Containerising NVIDIA Cumulus Linux

In one of his recent posts, Ivan raises a question: “I can’t grasp why Cumulus releases a Vagrant box, but not a Docker container”. Coincidentally, only a few weeks before that I had managed to create a Cumulus Linux container image. Since then, I’ve done a lot of testing and discovered limitations of the pure containerised approach and how to overcome them while still retaining the container user experience. This post is a documentation of my journey from the early days of running Cumulus on Docker to the integration with containerlab and, finally, running Cumulus in microVMs backed by AWS’s Firecracker and Weavework’s Ignite.

Innovation Trigger

One of the main reason for running containerised infrastructure is the famous Docker UX. Containers existed for a very long time but they only became mainstream when docker released their container engine. The simplicity of a typical docker workflow (build, ship, run) made it accessible to a large number of not-so-technical users and was the key to its popularity.

Virtualised infrastructure, including networking operating systems, has mainly been distributed in a VM form-factor, retaining much of the look and feel of the real hardware for the software processes running on top. However it Continue reading

Viewing compressed file content on Linux without uncompressing

If you need to check the contents of a compressed text file on Linux, you don't have to uncompress it first. Instead, you can use a zcat or bzcat command to extract and display file contents while leaving the file intact. The "cat" in each command name tells you that the command's purpose is to display content. The "z" tells you that it works with compressed files.Which of the two commands to use depends on the type of compressed file you are examining. If the file was compressed with gzip or zip, you would use the zcat command. If the file was compressed with bzip2, you would use the bzcat command. On some systems, zcat might be called gzcat.To read this article in full, please click here

Viewing compressed file content on Linux without uncompressing

If you need to check the contents of a compressed text file on Linux, you don't have to uncompress it first. Instead, you can use a zcat or bzcat command to extract and display file contents while leaving the file intact. The "cat" in each command name tells you that the command's purpose is to display content. The "z" tells you that it works with compressed files.Which of the two commands to use depends on the type of compressed file you are examining. If the file was compressed with gzip or zip, you would use the zcat command. If the file was compressed with bzip2, you would use the bzcat command. On some systems, zcat might be called gzcat.To read this article in full, please click here

DockerCon Is Almost Here!

Can you feel it? DockerCon is just days away. There’s still time to register before the one-day, free, virtual extravaganza takes place this Thursday, May 27. Demonstrations, product announcements, company updates — you name it, it’s on the program. All of it focused on modern application delivery in a cloud-native world.

Do DockerCon your way. There’s tons of options. Be sure to catch our line-up of top-notch keynote speakers, which includes Docker CEO Scott Johnston, CTO Justin Cormack, VP of Products Donnie Berkholz, and special guests from GitHub and Orbital Insight.

Check out our recent blog on what not to miss, such as sessions on coding using Docker’s new HTTP APIs, a dive into Docker Dev Environments, tips for navigating a multi-architecture world, and what to do if your container image has more vulnerabilities than you have Twitter followers.

Got questions? Find answers via Live Panels hosted by Docker Captain Bret Fisher, join Peter McKee on two developer focused panels and participate in Hema Ganapathy’s women’s panel. Just put your questions on selected topics in chat, and the team will do their best to answer them. Note: These live streamed Q&A sessions tend to be DevOps focused Continue reading

Network Break 334: Palo Alto Unveils New Security Gear; Arista Saves Time With Lowest-Latency Switch

This week's Network Break covers new firewalls & other security products from Palo Alto Networks, discusses Arista's lowest-latency switch (now with EOS), reviews financial results from Cisco and Palo Alto, and explains why Microsoft is making Internet Explorer go away (just not entirely).

The post Network Break 334: Palo Alto Unveils New Security Gear; Arista Saves Time With Lowest-Latency Switch appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Is it really the best just because its the most common?

I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard someone ask these two questions—

  • What are other people doing?
  • What is the best common practice?

While these questions have always bothered me, I could never really put my finger on why. I ran across a journal article recently that helped me understand a bit better. The root of the problem is this—what does best common mean, and how can following the best common produce a set of actions you can be confident will solve your problem?

Bellman and Oorschot say best common practice can mean this is widely implemented. The thinking seems to run something like this: the crowd’s collective wisdom will probably be better than my thinking… more sets of eyes will make for wiser or better decisions. Anyone who has studied the madness of crowds will immediately recognize the folly of this kind of state. Just because a lot of people agree it’s a good idea to jump off a cliff does not mean it is, in fact, a good idea to jump off a cliff.

Perhaps it means something closer to this is no worse than our competitors. If that’s the meaning, though, it’s a pretty cynical Continue reading

Tech Bytes: Nokia’s Fabric Services System Simplifies Data Center Operations (Sponsored)

Today's Tech Byte explores a digital sandbox for fabric emulation. This unique feature is part of Nokia's Fabric Services System for automating and operating a data center fabric. Our Nokia guest is Phani Koganti, Senior Director of Product Management. This is a sponsored episode.

The post Tech Bytes: Nokia’s Fabric Services System Simplifies Data Center Operations (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The Week in Internet News: Rural Areas Need Broadband to Attract Workers

Recruiting issue: Companies in some areas of the rural U.S. are trying to hire workers, but the lack of quality broadband service is hurting their efforts, the New York Times reports. The story looks at a manufacturer of asphalt paving equipment in rural Iowa that paid to have fiber laid to its factory, but there’s […]

The post The Week in Internet News: Rural Areas Need Broadband to Attract Workers appeared first on Internet Society.

The State of Data Center Networking 2021: Long Live Private Cloud

Today Pluribus announced the release of the State of the Data Center Networking 2021 Annual Report. This groundbreaking original research, conducted with Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), not only confirms many of the trends we have discussed recently, it reveals just how strong they are.

The post The State of Data Center Networking 2021: Long Live Private Cloud appeared first on Pluribus Networks.

Transient prompt with Zsh

Powerlevel10k is a prompt for Zsh. It contains some powerful features, is astoundingly fast, and easy to customize. I am quite amazed at the skills of its main author. Be sure to also have a look at Zsh for Humans, a complete Zsh configuration including this theme.

One of the nice features of Powerlevel10k is transient prompts: past prompts are reduced to a more minimal configuration to save space by removing unneeded information.

Demonstration of a transient prompt with Zsh: past prompts use a more compact form
My implementation of a transient prompt with Zsh. Past prompts are compact and include the time of the command execution, the hostname, and the status of the previous command while the complete prompt contains more information like the current directory and the Git branch.

When it comes to configuring my shell, I still prefer writing and understanding each line going into it. Therefore, I am still building my Zsh configuration from scratch. Here is how I have integrated the above transient feature into my prompt.

The first step is to configure the appearance of the prompt in its compact form. Let’s assume we have a variable, $_vbe_prompt_compact set to 1 when we want a compact prompt. We use the following function to define the prompt Continue reading

Feedback: Kubernetes Networking Deep Dive

Here’s what one of the engineers watching Stuart Charlton’s Kubernetes webinar wrote about it:

“Kubernetes Networking Deep Dive” is a must see webinar. Once done take a break and then watch it again, let it sink in and then sign-up for a free account with Azure or GCP and practice all that was learned during the webinar.

At the end of this exercise … one will begin to understand why the networking domain seems to be lagging behind … This webinar will help one pick up the pace!

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