Case Study: Scale-Out Cloud Infrastructure

I helped several customers design scale-out private or public cloud infrastructure. In every case, I tried to start with a reasonably small pod (based on what they’d consider acceptable loss unit – another great term I inherited from Chris Young), connected them to a shared L3 backbone (either within a data center or across multiple data centers), and then tried to address the inevitable desire for stretched layer-2 connectivity.

You’ll find a summary of these designs in my next ExpressExpress case study: Scale-Out Private Cloud Infrastructure, and if you need more details, I’m usually available for online consulting.

More details…

Apple vulnerability could allow firmware modifications, researcher says

A zero-day software vulnerability in the firmware of older Apple computers could be used to slip hard-to-remove malware onto a computer, according to a security researcher.Pedro Vilaca, who studies Mac security, wrote on his blog that the flaw he found builds on previous ones but this one could be far more dangerous. Apple officials could not be immediately reached for comment.Vilaca found it was possible to tamper with an Apple computer’s UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface). UEFI is firmware designed to improve upon BIOS, which is low-level code that bridges a computer’s hardware and operating system at startup.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud gaming at 4K still years away, Nvidia CEO says

Don’t expect online games to stream to your TV or PC at 4K resolution anytime soon.While it is possible to stream 4K movies from online services like Netflix to PCs, TVs and set-top boxes, streaming games from the cloud requires many infrastructure changes, said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, during a media briefing at Computex.Nvidia can currently stream 1080p games at 60 frames per second from its Grid online gaming service, but the technology needs to be developed for 4K streaming and a lot of fine-tuning is needed at the server level, Huang said.“It’s going to be a while,” Huang said.Many 4K TVs and monitors are already available, and display images at the 3840 x 2160-pixel resolution. Games typically require two-way communications, and servers process bits related to games differently than video streams.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Android developer advocate: everyone’s doing networking wrong

Twitter Google developer advocate Colt McAnlis: “Bad networking costs your customers money.”  Google developer advocate Colt McAnlis said that Android apps, almost across the board, are not architected correctly for the best networking performance, during a talk he gave Friday at Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco.“Networking performance is one of the most important things that every one of your apps does wrong,” he told the crowd.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Senate delays vote on NSA phone records dragnet

A controversial program allowing the U.S. National Security Agency to collect millions of domestic telephone records expired Sunday night after the Senate failed to vote on a bill to extend the authority for the surveillance.The Senate, meeting on Sunday as provisions of the counterterrorism Patriot Act were hours from expiring, voted on a so-called cloture to limit debate and move toward a vote on the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would rein in the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone records while allowing the agency to collect records in a more targeted manner.The 77-17 vote for cloture on the USA Freedom Act sets up a final vote on the bill, but the Senate isn’t likely to take action before Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Senate delays vote on NSA phone records dragnet

A controversial program allowing the U.S. National Security Agency to collect millions of domestic telephone records expired Sunday night after the Senate failed to vote on a bill to extend the authority for the surveillance.The Senate, meeting on Sunday as provisions of the counterterrorism Patriot Act were hours from expiring, voted on a so-called cloture to limit debate and move toward a vote on the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would rein in the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone records while allowing the agency to collect records in a more targeted manner.The 77-17 vote for cloture on the USA Freedom Act sets up a final vote on the bill, but the Senate isn’t likely to take action before Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 rumor rollup: Getting chippy, Force Touch all around

You know it’s a slow week for iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 rumors when most of the scuttlebutt centers around who’s going to be making the next great Apple smartphone’s processors.But that’s what we’ve largely been reduced to, in nanometer detail, this past week.Apple in recent years has used rival Samsung as well as Taiwan’s TSMC as chip suppliers, with speculation about the future of Samsung’s contributions to the iPhone and iPad fluctuating in sync with just how nasty or nice Apple and the Korean company are being to each other at the time.GforGames, which has been increasingly making a name for itself as a source of early news on mobile devices, reported this week on the battle for the next iPhone processor – the A9 – and the one after that, presumably the A10. The thinking goes that the iPhone 6S/6S Plus would get the A9 later this year and the iPhone 7 next year would be powered by the A10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nvidia seeks to sharpen gaming on laptops with G-Sync

Nvidia is bringing its G-Sync desktop display technology to laptops, which should lead to dramatic improvements in gaming for portable PCs.Nvidia’s G-Sync technology synchronizes monitors and display panels to the refresh rate of games, which reduces stutter and lag time. With G-Sync, GPUs are connected directly to displays, so images of a game appear almost instantly on a monitor as they are drawn up on a computer.As a result, games can run at more frames per second, improving the overall experience. The instantaneous refresh of screens also resolves the age-old problem of conventional monitors and displays being a bottleneck in the gaming experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker Compose and Docker Machine, Swarm, Compose Interworking

This is a continuation of my previous 2 blogs on Docker machine, Swarm. In this blog, I will cover Docker Compose and how Docker Machine, Swarm and Compose can work with each other. The interworking part is actively being developed by Docker team and is still at the preliminary stages. Docker Compose: Docker Compose comes from … Continue reading Docker Compose and Docker Machine, Swarm, Compose Interworking →

