Why you want a bare metal hypervisor and how to choose

Once upon a time, there was nothing but native, or bare metal, hypervisors (a.k.a. virtual machine managers). In the 1980s, I cut my teeth on IBM System/370 mainframes running VM/CMS, but bare metal's history goes all the way back to the 1960s. With bare metal hypervisors, the hypervisor runs directly on the hardware. There is no intervening operating system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Cisco dedicates security project to ‘pissing off the bad guys’

Following its disruption of a major distributor of Angler ransomware, Cisco is offering up free security consulting for hosting providers that’s aimed at wiping out persistent attacks that abuse providers’ services and threaten the rest of the Internet.Cisco’s Talos security intelligence and research group has launched Project Aspis, which hosting providers can sign up for to work with Talos and in return receive help including systems forensics, reverse engineering, threat intelligence sharing and, in the right circumstances, dedicated research engineers to work with, according to Cisco’s security blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CCNA – Operation of IP Data Networks 1.2

The next topic for CCNA is:

1.2 Select the components required to meet a given network specification

I wish the blueprint would have been a bit clearer on what they mean with this topic but it’s reasonable to think that it’s about picking routers and switches depending on the networking requirements.

Picking a router or switch will depend on what kind of circuit is bought from the ISP, if the service is managed, the number of users on the network, the number of subnets needed and if there are requirements for NAT and/or firewalling among many decision points. Since this is the CCNA RS we will pretend that devices such as the Cisco ASA does not exist which can be used for small offices to do both firewalling and routing.

I’ll give different examples and we’ll look at which devices make sense and why to pick one device over another.

MPLS VPN circuit
10 users
One subnet (data)
No need to NAT
No need for firewall

The MPLS VPN circuit is a managed service, meaning that the ISP will have a Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) at the customer. In other words, the ISP will put a router at the Continue reading

Which NoSQL database is right for you?

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Many organizations are turning to NoSQL for its ability to support Big Data’s volume, variety and velocity, but how do you know which one to chose?

A NoSQL database can be a good fit for many projects, but to keep down development and maintenance costs you need to evaluate each project’s requirements to make sure specialized criteria are addressed. Keep in mind that it is not just a question of being able to develop the application specified, it also means being able to easily manage and support applications with the potential for dramatic growth in scope and size in production for many years. One of my customers doubled the size of their business 12 times in less than 4 years.

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

October 2015 Patch Tuesday: Microsoft releases 3 critical and 3 important patches

For October 2015 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released only six security bulletins with three being rated as critical.3 rated CriticalThe three bulletins rated critical deal with remote code execution.MS15-106 is a cumulative fix for Internet Explorer, patching multiple memory corruption, scripting engine memory corruption, elevation of privilege, and information disclosure vulnerabilities as well as a security feature bypass involving VBScript and Jscript ASLR, and a scripting engine information disclosure bug. The most severe flaws could allow for remote code execution if an attacker tricks a user into visiting a maliciously crafted site. If successfully exploited, an attacker could gain the same user rights as the current user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

After Dell-EMC deal, will VMware’s Pat Gelsinger need a new laptop?

Here’s to hoping that Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, didn’t get off on the wrong foot with his new boss on Monday.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: The Bunch is back - How Dell and EMC could change the IT landscape | How will Dell justify its massive payout for EMC? +Some commenters were quick to point out that Gelsinger was using a Mac during the kick-off conference call to announce Monday’s mega-merger between Dell and EMC. When Michael Dell buys your company, does that mean you have to start using Dell laptops?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA wants vanishing drones

It’s a description right out of a James Bond or Mission: Impossible script: Create a flock of unmanned aircraft that can be dropped from a larger mothership to take on a mission, then actually vanish once the mission is carried out. +More on Network World: World’s craziest Halloween coffins+ Engineers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency envision the disappearing drones as ideal for a number of missions, including the delivery of humanitarian or military aid to people or military personnel in rough terrain or hard-to reach-places.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My Thoughts on Dell, EMC, and Networking

Dell.EMC.logo.storage

The IT world is buzzing about the news that Dell is acquiring EMC for $67 billion. Storage analysts are talking about the demise of the 800-lb gorilla of storage. Virtualization people are trying to figure out what will happen to VMware and what exactly a tracking stock is. But very little is going on in the networking space. And I think that’s going to be a place where some interesting things are going to happen.

It’s Not The Network

The appeal of the Dell/EMC deal has very little to do with networking. EMC has never had any form of enterprise networking, even if they were rumored to have been looking at Juniper a few years ago. The real networking pieces come from VMware and NSX. NSX is a pure software networking implementation for overlay networking implemented in virtualized networks.

