EP10: From Dubai to Silicon Valley, interview with LinkedIn’s lead architect Shawn Zandi
Shawn Zandi is a principal network architect with LinkedIn, where he builds large scale data center, backbone and networks. Over the past two decades, Shawn has worked as network and security architect for consulting firms from Dubai to Silicon Valley. Shawn holds many publications, patents and certifications including 3x CCIE in routing and switching, Security and Service provider as well as CCDE, while through the years of practice has become a vendor-neutral consultant. He currently lives in San Francisco, in Sunny California. In addition to his commitment to LinkedIn, Shawn is a technical advisor to networking startups in the Bay Area.
Quote: RFC1925 – The Twelve Networking Truths Rule (11)
Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.
Resources or Topics Mentioned:
Tech Lesson of the Day: Applying Machine Learning and Big Data to Networking
Your absurd story doesn’t make me a Snowden apologist
Defending truth in the Snowden Affair doesn't make one an "apologist", for either side. There plenty of ardent supporters on either side that need to be debunked. The latest (anti-Snowden) example is the HPSCI committee report on Snowden [*], and stories like this one in the Wall Street Journal [*]. Pointing out the obvious holes doesn't make us "apologists".Snowden & apologists will brush this off w/ vague denials and counteraccusations. Burden's on them to square his representations w/ reality.— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) December 31, 2016
As Edward Epstein documents in the WSJ story, one of the lies Snowden told was telling his employer (Booz-Allen) that he was being treated for epilepsy when in fact he was fleeing to Hong Kong in order to give documents to Greenwald and Poitras.
Well, of course he did. If you are going to leak a bunch of documents to the press, you can't do that without a bunch of lies to your employer. That's the very definition of this sort of "whistleblowing". Snowden has been quite open to the public about the lies he told his employer, including this one.
Rather than evidence that there's something wrong with Continue reading
My Personal Look Back on 2016
I haven't ever written a “year in review” type of post before. Sure, I do a post to summarize how the blog has done over the year but I've never done a personal look back. Last night-New Years Eve-I was thinking about everything that I was involved in during 2016 and I realized “I should write this down! I was involved in or a participant of some amazing things last year!”
So here we go. In an effort to show a more personal side and not just my geeky side, here is my personal 2016 year in review.
2016 End of Year Blog Statistics
Happy New Year! I just realized the other day that this blog turned 5 years old in 2016. It’s been a lot of fun and has paid me back for my time in terms of building my brand and being a means to explore and learn new topics. I have plans to put more focus on my writing in 2017 and reduce the friction between starting with a blank page and hitting that “Publish” button.
Anyways! Here’s a look back at 2016 on packetmischief.ca.
Hmm. Basically flat growth in terms of views and visitors. I feel like this is to be expected based on how much writing and promotion I did throughout the year. I can improve these numbers for 2017.
Just like last year, the new vs returning visitor numbers are basically unchanged.
The 5 most popular posts in 2016 are:
Quick links:
- 4 Types of Port Channels and When They’re Used
- Resetting Admin Password on a Cisco ISE Appliance
- What the Fex is a FEX Anyways
- Five Functional Facts about FabricPath
- Airplay, VLANs, and an Open Source Solution
And the top 5 posts in 2016 that Continue reading
Hybrid cloud recent solutions from Microsoft and VMWare – 2 different ends of the hybrid cloud spectrum
Public clouds have grown tremendously over the last few years and there are very few companies who do not use public cloud at this point. Even traditional enterprises with in-house data centers have some presence in the public cloud. I was looking at Amazon’s re:Invent conference details and I was amazed by the number of … Continue reading Hybrid cloud recent solutions from Microsoft and VMWare – 2 different ends of the hybrid cloud spectrum
2016 End of Year Blog Statistics
Happy New Year! I just realized the other day that this blog turned 5 years old in 2016. It's been a lot of fun and has paid me back for my time in terms of building my brand and being a means to explore and learn new topics. I have plans to put more focus on my writing in 2017 and reduce the friction between starting with a blank page and hitting that “Publish” button.
Anyways! Here's a look back at 2016 on packetmischief.ca.
2016 Recap and 2017 Goals
Yet another recap post to follow up on last year’s. 2015 was a big transition year for me, and last year I wanted to make sure I kept the momentum going. I make this post yearly to publicly track my own professional development goals. I find this helps me stay accountable to these goals, and it also allows others to give me a kick in the butt if I’m falling behind.2016 Recap and 2017 Goals
Yet another recap post to follow up on last year’s. 2015 was a big transition year for me, and last year I wanted to make sure I kept the momentum going. I make this post yearly to publicly track my own professional development goals. I find this helps me stay accountable to these goals, and it also allows others to give me a kick in the butt if I’m falling behind.2016 Recap and 2017 Goals
Yet another recap post to follow up on last year’s. 2015 was a big transition year for me, and last year I wanted to make sure I kept the momentum going.
I make this post yearly to publicly track my own professional development goals. I find this helps me stay accountable to these goals, and it also allows others to give me a kick in the butt if I’m falling behind.
2015 Goal Recap
First, let me recap some of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year, and see how well I did.
Network Automation Book - At this time last year, I announced that I was working on a network automation book with Scott Lowe and Jason Edelman. This has certainly taken a bit more time than any of us would have liked, but we’re very near the end. The three of us have had a very busy year, and there are very few things to do for this release. However, we have pushed several additional chapters to O’Reilly, so you can still read these via Safari.
