How to use the new Constructed Inventory Feature in Ansible Automation Platform 2.4

The New Constructed Inventory Feature

In this blog we introduced the idea for a new smarter way of handling inventory based on the Ansible constructed plugin. Now in Ansible Automation Platform 2.4, we have introduced this as a fully supported feature and this blog aims to introduce you to it! 

Constructed inventory is the successor to the existing Smart Inventory feature, and  is now presented as another choice when creating an Inventory in Ansible Automation Platform controller. This will take a list of ‘normal’ inventories as input, perform user-defined operations, filter, and produce a resultant inventory with content from the input inventories.

 

What is Constructed Inventory?

The function is similar to the existing smart inventory - in that it allows users to run jobs against hosts in multiple inventories. 

Constructed inventory however introduces new capabilities, including the built in ability to define and use both hostvars and groupvars:

  • Groups are present in constructed inventory and play a key role in its configuration.
  • User-defined logic (to add groups, vars, and down-select hosts) is run via ansible-inventory, which controller does for you, and is shown in the UI through an inventory update.
  • The format of user-defined logic Continue reading

AI requirements exceed infrastructure capabilities for many IT teams, study finds

As adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology accelerates, IT organizations are concerned that their existing infrastructure isn’t powerful enough to keep up.AI hardware – especially training hardware – is becoming more and more power hungry, according to Equinix, which just released its 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey.The power draw from traditional racks in a data center is between 5 kW and 10 kW per rack. But, increasingly, newer generations of GPU-based racks are pushing power draws north of 30 kW per rack, and in some cases as high as 72 kW per rack, according to Kaladhar Voruganti, senior technologist at Equinix. “So, definitely, it's very hard to host this type of infrastructure in private data centers,” he said.To read this article in full, please click here

AI requirements exceed infrastructure capabilities for many IT teams, study finds

As adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology accelerates, IT organizations are concerned that their existing infrastructure isn’t powerful enough to keep up.AI hardware – especially training hardware – is becoming more and more power hungry, according to Equinix, which just released its 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey.The power draw from traditional racks in a data center is between 5 kW and 10 kW per rack. But, increasingly, newer generations of GPU-based racks are pushing power draws north of 30 kW per rack, and in some cases as high as 72 kW per rack, according to Kaladhar Voruganti, senior technologist at Equinix. “So, definitely, it's very hard to host this type of infrastructure in private data centers,” he said.To read this article in full, please click here

Recovery options: Copy-on write vs redirect-on-write snapshots

Snapshots are a very popular way to create virtual copies of an entire system in order to facilitate very quick (or even instant) recovery.  A properly designed snapshot-based recovery system can recover very large volumes in just minutes and can often do so to a point in time just minutes ago. In contrast, a typical restore of such size would likely take many hours and would typically lose at least a day’s worth of data.There are two distinct approaches when it comes to creating snapshots: copy-on-write and redirect-on-write. Let’s talk about the advantages and disadvantages associated with each method, as they will greatly determine the impact on system performance, and therefore your ability to keep snapshots for a long time.To read this article in full, please click here

Day Two Cloud 200: Coaching For Accidental (And On-Purpose) Managers

Going from a tech role to manager is more than just a new gig---it's a full-blown career change. On today's Day Two Cloud we talk with management coach Steve Dwire about a manager's primary responsibilities, what new managers usually get wrong, management education vs. experience, and how to get better at the job. This episode goes places we didn't expect, so come along for the ride.

Day Two Cloud 200: Coaching For Accidental (And On-Purpose) Managers

Going from a tech role to manager is more than just a new gig---it's a full-blown career change. On today's Day Two Cloud we talk with management coach Steve Dwire about a manager's primary responsibilities, what new managers usually get wrong, management education vs. experience, and how to get better at the job. This episode goes places we didn't expect, so come along for the ride.

The post Day Two Cloud 200: Coaching For Accidental (And On-Purpose) Managers appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Leveraging Calico flow logs for enhanced observability

In my previous blog post, I discussed how transitioning from legacy monolithic applications to microservices based applications running on Kubernetes brings a range of benefits, but that it also increases the application’s attack surface. I zoomed in on creating security policies to harden the distributed microservice application, but another key challenge this transition brings is observing and monitoring the workload communication and known and unknown security gaps.

