How to build a service mesh with Istio and Calico

Microservices are loosely coupled software that provides flexibility and scalability to a cloud environment. However, securing this open architecture from vulnerabilities and malicious actors can be challenging without a service mesh.

This blog post will demonstrate how you can create an Istio and Calico integration to establish a service mesh that will manipulate HTTP traffic in the application layer. This Istio-Calico integration provides a unified way to write security policies interacting with applications and implement restrictions without disturbing the entire system.

What’s a service mesh?

A service mesh is a software layer that sits between the microservices that form your workload. After deploying and enabling a service mesh system for your workloads, an injector will add a sidecar container to each. These sidecars then collect and manipulate information via the rules you provide, allowing you to secure your cluster on an application level without requiring any change inside your software.

Without a service mesh, to ensure communication integrity and confidentiality between workloads, you must modify each to embed encryption methods. On top of that, gathering insight into the events that are happening in the application layer will require modifying the workload application itself, which all requires a good amount of Continue reading

HPE expands GreenLake private cloud offerings

HPE has announced new features for its GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise, including Kubernetes support and workload-optimized instances.HPE launched GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise in June. It's an automated private cloud offering for enterprises looking to deploy both traditional workloads and cloud-native applications inside their data centers. The service includes virtual machines, bare metal workloads, and containers, all running on GreenLake’s on-premises consumption model.Among the new services HPE announced is the option to deploy Kubernetes container services through Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Anywhere. Customers can now run the same container runtimes on-premises that they use in the public cloud, with a consistent experience across both public and private clouds.To read this article in full, please click here

HPE expands GreenLake private cloud offerings

HPE has announced new features for its GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise, including Kubernetes support and workload-optimized instances.HPE launched GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise in June. It's an automated private cloud offering for enterprises looking to deploy both traditional workloads and cloud-native applications inside their data centers. The service includes virtual machines, bare metal workloads, and containers, all running on GreenLake’s on-premises consumption model.Among the new services HPE announced is the option to deploy Kubernetes container services through Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Anywhere. Customers can now run the same container runtimes on-premises that they use in the public cloud, with a consistent experience across both public and private clouds.To read this article in full, please click here

More work for admins: When labor-saving management tools don’t ease workloads

If not deployed properly, today’s whiz-bang network management tools wind up making more work for network admins rather than saving them time and reducing their overload.Wait, labor saving devices don’t save labor? Not really, at least when it comes to freeing up time for more important or rewarding activities.It’s not unlike the "labor saving appliance" revolution in the American home, especially in the post-WW2 era.I’m referring, of course, to Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s classic history of technology book, More Work for Mother, which explored in depth how various supposedly labor-saving advances in household technology did not reduce the amount of time those women who kept house spent on housekeeping. On the contrary, because they mainly mechanized or automated work previously done by servants, children, or (occasionally) men, these tech advances shifted women’s efforts from organizing such work to doing it. At the same time, with some kinds of work around food preparation and clothes washing, they also brought back “in-house” work that had been effectively outsourced to commercial laundries, bakeries, etc.To read this article in full, please click here

More work for admins: When labor-saving management tools don’t ease workloads

If not deployed properly, today’s whiz-bang network management tools wind up making more work for network admins rather than saving them time and reducing their overload.Wait, labor saving devices don’t save labor? Not really, at least when it comes to freeing up time for more important or rewarding activities.It’s not unlike the "labor saving appliance" revolution in the American home, especially in the post-WW2 era.I’m referring, of course, to Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s classic history of technology book, More Work for Mother, which explored in depth how various supposedly labor-saving advances in household technology did not reduce the amount of time those women who kept house spent on housekeeping. On the contrary, because they mainly mechanized or automated work previously done by servants, children, or (occasionally) men, these tech advances shifted women’s efforts from organizing such work to doing it. At the same time, with some kinds of work around food preparation and clothes washing, they also brought back “in-house” work that had been effectively outsourced to commercial laundries, bakeries, etc.To read this article in full, please click here

Five Digital Transformation Trends for 2023

The Top 10 Ansible Blogs of 2022

Introduction

If you're looking to brush up on the most popular Ansible information from 2022 (or just grasping at any excuse to break away from your relatives for a few minutes during the holidays), you've come to the right place. What follows are the top 10 blogs that have captured the most attention from Ansible.com readers in 2022. 

