Versa Virtual Edge Report Webinar: Service Provider Expertise & NFV PoCs are Live Tomorrow
Learn from the top NFV PoCs, manage, and orchestrate NFV-based managed services with Versa's January 27th webinar!
Security ‘net: Social Media & Narratives
I have a rather motley collection of links this week roaming over security, social media, and algorithms. First up is three interesting reads on social media, some of which isn’t very technical, but it’s tangential to technology, so I still get to post them here. Since beginning work in earnest on a PhD in philosophy, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to stories in this realm, and thinking about how these things impact us as people and our culture at large.
First up, a prediction that Facebook is going to die because it’s a “garbage dump.” I’m not a huge user of Facebook, so I really don’t pay attention to what goes on there (which is probably why if you’ve tried to friend me there, I’ve not answered — I rarely look at requests, and almost never approve them).
It’s important for communication channels to keep their signal to noise ratio Continue reading
Lies vendors tell about Service Level Agreements and how to negotiate for something better
Although vendor-written, this contributed piece does not advocate a position that is particular to the author’s employer and has been edited and approved by Network World editors.
Most companies now use a range of cloud applications, and uptime performance for those applications is measured by Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These agreements acknowledge that glitches, system crashes and downtime have an enormous impact on business continuity and can adversely affect customer loyalty and churn. Gartner estimates downtime can cost major corporations as much as $100,000 per hour.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ansible 2.0 Has Arrived
After a year of work, we are extremely proud to announce that Ansible 2.0 has been released and is now generally available. This is by far one of the most ambitious Ansible releases to date, and it reflects an enormous amount of work by the community, which continues to amaze me. Approximately 300 users have contributed code to what has been known as “v2” for some time, and 500 users have contributed code to modules since the last major Ansible release.
Why Did We Start V2?
There are many pitfalls to refactoring software, so why did we decide to tackle such a major project? At the time we started the work on v2, Ansible was approximately three years old and had recently crossed the 1,000 contributor mark. This huge rate in growth also resulted in a degree of technical debt in the code, which was beginning to show as we continued to add features.
Ultimately, we decided it was worth it to take a step back and rework some aspects of the codebase which had been prone to having features bolted on without a clear-cut architectural vision. We also rewrote from scratch much of the code which was responsible Continue reading
Ansible 2.0 Has Arrived
After a year of work, we are extremely proud to announce that Ansible 2.0 ("Over the Hills and Far Away") has been released and is now generally available. This is by far one of the most ambitious Ansible releases to date, and it reflects an enormous amount of work by the community, which continues to amaze me. Approximately 300 users have contributed code to what has been known as “v2” for some time, and 500 users have contributed code to modules since the last major Ansible release.
Why Did We Start V2?
There are many pitfalls to refactoring software, so why did we decide to tackle such a major project? At the time we started the work on v2, Ansible was approximately three years old and had recently crossed the 1,000 contributor mark. This huge rate in growth also resulted in a degree of technical debt in the code, which was beginning to show as we continued to add features.
Ultimately, we decided it was worth it to take a step back and rework some aspects of the codebase which had been prone to having features bolted on without a clear-cut architectural vision. We also rewrote from scratch much Continue reading
Are Unnumbered Interfaces Harmful?
A few weeks ago I got into an interesting discussion about the potential harm caused by unnumbered IPv4/IPv6 interfaces.
Ignoring for the moment the vendor-specific or media-specific implementation details, these two arguments usually pop up in the first 100 milliseconds (assuming engineers involved in the discussion have some hands-on operational experience):
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Powerball lessons for infosec
"Powerball" is a 44-state lottery whose prize now exceeds $1 billion, so there is much attention on it. I thought I'd draw some lessons for infosec.The odds of a ticket winning the top prize is 1 in 292-million. However, last week 440-million tickets were purchased. Why did nobody win?
Because most people choose their own numbers. Humans choose numbers that are meaningful and lucky to them, such as birthdays, while avoiding meaningless or unlucky numbers, like 13. such numbers clump. Thus, while theory tells us there should've been at least one winner if everyone chose their number randomly, in practice a large percentage of possible numbers go unchosen. (Letting the computer choose random numbers doesn't increase your odds of winning, but does decrease the odds of having to sharing the prize).
The same applies to passwords. The reason we can crack passwords, even the tough ones using salted hashes, is because we rely upon the fact that humans choose passwords themselves. This makes password guessing a tractable human problem, rather than an intractable mathematical problem.
The average adult in lottery states spends $300 a year on the lottery. The amount spent on lotteries is more than sports, movies, music, Continue reading
2015 in review and 2016 goals
Last year I started writing down my goals for each year. My thought was that writing them down would be more meaningful than just thinking “I should try and do X this year”. So I want to take a quick look at how I did and talk about 2016 as well.
2015 Goals
Run a marathon
I signed up for, and attempted to run, the Twin Cities Marathon this fall. I knew going into it that I wouldn’t run the whole thing. My training schedule fell apart after the first month. While I could list all of the reasons why (Our 2nd kid was on the way, work was crazy, etc) there really are no excuses. In the month before the marathon I seriously picked up training again but it wasn’t enough. My new goal became to run half which I was able to do and I considered it a huge win for me. Having never run a race that big, I was a little hesitant about it but the experience was AWESOME and I’m definitely keeping this one on the goal list for 2016.
Start work on finishing my basement
Continue reading
Featured Interview: IMTC’s Pascal Menezes on Automated Diagnostics in SDN with Project Aspen
SDxCentral interview IMTC's Pascal Menezes where he discusses how Project Aspen has enabled new level of automated diagnostics within SDN.