Ansible data manipulation with a Filter

This year at Summit, an attendee posed a question about how to work with setting facts and changing data in Ansible. Many times we’ve come across people using task after task to manipulate data, to turn items into lists, filter our options, trying to do heavy data manipulation and to turn data from one source into another. Trying to make these programmatic changes using a mixture of YAML and Jinja inside of roles and playbooks is a headache of its own. While many of these options will work, they aren’t very efficient or easy to implement. Ansible Playbooks were never meant for programming.

One solution that is usually overlooked is to do the manipulation in Python inside of a module or a filter. This article will detail how to create a filter to manipulate data. In addition, a repository for all code referenced in this article has been created.

This example was first developed as a module. However after review, it was determined that these data transformations are best done as filters. Filters can take multiple data inputs, do the programmatic operations, and then can be used in line where they are used as input or set as a fact. Continue reading

Ansible data manipulation with a Filter

Background:

This year at Summit, an attendee posed a question about how to work with setting facts and changing data in Ansible. Many times we’ve come across people using task after task to manipulate data, to turn items into lists, filter our options, trying to do heavy data manipulation and to turn data from one source into another. Trying to make these programmatic changes using a mixture of YAML and Jinja inside of roles and playbooks is a headache of its own. While many of these options will work, they aren’t very efficient or easy to implement. Ansible Playbooks were never meant for programming.

One solution that is usually overlooked is to do the manipulation in Python inside of a module or a filter. This article will detail how to create a filter to manipulate data. In addition, a repository for all code referenced in this article has been created. 

This example was first developed as a module. However after review, it was determined that these data transformations are best done as filters. Filters can take multiple data inputs, do the programmatic operations, and then can be used in line where they are used as input or set as Continue reading

New Project: BGP Hands-On Labs

Approximately 30 years ago I managed to persuade the powers-that-be within Cisco’s European training organization that they needed a deep-dive BGP course, resulting in a 3 (later 5) day Advanced BGP Configuration and Troubleshooting (ABCT) course1. I was delivering that course for close to a decade, and gradually built a decent story explaining the reasoning and use cases behind most of (then available) BGP features, from simple EBGP sessions to BGP route reflectors and communities2.

Now imagine having more than a dozen hands-on labs that go with the “BGP from rookie to hero” story available for any platform of your choice3. I plan to make that work (eventually) as an open-source project that you’ll be able to download and run free-of-charge.

Read more …

Unleashing An Open Source Torrent On CPUs And AI Engines

When you combine the forces of open source and the wide and deep semiconductor experience of legendary chip architect Jim Keller, something interesting is bound to happen. …

The post Unleashing An Open Source Torrent On CPUs And AI Engines first appeared on The Next Platform.

Unleashing An Open Source Torrent On CPUs And AI Engines was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Day Two Cloud 205: States Of Quantum Computing With Abby Mitchell

Today's Day Two Cloud peers inside the box of quantum computing. We explore how it works, what qbits are and why they matter, the current state of quantum computing hardware, what problems could be solved with quantum computing, and how you can get involved with it via the Qiskit open-source project. Our guest is Abby Mitchell, Quantum Developer Advocate at IBM.

The post Day Two Cloud 205: States Of Quantum Computing With Abby Mitchell appeared first on Packet Pushers.

HS053: IT Facilities in 2023

The use of physical infrastructure has changed substantially in the last three years. Data centres are scaling down, offices and branches are being re-considered. One view is that offices are ‘playgrounds’ where white collar workers gather to chat, socialise, drink free coffee and have face-to-face for one or two days a week. An opposing view is that its legacy way of working but it will take time for people to adapt to remote work. 

HS053 IT Facilities in 2023

The use of physical infrastructure has changed substantially in the last three years. Data centres are scaling down, offices and branches are being re-considered. One view is that offices are ‘playgrounds’ where white collar workers gather to chat, socialise, drink free coffee and have face-to-face for one or two days a week. An opposing view is that its legacy way of working but it will take time for people to adapt to remote work. 

