Tech Bytes: Cloud Agility, On-Prem Performance With Pluribus And ITRenew (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we’re talking about how to get cloud agility on premises. Our sponsor is Pluribus Networks, which makes data center SDN software. They’ve brought along partner ITRenew, which specializes in providing high-performance rack-level infrastructure. We talk about how Pluribus and ITRenew come together to deliver a private cloud.

The post Tech Bytes: Cloud Agility, On-Prem Performance With Pluribus And ITRenew (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Influencing Cluster API AMI Selection

The Kubernetes Cluster API (CAPI) project—which recently released v1.0—can, if you wish, help manage the underlying infrastructure associated with a cluster. (You’re also fully able to have CAPI use existing infrastructure as well.) Speaking specifically of AWS, this means that the Cluster API Provider for AWS is able to manage VPCs, subnets, routes and route tables, gateways, and—of course—EC2 instances. These EC2 instances are booted from a set of AMIs (Amazon Machine Images, definitely pronounced “ay-em-eye” with three syllables) that are prepared and maintained by the CAPI project. In this short and simple post, I’ll show you how to influence the AMI selection process that CAPI’s AWS provider uses.

There are a couple different ways to influence AMI selection, and all of them have to do with settings within the AWSMachineSpec, which controls the configuration of an AWSMachine object. (An AWSMachine object is an infrastructure-specific implementation of a logical Machine object.) Specifically, there are these options for influencing AMI selection:

  1. You can instruct CAPI to use a specific AMI with the ami field. (If this field is set, the other options do not apply.)
  2. You can modify the lookup format used to Continue reading

Network Break 356: Aruba Beefs Up ToR Switch With DPUs; VMware Stands Free

This week on the Network Break podcast we discuss a new ToR switch from Aruba that includes built-in silicon to offload security and network services. Dell Technologies says the VMware spin-off will be complete by November 1st, and SASE startup Cato Networks raises $250 in an F round of funding.

The post Network Break 356: Aruba Beefs Up ToR Switch With DPUs; VMware Stands Free appeared first on Packet Pushers.

What is Open RAN?

Open RAN is a push for industry standards in the design of gear that’s used in the radio-access segment of telecom cellular networks and is particularly relevant to the buildout of 5G infrastructure. 5G resources What is 5G? Fast wireless technology for enterprises and phones How 5G frequency affects range and speed Private 5G can solve some problems that Wi-Fi can’t Private 5G keeps Whirlpool driverless vehicles rolling 5G can make for cost-effective private backhaul CBRS can bring private 5G to enterprises Radio-access networks (RAN) serve to connect the base stations that transmit and receive traffic to from endpoints like cell phones and laptops and provide the link toward the carrier core network.To read this article in full, please click here

How eBPF Streamlines the Service Mesh

There are several service mesh products and projects today, promising simplified connectivity between application microservices, while at the same time offering additional capabilities like secured connections, observability, and traffic management. But as we’ve seen repeatedly over the last few years, the excitement about service mesh has been tempered by practical additional overhead. Let’s explore how Envoy or wrote about his experiences configuring Istio to reduce consumption from around 1GB per proxy (!) to a much more reasonable 60-70MB each. But even in our Continue reading

What’s New: The Ansible AWS Collection 2.0 Release

When it comes to Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure automation, the latest release of the Ansible amazon.aws Collection brings a set of fresh features to build, manage and govern various public and hybrid cloud use cases while accelerating the process from development to production.

In this blog post, we will go over what else has changed and highlight what’s new in the 2.0 release of this Ansible Content Collection.

 

Forward-looking Changes

Much of our work in the 2.0 release has been focused in the following areas:

  • Enhancing several modules from the upstream community
  • Promoting modules to being formally supported by Red Hat 
  • Releasing various new enhancements and clarifying supportability policies

New boto3/botocore Support Policy

Starting with the 2.0 amazon.aws Collection release, it is now the Collection’s policy to support the versions of botocore and boto3 that were released 12 months prior to the most recent major Collection release, as well as following semantic versioning (for example, 2.0.0, 3.0.0). Individual modules may require a more recent library version to support specific features or require the boto library. Check the amazon.aws Collection documentation for the minimum required version for each module. Continue reading

Cloudflare Tunnel for Content Teams

Cloudflare Tunnel for Content Teams
Cloudflare Tunnel for Content Teams

A big part of the job of a technical writer is getting feedback on the content you produce. Writing and maintaining product documentation is a deeply collaborative and cyclical effort — through constant conversation with product managers and engineers, technical writers ensure the content is clear and serves the user in the most effective way. Collaboration with other technical writers is also important to keep the documentation consistent with Cloudflare’s content strategy.

So whether we’re documenting a new feature or overhauling a big portion of existing documentation, sharing our writing with stakeholders before it’s published is quite literally half the work.

In my experience as a technical writer, the feedback I’ve received has been exponentially more impactful when stakeholders could see my changes in context. This is especially true for bigger and more strategic changes. Imagine I’m changing the structure of an entire section of a product’s documentation, or shuffling the order of pages in the navigation bar. It’s hard to guess the impact of those changes just by looking at the markdown files.

