Why your security teams are not ready for containers and Kubernetes, and what you can do about it

From a people perspective and an organizational standpoint, many CISOs have said that their security teams are not ready for containers and Kubernetes. This isn’t surprising, given the stark contrast between where we were less than a decade ago and where we are today in terms of systems architecture. I am of course referring to the cloud-native era, which has ushered in a whole new architectural approach.

With Kubernetes at the center asserting its domination, it’s time to start thinking about how we can best prepare security teams for this new era. To do that, let’s look at why they’re struggling in the first place (spoiler alert: it’s because organizations are struggling, too).

Security and organizational structure in the era of cloud-native computing

In the traditional software development and deployment model, things were quite static. We can think of the traditional model as a relay race where the baton was passed from the development team to the platform team to the security team. While this model works well for traditional application architectures, this type of organizational structure is less effective for new architectures for container orchestration and Kubernetes-native applications, where everything is dynamic and highly automated.

But perhaps the most Continue reading

What is a Lifestyle Brand and Does It Make Sense for Your Business?

The term “lifestyle brand” is often used to describe a company or product that is associated with a certain lifestyle or set of values. A lifestyle brand may target a specific demographic, such as millennials, or it may be more broadly appealing.

Some companies embrace the lifestyle brand label while others shy away from it, preferring to focus on their product or service rather than any sort of perceived image. 

So, what exactly is a lifestyle brand? And does it make sense for your business? Let’s take a closer look.

What is a lifestyle brand?

A lifestyle brand can be defined as a company or product that is associated with a certain lifestyle or set of values. The key word here is “associated.” A lifestyle brand doesn’t necessarily produce products that are directly related to the lifestyle in question. Rather, the connection is more abstract.

For example, consider the clothing brand Levi’s. Levi’s isn’t explicitly a “lifestyle brand,” but it is often associated with the “casual cool” lifestyle. This is because Levi’s has built its image around being a relaxed, comfortable, and stylish brand. As a result, people who identify with the “casual cool” lifestyle are more likely Continue reading

How Do I Raise Awareness Of My Open Source Software Project? feat. Emily Omier – Video

Positioning Consultant Emily Omier advises the Day Two Cloud podcast audience on how to raise awareness of your open source software project. Just don’t say “marketing”! 😊😬 For the rest of Emily’s insights, listen to episode 118 of Day Two Cloud. https://packetpushers.net/series/day2cloud/ More Emily? https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloud-native-positioning/ You can subscribe to the Packet Pushers’ YouTube channel for […]

The post How Do I Raise Awareness Of My Open Source Software Project? feat. Emily Omier – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Using Apache Kafka to process 1 trillion inter-service messages

Using Apache Kafka to process 1 trillion inter-service messages
Using Apache Kafka to process 1 trillion inter-service messages

Cloudflare has been using Kafka in production since 2014. We have come a long way since then, and currently run 14 distinct Kafka clusters, across multiple data centers, with roughly 330 nodes. Between them, over a trillion messages have been processed over the last eight years.

Cloudflare uses Kafka to decouple microservices and communicate the creation, change or deletion of various resources via a common data format in a fault-tolerant manner. This decoupling is one of many factors that enables Cloudflare engineering teams to work on multiple features and products concurrently.

We learnt a lot about Kafka on the way to one trillion messages, and built some interesting internal tools to ease adoption that will be explored in this blog post. The focus in this blog post is on inter-application communication use cases alone and not logging (we have other Kafka clusters that power the dashboards where customers view statistics that handle more than one trillion messages each day). I am an engineer on the Application Services team and our team has a charter to provide tools/services to product teams, so they can focus on their core competency which is delivering value to our customers.

In this blog I’d Continue reading

Introducing Gluware Topology: Packet Pushers Gluware LiveStream, June 28, 2022 (4/7) – Video

Gluware introduces a new Topology feature in its network automation platform. Gluware Topology maps the network using the Gluware model and engine to visualize the network. Benefits of the new capability include improved operations by showing what network devices are where, faster troubleshooting, and streamlining security and audit processes. Packet Pushers host Ethan Banks joins […]

The post Introducing Gluware Topology: Packet Pushers Gluware LiveStream, June 28, 2022 (4/7) – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Tech Bytes: Forecasting SD-WAN Performance With WAN Insights (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we look at how to get better visibility into the WAN. Our sponsor is Cisco ThousandEyes and we’re going to discuss its latest capability, called WAN Insights, that analyzes WAN performance data to help remove SD-WAN blind spots and give network engineers a better understanding of whether their providers are delivering as promised.