Dell’s networking team was practically nonexistent until the Force10 acquisition. Since then there has been a lot of work in building a product to support Dell’s data center networking aspirations. Good work has been done on the hardware front. The software on the switches has had some R&D done internally, but the biggest gains have been in partnerships. Dell works closely Continue reading

More concurrency: Improved locking in PostgreSQL

If you want to build a large scale website, scaling out the webserver is not enough. It is also necessary to cleverly manage the database side. a key to high scalability is locking.

In PostgreSQL we got a couple of new cool features to reduce locking and to speed up things due to improved concurrency.

General recommendations: Before attacking locking, however, it makes sense to check what is really going on on your PostgreSQL database server. To do so I recommend to take a look at pg_stat_statements and to carefully track down bottlenecks. Here is how it works:

Google adopts single sign-on for more desktop, mobile apps

Google is expanding its identity service to provide single sign-on for more desktop and mobile applications.With enhanced OpenID Connect Identity Provider support, Google Apps administrators will be able to add single sign-on capabilities to mobile apps and to SaaS (software-as-a-service) apps available through the Google Apps Marketplace, said Shashank Gupta, product manager for Google Apps for Work. Google also added support for SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0 for popular SaaS providers and made it easier for administrators to add custom SAML app integrations.[ Simplify your security with six password managers for PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Find out which one prevails in InfoWorld's review. | Discover how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security newsletter. ] Organizations are increasingly adopting single sign-on because it improves corporate application security. Employees don't have to remember complex passwords for each application as they just use their Google Apps credentials to sign in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SANS: 20 critical security controls you need to add

Prioritizing security measures is the first step toward accomplishing them, and the SANS Institute has created a list of the top 20 critical security controls businesses should implement.They include some obvious steps, such as getting a comprehensive inventory of all network devices and software, implementing secure hardware configurations and providing for data recovery, but also gets into areas that are less evident.+More on Network World: Gartner: IT should simplify security to fight inescapable hackers+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Adding a Full API to PicOS

Pica8′s PicOS is a Linux network OS based on Debian. This makes it easy for our customers to integrate their own tools or applications within PicOS. We are compatible with all the leading DevOps tools, such as Puppet, Chef, and Salt; and of course, we support OpenFlow.

But what if you would like to have an application on the switch itself to manipulate its data path? This is beyond the standard DevOps model and is not aligned with the traditional OpenFlow model, which uses a centralized controller.

Typically the requirement for such an application would be:
– A switch using traditional L2/L3, as well as an API to override those L2/L3 forwarding decisions.
– The API could be called on the switch itself while the application is running on the switch (that requirement would forbid a centralized OpenFlow controller).

For this use case, most network equipment vendors have an SDK (Software Development Kit) to program native applications running directly on the switch. A good example would be the Arista EOSSdk.

One big issue with those SDKs is that they are “sticky.” Once you develop your application, it only runs on the SDK provided by your vendor, Continue reading

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Who's Hiring?

  • As a Networking & Systems Software Engineer at iStreamPlanet you’ll be driving the design and implementation of a high-throughput video distribution system. Our cloud-based approach to video streaming requires terabytes of high-definition video routed throughout the world. You will work in a highly-collaborative, agile environment that thrives on success and eats big challenges for lunch. Please apply here.

  • As a Scalable Storage Software Engineer at iStreamPlanet you’ll be driving the design and implementation of numerous storage systems including software services, analytics and video archival. Our cloud-based approach to world-wide video streaming requires performant, scalable, and reliable storage and processing of data. You will work on small, collaborative teams to solve big problems, where you can see the impact of your work on the business. Please apply here.

  • Close.io is a *profitable* fast-growing SaaS startup looking for a Lead DevOps/Infrastructure engineer to join our ~10 person team in Palo Alto or *remotely*. Come help us improve API performance, tune our databases, tighten up security, setup autoscaling, make deployments faster and safer, scale our MongoDB/Elasticsearch/MySQL/Redis data stores, setup centralized logging, instrument our app with metric collection, set up better monitoring, etc. Learn more and apply here.

  • Location Labs is Continue reading

Moving to the cloud? Willing to talk about it on Datanauts?

The Datanauts Podcast is looking for enterprise infrastructure folks who have worked on a project to migrate applications from in-house to the cloud. Interested in being a guest? Ping me -- [email protected] -- and let us know. You can be anonymous if you like, and you don't have to use your company name.

The post Moving to the cloud? Willing to talk about it on Datanauts? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

How will Dell justify its massive payout for EMC?

Dell's $67 billion acquisition of EMC stacks up as the largest technology deal in history. But if Michael Dell is gobbling up storage giant EMC in an attempt to stem the tide of movement from on-premise proprietary data centers to the cloud, it might be too little too late. Aside from merely bulking up, what exactly is Dell trying to do with EMC? If he hopes to leverage his new toy and its 83% stake in VMware to move deeper into the cloud, then this deal could end up justifying its enormous price tag. In a conference call about the deal, EMC CEO Joe Tucci reportedly claimed that being part of Dell as a private company would speed the development of cloud-based technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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