Announcing New Features To Help Hosting Providers Run Their Own Reliable DNS Infrastructure

Over the last six years, we’ve built the tooling, infrastructure and expertise to run a DNS network that handles our scale - we’ve answered a few million DNS queries in the few seconds since you started reading this.

DNS is the backbone of the internet. Every email, website visit, and API call ultimately begins with a DNS lookup. Internet is built on DNS, so every hosting company, registrar, TLD operator, and cloud provider must be able to run reliable DNS.

Last year CloudFlare launched Virtual DNS, providing DDoS mitigation and a strong caching layer of 100 global data centers to those running DNS infrastructure.

Today we’re expanding that offering with two new features for an extra layer of reliability: Serve Stale and DNS Rate Limiting.

Serve Stale

Virtual DNS sits in front of your DNS infrastructure. When DNS resolvers lookup answers on your authoritative DNS, the query first goes to CloudFlare Virtual DNS. We either serve the answer from cache if we have the answer in cache, or we reach out to your nameservers to get the answer to respond to the DNS resolver.

Even if your DNS servers are down, Virtual DNS can now answer on your behalf Continue reading

Ansible Container 0.2.0 Release

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We’re excited to announce the release of Ansible Container 0.2.0. The last few months have been exciting. We’ve been working at a fever pitch to add new features, build examples, and resolve issues, while at the same time we’ve seen the interest level and participation rate of the project steadily grow. It’s been amazing, and we’re grateful to all those that helped by opening issues, contributing code, and spreading the word. Thank you!

Throughout this release cycle we heard from a number of users that being able to reuse existing Ansible content was critical. We focused on that, making Ansible roles a key part of this release. We came up with several enhancements that make it easy to access existing Ansible roles during the container build process. We added a feature to assist in retrofitting existing roles to be ‘container aware' and we looked to the future and imagined new ways roles could enhance the process of building and sharing containers.

Accessing Existing Roles

We heard several times that incorporating existing Ansible roles into the container build process needed to be easier. We solved this by creating a method for accessing roles from the local file system as Continue reading

The Emergence Of Data-Centric Computing

As data grows, a shift in computing paradigm is underway. I started my professional career in the 1990s, during massive shift from mainframe computing to the heyday of client/server computing and enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM, and human resources software. Relational databases like Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, and Informix offered improvements to managing data, and the technique of combining a new class of midrange servers from Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard with storage tiers from EMC and IBM reduced costs and complexity over traditional mainframes.

However, what remained was that these new applications continued to operate …

The Emergence Of Data-Centric Computing was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: The fall of Theranos

This year has witnessed the spectacular fall from grace for the former Silicon Valley darling Theranos, the Palo Alto-based blood-testing startup, and its high-powered millennial co-founder, Elizabeth Holmes. Once valued at over $9 billion, Theranos has now become a target for massive mockery online. Perhaps the Theranos story also holds a much larger lesson about our whole technology culture. Though the company initially promised hundreds of cheap medical tests could be performed from a single pinprick of blood, what the company was less than candid about was its tests — which were available at Walgreens! — reportedly relied on using other companies’ technologies to stay afloat. —The New Stack

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Spotify ads slipped malware onto PCs and Macs

Spotify's ads crossed from nuisance over to outright nasty this week, after the music service’s advertising started serving up malware to users on Wednesday. The malware was able to automatically launch browser tabs on Windows and Mac PCs, according to complaints that surfaced online.As is typical for this kind of malware, the ads directed users’ browsers to other malware-containing sites in the hopes that someone would be duped into downloading more malicious software. The “malvertising” attack didn’t last long as Spotify was able to quickly correct the problem.“We’ve identified an issue where a small number of users were experiencing a problem with questionable website pop-ups in their default browsers as a result of an isolated issue with an ad on our Free tier,” Spotify said on several threads in its support forums. “We have now identified the source of the problem and have shut it down. We will continue to monitor the situation.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New Amazon Echo Dot Launches Oct 20, Get Free Ones When You Buy 5 or 10 – Deal Alert

The all new Amazon Echo Dot launch date is right around the corner: October 20th. Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses Alexa to play & control music (either on its own, or through a connected speaker/receiver), control smart home devices, provide information, read the news, set alarms, and more. If you’re looking to buy them as gifts, or for different homes or rooms, Amazon will throw in a free one ($50 value) when you buy 5, or two free ones when you buy 10 (a $100 value). To take advantage of this limited time offer, select 6 or 12 in the quantity dropdown and add to your Shopping Cart. Enter promo code DOT6PACK or DOT12PACK at checkout where you will see the discount applied. The new Amazon Echo Dot comes in black, and now also white.  See the new Amazon Echo Dot now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The state of cybersecurity professional careers

I’ve written about and researched the cybersecurity skills shortage for many years. For example, ESG research indicates that 46 percent of organizations claim to have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills this year—an 18 percent increase from 2015.Of course, I’m not the only one looking into the cybersecurity skills shortage. For example: According to Peninsula Press (a project of the Stanford University Journalism Program), more than 209,000 U.S.-based cybersecurity jobs remained unfilled, and postings are up 74 percent over the past five years. Analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the demand for cybersecurity professionals is expected to grow 53 percent by 2018. So, many researchers agree, then, that we don’t have enough skilled prospects to fill all of the open cybersecurity jobs. OK, but that puts a heck of a lot of burden on the existing cybersecurity workforce. Are they up to the task? Do they have the right training? Are they managing their careers appropriately?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The State of Cybersecurity Professional Careers

I’ve written about and researched the cybersecurity skills shortage for many years.  For example, ESG research indicates that 46% of organizations claim to have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills this year – an 18% increase from 2015 (note: I am an ESG employee).Of course, I’m not the only one looking into the cybersecurity skills shortage.  For example: According to Peninsula Press (a project of the Stanford University Journalism Program), more than 209,000 U.S.-based cybersecurity jobs remained unfilled, and postings are up 74 percent over the past five years. Analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the demand for cybersecurity professionals is expected to grow 53 percent by 2018. So many researchers agree then that we don’t have enough skilled prospects to fill all of the open cybersecurity jobs.  Okay but that puts a heck of a lot of burden on the existing cybersecurity workforce.  Are they up to the task?  Do they have the right training?  Are they managing their careers appropriately?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware vForum Live is Coming to Toronto on 11/9 & Houston on 11/17!

Attention IT professionals – want to discover the benefits of network virtualization, mobility, and cloud? You can at VMware vForum Live! Join our experts in-person for an interactive, all-day event that will take you through technical deep dives of VMware solutions. Sign up today for vForum Live in Toronto on Nov 9th or sign up for vForum Live in Houston on Nov 17th now!

vForum Live is your chance to collaborate with peers, interact with VMware experts and receive actionable advice on how you can simplify your IT and deliver an effective cloud strategy. From keynote speeches presented by the industry’s heaviest hitters to specific VMware solution breakout sessions, you’ll get to hear the latest tips, tricks and insights. Plus, partake in our hands-on SociaLabs in the afternoon to get direct experience working with various solutions under the guidance of a VMware expert.

Here’s a list of VMware technical leaders and industry experts who will be presenting:

  • Chris Wolf, VMware CTO of the Americas – “Delivering Tomorrow’s Agile, Secure and Open Solutions, Today”
  • Kevin Mitnick, internationally-known Global White Hat Hacker – “Art of Deception: How Hackers and Con Artists Manipulate You and What You Can Do About It”
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