Culling The Community

exclusion

By now, you may have seen some bit of drama in the VMUG community around the apparent policy change that disqualified some VMUG leaders based on their employer. Eric Shanks (@Eric_Shanks) did a great job of covering it on his blog as did Matt Crape (@MattThatITGuy)with his post. While the VMUG situation has its own unique aspects, the question for me boils down to something simple: How do you remove people from an external community?

Babies And Bathwater

Removing unauthorized people from a community is nothing new under the sun. I was a Cisco Champion once upon a time. During the program’s second year I participated in briefings and events with the rest of the group, including my good friend Amy Arnold (@AmyEngineer). When the time came to reapply to the program for Year 3, I declined to apply again for my own reasons. Amy, however, was told that she couldn’t reapply. She and several other folks in the program were being disqualified for “reasons”. It actually took us a while to figure out why, and the answer still wasn’t 100% clear. To this day the best we can figure out is that Continue reading

Containers will be a $2.6B market by 2020, research firm says

The market for containers – which are used by developers to package applications – is “exploding” with a slew of startups looking to compete with legacy vendors who are increasingly prioritizing the technology.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Greenpeace’s naughty and nice list of the most – and least – green tech vendors | Oops, this Redditor accidentally deleted his Microsoft Azure DNS +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Introduction to VPN (Virtual Private Network)

Introduction to VPN (Virtual Private Network) Let’s start with the definition. VPN is a logical network and created over shared physical infrastructure. Shared infrastructure can be private such as MPLS VPN of a Service Provider or over the Public infrastructure such as Internet. There are many concepts to understand VPN in detail but in this […]

The post Introduction to VPN (Virtual Private Network) appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Review: PocketCHIP—Super cheap Linux terminal that fits in your pocket

Portable, pocket-sized computer. Runs Linux. Has a good battery life. Bonus points for a physical keyboard, and full-size USB port. Double bonus points for being cheap. That’s sort of my ideal “carry with me” device. If I can have a Linux device, with a proper shell that I can work entirely from, I’m a happy camper. Over the past few years I’ve been able to hobble together a few devices to accomplish this Utopian goal—more or less. At one point, I hobbled together a makeshift Raspberry Pi case (with a screen that I powered with an external USB power supply) using a whole lot of electrical tape. That was great except the “case” was just—well—tape. And I couldn’t find a tiny physical keyboard that fit with the size of it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

InfraKit Under the Hood: High Availability

Back in October, Docker released Infrakit, an open source toolkit for creating and managing declarative, self-healing infrastructure. This is the first in a two part series that dives more deeply into the internals of InfraKit.

Introduction

At Docker,  our mission to build tools of mass innovation constantly challenges to look at ways to improve the way developers and operators work. Docker Engine with integrated orchestration via Swarm mode have greatly simplified and improved efficiency in application deployment and management of microservices. Going a level deeper, we asked ourselves if we could improve the lives of operators by making tools to simplify and automate orchestration of infrastructure resources. This led us to open source InfraKit, as set of building blocks for creating self-healing and self-managing systems.

Infrakit

There are articles and tutorials (such as this, and this) to help you get acquainted with InfraKit. InfraKit is made up of a set of components which actively manage infrastructure resources based on a declarative specification. These active agents continuously monitor and reconcile differences between your specification and actual infrastructure state. So far, we have implemented the functionality of scaling groups to support the creation of a compute cluster or Continue reading

Microsoft launches StaffHub to connect deskless workers

Microsoft is taking another step toward serving workers who aren't at computers all day with a new Office 365 service launched Thursday. StaffHub, which is part of the company's enterprise productivity offering, allows managers to set schedules for deskless workers like retail employees and service technicians.The service is designed to let managers set schedules for and distribute company resources to employees through a simple interface. Employees can use the service to swap shifts with one another and chat, too.The new offering is part of Microsoft's push to expand usage of Office 365. While the cloud productivity service has had a strong following among knowledge workers, it has traditionally held less utility for people who aren't editing Word documents and sending emails through Outlook all day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Let’s encrypt with DANE

If you looked at the realm of security, and X.509 certificate-based secure systems, we appear to be in the worst of all worlds: it can be expensive, inherently compromisable and slow to set up and access. So somehow, we’ve managed to achieve “Security: Poor, Slow and Expensive!”. However, this environment is changing, and it may no longer be the case. In this post, I’d like to walk through the process of setting up good, inexpensive and accessible security using several public tools. —APNIC

The post Worth Reading: Let’s encrypt with DANE appeared first on 'net work.

