Technology Short Take #65

Welcome to Technology Short Take #65! As usual, I gathered an odd collection of links and articles from around the web on key data center technologies and trends. I hope you find something useful!

Networking

  • Michael Ryom has a nice (but short) article on using Log Insight along with a NetFlow proxy to help provide more detailed visibility into traffic flows between VMs on NSX logical networks.
  • Brent Salisbury has an article on GoBGP, a Go-based BGP implementation. BGP seems to be emerging as an early front-runner for a standards-based control plane for software networking. Couple something like GoBGP with IPVLAN L3 (see Brent’s article) and you’ve got a new model for your data center network.
  • Andy Hill has an article on doing rolling F5 upgrades using Ansible.
  • Filip Verloy has an article that discusses the integration between Nuage Networks and Fortinet.
  • This should probably go in the “Cloud Computing/Cloud Management” section, but the boundaries between areas are getting more and more blurry every day. (Thankfully, due to LASIK my vision is sharper than ever.) In any case, here’s a post by Marcos Hernandex on the use of subnet pools in OpenStack. Although Marcos’ post discusses them Continue reading

Google’s CEO just called the next wave in computing, and it’s not VR

Every decade or so, a new era of computing comes along that shapes everything we do. Much of the 90s was about client-server and Windows PCs. By the aughts, the Web had taken over and every advertisement carried a URL. Then came the iPhone, and we're in the midst of a decade defined by people tapping myopically into tiny screens.So what comes next, when mobile gives way to something else? Mark Zuckerberg thinks it's VR. There's likely to be a lot of that, but there's a more foundational technology that makes VR possible and permeates other areas besides.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

43% off Energizer Cigarette Lighter Power Inverter – Deal Alert

The Energizer EN100 Ultra Compact Plug-in Power Inverter provides 100 watts of continuous AC power to your devices. Designed for road trips or anyone who drives frequently, this device simply plugs into your cigarette adaptor and can charge everything from your laptop, to your portable DVD player, to your various phones and tablets simultaneously. Or keep it on hand for emergencies.This unit averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from almost 500 people (read reviews). Regularly listed for $34.99, the EN100 is heavily discounted and can be purchased now on Amazon for just $19.99. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s weak phone sales drag down its Surface and cloud wins

Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia is proving to be quite the albatross around the company's neck. The company has stepped away from focusing on phones, and its handset sales revenue fell by almost half in the first quarter.Microsoft sold only 2.3 million Lumia phones during the quarter, 73 percent fewer units compared with the first quarter of 2015. That meant Lumia handset revenue fell 46 percent. This dragged down the company's overall device revenue despite major gains in its Surface business. Sales of Surface tablets and the Surface Book touchscreen laptop brought in $1.1 billion for Microsoft during the last quarter, compared with $713 million during the same period last year. That's good news for the company's future, but it's being hurt by the present state of the phone business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nvidia’s Tesla P100 Steals Machine Learning From The CPU

Pattern analytics, deep learning, and machine learning have fueled a rapid rise in interest in GPU computing, in addition to GPU computing applications in high performance computing (HPC) and cloud-based data analytics.

As a high profile example, Facebook recently contributed its “Big Sur” design to the Open Compute Project (OCP), for use specifically in training neural networks and implementing artificial intelligence (AI) at scale. Facebook’s announcement of Big Sur says “Big Sur was built with the Nvidia Tesla M40 in mind but is qualified to support a wide range of PCI-e cards,” pointing out how pervasive Nvidia’s Tesla …

Nvidia’s Tesla P100 Steals Machine Learning From The CPU was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

A new AMD licensing deal could create more x86 rivals for Intel

Things just a lot more interesting in the x86 server market.AMD has announced a plan to license the design of its top-of-the-line server processor to a newly formed Chinese company, creating a brand-new rival for Intel.AMD is licensing its x86 processor and system-on-chip technology to a company called THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd.), a joint venture between AMD and a consortium of public and private Chinese companies.AMD is providing all the technology needed for THATIC to make a server chip, including the CPUs, interconnects and controllers. THATIC will be able to make variants of the x86 chips for different types of servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