Open Source - Given that I now work for a company centered around an open Continue reading
2016 Recap and 2017 Goals
Yet another recap post to follow up on last year’s. 2015 was a big transition year for me, and last year I wanted to make sure I kept the momentum going.
I make this post yearly to publicly track my own professional development goals. I find this helps me stay accountable to these goals, and it also allows others to give me a kick in the butt if I’m falling behind.
2015 Goal Recap
First, let me recap some of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year, and see how well I did.
Network Automation Book - At this time last year, I announced that I was working on a network automation book with Scott Lowe and Jason Edelman. This has certainly taken a bit more time than any of us would have liked, but we’re very near the end. The three of us have had a very busy year, and there are very few things to do for this release. However, we have pushed several additional chapters to O’Reilly, so you can still read these via Safari.
Open Source - Given that I now work for a company centered around an open Continue reading
Killing ‘Zombies’ For Data Center Efficiency
The Uptime Institute has estimated the gains from eliminating 'zombie' servers versus doing nothing.
Panama expands Cloudflare network to 50 countries
A man, a plan, a canal, a data center. Over 5 million Internet properties are now faster across Panama, as Cloudflare turned up its newest data center in Panama City. This is our 102nd data center globally, and brings us to a special milestone as our network now spans 50 countries. While perhaps not quite as big an announcement as the $5B Panama Canal expansion, the websites of many important newspapers, TV stations, banks and airlines can be accessed directly from Panama.
‘A man a plan a canal’ y un data center! A Partir de hoy más de 5 millones de sitios en internet serán mas rápidos desde Panamá, ya que hemos introducido nuestro más reciente centro de datos en Ciudad de Panamá. Es nuestro centro de datos número 102 a nivel mundial. Es una hito especial ya que la red global de Cloudflare alcanza 50 países a nivel mundial. Tal vez no es un anuncio tan grande como la inauguración de la expansión del canal, pero a partir de hoy muchos de los sitios importantes de diarios, Televisoras, bancos y aerolíneas serán servidos directamente desde Panamá.
Bridge of the Americas
Puente de las Américas
Internet in Panama
El Internet Continue reading
How to Make the Most of SDN
What you need to know when considering service assurance for your carrier SDN projects.
Show 321: Did Anything Change In 2016?
For the past 12 months weve discussed technology that could transform networking. But did anything really change? Three guests join the Packet Pushers to discuss. The post Show 321: Did Anything Change In 2016? appeared first on Packet Pushers.
New Year’s Resolution: Learn Docker
Remember last year when I said the market for Docker jobs was blowing up? Well, it’s more than doubled in the last year. And Swarm is also rising quickly, growing 12829%, almost all of that in the last year. We expect that with our partnership with Microsoft and Windows Docker containers, that this will grow even faster in the next year as .NET developers start to containerize their applications and Windows IT Professionals start porting their infrastructure to Docker. Take a look at this trendline from indeed.com.
So what are you doing to increase your Docker skills? Want a few suggestions?
Whether you’re a developer or more an ops person, a great place to start is the Docker Labs repository, which has currently 28 labs for you to choose from. They range from beginner tutorials, to orchestration workshops, security and networking tutorials, and guides for using different programming languages and developer tools.
Of course there’s also the Docker Documentation, which has a rich set of resources.
At Dockercon 2017 in April, there will be rich set of material for beginners and experts alike, and you will get to meet people from all over the world Continue reading
Quickly Adding an NMS to VIRL
I’ve spent the last few days experimenting with APIC-EM and the path trace capabilities. My lab environment is currently leveraging VIRL (Virtual Internet Routing LAB). Since it wasn’t obvious how to integrate APIC-EM with the lab platform, I wanted to share my configuration.
TL;DR–When building the topology, click the background and view the properties for the Topology. Change the Management Network to “Shared flat network”. This will put the all of the devices ‘Mgmt-intf’ vrf on the ‘flat’ (172.16.1.0/24 by default) network when the topology is built.
When I started this process, I really didn’t realize how easy it could be. I actually tried to leverage a manual connection to L2 External (FLAT) to do the management in-band for the topology. This is certainly possible, but there is a much easier way. As most VIRL users have noticed, there is a management IP address that gets assigned to each device. There is a simple configuration change that will allow that address to be one from the ‘FLAT’ pool and connected externally to the ‘L2 External (FLAT)’ network.
My configuration
- APIC-EM built with IP address 172.16.1.2/24 (172.16.1.2-49 are unassigned and part of the Continue reading
Automating Your Job Away Isn’t Easy
One of the most common complaints about SDN that comes from entry-level networking folks is that SDN is going to take their job away. People fear what SDN represents because it has the ability to replace their everyday tasks and put them out of a job. While this is nowhere close to reality, it’s a common enough argument that I hear it very often during Q&A sessions. How is it that SDN has the ability to ruin so many jobs? And how is it that we just now have found a way to do this?
Measure Twice
One of the biggest reasons that the automation portion of SDN has become so effective in today’s IT environment is that we can finally measure what it is that networks are supposed to be doing and how best to configure them. Think about the work that was done in the past to configure and troubleshoot networks. It’s often a very difficult task that involves a lot of intuition and guesswork. If you tried to explain to someone the best way to do things, you’d likely find yourself at a loss for words.
However, we’ve had boring, predictable standards for many years. Instead of Continue reading