10. Introducing the Event-Driven Ansible developer preview

One of the buzzworthy announcements at AnsibleFest 2022 was Event-Driven Ansible, released as Developer Preview by Red Hat. In this blog, Joe Pisciotta, Ansible Product Manager, describes Event-Driven Ansible's integration with 3rd-party event sources and support for establishing rules using "if-then" scenarios. Discover why Event-Driven Ansible makes remediating issues simple and removes the time-consuming customization usually required with "self-healing" approaches. 

9. What's new in Ansible Automation Platform 2.3

Several new features and enhancements were announced as part of Ansible Automation Platform 2.3, such as more flexibility and control over execution nodes in automation mesh, the launch of Ansible validated content to help you get started automating operational tasks, support for LDAP with RBAC, and much more. Sean Cavanaugh, Ansible Technical Marketing Manager, outlines the capabilities of these new Continue reading

How to use the wall command

In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at the wall command. The name is short for “write all” and it provides a way for messages to be sent to all logged in users. On some Linux systems (like Fedora), this requires the use of sudo.

MEF Introduces First SASE Standard and Zero Trust Framework

Will 2023 be the year of Artificial Intelligence for InfoSec?

Gartner has been saying that “next big thing” in network security is the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies for years now… Mainly because these technologies have the potential to revolutionize the way that network security is managed by enabling systems to learn and adapt to new threats in real-time.

One of the main benefits of using AI and ML in network security is that they can help to identify and mitigate threats much faster than traditional methods. This is because they can analyze vast amounts of data in real-time, and detect patterns and anomalies that might indicate the presence of a threat. In addition, they can be programmed to take specific actions in response to these threats, such as blocking access to a particular network resource or alerting security personnel.

Another benefit of using AI and ML is that they can help to reduce the workload of security professionals. By automating many of the tasks currently carried out manually, such as analyzing logs and identifying potential threats, AI and ML technologies can free up time for security professionals to focus on more critical tasks.

However, it is essential to note that using AI and Continue reading

How VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Enables Businesses to Modernize Application Delivery

Cisco’s NXOS EVPN Hybrid mode – interoperability with Asymmetric VTEPs

In this post, we pull back the curtain on this new NXOS EVPN Hybrid mode and understand how it enables interoperability with Asymmetric VTEPs.

Tips For Network Engineers Willing to Transit to Network Automation

Hello my friend,

quite often we are getting questions from various folks on LinkedIn or via private consultations about how start with network automation and, more importantly, whether to start with network automation at all. With this blogpost we’ll try to answer the most popular question.

1
2
3
4
5
No part of this blogpost could be reproduced, stored in a 

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any 

means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, 

or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the 

prior permission of the author.

What to Do If You Already Want to Start?

The answer is simple: don’t wait. The amount of things you need to learn in order to succeed is huge and growing daily with new tools and platforms released. However, the good news is that we we provide you everything you need to start successfully in the role:

We offer the following training programs for you:

• Zero-to-Hero Network Automation Training
• High-scale automation with Nornir
• Ansible Automation Orchestration with Ansble Tower / AWX
• Expert-level training: Closed-loop Automation and Next-generation Monitoring

During these trainings you will learn the following topics:

• Success and failure strategies to build the automation tools.
• Principles of Continue reading

Can ChatGPT debug my code? Can it write better code?

Everyone’s talking about it, so why should I not add something too.

Interview question

ChatGPT is pretty amazing. I asked it an interview question, and it just plain solved it. Well, there was one real world imperfection. I asked it to fix that problem, and then it went off the rails. The more I hinted, the worse the code got.

I won’t give the details here, because I want to keep using the question / topic.

Finding bugs

So I wondered if it could find bugs. First an easy one:

Q:

What's the problem with this C++ code:
int* foo() {
  auto ret = new int;
  int r2 = *ret * 2;
  return &r2;
}

A:
There are several problems with the code you provided:

1. The function foo is returning a pointer to a local variable r2,
   which is not safe because the memory for r2 is deallocated when the
   function returns. This can cause undefined behavior when you try to
   access the returned pointer after the function has returned.
2. The function foo is allocating memory for an integer with new int,
   but it is not deallocating that memory before the function
   returns. This can lead to a  Continue reading

The Power of Continuing Education on Certifications

I’m about six months away from recertifying my CCIE and even though I could just go Emeritus now I’m working on completing some continuing education at the end of the year to push it out another three years. I am once again very thankful that Cisco has this as an option instead of taking a test over and over again as the only option to renew my certifications.