One of GNU/Linux’s most important networking components just got an update

The software framework that powers the network connections on many GNU/Linux systems just got its second major update in less than a year and a half, with the version 1.2 release of NetworkManager.Version 1.2 brings several improvements to NetworkManager, including better security and usability for Wi-Fi. The changes should make the list of available access points more responsive and manageable, save energy on mobile devices and laptops, and even improve privacy by MAC address randomization, according to an official announcement. LuisalvaradoxWikipedia An earlier version of NetworkManagerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

One of GNU/Linux’s most important networking components just got an update

The software framework that powers the network connections on many GNU/Linux systems just got its second major update in less than a year and a half, with the version 1.2 release of NetworkManager.Version 1.2 brings several improvements to NetworkManager, including better security and usability for Wi-Fi. The changes should make the list of available access points more responsive and manageable, save energy on mobile devices and laptops, and even improve privacy by MAC address randomization, according to an official announcement. LuisalvaradoxWikipedia An earlier version of NetworkManagerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel Owns The Server, Wants To Own The Rack

Chip maker Intel has been getting a lot of grief in recent days about missing the boat on putting chips in Apple’s iPhone back when the product was announced back in 2007, and then subsequently also losing out on the opportunity to have Intel Inside the Apple iPad tablet that came out three years later. Say what you will, but the folks that have been running Intel’s Data Center Group have not missed any boats, but rather have built a warship.

As the traditional PC client business continues to erode, the part of the company that is dedicated to the …

Intel Owns The Server, Wants To Own The Rack was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

RIP Prince, a legendary musician with a complicated Internet history

I still recall where I first saw the late Prince's 1984 movie Purple Rain -- at a now-defunct bar called Play it Again Sam's in Boston's Allston/Brighton area where those of us who couldn't afford a fancy high-tech machine called a VCR would go to watch second-run movies while downing pitchers of beer and buckets of popcorn.Prince, who died today at the age of 57, probably would have frowned on such repurposing of his artistic output in light of his well-documented and uneasy relationship with the latest technology for distributing video and audio.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA gives solar ionic propulsion a monster boost

NASA this week took a giant step toward using solar electric power for future space missions by awarding a $67 million to Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop an advanced electric propulsion system.Such a system would deploy large solar arrays that can be used to convert sunlight into electrical power that ionizes atoms of xenon which is the propellant for the spacecraft’s thrusters. The thrust of such a power plant isn’t huge but its ability to provide increasing, continuous power over a long period of time is what makes it so attractive for long-duration spaceflights.+More on Network World: NASA: Top 10 space junk missions+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA gives solar ionic propulsion a monster boost

NASA this week took a giant step toward using solar electric power for future space missions by awarding a $67 million to Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop an advanced electric propulsion system.Such a system would deploy large solar arrays that can be used to convert sunlight into electrical power that ionizes atoms of xenon which is the propellant for the spacecraft’s thrusters. The thrust of such a power plant isn’t huge but its ability to provide increasing, continuous power over a long period of time is what makes it so attractive for long-duration spaceflights.+More on Network World: NASA: Top 10 space junk missions+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Is your tax data secure?

Monday is Tax Day. Many of us are thinking about our taxes. Are they too high or too low? What’s our money being spent on? Do we have a government worth paying for? I’m not here to answer any of those questions — I’m here to give you something else to think about. In addition to sending the IRS your money, you’re also sending them your data. It’s a lot of highly personal financial data, so it’s sensitive and important information. Is that data secure?

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The post Worth Reading: Is your tax data secure? appeared first on 'net work.

Android users could be harmed by EU ruling

Yesterday, the European Union launched an inquiry into Android’s dominant 80% share of the smartphone market. The Antitrust Commission announced it will investigate the connection between Google Play services and Google apps.Any smartphone supplier can run the Android Open Source Project (OASP,) a free and available as an open source project. China’s Xiaomi, for instance, takes the Android OASP and repackages it with a UI that looks like iPhone’s UI.  Xaomi doesn’t opt in to the Play Store for its apps, but relies on its own app store. Most hardware OEMs opt in to Google Play services because they want access to the million plus apps on the Play Store and Android’s security services. Security is a more subtle point but an important part of the Android operating systems architecture that is built on Play Services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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