Bootstrapping Servers into Ansible

As part of a lab rebuild I’ve been doing over the last few weeks (funny how hardware failures can lead to a lab rebuild), I’ve been expanding the use of Ansible for configuration automation. In this post, I’m going to share the process I’ve created for bootstrapping newly-built servers into Ansible.

I developed this Ansible bootstrapping process to work in conjunction with the fully automated Ubuntu installation method that I described in an earlier post. The idea is that I would be able to boot a new server (virtual or physical), choose a configuration from the PXE menu, and a few minutes later have a built Ubuntu system. Then, with a single command, I could “bootstrap” the server into an Ansible configuration automation system. This latter part—configuring systems to work with Ansible—is what I’ll be describing here.

First, a (very) brief overview of Ansible. Ansible is a configuration automation tool that leverages standard SSH connections to remote devices in order to perform its work. Ansible is agentless, so no software has to be pre-installed on the managed servers, but this means Ansible has to authenticate against remote systems in order to establish these SSH connections. This authentication should, in ideal Continue reading

EMC scoops up Virtustream for cloud management in $1.2B deal

EMC is purchasing the privately held Virtustream software provider for approximately $1.2 billion to expand its portfolio of cloud management tools.Storage systems provider EMC will use Virtustream technology to aid customers moving to cloud-based services as an alternative to running data centers in-house. Virtustream's software can be used to manage complex enterprise applications, such as SAP's S/4HANA, so they can be run effectively on hosted infrastructure services.MORE M&A: 2015 Enterprise networking & IT M&A tracker Based in Bethesda, Maryland, Virtustream will be the basis of a new business unit at EMC. Rodney Rogers, the CEO of Virtustream, will lead the new business cloud services unit and report to EMC CEO Joe Tucci.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Watch Google I/O livestream here

Google I/O 2015 kicks off Wednesday, May 28, from the Moscone Center in San Francisco, at 9 a.m. PST (Noon EST.) So it’s just about smack-dab in the center of the working week, if you’re on the East Coast. That might well mean that you’re just sitting down to lunch, so you could do a lot worse than tune in right here for a live stream of the opening keynote. What, exactly, is going to be said, we don’t know, but the kickoff is generally where Google makes the biggest, splashiest announcements of the event. These may be big surprises, so make sure you’re not facing your monitor if you have to do a spit-take.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 key criteria for defining edge data centers

The explosion of the cloud and internet-based content has created the need to move the internet's "edge," closer to where the users are. Historically, the "edge" had been limited to tier-1 cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. If a user in a tier-2 city, such as St. Paul, wanted to access internet-based content, the data would actually come from the closest edge location, in this case Chicago.If the user is just doing general browsing, it's hard to notice whether you're near or far from the edge. However, for any kind of mission-critical or real-time traffic like video, cloud-based applications, or gaming, the extra latency can significantly degrade performance and increase security risks.   To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reflections on OpenStack Summit 2015 – A Market Maturing

I just came back from the OpenStack Summit 2015 in Vancouver and have finally caught my breath, so I can share some insights from this important event. It was incredible to bear witness to the continued growth of the OpenStack community in general and this event in particular. I still remember the very early summits when this industry was in its infancy. Back then, it seemed that most of the attendees were engineers conducting design sessions. This past week was gratifying to see how many real customers and actual OpenStack users were at the show. I would even go so far as to say they constituted the majority of the attendees.

Pic 1 for blog

Cumulus Networks co-founder and CTO Nolan Leake talks with visitors at the Cumulus Networks booth.

OpenStack Users Love Cumulus Networks

Cumulus Networks was very much present throughout the show — in our booth, in our partners’ booths, in panel sessions and, apparently, in the minds of many of the attendees. Cumulus Linux was seen as a universal network OS underlay for a variety of architectures. In addition to the sessions featuring our co-founder and CTO Nolan Leake, it was exciting to hear Cumulus Networks mentioned in many of the sessions I Continue reading

Research community looks to SDN to help distribute data from the Large Hadron Collider

