Cisco fortifies storage throughput, analytics

Cisco this week took the wraps off several products aimed at helping existing Fibre Channel customers grow the speed, capacity and management of their storage environments.In particular, Cisco rolled out a 32Gb Fibre Channel module for its MDS 9700 storage switch family with baked-in storage networking analytics, a 32Gb Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter for the rack-mounted Cisco UCS C-Series server, as well as non-volatile memory express (NVMe) over FC support for flash memory appliances.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple is developing its own power management chips, says analyst

It appears that Apple is developing its own power management chips, according to a report from German private bank Bankhaus Lampe. The release of the report Tuesday led to a sharp drop in the shares of Dialog Semiconductor, the current supplier of these chips to the iPhone maker.“The teams of both companies collaborate very closely and thus, Dialog cannot be replaced by a third-party supplier. However, Apple itself could replace Dialog,” wrote analyst Karsten Iltgen.As evidence, the report cited 16 different job openings on Apple’s website for analog/power management engineers for the design center in Munich alone.“A search on social networks such as LinkedIn revealed that Apple has already poached about 20 chip designers, some of them with long-standing experience, from Dialog,” said the report, which estimates that about 40 power-management chip engineers are currently working at the design center in Munich, with a similar number working in the area at the center in California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inside look at Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s next-generation infrastructure

In the 18 months since the company split from its sister consumer business, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been in an almost constant state of refining its strategy.The company backed out of the public cloud market; sold off its Enterprise Services Business to competitor CSC for $8.5 billion; dealt other “non-core” assets to Micro Focus in an $8.8 billion deal; and dumped its OpenStack and Cloud Foundry development efforts off to Suse. HPE also bought all-flash storage vendor Nimble storage for $1 billion last month and snapped up hyperconverged infrastructure vendor Simplivity for another $650 million in January.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inside look at Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s next-generation infrastructure

In the 18 months since the company split from its sister consumer business, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been in an almost constant state of refining its strategy.The company backed out of the public cloud market; sold off its Enterprise Services Business to competitor CSC for $8.5 billion; dealt other “non-core” assets to Micro Focus in an $8.8 billion deal; and dumped its OpenStack and Cloud Foundry development efforts off to Suse. HPE also bought all-flash storage vendor Nimble storage for $1 billion last month and snapped up hyperconverged infrastructure vendor Simplivity for another $650 million in January.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inside look at Hewlett Packard’s next-generation infrastructure

In the 18 months since the company split from its sister consumer business, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been in an almost constant state of refining its strategy.The company backed out of the public cloud market; sold off its Enterprise Services Business to competitor CSC for $8.5 billion; dealt other “non-core” assets to Micro Focus in an $8.8 billion deal; and dumped its OpenStack and Cloud Foundry development efforts off to Suse. HPE also bought all-flash storage vendor Nimble storage for $1 billion last year and snapped up hyperconverged infrastructure vendor Simplivity for another $650 million in January.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What it takes to become a security systems administrator

download What it takes to become a security systems administrator CSO To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Managing the Cloud Network: CPM or APM?

We all know the future of enterprises is in flux with the consolidation or demise of Avaya/Nortel, Brocade/Foundry, Force 10, H3C and BNT assets. This speaks to the major trend of enterprise applications migrating to the cloud, any cloud be it public, private or hybrid. As this rapid transition prevails with efficiencies and scale, traditional applications and... Read more →

Data centers decline as users turn to rented servers

Data centers are declining worldwide both in numbers and square footage, according to IDC -- a remarkable change for an industry that has seen booming growth for many years.Users are consolidating data centers and increasingly renting server power. These two trends are having a major impact on data center space.[ Further reading: The march toward exascale computers ] The number of data centers worldwide peaked at 8.55 million in 2015, according to IDC. That figure began declining last year, and is expected to drop to an expected 8.4 million this year. By 2021, the research firm expects there to be 7.2 million data centers globally, more than 15% fewer than in 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data centers decline as users turn to rented servers

Data centers are declining worldwide both in numbers and square footage, according to IDC -- a remarkable change for an industry that has seen booming growth for many years.Users are consolidating data centers and increasingly renting server power. These two trends are having a major impact on data center space.[ Further reading: The march toward exascale computers ] The number of data centers worldwide peaked at 8.55 million in 2015, according to IDC. That figure began declining last year, and is expected to drop to an expected 8.4 million this year. By 2021, the research firm expects there to be 7.2 million data centers globally, more than 15% fewer than in 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Software-Defined Data Center: How to Get Started

Risk or Reward: First Nvidia DGX-1 Boxes Hit the Cloud

If you can’t beat the largest cloud players at economies of scale, the only option is to try to outrun them in performance, capabilities, or price.

