HS 008: Five Core Issues for IT Architects in 2021
What five issues would be top of mind for IT architects ? Security, Backup.Recovery, Cloud, Skills Development and Distributed/Hybrid Work. Listen in on why and how these issues are our choices. If you have feedback or want us to followup then head over to our Follow Up page and send us your anonymous (or not) feedback.
Heavy Strategy 008: Five Core Issues for IT Architects in 2021
What five issues would be top of mind for IT architects ? Security, Backup.Recovery, Cloud, Skills Development and Distributed/Hybrid Work. Listen in on why and how these issues are our choices. If you have feedback or want us to followup then head over to our Follow Up page and send us your anonymous (or not) feedback.
The post Heavy Strategy 008: Five Core Issues for IT Architects in 2021 appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Automatic Remediation of Kubernetes Nodes
We use Kubernetes to run many of the diverse services that help us control Cloudflare’s edge. We have five geographically diverse clusters, with hundreds of nodes in our largest cluster. These clusters are self-managed on bare-metal machines which gives us a good amount of power and flexibility in the software and integrations with Kubernetes. However, it also means we don’t have a cloud provider to rely on for virtualizing or managing the nodes. This distinction becomes even more prominent when considering all the different reasons that nodes degrade. With self-managed bare-metal machines, the list of reasons that cause a node to become unhealthy include:
- Hardware failures
- Kernel-level software failures
- Kubernetes cluster-level software failures
- Degraded network communication
- Software updates are required
- Resource exhaustion1
Unhappy Nodes
We have plenty of examples of failures in the aforementioned categories, but one example has been particularly tedious to deal with. It starts with the following log line from the kernel:
unregister_netdevice: waiting for lo to become free. Usage count = 1
The issue is further observed with the number of network interfaces on the node owned by the Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin getting out of proportion with the number of running pods:
$ Continue readingRansomware: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Many claim that "ransomware" is due to cybersecurity failures. It's not really true. We are adequately protecting users and computers. The failure is in the inability of cybersecurity guardians to protect themselves. Ransomware doesn't make the news when it only accesses the files normal users have access to. The big ransomware news events happened because ransomware elevated itself to that of an "administrator" over the network, giving it access to all files, including online backups.
Generic improvements in cybersecurity will help only a little, because they don't specifically address this problem. Likewise, blaming ransomware on how it breached perimeter defenses (phishing, patches, password reuse) will only produce marginal improvements. Ransomware solutions need to instead focus on looking at the typical human-operated ransomware killchain, identify how they typically achieve "administrator" credentials, and fix those problems. In particular, large organizations need to redesign how they handle Windows "domains" and "segment" networks.
I read a lot of lazy op-eds on ransomware. Most of them claim that the problem is due to some sort of moral weakness (laziness, stupidity, greed, slovenliness, lust). They suggest things like "taking cybersecurity more seriously" or "do better at basic cyber hygiene". These are "unfalsifiable" -- things that nobody Continue reading
Hedge 91: Leslie Daigle and IP Addresses Acting Badly
What if you could connect a lot of devices to the Internet—without any kind of firewall or other protection—and observe attackers trying to find their way “in?” What might you learn from such an exercise? One thing you might learn is a lot of attacks seem to originate from within a relatively small group of IP addresses—IP addresses acing badly. Listen in as Leslie Daigle of Thinking Cat and the Techsequences podcast, Tom Ammon, and Russ White discuss just such an experiment and its results.
Automation Savings Planner
Pre-plan your automation savings with Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Enterprise organizations understand that to be leaders in their industries, they must change the way they deliver applications, improve their relationships with customers and gain competitive advantages.
Positioning those advantages to have a positive return on investment often starts with proper planning and automation.
But what does proper planning of your automation even look like?
For some enterprises, proper planning includes reducing automation costs. For others, it’s reducing time spent to open new opportunities.
With this in mind, Red Hat is excited to introduce Automation Savings Planner, a new enhancement that puts automation planning in the forefront within the hosted services on console.redhat.com.
The Automation Savings Planner is designed to provide a one stop shop to plan, track and analyze potential efficiency improvements and cost savings of your automation initiatives.
How does it work?