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starts back up in June, the data collected and distributed worldwide for research will surpass the 200 petabytes exchanged among LHC sites the last time the collider was operational. Network challenges at this scale are different from what enterprises typically confront, but Harvey Newman, Professor of Physics at Caltech, who has been a leader in global scale networking and computing for the high energy physics community for the last 30 years, and Julian Bunn, Principal Computational Scientist at Caltech, hope to introduce a technology to this rarified environment that enterprises are also now contemplating:  Software Defined Networking (SDN).  Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently sat down with Newman and Bunn to get a glimpse inside the demanding world of research networks and the promise of SDN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hyundai now offers an Android car, even for current owners

Android Auto, a product that up until now was only talked about by industry insiders and journalists, just shipped this week.Well, it didn't really ship, because it is being released as a software update to the 2015 Hyundai Sonata that existing owners can download. It will also be factory-installed on new models. Android Auto is an attempt to incorporate the convenience and safety of pairing a smartphone to a car without the distraction. It also points out that the car has become a software-driven mobile device, not unlike computers and smartphones.See also: Volvo charges extra for self-driving car feature that brakes for pedestrians Android Auto reduces driver distraction from smartphone use by integrating the smartphone with the console stereo system that the industry calls a head-unit. It focuses the driver's attention in short, safe interactions with the console display when using Android apps. According to Hyundai, "at any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving, a number that has held steady since 2010." Distracted driving endangers drivers and their passengers, as well as those who share the road with them. According to the National Safety Board, Continue reading

Microsoft developing Cortana app for iOS, Android

Microsoft is bringing Cortana to iOS and Android smartphones, extending the voice-controlled personal assistant to platforms beyond Windows 10 and Windows Phone.Using the Cortana iOS and Android apps people will be able to dictate emails, set appointments and conduct Web searches by speaking commands, among other features. The app will also let people arrange to receive notifications like sports scores and flight information.Windows 10 will include a program called Phone Companion to help people set up on Cortana and sync their PCs with their smartphone, whether it runs iOS, Android or Windows Phone. The Phone Companion program will also let users sync OneNote, Music, Office and OneDrive between their Windows 10 PC and their Android, iOS or Windows Phone smartphone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Synology patches serious flaws in its network-attached storage devices

Network-attached storage (NAS) manufacturer Synology fixed several vulnerabilities in its devices’ software, one of which could allow attackers to compromise the data stored on them.The most serious vulnerability is located in the Synology Photo Station, a feature of DiskStation Manager (DSM), the Linux-based operating system that runs on the company’s NAS devices.Synology Photo Station allows users to create online photo albums and blogs that can be accessed remotely using the NAS device’s public IP (Internet Protocol) address.Researchers from Dutch firm Securify found that Photo Station did not properly sanitize user input, allowing potential attackers to inject system commands that would be executed with the privileges of the Web server.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Heads up: Google Glass may be coming back

According to reports last week in the Financial Times, Google really is working on a new version of Glass, the now-cancelled wearable device that became the poster child for clueless tech products creeping out normal people.Google has claimed that it would continue working on the device since it stopped selling it in January, but until now there's been no word on what the company had in mind. Was it hoping to make a few tweaks and come up with a new marketing campaign and hope that would be enough for a successful re-launch? Or was the plan to completely scrap Google Glass as is and develop a new product based on what it learned from the first attempt?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Just. Write.

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Somewhere, someone is thinking about writing. They are confused where to start. Maybe they think they can’t write well at all? Perhaps they even think they’ll run out of things to say? Guess what?

Just. Write.

Why A Blog?

Social media has taken over as the primary form of communication for a great majority of the population. Status updates, wall posts, and picture montages are the way we tell everyone what we’re up to. But this kind of communication is fast and ephemeral. Can you recall tweets you made seven months ago? Unless you can remember a keyword, Twitter and Google do a horrible job of searching for anything past a few days old.

Blogs represent something different. They are the long form record of what we know. They expand beyond a status or point-in-time posting. Blogs can exist for months or years past their original post date. They can be indexed and shared and amplifed. Blogs are how we leave our mark on the world.

I’ve been fielding questions recently from a lot of people about how to get started in blogging. I’m a firm believer that everyone has at least one good blog post in them. One story Continue reading

Waste Not a Moment (Time Management)

One of the legends surrounding people who get a lot done is they simply don’t sleep. It’s long been said that I have some number of clones who do part of my work, or perhaps that if you ask different clones the same question, you’ll get different answers. This has, of course, been verified scientifically… But the truth is busy people do sleep, and they don’t have clones.

