Node Africa Deploys Greenfield Data Center Infrastructure, Leads Africa to be Cloud First Continent

Node Africa is a cloud service provider and cloud broker. One of very few hybrid to public cloud providers in Africa, it offers its customers bespoke cloud infrastructure and services including consulting, design, build, and deployment of complex solutions. When the organization launched in Kenya, their challenges included deploying a data center in under two months, and creating a hybrid offering that would reduce bandwidth challenges.

Because of cost constraints, Node Africa chose VMware and the vCloud Air Network program (vCAN) to build its business and data center, so that they would only pay for what they used. Then, using the vCloud Architecture Toolkit—including vSphere, vCloud Director, and NSX—they built a scalable cloud infrastructure in six weeks.

Node Africa CEO Phares Kariuki says, “The amount of money we have saved on networking equipment as a result of using NSX as the basis of our network has been amazing. We saved $10,000 on just our initial network infrastructure investment, that’s big for a green fields start-up.”

Read the complete case study here.

Roger

The post Node Africa Deploys Greenfield Data Center Infrastructure, Leads Africa to be Cloud First Continent appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

Microsoft appears to be building a business app marketplace

Microsoft appears to be building a business app store. The company put online a test version of a service called AppSource that’s designed to help businesses find software that augments the Microsoft products they already use, such as Power BI and Dynamics AX. The AppSource site was available Tuesday night at appsource.microsoft.com), but is down now. A description on its homepage said that users would be able to use the site to find software-as-a-service offerings from Microsoft and selected partners that they could try for free before purchasing them. All of this appears to have come to light after someone developing the site at Microsoft accidentally made a test version of it available on the public Internet, where it was discovered by a prolific Microsoft leaker who goes by Walking Cat on Twitter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OVS Integration with Debian Network Scripts

I had a reader contact me recently with some questions regarding the use of Open vSwitch (OVS) on Debian “Jessie” 8.5 and using the OVS integration with the Debian network scripts. For those of you that might be unfamiliar with this functionality, it’s the ability to configure OVS via instructions and directives found in the /etc/network/interfaces file. As I was helping this reader, I came across a couple potential “gotchas” that I wanted to point out here.

First, I’ll point you to the documentation for the Debian network scripts integration, which is found in this file in the “Debian network scripts integration” section. This documentation provides the complete breakdown of the various commands that can be used in /etc/network/interfaces to configure OVS.

Based on that documentation, you could create an OVS bridge and add a physical port to that bridge by including the following stanzas in /etc/network/interfaces:

allow-ovs ovsbr0
iface ovsbr0 inet manual
  ovs_type OVSBridge
  ovs_ports eth1

allow-ovsbr0 eth1
iface eth1 inet manual
  ovs_bridge ovsbr0
  ovs_type OVSPort

Now for the gotchas…

The Debian “Jessie” repos include version 2.3.0 of OVS; the latest release in the 2.3.x train is 2.3.3. As it turns Continue reading

Technology Short Take #68

Welcome to Technology Short Take #68, my erratically-published collection of links, articles, and posts from around the web—all focused on today’s major data center technologies. I’ve been trying to stick to a schedule that has these posts published on a Friday, but given the pending holiday weekend I wanted to get this out a bit early. As always, I hope that something I’ve included here proves useful to you.

Networking

Box Shuttle makes it easier to ditch on-prem file storage

Businesses that want to get their files out of on-premises data centers and into the cloud now have a new option from Box. On Wednesday, the company launched Box Shuttle, which includes tools and consulting services to help businesses move potentially terabytes of data from legacy applications into the Box cloud.Box will work with customers to develop a migration plan for getting their data out of private data centers into its cloud service. It will help figure out what content customers should keep, archive and delete.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Configuring OpenSwitch

The following configuration enables sFlow monitoring of all interfaces on a white box switch running the OpenSwitch operating system, sampling packets at 1-in-4096, polling counters every 20 seconds and sending the sFlow to an analyzer (10.0.0.50) on UDP port 6343 (the default sFlow port): 
switch(config)# sflow collector 10.0.0.50
switch(config)# sflow sampling 4096
switch(config)# sflow polling 20
switch(config)# sflow enable
A previous posting discussed the selection of sampling rates.  Additional information can be found in the OpenSwitch sFlow User Guide.

See Trying out sFlow for suggestions on getting started with sFlow monitoring and reporting.

