The Shifting Lens of Mentoring

The other day I realized that I had become the “old man” at Tech Field Day. Not so much that I’m ready for AARP but more that I’ve been there longer than anyone else but Stephen. The realization was a long time coming but the thing that pushed me to understand it was when someone asked a question about a policy we had and I not only knew the reason why we did it but also a time before we had it.

As I spent time thinking about the way that I’ve graduated from being the new guy to the old mentor I thought about the inflection point when the changeover happened.

Green and Growing

The first part of the demarcation between mentor and mentee in my eyes is where the knowledge lies. When you’re first starting out you’re the one that needs to understand things. You ask lots and lots of questions and try to understand how things are done and why you do them that way. Focusing on that knowledge acquisition is part of the marker of someone in need of mentorship.

For those trying to mentor these eager employees don’t make the mistake of getting frustrated at Continue reading

Broadcom CEO pledges $2 billion for VMware R&D, professional services support

Broadcom said it will spend $2 billion a year to accelerate research and development for VMware products and services.In making the investment assurance, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan wrote in a blog post: “By extending our multi-cloud strategy, we will invest in extending VMware’s software stack to run and manage workloads across private and public clouds, which means any enterprise can run application workloads easily, securely, and seamlessly on-prem, or in any cloud platform they prefer.”“If companies can run VMware as a private cloud on-prem, they should be able to take their same application workloads to the public cloud without needing to re-engineer that application or worry about being locked into the public cloud providers that they choose,” Tan stated.To read this article in full, please click here

Broadcom CEO pledges $2 billion for VMware R&D, professional services support

Broadcom said it will spend $2 billion a year to accelerate research and development for VMware products and services.In making the investment assurance, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan wrote in a blog post: “By extending our multi-cloud strategy, we will invest in extending VMware’s software stack to run and manage workloads across private and public clouds, which means any enterprise can run application workloads easily, securely, and seamlessly on-prem, or in any cloud platform they prefer.”“If companies can run VMware as a private cloud on-prem, they should be able to take their same application workloads to the public cloud without needing to re-engineer that application or worry about being locked into the public cloud providers that they choose,” Tan stated.To read this article in full, please click here

Monitoring Kubernetes clusters activity with Azure Managed Grafana and Calico

Cloud computing revolutionized how a business can establish its digital presence. Nowadays, by leveraging cloud features such as scalability, elasticity, and convenience, businesses can deploy, grow, or test an environment in every corner of the world without worrying about building the required infrastructure.

Unlike the traditional model, which was based on notifying the service provider to set up the resources for customers in advance, in an on-demand model, cloud providers implement application programming interfaces (API) that can be used by customers to deploy resources on demand. This allows the customer to access an unlimited amount of resources on-demand and only pay for the resources they use without worrying about the infrastructure setup and deployment complexities.

For example, a load balancer service resource is usually used to expose an endpoint to your clients. Since a cloud provider’s bandwidth might be higher than what your cluster of choice can handle, a huge spike or unplanned growth might cause some issues for your cluster and render your services unresponsive.

To solve this issue, you can utilize the power of proactive monitoring and metrics to find usage patterns and get insight into your system’s overall health and performance.

In this hands-on tutorial, I will Continue reading

ChatGPT and AI-based Tools Require Strict Scrutiny

The following sponsored blog post was written by Palo Alto Networks. We thank Palo Alto Networks for being a sponsor. ChatGPT is the fastest-growing consumer application in history, with 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch.  While these AI apps can significantly boost productivity and creative output, they also pose a serious […]

The post ChatGPT and AI-based Tools Require Strict Scrutiny appeared first on Packet Pushers.

IPv6 Buzz 125: Unique Local Addressing (ULA) And Other IPv6 Topics At IETF 116

In today's IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed and Tom speak with Nick Buraglio, a network architect for the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet). We discuss the recent IETF 116 meeting and what's new with IPv6, ULA, IPv6 end site multihoming and its challenges, and more.

The post IPv6 Buzz 125: Unique Local Addressing (ULA) And Other IPv6 Topics At IETF 116 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Day Two Cloud 193: Should You Get A Cloud Networking Cert?

On today's Day Two Cloud we explore cloud networking certifications. Who do these certs make sense for? Which clouds should you focus on? What do certifications typically cover? Where do third-party devices such as firewalls and load balancers fit into the certification picture? If you're an old-school CLI jockey coming into cloud networking, how should you approach concepts such as Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Day Two Cloud 193: Should You Get A Cloud Networking Cert?

On today's Day Two Cloud we explore cloud networking certifications. Who do these certs make sense for? Which clouds should you focus on? What do certifications typically cover? Where do third-party devices such as firewalls and load balancers fit into the certification picture? If you're an old-school CLI jockey coming into cloud networking, how should you approach concepts such as Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

The post Day Two Cloud 193: Should You Get A Cloud Networking Cert? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Silent Hosts in EVPN Fabrics

The Dynamic MAC Learning versus EVPN blog post triggered tons of interesting responses describing edge cases and vendor bugs implementation details, including an age-old case of silent hosts described by Nitzan:

Few years ago in EVPN network, I saw drops on the multicast queue (ingress replication goes to that queue). After analyzing it we found that the root cause is vMotion (the hosts in that VLAN are silent) which starts at a very high rate before the source leaf learns the destination MAC.

It turns out that the behavior they experienced was caused by a particularly slow EVPN implementation, so it’s not exactly the case of silent hosts, but let’s dig deeper into what could happen when you do have silent hosts attached to an EVPN fabric.

Silent Hosts in EVPN Fabrics

The Dynamic MAC Learning versus EVPN blog post triggered tons of interesting responses describing edge cases and vendor bugs implementation details, including an age-old case of silent hosts described by Nitzan:

Few years ago in EVPN network, I saw drops on the multicast queue (ingress replication goes to that queue). After analyzing it we found that the root cause is vMotion (the hosts in that VLAN are silent) which starts at a very high rate before the source leaf learns the destination MAC.

It turns out that the behavior they experienced was caused by a particularly slow EVPN implementation, so it’s not exactly the case of silent hosts, but let’s dig deeper into what could happen when you do have silent hosts attached to an EVPN fabric.

Cisco wants you to buy now, pay later

Cisco today announced a new finance program that encourages customers to buy products and services now without having to start paying for them till 2024.Specifically the Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program will let customers purchasing Cisco products before July 29, 2023, and defer all payments until 2024. Payments deferred until 2024 would be based on the total amount financed and contract terms, the vendor stated.Cisco said another flexible payment option is available for its partners to let their customers buy Cisco technology today, and pay later, the vendor said in a statement.The entirety of Cisco’s portfolio is eligible for the program, including hardware, software, and services, as well as select partner services and third-party hardware. In addition the Cisco Refresh portfolio of Cisco certified remanufactured products is also eligible for organizations that want to acquire used gear, the vendor stated.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco wants you to buy now, pay later

Cisco today announced a new finance program that encourages customers to buy products and services now without having to start paying for them till 2024.Specifically the Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program will let customers purchasing Cisco products before July 29, 2023, and defer all payments until 2024. Payments deferred until 2024 would be based on the total amount financed and contract terms, the vendor stated.Cisco said another flexible payment option is available for its partners to let their customers buy Cisco technology today, and pay later, the vendor said in a statement.The entirety of Cisco’s portfolio is eligible for the program, including hardware, software, and services, as well as select partner services and third-party hardware. In addition the Cisco Refresh portfolio of Cisco certified remanufactured products is also eligible for organizations that want to acquire used gear, the vendor stated.To read this article in full, please click here