In a more traditional application architecture, traffic will flow between tiers of an application and will usually traverse a firewall, and at that point, can be observed and actioned. In Kubernetes, the network architecture is much flatter, and thus creates a challenge for the more traditional means of observing flows in the cluster.

However since Calico is able to secure workloads on this flat network, it also means it can observe these traffic flows, too. In fact, Calico can report far more data about these flows over what a traditional 5-tuple firewall would, allowing DevOps and Security teams to make more informed decisions to effectively secure their applications.

Calico’s 52 data types

Traditional firewalls will report on five data types, or tuples, of a flow. Namely:

  1. The source IP address
  2. The destination Continue reading

Finding files on Linux in all sorts of ways

The Linux find command can locate files based on almost any criteria that you might need. This post describes the many criteria you can use to find what you’re looking for – even when you can’t remember what you named a file or when you last changed it or added content.Basic find syntax The basic syntax for the find command looks like this:$ find [starting location] [criteria] [options] [action to take] The starting location can be a directory name (e.g., /var/log), the current directory (.), your home directory whether you’re sitting in it or not (~), or a directory relative to your current position (e.g., ./bin). You can be as specific as you want when entering the starting location.To read this article in full, please click here

Finding files on Linux in all sorts of ways

The Linux find command can locate files based on almost any criteria that you might need. This post describes the many criteria you can use to find what you’re looking for – even when you can’t remember what you named a file or when you last changed it or added content.Basic find syntax The basic syntax for the find command looks like this:$ find [starting location] [criteria] [options] [action to take] The starting location can be a directory name (e.g., /var/log), the current directory (.), your home directory whether you’re sitting in it or not (~), or a directory relative to your current position (e.g., ./bin). You can be as specific as you want when entering the starting location.To read this article in full, please click here

US weighs further restrictions on chip exports to China

US semiconductor manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD will face new controls on exports of their chips to China, with the US Department of Commerce set to announce the restrictions as early as July, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.In 2022, after the US placed new restrictions on exports to China of chips used in AI systems, Nvidia said it would offer a new export-compliant advanced A800 chip to the country, in addition to making changes to its H100 so that it would also comply with the changes to regulations.However, new restrictions could see sales of A800 chips to China banned unless Nvidia obtains a special US export license, according to the Wall Street report, citing people familiar with the situation.To read this article in full, please click here

HS050: The Tech Job Debacle

Google, Microsoft, Twitter, META/FB and a few others laid off an estimated 200,000 tech and tech-adjacent folks in recent weeks. Other companies like Fedex and Amazon have made layoffs, many impacting the IT teams. What does that mean for the tech industry? Between AI and our corporate overlords are we all lucky to be employed, and should we go back to working 80 hour in-office weeks? 

HS050 The Tech Job Debacle

Google, Microsoft, Twitter, META/FB and a few others laid off an estimated 200,000 tech and tech-adjacent folks in recent weeks. Other companies like Fedex and Amazon have made layoffs, many impacting the IT teams. What does that mean for the tech industry? Between AI and our corporate overlords are we all lucky to be employed, and should we go back to working 80 hour in-office weeks? 

The post HS050 The Tech Job Debacle appeared first on Packet Pushers.

BrandPost: Enable workplace transformation with SASE in four use cases

By: Gabriel Gomane, Sr Product Marketing Manager, HPE Aruba Networking.The advent of digital transformation has brought about a complete overhaul in the workplace and revolutionized the way we access applications. This transformation can be attributed to four pivotal factors: the emergence of hybrid working, the migration of business applications to the cloud, the rapid proliferation of IoT devices, and the growing concerns surrounding cybersecurity risks.To enable this transformation, organizations can deploy SASE and tailor their SASE journey to align with their specific security and business goals. They can start their SASE journey by securing remote workers with ZTNA or they can begin by addressing application performance issues in branches with SD-WAN. There are no right or wrong choices, but it’s rather a matter of prioritizing specific use cases.To read this article in full, please click here

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