Scour every corner of a realm filled with ancient relics and mysterious buildings in order to uncover your past and unearth the many secrets of a forgotten land. Horizon Zero Dawn for the PS4 is discounted 32% right now on Amazon, so you can pick it up for just $39.88. See it on Amazon here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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