How to Setup a Highly Available Multi-AZ Cassandra Cluster on AWS EC2

This is a guest post by Alessandro Pieri, Software Architect at Stream. Try out this 5 minute interactive tutorial to learn more about Stream’s API.

Originally built by Facebook in 2009, Apache Cassandra is a free and open-source distributed database designed to handle large amounts of data across a large number of servers. At Stream, we use Cassandra as the primary data store for our feeds. Cassandra stands out because it’s able to:

• Shard data automatically

• Handle partial outages without data loss or downtime

• Scales close to linearly

If you’re already using Cassandra, your cluster is likely configured to handle the loss of 1 or 2 nodes. However, what happens when a full availability zone goes down?

In this article you will learn how to setup Cassandra to survive a full availability zone outage. Afterwards, we will analyze how moving from a single to a multi availability zone cluster impacts availability, cost, and performance.

Recap 1: What Are Availability Zones?

Worth Reading: Learning is hard

Easy access to the tl;dr version of everything a google search away has eroded that foundation in the IT community. I can’t exclude myself from that either, having fallen into that trap of thinking that google will help me find the quick fix. It builds a hidden technical debt because the things we claim to understand are really just black boxes we know how to stack in a certain way. The idea of learning all these things is so that we can apply them to solve problems better. Despite evidence to the contrary there is an underlying presumption that the capacity for original, creative thought is a given. —route-spf

The post Worth Reading: Learning is hard appeared first on 'net work.

Pokemon Go now a go on Android smartphones with Intel chips

It took a while, but the hot Pokemon Go mobile game is now working on smartphones with Intel chips.Initially, the app wasn't compatible with Intel-based smartphones. Concerned users put up a petition, which had 42,606 supporters, requesting Niantic Labs -- the developer -- to make the game compatible with x86 smartphone chips.In response to the user backlash, Niantic Labs and Intel worked together to make the app compatible with x86 smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey Results

Embracing the Two-Tiered Data-Center Network Architecture

Organizations that embrace a two-tier network architecture will be more likely to thrive in the future.

Announcing Docker 1.12 Hackathon winners

The judges have deliberated, our community has voted, and the results are in! We are happy to announce the top 5 submissions of the Docker 1.12 Hackathon.

In case you missed it, the theme of the hackathon was to build, ship, and run a distributed software application using a release candidate of Docker 1.12. We encouraged participants to hack the new features included in Docker 1.12, such as: Swarm Mode, Cryptographic node identity, Service API, and Build-in routing mesh.

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Network Virtualization Merging LANs & WANs

Network virtualization (NV) is starting to blur the lines between the LAN and the WAN.

VCE chief boasts of hyperconvergence superpower

VCE has only been in the hyperconverged appliance market since the February launch of its VxRail family, but President Chad Sakac says the company will soon be the No.1 player in that rapidly growing market. Sakac doesn’t lack for confidence, nor will his company – launched as a joint EMC/Cisco/VMware venture – lack for resources to back up his claims. VCE is now the converged infrastructure division of EMC and, if things go to plan, will soon be part of the merged Dell/EMC. That giant company, Sakac says, will boast a ‘superpower’ that gives it a huge advantage over rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Not being beholden to Wall Street, it can move customers more quickly to true utility models of IT. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

VCE chief boasts of hyperconvergence superpower

VCE has only been in the hyperconverged appliance market since the February launch of its VxRail family, but President Chad Sakac says the company will soon be the No.1 player in that rapidly growing market. Sakac doesn’t lack for confidence, nor will his company – launched as a joint EMC/Cisco/VMware venture – lack for resources to back up his claims. VCE is now the converged infrastructure division of EMC and, if things go to plan, will soon be part of the merged Dell/EMC. That giant company, Sakac says, will boast a ‘superpower’ that gives it a huge advantage over rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Not being beholden to Wall Street, it can move customers more quickly to true utility models of IT. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

VCE chief boasts of hyperconvergence superpower

VCE has only been in the hyperconverged appliance market since the February launch of its VxRail family, but President Chad Sakac says the company will soon be the No.1 player in that rapidly growing market. Sakac doesn’t lack for confidence, nor will his company – launched as a joint EMC/Cisco/VMware venture – lack for resources to back up his claims. VCE is now the converged infrastructure division of EMC and, if things go to plan, will soon be part of the merged Dell/EMC. That giant company, Sakac says, will boast a ‘superpower’ that gives it a huge advantage over rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Not being beholden to Wall Street, it can move customers more quickly to true utility models of IT. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Savvius and IBM Partner to Improve Security

Savvius' Vigil 2.0 will complement IBM QRadar in archiving suspicious network traffic.