The post Tech Bytes: Forecasting SD-WAN Performance With WAN Insights (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

IBM adds four servers to Power10 lineup

IBM is expanding its Power10 server lineup with four new midrange and scale-out systems designed for on-premises, data-intensive and business-critical workloads.The new Power S1014, Power S1022, Power S1024 and Power E1050 platforms cover a range of workloads.The E1050 is a four-socket system optimized for data-intensive enterprise workloads. In terms of how it ranks, the E1050 is a step below the top end of the Power10 portfolio, which is the existing E1080 four-socket rack server.The new scale-out systems are the single-socket S1014, described as ideal for entry-level SMBs and remote offices, and the S1022 and S1024 systems, which are two-socket systems aimed at higher-end uses.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM adds four servers to Power10 lineup

IBM is expanding its Power10 server lineup with four new midrange and scale-out systems designed for on-premises, data-intensive and business-critical workloads.The new Power S1014, Power S1022, Power S1024 and Power E1050 platforms cover a range of workloads.The E1050 is a four-socket system optimized for data-intensive enterprise workloads. In terms of how it ranks, the E1050 is a step below the top end of the Power10 portfolio, which is the existing E1080 four-socket rack server.The new scale-out systems are the single-socket S1014, described as ideal for entry-level SMBs and remote offices, and the S1022 and S1024 systems, which are two-socket systems aimed at higher-end uses.To read this article in full, please click here

Announcing VMware HCX 4.4

VMware HCX continues to evolve with the release of HCX 4.4 which includes several key enhancements in multiple different areas. These enhancements are going to address new requirements, stabilize the current feature set and provide additional security. This blog aims to highlight the major changes in HCX 4.4.

Transport Analytics

Following the release of HCX 4.1, the HCX team undertook an effort to better understand how various aspects of a network underlay (including bandwidth, packet loss and latency conditions) affect migration outcomes. We called this effort the Network Underlay Characterization for HCX.

During the 4.2 release, the characterization exercise enabled us to officially support services over VPN/SD-WAN, along with the Network Underlay minimum requirements to support any underlay agnostically. We also published detailed tech paper (See Network Underlay Requirements and HCX Performance Outcomes). This document guides the reader through the characterization exercise (manually using command line tooling).

HCX 4.4 adds Transport Analytics the HCX, allowing the user to execute performance baselining for the HCX service transport on-demand and visualizes transport performance in real-time and as time-series graphs.

This enables the migration administrator to understand the network underlay conditions reflected in the transport and plan Continue reading

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  • Wynter is looking for system administrators, engineers, and developers to join its research panel. Participate in research surveys, get paid ($90-$180/hr) for your feedback and comments. Super low key commitment, 10-15 mins per survey. Learn more and sign up.

  • DevOps Engineer: At Kinsta, we set out to create the best managed hosting platform in the world. If you are an experienced DevOps Engineer who is constantly looking for ways to innovate and improve, we might just be the place for you! As Kinsta’s DevOps Engineer, you will be instrumental in making sure that our infrastructure is always on the bleeding edge of technology, remaining stable and high-performing at all times. If you love working with Linux, have a background in PHP, and have worked with cutting-edge technologies, such as Continue reading

A story about AF_XDP, network namespaces and a cookie

A story about AF_XDP, network namespaces and a cookie
A story about AF_XDP, network namespaces and a cookie

A crash in a development version of flowtrackd (the daemon that powers our Advanced TCP Protection) highlighted the fact that libxdp (and specifically the AF_XDP part) was not Linux network namespace aware.

This blogpost describes the debugging journey to find the bug, as well as a fix.

flowtrackd is a volumetric denial of service defense mechanism that sits in the Magic Transit customer’s data path and protects the network from complex randomized TCP floods. It does so by challenging TCP connection establishments and by verifying that TCP packets make sense in an ongoing flow.

It uses the Linux kernel AF_XDP feature to transfer packets from a network device in kernel space to a memory buffer in user space without going through the network stack. We use most of the helper functions of the C libbpf with the Rust bindings to interact with AF_XDP.

In our setup, both the ingress and the egress network interfaces are in different network namespaces. When a packet is determined to be valid (after a challenge or under some thresholds), it is forwarded to the second network interface.

For the rest of this post the network setup will be the following:

A story about AF_XDP, network namespaces and a cookie

e.g. eyeball packets Continue reading

Nvidia launches quantum computing platform

Nvidia, the darling of high performance computing (HPC), is bringing new attention to quantum computing. The company has launched its Nvidia Quantum Optimized Device Architecture, or QODA. This hybrid platform is designed to make quantum computing more accessible by enabling programming of both quantum applications and classical applications in a single, consolidated environment. According to Nvidia, it's aimed at speeding breakthroughs in quantum research and development across AI, HPC, health, finance and other disciplines.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia launches quantum computing platform

Nvidia, the darling of high performance computing (HPC), is bringing new attention to quantum computing. The company has launched its Nvidia Quantum Optimized Device Architecture, or QODA. This hybrid platform is designed to make quantum computing more accessible by enabling programming of both quantum applications and classical applications in a single, consolidated environment. According to Nvidia, it's aimed at speeding breakthroughs in quantum research and development across AI, HPC, health, finance and other disciplines.To read this article in full, please click here

Automation 15. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Model-Driven Network Automation Featuring Cisco, Nokia, and OpenConfig YANG

Hello my friend,

All of us (definitely me, at least) are always thrilled hearing news from network vendors on their implementation of model-driven interfaces for network management. Having spent years automating network devices in a text-based paradigm (i.e., from CLI-based automation to full fledged configuration rendering with a replacement), I’m a firm believer that model-driven approach based on YANG modules and protocols such as GNMI, NETCONF, and RESTCONF, is a proper way to go. Recently we disclosed the development we are doing in terms of network topology visualization with DANT. And today we’d like to share lessons learned based on that experience.

We planned to write this blogpost for a few weeks if not months, but due to various reasons it was delayed. We are delighted to finally post it, so that you can get some useful ideas how you can build your own CI/CD pipeline with GitHub, probably the most popular platform for collaborative software development.



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