Docker Swarm

This is a continuation of my previous blog on Docker machine. In this blog, I will cover Docker Swarm. Swarm manages a set of Docker nodes as a single cluster. This has the following advantages: Rather than managing individual Docker nodes, the cluster can be managed as a single entity. Swarm has an in-built scheduler … Continue reading Docker Swarm →

Connecting VMs between Virtualbox and VMWare Player

I had written blogs earlier on using Virtualbox and VMWare Player. I recently had a need to connect VMs running on Virtualbox and VMWare player. This is for my Windows laptop. I found the procedure mentioned in this link to be very useful. There are 2 options. Use bridged mechanism. Create a networking interface with … Continue reading Connecting VMs between Virtualbox and VMWare Player →

Access-list Vs Prefix-list

General Query about access-list and prefix list ?

ACCESS-LIST
Access-list is sequential series of filters
Action :Either deny or permit
Matching Criteria can be source address in case of standard access-list or may be source address ,destination address,protocol,port or socket in case of extended access-list.
Its Implicit Deny means that no match occur through all filter in access-list ,it will tend to automatically dropped.
Its sequential,means that filter is checked from top to bottom.If the first match is encountered,the rest of the access -list is ignored.

**Always try to put filtering line in right sequence to avoid access-list mulfunctioning.

Standard Access-list
access-list 1 permit 10.10.10.1 0.0.0.0
access-list 1 permit 10.10.10.20 0.0.0.0
OR
ip access-list standard 1
10 permit 10.10.10.1 0.0.0.0
20 permit 10.10.10.20 0.0.0.0

Extended Access-list
access-list 100 permit ip 10.10.10.10 0.0.0.0 172.16.10.0 0.0.0.255
access-list 111 permit port access-list 111 permit tcp 10.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 172.1.141.0 0.0.0.255 eq 23
access-list 112 permit udp Continue reading

YouTube: Packet Capturing with VIRL

Tried VIRL when it first came out.  “Why?”, you ask, when you know I work in a Cisco Customer Proof of Concept lab with lots of “real” networking hardware? Answer is because it would be nice to be able to toss together networks to play with… without having to reserve gear, load line cards that are on shelves into empty chassis, cable, code, config… etc etc.

But there was, for me, a major item missing from VIRL when it first came out — the ability to packet capture easily.  For what I wanted VIRL for, that was a showstopper for me. So, back into the lab for my “playing” and teaching.

Now?  :)  Very very happy to pass on to you that VIRL supports packet capturing now!!!  Tossed together a quick ~12minute youtube.

link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think Bigger

I get frustrated by those who take a narrow view of technology, and progress in general. They see things in terms of where they are now, and where they were. But they struggle to see a bit further out. The Internet of Things is a good example of this.

I made the mistake of reading the comments on a recent El Reg article (I know, I know: Never read the comments). I came across this comment about the IoT:

…The innocent child asked “but why would the toaster need to talk to the ‘fridge?” The marketing gurus had no answer and a few years later the outfit went bankrupt. In all the time since, no one has been able to answer that question.

From there the comments devolved into a rather pointless discussion about milk, bread, spam on toast and Twitter. This is a fairly common theme on El Reg articles (along with “cloud has little appeal for 90% of SM server/computing requirements”, but that’s another issue).

I find it frustrating when people take a narrow, short-sighted view when looking at technology trends. We all see things from our own perspective, but it’s good to lift your head Continue reading

At Google I/O, no huge surprises but a honing of critical products

Gone are the days of skydivers landing on the tops of buildings wearing Google Glass, or new Chromebooks, tablets and smartwatches. This year, the focus of much of Google’s big I/O conference was to propel the Android operating system into new areas others have pioneered, like peer-to-peer payments and smart home appliances.There were no new hardware platforms, like Google Glass, Android TV or Android Auto. No new smartwatches like the LG G and Samsung Gear Live that debuted last year, marking Google’s entrance into the watch market.Instead, Google confirmed rumors this week by giving us Brillo, a stripped-down version of Android to power things like smart light bulbs and Internet-connected toasters and let them be controlled by Android devices. It might be radical were it not for Samsung, Apple and Microsoft developing similar systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

At Google I/O, no huge surprises but a honing of critical products

Gone are the days of skydivers landing on the tops of buildings wearing Google Glass, or new Chromebooks, tablets and smartwatches. This year, the focus of much of Google’s big I/O conference was to propel the Android operating system into new areas others have pioneered, like peer-to-peer payments and smart home appliances.There were no new hardware platforms, like Google Glass, Android TV or Android Auto. No new smartwatches like the LG G and Samsung Gear Live that debuted last year, marking Google’s entrance into the watch market.Instead, Google confirmed rumors this week by giving us Brillo, a stripped-down version of Android to power things like smart light bulbs and Internet-connected toasters and let them be controlled by Android devices. It might be radical were it not for Samsung, Apple and Microsoft developing similar systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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