What they don’t do is waste the one resource everyone has a limited supply of — time. In the British Navy of yore, there was a phrase for this focus on using time effectively:

Waste not a moment.

Now I’m not here to give you time management tips and tricks. I’m happy enough to tell you what I do that seems to work. For instance —

  • Set aside specific times to check email; don’t check it constantly.
  • Schedule time to read and learn every day; still, however, slip in reading while you’re waiting in line, waiting on dinner by yourself, etc.
  • Don’t spend a lot of time on social media. Don’t read the comments to a story, just the story.
  • Don’t feel guilty about deleting things, or not reading them.
  • Corollary one: Continue reading

Infinit improves its iPad user interface, partners with HTC to speed up file sharing

French start-up Infinit has customized its iOS client for Apple’s iPads and partnered with HTC to put its free software for speeding up file sharing on the company’s smartphones.Infinit has developed a peer-to-peer technology that the company says lets users share files faster than when using services such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Apple’s AirDrop,. The Tuesday’s announcements build on the launch of its applications for Android and iOS at the end of March.The iOS app has been upgraded to work better on Apple’s tablets. A lot of people share files between their MacBooks and iPads, so customizing the layout of the user interface for the bigger tablet screens made sense, according to chief operating officer and co-founder Baptiste Fradin.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Charter Communications confirms bid to buy Time Warner Cable for $78.7B

Charter Communications has confirmed it plans to acquire of Time Warner Cable, a deal that if approved would create the second-biggest cable operator in the U.S.Cable operators are under pressure from a new generation of companies such as Netflix that offer competing video services, and Charter is hoping scale will help it compete more effectively. It values the deal at $78.7 billion including assumed debt.MORE M&A: 2015 Enterprise networking & IT M&A trackerCharter also plans to acquire Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company. If successful, the deals would make Charter, currently the fourth-biggest cable company in the U.S., second only to Comcast. The combined entity would serve 23.9 million customers in 41 states.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Charter Communications confirms bid to buy Time Warner Cable for $78.7B

Charter Communications has confirmed it plans to acquire of Time Warner Cable, a deal that if approved would create the second-biggest cable operator in the U.S.Cable operators are under pressure from a new generation of companies such as Netflix that offer competing video services, and Charter is hoping scale will help it compete more effectively. It values the deal at $78.7 billion including assumed debt.MORE M&A: 2015 Enterprise networking & IT M&A trackerCharter also plans to acquire Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company. If successful, the deals would make Charter, currently the fourth-biggest cable company in the U.S., second only to Comcast. The combined entity would serve 23.9 million customers in 41 states.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, May 26

Charter strikes $55 billion deal for Time Warner CableCharter Communications will spend US$55 billion to buy Time Warner Cable in a deal that would create a broadband powerhouse in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reports. Comcast’s bid to buy Time Warner fell apart last month when it became clear that key regulators in the U.S. were opposed. Expect Charter’s plans to be closely scrutinized for their impact on competition, as well.Legendary Apple designer Jony Ive moves up into less hands-on roleThe British design genius who partnered with the late Steve Jobs to create some of the most iconic products in tech is moving up into a newly created executive role at Apple—and one that will likely have him in a less hands-on role, re/code reports. Jony Ive was named chief design officer, a role where he’ll focus on new ideas and future initiatives, while day-to-day oversight will fall to Richard Howarth on industrial design and Alan Dye on user interfaces.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, May 26

Charter strikes $55 billion deal for Time Warner CableCharter Communications will spend US$55 billion to buy Time Warner Cable in a deal that would create a broadband powerhouse in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reports. Comcast’s bid to buy Time Warner fell apart last month when it became clear that key regulators in the U.S. were opposed. Expect Charter’s plans to be closely scrutinized for their impact on competition, as well.Legendary Apple designer Jony Ive moves up into less hands-on roleThe British design genius who partnered with the late Steve Jobs to create some of the most iconic products in tech is moving up into a newly created executive role at Apple—and one that will likely have him in a less hands-on role, re/code reports. Jony Ive was named chief design officer, a role where he’ll focus on new ideas and future initiatives, while day-to-day oversight will fall to Richard Howarth on industrial design and Alan Dye on user interfaces.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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