What can you get in a $99 laptop this holiday season?

If you're looking for dirt-cheap Windows 10 laptops, many will be available this holiday season, but don't expect superior hardware.Dell appears to be the first major PC maker making a move in the holiday price wars. In the U.S., the company will sell its Inspiron 11 3000 for $99.99, starting at 6:00 p.m. ET on Nov. 24. It'll be available in limited quantities, and the price will go back up to $199.99 after the sale period ends.The Inspiron 11 3000 has an Intel Celeron processor, Windows 10 Home, 2GB memory and 32GB storage. It also has an 11.6-inch 720p display, which is being phased out of laptops.The Dell laptop won't be able to store many large data or video files, so it could be used for basic computing and web-based tasks. It is configured much like a Chromebook, which is targeted for people who surf the internet, use online services and store files online.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Brace yourselves, commercial drones are coming

Las Vegas Commercial UAV Expo Image by Magdalena Petrova Now in its second year, the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas attracts companies who what to integrate drones into their workflows. Industries range from security, to construction, to surveying and mapping. Let's check out some of the drones that darted across our radar. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Brace yourselves, commercial drones are coming

Las Vegas Commercial UAV Expo Image by Magdalena Petrova Now in its second year, the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas attracts companies who what to integrate drones into their workflows. Industries range from security, to construction, to surveying and mapping. Let's check out some of the drones that darted across our radar. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The long, slow death of private cloud continues

I must have touched a nerve with my last post, as I was contacted by two vendors that wanted to share their perspective on private cloud computing. Even though I don’t consider myself an analyst and therefore typically avoid “briefings,” I thought it would be interesting to see what they had to say.Both vendors covered what I consider well-trod ground: Organizations use private clouds for reasons of security/compliance, data sovereignty, data gravity (i.e., there is lots of data on-premises and it would be very difficult to migrate it to a public cloud provider), application inflexibility, and so on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: MongoDB 3.4 accelerates digital transformation in the enterprise

MongoDB just released version 3.4 of its database product. The company states that this release targets enterprises wanting to conduct a "digital transformation."What MongoDB appears to mean is that version of the software extends operational and analytical capabilities with the goal in mind of helping those enterprises select a single database for their "Next-Generation Applications."Here's what MongoDB has to say about version 3.4 The latest version is a major advance that places MongoDB at the center of enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives. Organizations today are focused on delivering new classes of applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, which have deep operational and analytical requirements. By further strengthening the product’s always-on operational and real-time analytics capabilities, MongoDB makes it easier for enterprises to consolidate their technology footprint and accelerate their digital transformation with a single database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: MongoDB 3.4 accelerates digital transformation in the enterprise

MongoDB just released version 3.4 of its database product. The company states that this release targets enterprises wanting to conduct a "digital transformation."What MongoDB appears to mean is that version of the software extends operational and analytical capabilities with the goal in mind of helping those enterprises select a single database for their "Next-Generation Applications."Here's what MongoDB has to say about version 3.4 The latest version is a major advance that places MongoDB at the center of enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives. Organizations today are focused on delivering new classes of applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, which have deep operational and analytical requirements. By further strengthening the product’s always-on operational and real-time analytics capabilities, MongoDB makes it easier for enterprises to consolidate their technology footprint and accelerate their digital transformation with a single database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thread Group aims its IoT mesh network at enterprises

The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thread Group aims its IoT mesh network at enterprises

The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

oVirt Software Defined Networking, The OVN Network Provider

oVirt offers not only its own internal networking, but also an API for external network providers. This API enables using external network management software inside environments managed by oVirt and takes advantage of their extended capabilities. One of such solutions is OVN: Open Virtual Network. OVN is an OVS (Open vSwitch) extension that brings Software Defined Networking to OVS.

OVN enables support for virtual networks abstraction by adding native OVS support for virtual L2 and L3 overlays. This allows the user to create as many VM networks as required, without troubling the adminstrator with vlan requests or infrastructure changes.

The oVirt provider for OVN consists of two parts: * The oVirt OVN driver * The oVirt OVN provider

oVirt OVN Driver

The oVirt OVN driver is the Virtual Interface Driver placed on oVirt hosts that handle the wiring of VM NICs to OVN networking.

The driver allows Vdsm, libvirt, and OVN to interact whenever a NIC is plugged in such a way that the VM NIC is added to an appropriate OVN Logical Switch and the appropriate OVN overlays on all the hosts in the oVirt environment.