Uber to drop $500 million into mapping

Uber may not plan to reinvent the wheel, but the company will drop $500 million to re-map parts of the world. The company has been using Google Maps, but now that’s not good enough…especially if the maps need to be extremely precise for self-driving cars.“Uber wouldn’t exist if comprehensive interactive digital maps hadn’t been created first,” said Brian McClendon, vice president of advanced technologies at Uber. McClendon, who was previously the head of Google Maps, believes, “Existing maps are a good starting point, but some information isn’t that relevant to Uber, like ocean topography.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud computing just had another amazing, awesome, over-the-top good week

Cloud computing has been on a roll for a while now, and instead of slowing down, it just keeps speeding up. Last week, for example, the cloud hit the accelerator big time, as demonstrated by a pair of key developments:First, Amazon announced record quarterly results for Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS simply blew through its Q2 numbers, hitting $2.9 billion in revenue, which was up more than $1 billion from the same quarter in 2015. Yes, quarterly revenue increased by a billion dollars in just one year.Second, Oracle announced a $9.3 billion takeover of cloud ERP provider NetSuite. That’s a huge investment in the cloud from a company that not so long ago went out of its way to ridicule the very concept of cloud computing. (Sure, NetSuite had deep Oracle ties, but almost $10 billion to buy into the cloud is serious money.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Game of Thrones can teach you valuable security lessons

With new hacking techniques, malware, viruses and threats being created faster than Melisandre’s demon babies, the web is indeed dark and full of terrors. Here are seven lessons for security managers pulled straight out of Westeros.1. Small things can become huge problemsIn the age of big data, risk once deemed minimal may pose serious threats to companies concerned with keeping the information they’ve collected private, but that begins and ends within the companies and the parameters and protocols they have in place to keep data secure.Nobody took the dragons or dire wolves seriously in the beginning of Game of Thrones, but by season 3 they were capable of wreaking havoc and wiping out armies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Well-tuned foundational systems make cutting-edge projects possible

AFLAC still uses technology that was developed using assembly, the old programming language. It's part of the mainframe system that runs the insurance company's policy, administration, claims and billing functions, and it works just fine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IT resume makeover: Don’t try to please everyone

The longer your career stretches out, the more experience and knowledge you gain. But that doesn't mean you need to dump it all onto your resume. Instead, resume experts say, you should focus on crafting a focused and concise resume.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IT career roadmap: The journey to certified scrum trainer

Angela Johnson's career began at a call center where she performed technical and customer support and end-user training for legal clients having trouble with the online legal research and database service WestLaw. But after a few years, during which time parent company West was acquired by Thomson Reuters, Johnson moved to Rockwell Automation, a manufacturing automation company whose products gathered and analyzed data about specific parts being machined on factory and plant floors."I am one of a rare breed whose brain seems to intuitively understand the linear nature and thinking required to work with relational databases, I guess, and Rockwell recognized that. We had so many clients on so many different databases, but I was able to help with the technical aspects of extracting that data from Oracle, SQL, Sybase, all these different databases and analyzing it," Johnson says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spies planted malware on critical infrastructure, Russian security service says

Russian military networks and other critical infrastructure have been hit by tailor-made malware, according to government officials.Networks at some 20 organizations in Russia -- including scientific and military institutions, defense contractors, and public authorities -- were found to be infected with the malware, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said Saturday.The range of infected sites suggests that the targets were deliberately selected as part of a cyber-espionage operation, the FSB said.Analysis of the attack showed that filenames, parameters and infection methods used in the malware are similar to those involved in other high-profile cyber-espionage operations around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spies planted malware on critical infrastructure, Russian security service says

Russian military networks and other critical infrastructure have been hit by tailor-made malware, according to government officials. Networks at some 20 organizations in Russia -- including scientific and military institutions, defense contractors, and public authorities -- were found to be infected with the malware, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said Saturday. The range of infected sites suggests that the targets were deliberately selected as part of a cyber-espionage operation, the FSB said. Analysis of the attack showed that filenames, parameters and infection methods used in the malware are similar to those involved in other high-profile cyber-espionage operations around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lumia sales plummet as Microsoft fires more staffers

Microsoft had a pretty good earnings report last month as it closed out fiscal year 2016 (its fiscal year ends June 30 of each year). Now people are digging through the financial reports to see what the company didn't disclose in its press release or earnings call, and one unfortunate number has emerged: the pitiful sales of Lumia phones.It's the latest in the sad story behind former CEO Steve Ballmer's final debacle, the purchase of Nokia's handset business. Nokia was the strongest supporter of Windows Phone, but beyond Ballmer and some Finnish shareholders, no one thought this $7.2 billion acquisition was a good idea. In the end, it cost more than $10 billion in write-downs, which means paper losses, not actual money out the door, but many employees from Nokia have been cut loose as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here