Users can create an automation savings plan within Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform by defining how long and often the work is done manually, as well as a list of tasks needed to successfully automate this job.
Once defined, you can integrate your newly Continue reading
Day Two Cloud 106: Towards A More Open Cloud
On today's Day Two Cloud we discuss the notion of open cloud. The premise is about reducing or minimizing costs of migrating from a public cloud. In theory, open cloud lets organizations keep their options open to make changes and reduces lock-in. But is open cloud even feasible? Our guest is Chris Psaltis, co-founder and CEO of Mist.io, a startup building an open-source, multi-cloud management platform.Day Two Cloud 106: Towards A More Open Cloud
On today's Day Two Cloud we discuss the notion of open cloud. The premise is about reducing or minimizing costs of migrating from a public cloud. In theory, open cloud lets organizations keep their options open to make changes and reduces lock-in. But is open cloud even feasible? Our guest is Chris Psaltis, co-founder and CEO of Mist.io, a startup building an open-source, multi-cloud management platform.
The post Day Two Cloud 106: Towards A More Open Cloud appeared first on Packet Pushers.
5 Ways AIOps Can Simplify NetOps Teams’ Lives
AIOps has great potential to streamline workflows and increase productivity within IT and NetOps teams. This can improve business outcomes and allow for the reallocation of resources to other projects.Free Speech is More than Words
A couple of weeks ago, I joined Leslie Daigle and Alexa Reid on Techsequences to talk about free speech and the physical platform—does the right to free speech include the right to build and operate physical facilities like printing presses and web hosting? I argue it does. Listen in if you want to hear my argument, and how this relates to situations such as the “takedown” of Parler.
Data Center Fabric Monitoring & Visibility: Tools and Options
So far in our blog series on data center network trends, we have focused on options and best practices for...
The post Data Center Fabric Monitoring & Visibility: Tools and Options appeared first on Pluribus Networks.
IT Pro Salary Survey: What You Earned in 2020
Did you get a raise in 2020? The InformationWeek 2020 IT Salary Survey lets you know how you stacked up against your peers during a year that was like no other.NATs, PATs, and Network Hygiene
While reading a research paper on address spoofing from 2019, I ran into this on NAT (really PAT) failures—
The authors state 49% of the NATs they discovered in their investigation of spoofed addresses fail in one of these two ways. From what I remember way back when the first NAT/PAT device (the PIX) was deployed in the real world (I worked in TAC at the time), there was a lot of discussion about what a firewall should do with packets sourced from addresses not indicated anywhere.
If I have an access list including 192.168.1.0/24, and I get a packet sourced from 192.168.2.24, Continue reading
Heavy Networking 588: Exploring The Hidden Realms Of Subsea Cables With Telstra (Sponsored)
Subsea communications cables are an essential part of the global Internet. On today's Heavy Networking, sponsored by Telstra, we dive into the realms of undersea cables to learn how they are laid, signalling methods, POPs and landing stations, how they can be damaged (and repaired), and more. Our Telstra guests are Andy Lumsden, Head of Network Engineering and Operations; and Jeff McHardy, General Manager, Network Development and Commercial Management.Heavy Networking 588: Exploring The Hidden Realms Of Subsea Cables With Telstra (Sponsored)
Subsea communications cables are an essential part of the global Internet. On today's Heavy Networking, sponsored by Telstra, we dive into the realms of undersea cables to learn how they are laid, signalling methods, POPs and landing stations, how they can be damaged (and repaired), and more. Our Telstra guests are Andy Lumsden, Head of Network Engineering and Operations; and Jeff McHardy, General Manager, Network Development and Commercial Management.
The post Heavy Networking 588: Exploring The Hidden Realms Of Subsea Cables With Telstra (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.
The Data Driven Enterprise
The rise of cloud migration for enterprises with mission critical applications is redefining the data center. The reality for any enterprise: a systematic approach balancing workloads in the cloud and premises while securing data. Data and applications must be managed as critical assets in the 21st century.
The Data Driven Enterprise
The rise of cloud migration for enterprises with mission critical applications is redefining the data center. The reality for any enterprise: a systematic approach balancing workloads in the cloud and premises while securing data. Data and applications must be managed as critical assets in the 21st century.