As I embark on another journey to keep myself current in the networking community, I realize that the flexibility that education credits offer is more important that just passing a test or learning a new skill. Employers should also be thrilled that knowledge workers have the ability to work on other skills and be recognized for them. Because there are two different paths that this can lead to.

To Be The Best

One of the things that most professionals recognize with continuing education is that you can leverage your skills to race through things. If you’re already an expert at something like BGP or spanning tree why not take courses to improve the depth of your knowledge? This is part of the reason why there are a number of double CCIEs that Continue reading

Closing out 2022 with our latest Impact Report

To conclude Impact Week, which has been filled with announcements about new initiatives and features that we are thrilled about, today we are publishing our 2022 Impact Report.

In short, the Impact Report is an annual summary highlighting how we are helping build a better Internet and the progress we are making on our environmental, social, and governance priorities. It is where we showcase successes from Cloudflare Impact programs, celebrate awards and recognitions, and explain our approach to fundamental values like transparency and privacy.

We believe that a better Internet is principled, for everyone, and sustainable; these are the three themes around which we constructed the report. The Impact Report also serves as our repository for disclosures consistent with our commitments for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and UN Global Compact (UNGC).

Check out the full report to:

• Explore how we are expanding the value and scope of our Cloudflare Impact programs
• Review our latest diversity statistics — and our newest employee resource group
• Understand how we are supporting humanitarian and human rights causes
• Read quick summaries of Impact Week announcements
• Examine how we calculate and validate emissions data

As fantastic as 2022 has Continue reading

Everything you might have missed during Cloudflare’s Impact Week 2022

And that’s a wrap! Impact Week 2022 has come to a close. Over the last week, Cloudflare announced new commitments in our mission to help build a better Internet, including delivering Zero Trust services for the most vulnerable voices and for critical infrastructure providers. We also announced new products and services, and shared technical deep dives.

Were you able to keep up with everything that was announced? Watch the Impact Week 2022 wrap-up video on Cloudflare TV, or read our recap below for anything you may have missed.

Product announcements

Data center networking trends to watch for 2023

Hybrid and multicloud initiatives will continue to shape enterprise IT in 2023, and the impact on data-center networking will be felt across key areas including security, management, and operations. Network teams are investing in technologies such as SD-WAN and SASE, expanding automation initiatives, and focusing on skills development as more workloads and applications span cloud environments.“The most important core trend in data centers is the recognition that the hybrid cloud model – which combines current transaction processing and database activities with a cloud-hosted front-end element for the user interface – is the model that will dominate over time,” said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. and a Network World columnist. The industry is seeing a slow modernization of data center applications to support the hybrid-cloud model, Nolle says, “and included in that is greater componentization of those applications, a larger amount of horizontal traffic, and a greater need to manage security within the hosted parts of the application.”To read this article in full, please click here

Data center networking trends to watch for 2023

Hybrid and multicloud initiatives will continue to shape enterprise IT in 2023, and the impact on data-center networking will be felt across key areas including security, management, and operations. Network teams are investing in technologies such as SD-WAN and SASE, expanding automation initiatives, and focusing on skills development as more workloads and applications span cloud environments.“The most important core trend in data centers is the recognition that the hybrid cloud model – which combines current transaction processing and database activities with a cloud-hosted front-end element for the user interface – is the model that will dominate over time,” said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. and a Network World columnist. The industry is seeing a slow modernization of data center applications to support the hybrid-cloud model, Nolle says, “and included in that is greater componentization of those applications, a larger amount of horizontal traffic, and a greater need to manage security within the hosted parts of the application.”To read this article in full, please click here

Data center networking trends to watch for 2023

Hybrid and multicloud initiatives will continue to shape enterprise IT in 2023, and the impact on data-center networking will be felt across key areas including security, management, and operations. Network teams are investing in technologies such as SD-WAN and SASE, expanding automation initiatives, and focusing on skills development as more workloads and applications span cloud environments.“The most important core trend in data centers is the recognition that the hybrid cloud model – which combines current transaction processing and database activities with a cloud-hosted front-end element for the user interface – is the model that will dominate over time,” said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. and a Network World columnist. The industry is seeing a slow modernization of data center applications to support the hybrid-cloud model, Nolle says, “and included in that is greater componentization of those applications, a larger amount of horizontal traffic, and a greater need to manage security within the hosted parts of the application.”To read this article in full, please click here