While go head to head with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or IBM on cloud infrastructure prices is a challenge, one way to gain an edge is by being the first to deliver bleeding-edge hardware to those users with emerging, high-value workloads. The trick is to be at the front of the wave, often with some of the most expensive iron, which is risky with AWS and others nipping at heels and quick to follow. It …

Risk or Reward: First Nvidia DGX-1 Boxes Hit the Cloud was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Firewall Reviews From the Frontlines

IDG Contributor Network: DevOps—The path to sustainable competitive advantages

A fundamental shift is happening in software development, and the way applications are built and brought to market is changing rapidly. As IT infrastructure has moved to the cloud and the age of the customer has made digital experiences pivotal in creating competitive advantages, DevOps has emerged. IT has refocused from managing servers to supporting lines of business managers and developers in their quest to provide integrated experiences across devices and touchpoints.+ Also on Network World: How DevOps can redefine your IT strategy + This shift can be compared to Henry Ford's innovation of the assembly line. Ford was able to set up a process that could produce more reliable cars faster and at lower costs. Similarly, the future of digital experiences belongs to the companies that can standardize and optimize their app delivery process. Companies that are able to align DevOps stratigeis and tools to deliver digital experiences faster and better than their competition have an advantage that will be difficult to replicate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: When phone systems attack

A telephony denial of service (TDoS) attack is a specific type of DDoS attack that originates from or is directed towards a telephone system with the intent of bringing down the targeted system. These attacks commonly focus on commercial businesses and may often include ransomware requests. In reality, these attacks can affect anyone, including our nation’s 911 infrastructure, because even it is not isolated from or immune from these types of attacks. And based on its mission, in many ways, it is more fragile.Unintentional TDoS attack Just last year, 911 centers across the country, including a site in Phoenix, Arizona, were the targets of allegedly unintentional 911 TDoS attacks when some malicious JavaScript code was published on a web page. The code, once loaded on a smartphone browser, would cause some devices to automatically dial 911 repeatedly without user intervention and without the user’s knowledge. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: When phone systems attack

A telephony denial of service (TDoS) attack is a specific type of DDoS attack that originates from or is directed towards a telephone system with the intent of bringing down the targeted system. These attacks commonly focus on commercial businesses and may often include ransomware requests. In reality, these attacks can affect anyone, including our nation’s 911 infrastructure, because even it is not isolated from or immune from these types of attacks. And based on its mission, in many ways, it is more fragile.Unintentional TDoS attack Just last year, 911 centers across the country, including a site in Phoenix, Arizona, were the targets of allegedly unintentional 911 TDoS attacks when some malicious JavaScript code was published on a web page. The code, once loaded on a smartphone browser, would cause some devices to automatically dial 911 repeatedly without user intervention and without the user’s knowledge. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How we made our DNS stack 3x faster

Cloudflare is now well into its 6th year and providing authoritative DNS has been a core part of infrastructure from the start. We’ve since grown to be the largest and one of the fastest managed DNS services on the Internet, hosting DNS for nearly 100,000 of the Alexa top 1M sites and over 6 million other web properties – or DNS zones.

CC-BY 2.0 image by Steve Jurvetson

Today Cloudflare’s DNS service answers around 1 million queries per second – not including attack traffic – via a global anycast network. Naturally as a growing startup, the technology we used to handle tens or hundreds of thousands of zones a few years ago became outdated over time, and couldn't keep up with the millions we have today. Last year we decided to replace two core elements of our DNS infrastructure: the part of our DNS server that answers authoritative queries and the data pipeline which takes changes made by our customers to DNS records and distributes them to our edge machines across the globe.

The rough architecture of the system can be seen above. We store customer DNS records and other origin server information in a central database, convert the Continue reading

NETCONF Agent(s) on Cisco IOS XE 16.x

Evgeny made an interesting observation while testing the NETCONF client on IOS XE 16.x (see also this comment on my blog):

The most interesting part: for unknown reason IOS-XE gives different answers about capabilities on ports 830 and 22.

Einar quickly explained the mysterious behavior:

Network Notes: OSI Reference

Hell has nine layers .... so does the OSI model. I know, I know, you have been taught that the OSI model has seven layers. See the illustration below for the proof. continue reading

Tech Timeline: The iPad first goes on sale

The iPad made it possible to leave your laptop at home and still stay productive. You could write emails, watch movies, and surf the web all through a 9.7-inch touch screen display. It wasn't the first tablet, but it was one of the most popular. Apple sold 300,000 units on the first day and that hit a million in the first month. The cheapest model started at $499 and came with 16 GB of memory. Yikes! To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech Timeline: The iPad first goes on sale

The iPad made it possible to leave your laptop at home and still stay productive. You could write emails, watch movies, and surf the web all through a 9.7-inch touch screen display. It wasn't the first tablet, but it was one of the most popular. Apple sold 300,000 units on the first day and that hit a million in the first month. The cheapest model started at $499 and came with 16 GB of memory. Yikes! To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here