Fibre Channel in the Cloud: FCaaS

Public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace, as well as private cloud systems such as OpenStack, have dominated the computing landscape for the past several years. And once a joke of a marketing term (remember Larry Ellison’s super villain-monologue on the topic?), the cloud is now A Thing, with a definition and everything.

One technology that seemed like it was getting left behind in all these cloud games, however, was Fibre Channel. Ephemeral compute nodes, object storage, extreme scale, elastic provisioning — all of these were characteristics that were initially thought to be bad fits for Fibre Channel.

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Sad Fibre Channel is Sad

As it turns out, Fibre Channel is right at home in the cloud.

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Amazon Web Services has recently rolled out Fibre Channel as a Service (FCaaS), as have Rackspace, Digital Ocean, and Microsoft Azure.

All of those public cloud providers have some sort of block storage offerings, but they’re typically based on something like iSCSI or another back-end block protocol. Customers have been demanding the kind of block storage in the public cloud, where they can control zoning and zonesets, just like they do in their traditional data centers worlds.

The Continue reading

Worth Reading: Are we headed to another bust?

I believe it is important to remember this history as we celebrate the rise of the unicorns. There are already some indications the current tech boom may be nearing its end. The media has started commenting “The signs of a new tech bubble are everywhere: easy money, widespread exuberance, hidden leverage, and mass participation by amateur investors.” What turns a bubble into a bust is a change in investors’ psychology. History tells us it does not take much for such a change to occur. The decline of stock markets around the world over the past few months suggests such a change may already be taking place. -via the Communications of the ACM

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The post Worth Reading: Are we headed to another bust? appeared first on 'net work.

Late Breaking: Cisco Switches to Arista

The legal feud between Cisco and Arista may finally be over, though perhaps not in the way any of us had expected.

Arista LogoCisco Logo

The news starting to filter out of San Jose this morning is that Cisco has agreed to drop its lawsuit in return for the immediate acquisition of Arista Networks’ assets, intellectual property and employees. After the ITC’s initial determination last month that Arista had infringed on three out of five patents listed in the suit, it is understood that this solution was urgently brokered to protect the company’s employees from the potential fallout should the ITC’s next ruling be less than favorable.

Sources close to Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins are saying that Cisco plans to rebrand Arista’s impressive 7500 switch hardware as the new flagship Cisco Nexus 8000 series. With its reassuringly familiar command line interface, Arista’s EOS should be a seamless addition to Cisco’s impressive existing portfolio of network operating systems (i.e. IOS, Native IOS, IOS-XR, IOS-XRv, IOS-XE and NXOS) and customers will likely be lining up to deploy the impressive new Nexus 8000 series hardware without having to suffer through the pains of the usual new product learning curve.

In some ways the timing of Continue reading

Flaw in popular door controllers allow hackers to easily unlock secure doors

Doors that provide access into secure areas in airports, hospitals, government facilities and other organizations can easily be opened by hackers due to a vulnerability into a popular brand of networked door controllers.The flaw exists in the widely used VertX and Edge lines of door controllers from HID Global, one of the world's largest manufacturers of smartcards, card readers and access control systems.HID's VertX and Edge controllers can be remotely managed over the network and have a service called discoveryd (discovery daemon) that listens to UDP probe packets on port 4070, according to Ricky Lawshae, a researcher with Trend Micro's newly acquired DVLabs division.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

TFTP via VRF

How does Internet work - We know what is networking

As you can see from my article list, I’m going through some VRF configuration in the last few weeks I ran into this today and it sounded interesting enough to share it with you. The issue with TFTP IOS image copy to flash when having all interfaces in specific VRF and no interface in Global Routing Table. Long story short, you kick in this command for normal IOS download to the router: R1#copy tftp://10.10.10.11/c890-universalk9-mz.154-3.M5.bin flash: Destination filename ? Accessing tftp://10.10.10.11/c890-universalk9-mz.154-3.M5.bin... %Error opening tftp://10.10.10.11/c890-universalk9-mz.154-3.M5.bin (Timed out) …and it isn’t working of course. The issue is in having all interfaces member of

TFTP via VRF

10 no-cost home security mobile apps worth a download

The App Store and Google Play stores are awash in home security apps. How do you choose? Some of the features you should look for are the "ability to save CCTV footage to your mobile device, view live CCTV footage through your mobile device, store recordings on your cloud, control your security system from your mobile device and activate a 'call to action'," says James McCann of JMC Technologies, a UK-based supplier of CCTV equipment. In addition, all of the best apps offer instant notification whenever unusual activity is detected, says McCann. McCann has rounded up 10 of the best mobile home security apps for iOS and Android — all free to download and all worth a try. These apps come recommended by industry experts and have (mostly) positive reviews on their respective app stores, says McCann. And he personally vouches for every last one of them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Salary Survey 2016: How does your compensation stack up?