The post HS053 IT Facilities in 2023 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Hardening Workers KV

Hardening Workers KV
Hardening Workers KV

Over the last couple of months, Workers KV has suffered from a series of incidents, culminating in three back-to-back incidents during the week of July 17th, 2023. These incidents have directly impacted customers that rely on KV — and this isn’t good enough.

We’re going to share the work we have done to understand why KV has had such a spate of incidents and, more importantly, share in depth what we’re doing to dramatically improve how we deploy changes to KV going forward.

Workers KV?

Workers KV — or just “KV” — is a key-value service for storing data: specifically, data with high read throughput requirements. It’s especially useful for user configuration, service routing, small assets and/or authentication data.

We use KV extensively inside Cloudflare too, with Cloudflare Access (part of our Zero Trust suite) and Cloudflare Pages being some of our highest profile internal customers. Both teams benefit from KV’s ability to keep regularly accessed key-value pairs close to where they’re accessed, as well its ability to scale out horizontally without any need to become an expert in operating KV.

Given Cloudflare’s extensive use of KV, it wasn’t just external customers impacted. Our own internal teams felt the pain Continue reading

Cloudflare Workers database integration with Upstash

Cloudflare Workers database integration with Upstash
Cloudflare Workers database integration with Upstash

During Developer Week we announced Database Integrations on Workers  a new and seamless way to connect with some of the most popular databases. You select the provider, authorize through an OAuth2 flow and automatically get the right configuration stored as encrypted environment variables to your Worker.

Today we are thrilled to announce that we have been working with Upstash to expand our integrations catalog. We are now offering three new integrations: Upstash Redis, Upstash Kafka and Upstash QStash. These integrations allow our customers to unlock new capabilities on Workers. Providing them with a broader range of options to meet their specific requirements.

Add the integration

We are going to show the setup process using the Upstash Redis integration.

Select your Worker, go to the Settings tab, select the Integrations tab to see all the available integrations.

Cloudflare Workers database integration with Upstash

After selecting the Upstash Redis integration we will get the following page.

Cloudflare Workers database integration with Upstash

First, you need to review and grant permissions, so the Integration can add secrets to your Worker. Second, we need to connect to Upstash using the OAuth2 flow. Third, select the Redis database we want to use. Then, the Integration will fetch the right information to generate the credentials. Finally, click “Add Continue reading

Schneider and Compass partner to streamline modular data center deployments

Schneider Electric and Compass Datacenters have announced a partnership that's aimed at expanding the two companies' production capabilities for modular data centers. They're building a 110,000 square-foot facility where they'll integrate Schneider’s power management equipment with Compass’s prefabricated data center modules in an effort to speed deployments across the US.It’s an ideal match. Schneider makes the infrastructure that runs data centers, such as power generators and HVAC systems, and Compass designs and builds data centers for hyperscalars and cloud service providers worldwide. Compass builds standard-design data centers as well as the newer modular type, which is gaining in popularity.To read this article in full, please click here

Schneider and Compass partner to streamline modular data center deployments

Schneider Electric and Compass Datacenters have announced a partnership that's aimed at expanding the two companies' production capabilities for modular data centers. They're building a 110,000 square-foot facility where they'll integrate Schneider’s power management equipment with Compass’s prefabricated data center modules in an effort to speed deployments across the US.It’s an ideal match. Schneider makes the infrastructure that runs data centers, such as power generators and HVAC systems, and Compass designs and builds data centers for hyperscalars and cloud service providers worldwide. Compass builds standard-design data centers as well as the newer modular type, which is gaining in popularity.To read this article in full, please click here

Moving tasks from foreground to background and back again

When working on the Linux command line, you can start a task, move it to the background, and, when you’re ready to reverse the process, bring it back to the foreground. When you run a command or script in the foreground, it occupies your time on the command line – until it’s finished. When you need to do something else while still allowing that first task to complete, you can move it to the background where it will continue processing and spend your time working on something else.The easiest way to do this is by typing ^z (hold the Ctrl key and press “z”) after starting the process. This stops the process. Then type “bg” to move it to the background. The jobs command will show you that it is still running.To read this article in full, please click here