Rudy Giuliani to coordinate regular cybersecurity meetings between Trump, tech leaders

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says Donald Trump has tapped him to gather top cybersecurity leaders to meet with the administration regularly to share “all the information available in the private sector” with the goal of improving national cyber defenses “because we’re so far behind.” “The president elect-decided he wanted to bring in on a regular basis the people in the private sector, the corporate leaders in particular and thought leaders in the private sector who are working on security for cyber because we’re so far behind,” Giuliani said on Fox and Friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rudy Giuliani to coordinate regular cybersecurity meetings between Trump, tech leaders

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says Donald Trump has tapped him to gather top cybersecurity leaders to meet with the administration regularly to share “all the information available in the private sector” with the goal of improving national cyber defenses “because we’re so far behind.”“The president elect-decided he wanted to bring in on a regular basis the people in the private sector, the corporate leaders in particular and thought leaders in the private sector who are working on security for cyber because we’re so far behind,” Giuliani said on Fox and Friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons for corporate IT from Geek Squad legal case

The life of the corporate desktop team can turn into a legal nightmare quickly if end users haven’t agreed that it’s OK for techs to search their machines, something that has come to light in a California child pornography case involving Best Buy’s Geek Squad.In that case, Geeks working on a customer laptop found a pornographic picture and turned it over to the FBI, which paid them $500 and prosecuted the owner of the machine.Now the Geeks in question are in hot water because the arrangement with the FBI violates the corporate policies of Best Buy, which runs Geek Squad.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons for corporate IT from Geek Squad legal case

The life of the corporate desktop team can turn into a legal nightmare quickly if end users haven’t agreed that it’s OK for techs to search their machines, something that has come to light in a California child pornography case involving Best Buy’s Geek Squad.In that case, Geeks working on a customer laptop found a pornographic picture and turned it over to the FBI, which paid them $500 and prosecuted the owner of the machine.Now the Geeks in question are in hot water because the arrangement with the FBI violates the corporate policies of Best Buy, which runs Geek Squad.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

43% off Microsoft Wireless Desktop 900 Keyboard and Mouse Bundle – Deal Alert

The Wireless Desktop 900 keyboard from Microsoft has quiet-touch keys and customizable buttons for access to the Windows features you use most. The full-size ambidextrous mouse provides comfortable, precise navigation. The Wireless Desktop 900 also includes Advanced Encryption Standard to help protect your information by encrypting your keystrokes. Both the keyboard and the mouse have an average battery life of 2-years. The typical list price of $50 has been reduced to $28.28, making this a good deal on Amazon where it averages 4.5 out of 5 stars (read recent reviews) from over 140 reviewers.  See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

43% off Microsoft Wireless Desktop 900 Keyboard and Mouse Bundle – Deal Alert

The Wireless Desktop 900 keyboard from Microsoft has quiet-touch keys and customizable buttons for access to the Windows features you use most. The full-size ambidextrous mouse provides comfortable, precise navigation. The Wireless Desktop 900 also includes Advanced Encryption Standard to help protect your information by encrypting your keystrokes. Both the keyboard and the mouse have an average battery life of 2-years. The typical list price of $50 has been reduced to $28.28, making this a good deal on Amazon where it averages 4.5 out of 5 stars (read recent reviews) from over 140 reviewers.  See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Death to the hybrid WAN

All too often SD-WAN and hybrid WAN are used interchangeably—mistakenly. SD-WANs extend software-defined networking (SDN) technologies to the WAN. As with SDNs, SD-WANs build an “overlay” or a virtual abstraction of the underlying physical network that can then be reconfigured and optimized for the applications traveling across the overlay. It’s this property that allows SD-WANs to give one application a hub-and-spoke WAN configuration, while another application a meshed WAN configuration each with their own IP addressing spaces, traffic policies and more. Hybrid WANs combine a mix of data services to interconnect geographically dispersed locations. A network that combines MPLS and carrier Ethernet services is a hybrid WAN, so too is a WAN that combines 4G and MPLS. When you have some sites connected via MPLS and others via IP VPNs, this too was a hybrid WAN. When you have sites connected to an MPLS backbone with a secondary Internet connection, you also have a hybrid WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Death to the hybrid WAN