Survey says!Image by ThinkstockIn a tight job market, security pros are paid well, rate job satisfaction high, and will make a move for money, according to Computerworld's 2016 IT Salary Survey*. Read the full article: With all eyes on security, talent shortage sends salaries sky highTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How to audit external service providers

News of or firsthand experience with breaches that attackers managed to achieve using external service providers such as POS vendors reminds enterprises that the federated enterprise makes a bulletproof perimeter no longer possible.Failure to audit your providers is like neglecting to audit your internal enterprise, culminating in similar ramifications. In both cases, you can’t close holes you don’t know exist. But knowing what to audit can be the lion’s share of how to get it done right.In this fourth installment of a five part series designed to harden and remove vulnerabilities in incident response itself, CSO tips you off on what to audit inside those who conduct trade so closely with you and what resources to use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IOS For iOS – New Cisco App Brings Network Control To iPhone

This morning Cisco announced the release of a groundbreaking new product offering complete control of a Cisco-based enterprise network using Apple’s iPhone™ platform. IOS For iOS, or IFi® (pronounced eye-Fie, kind of like WiFi but without the W) will be available in the App Store in July 2016. Cisco have described the app as bringing Cellphone Defined Networking (CDN) to busy network engineers and administrators.

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What Is IOS For iOS?

The basic idea is to offer real time telemetry and full remote automation of the network so that engineers can make critical changes anywhere and anytime, reducing Mean Time To Restore (MTTR) and increasing employee satisfaction. The system requires at least one companion server to be located in a data center to perform management and automation functions on the user’s behalf. The other component of course is the app itself, which connects to the companion server as needed.

My main initial criticisms of the app are that it requires a massive 23GB (you read that correctly!) of storage on your iPhone, and–due to the screen estate needs and the CPU required for the app to run at a reasonable speed–it is only recommended for use on the iPhone Continue reading

Automating Security Group and Policy Creation with NSX REST API

As we’ve seen in many of the prior posts, VMware NSX is a powerful platform decoupling networking services from physical infrastructure. NSX effectively enables logical networking and security within a virtualized environment; this brings many of the same benefits we’re familiar with gaining from server virtualization such as flexibility, faster provisioning, better utilization of hardware, cost savings, decreased downtime, etc. One of the major benefits of the software approach that NSX brings is the ability to automate easily via REST API. In this post, we’ll take a look at a simple yet realistic use case focused around security where automation can help.  Continue reading

FBI is cracking an iPhone in an Arkansas murder case

Now that it has found a way to do so for its own purposes in a California terrorism case, the FBI is helping Arkansas prosecutors break into an iPhone and iPad.This time it’s to look for evidence in a murder trial, and it’s without asking Apple for help to crack the iOS devices. Instead prosecutors in Faulkner County, Ark., asked the FBI to take a shot at it, given its recent success breaking into the phone used by a terrorist in San Bernardino, Calif., according to the Associated Press.The FBI is also helping break into an iPod related to the case, the AP says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Grow lunar-based solar panels to eliminate fossil-fuel reliance, says kid

Nearly 200 countries signed the fossil fuel ramp-down agreement in Paris at the end of last year. New goals are now in place to end the use of fossil fuels worldwide. No more global warming could be in the cards.Sounds good, right? Well it probably is, but there’s a slight problem: Just how are we going to power our smartphones, homes, factories, and Internets without coal and gas? That’s a lot of solar panels and windfarms needed—and needed quickly.One high school kid reckons he’s got the answer, reported Popular Science magazine a few weeks ago: Just stick a bunch of solar panels on the moon and beam the power back down to Earth by microwave.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Grow lunar-based solar panels to eliminate fossil-fuel reliance, says kid

Nearly 200 countries signed the fossil fuel ramp-down agreement in Paris at the end of last year. New goals are now in place to end the use of fossil fuels worldwide. No more global warming could be in the cards.

Sounds good, right? Well it probably is, but there’s a slight problem: Just how are we going to power our smartphones, homes, factories, and Internets without coal and gas? That’s a lot of solar panels and windfarms needed—and needed quickly.

One high school kid reckons he’s got the answer, reported Popular Science magazine a few weeks ago: Just stick a bunch of solar panels on the moon and beam the power back down to Earth by microwave.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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