We writers check those changes in context by building a development server on our local machines. But sharing what we see locally with our stakeholders has Continue reading

Review: Dune (2021)

One of the most important classic sci-fi stories is the book "Dune" from Frank Herbert. It was recently made into a movie. I thought I'd write a quick review.

The summary is this: just read the book. It's a classic for a good reason, and you'll be missing a lot by not reading it.

But the movie Dune (2021) movie is very good. The most important thing to know is see it in IMAX. IMAX is this huge screen technology that partly wraps around the viewer, and accompanied by huge speakers that overwhelm you with sound. If you watch it in some other format, what was visually stunning becomes merely very pretty.

This is Villeneuve's trademark, which you can see in his other works, like his sequel to Bladerunner. The purpose is to marvel at the visuals in every scene. The story telling is just enough to hold the visuals together. I mean, he also seems to do a good job with the story telling, but it's just not the reason to go see the movie. (I can't tell -- I've read the book, so see the story differently than those of you who haven't).

Beyond the story Continue reading

Infrastructure 3. Deploying High Performance Pure Virtual Linux Router – 6WIND

Hello my friend,

Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) is not a new topic. There are numerous blogpost and articles, even in our blog, which review this topic. Yet, there is much more we can cover. Today we’ll share some insights on one of the very interesting products existing on the market today: 6WIND vRouter Turbo Router. We have a limited amount of days to write a few articles under our evaluation license. Hence, we’ll focus only on the most critical elements.



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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.

Is Linux Suitable for Automation?

It absolutely is. In fact, Linux is the real home for automation systems, as in many cases it hosts the tools you create in Ansible, Python, Bash, Go or any other language. At the same time, in order to effectively work with Linux, you need to know how to automate management and operation of Linux operating system itself. And you will be absolutely capable to do that, once you attend our Continue reading

Controversial Reads 102221


Mark Zuckerberg, unlike Einstein, did not dream up Facebook out of a sense of moral duty, or a zeal for world peace. This summer, the population of Zuckerberg’s supranational regime reached 2.9 billion monthly active users, more humans than live in the world’s two most populous nations—China and India—combined.


The greatest risk of monopolies is that they’ll obstruct the ideas that will make our homes truly smart. Our “Jetsons” future is on the line.


Given these concerns, it seems especially bizarre that Amazon was willing to reference the price of competing smart thermostats sold via its platform during the launch. Its smart thermostat is “less than half the average cost of a smart thermostat sold on Amazon.com,” the company’s senior vice president of devices and services, Dave Limp, said.


Apple’s co-founder changed how we view tech. A decade after his death, we’ve changed how we view the tech industry, too.


The U.S. government is secretly ordering Google to provide data on anyone typing in certain search terms, an accidentally unsealed court document shows. There are fears such “keyword warrants” threaten to implicate innocent Web users in serious crimes and are more common than previously thought.


There are Continue reading

Weekend Reads 102121


A recent phishing campaign targeting Coinbase users shows thieves are getting smarter about phishing one-time passwords (OTPs) needed to complete the login process.


What does it mean to cloud-connect the network? Simply put, it means connecting network equipment to the cloud and collecting telemetry, but this simple idea has far-reaching benefits that can up level the support experience for customers and vendors.


This post will focus on a key part of DNSSEC infrastructure — Root KSK ceremonies. These ceremonies exist to provide transparency to the Internet community around the creation, use, and storage of the Root KSK.


Despite 60% surge in dangerous third-party domain registrations, domain security is an underutilized security component to curb phishing and related ransomware attacks.


The term “code debt” in computer programming refers to the idea that certain decisions in writing computer code will lead to future consequences which have to be dealt with.


Before you give in to your impulses and wipe your screen with whatever you have at hand, let us stop you right there. Your display is way more delicate than you think, and if you want it to last you a long time in optimal conditions, you’ll need to treat it with Continue reading

Worth Reading: Network Validation Evolution at Hostinger

Network validation is becoming another overhyped buzzword with many opinionated pundits talking about it and few environments using it in practice (why am I not surprised?)

As always, there are exceptions. They don’t have to be members of the FAANG club, and some of them get the job done with open-source tools regardless of what vendor marketers would like you to believe. For example, Donatas Abraitis described how the Hostinger networking team gradually implemented network validation using Cumulus VX, Vagrant, SuzieQ, PyTest and Test Kitchen. Enjoy!

Worth Reading: Network Validation Evolution at Hostinger

Network validation is becoming another overhyped buzzword with many opinionated pundits talking about it and few environments using it in practice (why am I not surprised?)

As always, there are exceptions. They don’t have to be members of the FAANG club, and some of them get the job done with open-source tools regardless of what vendor marketers would like you to believe. For example, Donatas Abraitis described how the Hostinger networking team gradually implemented network validation using Cumulus VX, Vagrant, SuzieQ, PyTest and Test Kitchen. Enjoy!

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