Terror-suspect database used by banks, governments, has been leaked

A database described by some as a "terrorism blacklist" has fallen into the hands of a white-hat hacker who may decide to make it accessible to the public online.The database, called World-Check, belongs to Thomson Reuters and is used by banks, governments and intelligence agencies to screen people for criminal ties and links to terrorism.Security researcher Chris Vickery claims to have obtained a 2014 copy of the database. He announced the details on Tuesday in a post on Reddit."No hacking was involved in my acquisition of this data," he wrote. "I would call it more of a leak than anything, although not directly from Thomson Reuters."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Terror-suspect database used by banks, governments, has been leaked

A database described by some as a "terrorism blacklist" has fallen into the hands of a white-hat hacker who may decide to make it accessible to the public online.The database, called World-Check, belongs to Thomson Reuters and is used by banks, governments and intelligence agencies to screen people for criminal ties and links to terrorism.Security researcher Chris Vickery claims to have obtained a 2014 copy of the database. He announced the details on Tuesday in a post on Reddit."No hacking was involved in my acquisition of this data," he wrote. "I would call it more of a leak than anything, although not directly from Thomson Reuters."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

System Software, Orchestration Gets an OpenHPC Boost

System software setup and maintenance has become a major efficiency drag on HPC labs and OEMs alike, but community and industry efforts are now underway to reduce the huge amounts of duplicated development, validation and maintenance work across the HPC ecosystem. Disparate efforts and approaches, while necessary on some levels, slow adoption of hardware innovation and progress toward exascale performance. They also complicate adoption of complex workloads like big data and machine learning.

With the creation of the OpenHPC Community, a Linux Foundation collaborative project, the push is on to minimize duplicated efforts in the HPC software stack wherever …

System Software, Orchestration Gets an OpenHPC Boost was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Datanauts 040: Hands-On Learning Series – CoreOS & AppVeyor

Todays Datanauts show is all about learning new technologies. Ethan and Chris have each spent time digging into a technology thats unfamiliar to them: building a DNS service using CoreOS for Ethan, and using AppVeyor to built a test environment for PowerShell scripts for Chris. The post Datanauts 040: Hands-On Learning Series – CoreOS & AppVeyor appeared first on Packet Pushers.

SAP’s ERP app for SMBs gets an overhaul for digital transformation

The digital transformation imperative is becoming increasingly urgent for companies large and small, and SAP wants to help. On Wednesday, the ERP giant set its sights squarely on SMBs with an updated app that's been enriched with analytics and other key features.Originally announced last year, SAP Business One 9.2 is the latest version of SAP's ERP app for small and medium-size businesses, and it's now generally available both on-premises and in the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile ransomware use jumps, blocking access to phones

The number of users infected with mobile ransomware is skyrocketing, as hackers try to expand the number of potential victims they can target.Compared with a year ago, almost four times as many users are being attacked by mobile ransomware, security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Wednesday.It's a troubling trend. Ransomware has typically targeted PCs by encrypting all the information that is inside the targeted machines, and then holding the data hostage in exchange for money.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile ransomware use jumps, blocking access to phones

The number of users infected with mobile ransomware is skyrocketing, as hackers try to expand the number of potential victims they can target.Compared with a year ago, almost four times as many users are being attacked by mobile ransomware, security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Wednesday.It's a troubling trend. Ransomware has typically targeted PCs by encrypting all the information that is inside the targeted machines, and then holding the data hostage in exchange for money.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 to feature radically new home button design

The lack of a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack may not be the only big design change Apple introduces when it rolls out the iPhone 7 later this year. According to sources, and most recently a report from analysts Cowen and Company (via Business Insider), the home button on the iPhone 7 will be like nothing Apple has ever shipped before.Specifically, the iPhone 7's home button may sit flush with the entire device itself and will not be able to be pressed down. Instead, Apple will incorporate Force Touch technology such that when a user taps the home button, it will trigger a series of vibrations that will mimic the feeling of a pressed button.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 to feature radical new home button design

The lack of a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack may not be the only big design change Apple introduces when it rolls out the iPhone 7 later this year. According to sources, and most recently a report from analysts Cowen and Company (via Business Insider), the home button on the iPhone 7 will be like nothing Apple has ever shipped before.Specifically, the iPhone 7's home button may sit flush with the entire device itself and will not be able to be pressed down. Instead, Apple will incorporate Force Touch technology such that when a user taps the home button, it will trigger a series of vibrations that will mimic the feeling of a pressed button. While this may seem a bit far fetched, note that Apple already employs such technology on the company's MacBook line. And having used Apple's MacBook, I can attest that Apple's scheme of haptic feedback truly does mimic the feeling of a physical button.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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