All too often SD-WAN and hybrid WAN are used interchangeably—mistakenly. SD-WANs extend software-defined networking (SDN) technologies to the WAN. As with SDNs, SD-WANs build an “overlay” or a virtual abstraction of the underlying physical network that can then be reconfigured and optimized for the applications traveling across the overlay. It’s this property that allows SD-WANs to give one application a hub-and-spoke WAN configuration, while another application a meshed WAN configuration each with their own IP addressing spaces, traffic policies and more. Hybrid WANs combine a mix of data services to interconnect geographically dispersed locations. A network that combines MPLS and carrier Ethernet services is a hybrid WAN, so too is a WAN that combines 4G and MPLS. When you have some sites connected via MPLS and others via IP VPNs, this too was a hybrid WAN. When you have sites connected to an MPLS backbone with a secondary Internet connection, you also have a hybrid WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rated insecurity: Faux Cat 6 cable sold on Amazon

Many of you are on Wi-Fi, but this is salient to you. Amazon’s enormous sales site is marketing Cat 5 and Cat 6 Ethernet cable with aluminum conductors, as well as “plenum-rated” cable that bears no UL markings and is likely fraudulent. This comes after a run of apparently bogus Apple chargers and cables. Why do you care? Several reasons:  Some of the Ethernet cable sold uses either copper-coated or copper-mixed aluminum. Numerous specs call for the conductors to be solid copper. Why? Copper meets conductivity specs and won’t heat up under load. Organizations using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to power remote Wi-Fi access points (quite common these days) risk having the cable catch fire due to overheating, or just melt and short—especially on long cable runs. Plenum-rated cables are self-extinguishing. This means if you put a nail through one (we hope accidentally), then a jacket surrounding the cable prevents setting something in the surrounding area on fire. If you add the two factors together, cable that heats up and jackets that don’t extinguish a possible flame, then the sprinklers turn on. We hope.  Whilst perusing the listings, I came across numerous enticing examples. Why enticing? Because their cost Continue reading

Rated insecurity: Faux Cat 6 cable sold on Amazon

Many of you are on Wi-Fi, but this is salient to you. Amazon’s enormous sales site is marketing Cat 5 and Cat 6 Ethernet cable with aluminum conductors, as well as “plenum-rated” cable that bears no UL markings and is likely fraudulent. This comes after a run of apparently bogus Apple chargers and cables. Why do you care? Several reasons:  Some of the Ethernet cable sold uses either copper-coated or copper-mixed aluminum. Numerous specs call for the conductors to be solid copper. Why? Copper meets conductivity specs and won’t heat up under load. Organizations using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to power remote Wi-Fi access points (quite common these days) risk having the cable catch fire due to overheating, or just melt and short—especially on long cable runs. Plenum-rated cables are self-extinguishing. This means if you put a nail through one (we hope accidentally), then a jacket surrounding the cable prevents setting something in the surrounding area on fire. If you add the two factors together, cable that heats up and jackets that don’t extinguish a possible flame, then the sprinklers turn on. We hope.  Whilst perusing the listings, I came across numerous enticing examples. Why enticing? Because their cost Continue reading

Rated insecurity: Faux Cat 6 cable sold on Amazon

Many of you are on Wi-Fi, but this is salient to you. Amazon’s enormous sales site is marketing Cat 5 and Cat 6 Ethernet cable with aluminum conductors, as well as “plenum-rated” cable that bears no UL markings and is likely fraudulent. This comes after a run of apparently bogus Apple chargers and cables. Why do you care? Several reasons:  Some of the Ethernet cable sold uses either copper-coated or copper-mixed aluminum. Numerous specs call for the conductors to be solid copper. Why? Copper meets conductivity specs and won’t heat up under load. Organizations using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to power remote Wi-Fi access points (quite common these days) risk having the cable catch fire due to overheating, or just melt and short—especially on long cable runs. Plenum-rated cables are self-extinguishing. This means if you put a nail through one (we hope accidentally), then a jacket surrounding the cable prevents setting something in the surrounding area on fire. If you add the two factors together, cable that heats up and jackets that don’t extinguish a possible flame, then the sprinklers turn on. We hope.  Whilst perusing the listings, I came across numerous enticing examples. Why enticing? Because their cost Continue reading

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