What Data Centers Can Learn From The Military
Hyperscale innovators are driving technology today in the way that NASA and the military introduced new capabilities decades ago, but some principles remain the same.Why Do We Need VXLAN (and What Is It)?
Do you need VXLAN in your data center or could you continue using traditional bridging? Do layer-2 fabrics make sense or are they a dead end in the evolution of virtual networking?
I tried to provide a few high-level answers in the Introduction to VXLAN video which starts the VXLAN Technical Deep Dive webinar. The public version of the video is now available on ipSpace.net Free Content web site.
Tesla is copying Apple’s business model
One of the interesting things about Tesla is that the company is trying to copy Apple's business model. As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur myself, and an owner of a Tesla car, I thought I'd write up what that means.There are two basic business models in the world. The first is cheap, low-quality, high-volume products. You don't make much profit per unit, but you sell of a ton of them. The second is expensive, high-quality (luxury), low-volume products. You don't sell many units, but you make a lot of profit per unit.
It's really hard to split the difference, selling high-volume, high-quality products. If you spend 1% more on quality, your customers can't tell the difference (without more research on their part), so you'll lose 10% of your customers who won't accept the higher price. Or, you are selling to the luxury market, lowering price to sell more units means lowering quality standards, destroying your brand.
Rarely, though, companies can split the difference. A prime example is Costco. While the average person who shops at Walmart (low-quality, high-volume store) earns less than $20,000 per year, the average income of a Costco customer is over $90,000 per year. Costco sells high-quality Continue reading
DockerCon EU 2015 Videos: Day 2 of Black Belt
We have more vides from DockerCon EU 2015 to share! Scroll down to watch the recorded sessions and accompanying slides from Day 2 in the Black Belt track at DockerCon EU 2015. How to be successful running Docker in Production – … ContinuedNetwork Automation with Ansible – Dynamically Configuring Interface Descriptions
It’s been a while since my last post, but let’s hope that changes with the flurry of posts planned for this month. Most of my recent time has been spent traveling and teaching courses that cover how to use Python and Ansible for Network Automation. I’ve written about many of these concepts in the past, but to re-iterate what I’ve been saying, and what I’ve written in the past, it’s crucial to start small when it comes to automation (otherwise it’s easy to feel overwhelmed trying to automate everything and then you never make any real progress). By starting small, you can get a quick win, and can gradually expand from there. In this post, I’m going to review one very small example of how to use Ansible for network automation. We’ll review how to use Ansible to dynamically configure interface descriptions populated with real-time LLDP neighbor information. While this post focuses on Cisco Nexus switches, note that the same approach can be used for any vendor.
The process that we’ll be using to auto-configure the interface descriptions is a three-step process:
1. Discover the device
While we are only using Cisco switches in this example, we still go through Continue reading
A Use Case for an SSH Bastion Host
In this post, I’m going to explore one specific use case for using an SSH bastion host. I described this configuration and how to set it up in a previous post; in this post, though, I’d like to focus on one practical use case.
This use case is actually one I depicted graphically in my earlier post:
This diagram could represent a couple different examples. For example, perhaps this is an AWS VPC. Security best practices suggest that you should limit access from the Internet to your instances as much as possible; unless an instance needs to accept traffic from the Internet, don’t assign a public IP address (or an Elastic IP address). However, without a publicly-accessible IP address, how does one connect to and manage the instance? You can’t SSH to it without a publicly-accessible IP address—unless you use an SSH bastion host.
Or perhaps this diagram represents an OpenStack private cloud, where users can deploy instances in a private tenant network. In order for those instances to be accessible externally (where “externally” means external to the OpenStack cloud), the tenant must assign each instance a floating IP address. Security may not be as much of a concern Continue reading
Artificial Intelligence Handles Phone Calls for NTT
NTT also announced a reseller partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
DockerCon EU 2015 Videos: Day 1 of Black Belt
Videos from this year’s DockerCon EU 2015 conference are now available! Below are the recorded videos and slides from the sessions on Day 1 in the Black Belt track at DockerCon EU 2015. We will publish more videos this week on the blog – stay tuned … ContinuedVapor IO Scores First Round of Funding
The investors include Goldman Sachs and AVX Partners, but the amount is unknown.
The Ansible Support Mailbox
Hi, I'm David Federlein and you may know me from such tickets to the Customer Success Team as “How does Tower’s Dynamic Inventory use Private IPs?" and “How do I import my Ansible inventory to Tower?" Or perhaps you just knew me from grade school. If that’s the case I’d like to apologize for that incident with the fake perfume that smelled like farts and further reassure you that I never again ordered any novelty items from the back of comic books.
In regards to Tower and Ansible, I am here today to share some tips that may be of help in your endeavor for automated nirvana. Perhaps after I’ve shared some of this with you I can one day have someone call me “Sir” without adding “you’re making a scene.” Let’s get down to business.
By now you should be familiar with our love of cowsay, but cows can be dangerous! Don't kid yourself: If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! So if you’d like to turn off the bovines throwing taunting barbs as you run your playbook, remember two things:
1) That cow is judging Continue reading
The Ansible Support Mailbox
Hi, I'm David Federlein and you may know me from such tickets to the Customer Success Team as “How does Tower’s Dynamic Inventory use Private IPs?" and “How do I import my Ansible inventory to Tower?" Or perhaps you just knew me from grade school. If that’s the case I’d like to apologize for that incident with the fake perfume that smelled like farts and further reassure you that I never again ordered any novelty items from the back of comic books.
In regards to Tower and Ansible, I am here today to share some tips that may be of help in your endeavor for automated nirvana. Perhaps after I’ve shared some of this with you I can one day have someone call me “Sir” without adding “you’re making a scene.” Let’s get down to business.
By now you should be familiar with our love of cowsay, but cows can be dangerous! Don't kid yourself: If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! So if you’d like to turn off the bovines throwing taunting barbs as you run your playbook, remember two things:
1) That cow is judging Continue reading
Talligent Launches New Version of Cloud Management Software
The uptick in OpenStack deployments is feeding the need for better management tools.