Moving tasks from foreground to background and back again

When working on the Linux command line, you can start a task, move it to the background, and, when you’re ready to reverse the process, bring it back to the foreground. When you run a command or script in the foreground, it occupies your time on the command line – until it’s finished. When you need to do something else while still allowing that first task to complete, you can move it to the background where it will continue processing and spend your time working on something else.The easiest way to do this is by typing ^z (hold the Ctrl key and press “z”) after starting the process. This stops the process. Then type “bg” to move it to the background. The jobs command will show you that it is still running.To read this article in full, please click here

C. Part 00. How I have appeared here after many years in Python?

Hello my friend,

It has been a long, very long break in posting. In fact, it was almost for half a year, which are not proud of in any capacity. However, this was needed to allow my to accomplish a few things in my own study and get back even more loaded, so that I can share more useful information and insights about networking, computing, software development and IT in general.

So, Have You Stopped Doing Automation?

We have absolutely not. In fact, developing software for distributes systems, which requires network connectivity between their components, I see how critical is to have the entire IT infrastructure (including networking) to have done right. By “done right” I mean the IT/network infrastructure, which is stable, predictable and deterministic. And in the fast pace environment, where you scale your infrastructure quick up and down (we are not talking about Kubernetes here), the network automation is the only way to achieve this level of precision and sustainability. So, my dudes, network automation is THE ONLY way how the network can be operated in now and in future. Your software development/business teams will be happy if you do things in your network automated way, I Continue reading

Changing Diapers, Not Lives

When was the last time you heard a product pitch that included words like paradigm shift or disruptive or even game changing? Odds are good that covers the majority of them. Marketing teams love to sell people on the idea of radically shifting the way that they do something or revolutionizing an industry. How often do you feel that companies make something that accomplishes the goal of their marketing hype? Once a year? Once a decade? Of the things that really have changed the world, did they do it with a big splash? Or was it more of a gradual change?

Repetition and Routine

When children are small they are practically helpless. They need to be fed and held and have their diapers changed. Until they are old enough to move and have the motor functions to feed themselves they require constant care. In fact, potty training is usually one of the last things on that list above. Kids can feed themselves and walk places and still be wearing diapers. It’s just one of those things that we do as parents.

Yet, changing diapers represents a task that we usually have no issue with. Sure it’s not the most glamorous Continue reading

Flight to cloud drives IaaS networking adoption

As data, applications, and workloads continue to move to the cloud, demand for IaaS networking is surging. The market for cloud-based IaaS networking will reach $19.4 billion in total global revenues this year, according to IDC, with a compound annual growth rate of 28% projected through 2026.Increasing cloud-native application architectures, distributed workloads, and their respective integration needs are the biggest drivers of IaaS cloud networking adoption, says IDC analyst Taranvir Singh."Traditional network architectures, transports and operational models are no longer able to meet the growing requirements and objectives of enterprises’ modern networking needs," he says. "Networks need to be aligned with cloud principles."To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco buys Internet BGP monitoring firm Code BGP

Aiming to bolster its assessment of Internet traffic health, Cisco has acquired Code BGP, a privately held BGP monitoring startup, for an undisclosed amount.Code BGP will slide into Cisco’s ThousandEyes network intelligence product portfolio and bring a cloud-based platform that, among other features, maintains an inventory of IP address prefixes, peerings and outbound policies of an organization via configured sources, like BGP feeds. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) tells Internet traffic what route to take, and the BGP best-path selection algorithm determines the optimal routes to use for traffic forwarding.Then, the system lets customers see and interact with this inventory in real-time through an open API and bring real-time detection of BGP hijacking, route leaks, and other BGP issues according to the company. Adding such capabilities will let ThousandEyes further expand its BGP monitoring and incident analysis capabilities to maintain health of the Internet as well as key applications and services, according to Joe Vaccaro vice president of products for Cisco’s ThousandEyes in a blog about the acquisition. To read this article in full, please click here

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