The oVirt OVN driver rpm is now available for testing. The latest version Continue reading

Microsoft goes after Slack with new Teams service

Workplace collaboration has become increasingly focused on chat in the past couple of years, and Microsoft is jumping into the new space with both feet, launching a new product it calls Teams.Teams allows groups within a company to divide into subgroups and then set up individual channels to discuss their work. The chat-based workspace is designed to integrate deeply with the rest of Microsoft's Office 365 productivity suite, including OneDrive and Skype, for file sharing, voice and video chat. The application is available in beta starting Thursday on the web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Aligned Energy changes the data center model

Aligned Energy is about to complete construction of its Phoenix data center, a facility that it claims is leading the way in terms of data center efficiency. Aligned Energy's leaders are so sure of the efficiencies they're driving that they're introducing a new model for how data center space is bought and sold.But before we look at that, let's look at some fundamentals around data centers.+ Also on Network World: Google's DeepMind A.I. can slash data center power use 40% + It is a generally accepted fact that data centers, a massive and growing industry, is highly wasteful of both energy and water. Indeed, Greenpeace recently went out on a limb with a campaign and report questioning the environmental impact of some major data center users and calling for a move to environmentally efficient construction and operation of data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Aligned Energy changes the data center model

Aligned Energy is about to complete construction of its Phoenix data center, a facility that it claims is leading the way in terms of data center efficiency. Aligned Energy's leaders are so sure of the efficiencies they're driving that they're introducing a new model for how data center space is bought and sold.But before we look at that, let's look at some fundamentals around data centers.+ Also on Network World: Google's DeepMind A.I. can slash data center power use 40% + It is a generally accepted fact that data centers, a massive and growing industry, is highly wasteful of both energy and water. Indeed, Greenpeace recently went out on a limb with a campaign and report questioning the environmental impact of some major data center users and calling for a move to environmentally efficient construction and operation of data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Your very own canary for the wireless coal mine: Cape’s new Wi-Fi monitor

Announced today, the Cape Sensor is a simple device that can be installed anywhere in a company’s campus, and behaves just like any other Wi-Fi client being used in that area – the idea being that any wireless issues experienced by actual clients should be seen by the Cape Sensor operating in the same place. ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Hottest Enterprise Networking & IT Startups of 2016 + Cisco says it'll make IoT safe because it owns the networkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco seeks faster time to discovery for breaches, compromises

Cisco has announced security upgrades to cut the time compromises go unnoticed on endpoints, giving attackers less time to do damage if they get past preventive security measures.Unveiled at the Cisco Partner Summit this week, the new AMP for Endpoints comes with a lightweight agent to gather data that is analyzed in the Cisco AMP cloud. This lifts the processing burden from customers’ infrastructure.And the platform now includes an agentless feature for devices that can’t take an agent, such as visitors’ laptops.In addition to the cloud version, the analytics part of the platform can also be purchased for deployment on customer premises in their own private clouds. Detection, analysis and recommended response are handled in the cloud and pushed to the endpoints.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco seeks faster time to discovery for breaches, compromises

Cisco has announced security upgrades to cut the time compromises go unnoticed on endpoints, giving attackers less time to do damage if they get past preventive security measures.Unveiled at the Cisco Partner Summit this week, the new AMP for Endpoints comes with a lightweight agent to gather data that is analyzed in the Cisco AMP cloud. This lifts the processing burden from customers’ infrastructure.And the platform now includes an agentless feature for devices that can’t take an agent, such as visitors’ laptops.In addition to the cloud version, the analytics part of the platform can also be purchased for deployment on customer premises in their own private clouds. Detection, analysis and recommended response are handled in the cloud and pushed to the endpoints.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NFS & Firewalls in RHEL 7

Here is a quick post for you guys. I’m in the midst of creating a follow up to one of my other articles and it dawns on me that I need to do this particular post first.. A post within a post, or before a post, or something. In either case, I need to provide an update to configuring NFS to poke through a firewall in RHEL 7 for the purpose of RHV in a home lab.. or other use cases. Read on, if you will…

Background

In some older posts, I show you how to configure NFSv3 to use predictable ports in RHEL so that it is more IPtables friendly. You don’t want to shut your firewall down and leave your security wide open. And if your firewall is also doing other work for you like port forwarding, then your ~really~ can’t shut it down…

So here’s the skinny: I’m in the process of setting up new systems for “RHV w/ Hosted Engine”, and I’m using an NFS server for the storage. It’s a home lab, so I’m not exactly worried about performance. I really don’t recommend using a Linux server for production NFS in virtualization, but again, this Continue reading