New NVMe spec brings new support for hard drives

The new NVM Express 2.0 has been released and with it a surprise: The non-volatile memory express protocol—best known for handling SSD speeds—is now offering full-blown support for traditional hard-disk drives.This is quite unexpected because SSDs are orders of magnitude faster than traditional HDDs. [ Read also: How to plan a software-defined data-center network ] The first flash-based SSDs used SATA/SAS physical interfaces borrowed from existing hard drive-based enterprise server/ storage systems. However, none of these interfaces and protocols were designed for high-speed storage media and the SATA/SAS bus became a bottleneck for the much faster SSD.To read this article in full, please click here

Smart Security Strategies for the World of Social Media

Celebrating 7 Years of Project Galileo

Every June, we celebrate the anniversary of Project Galileo. This year, we are proud to celebrate seven years of protecting the most vulnerable groups on the Internet from cyber attacks. June is a busy month for us at Cloudflare, with the anniversary of Project Galileo and Access Now’s RightsCon, one of the largest events on human rights in the digital age. As we collaborate with civil society on topics from technology, privacy, digital security and public policy, we learn how to better protect critical voices on the Internet but also how to use the Cloudflare network to make positive changes to the Internet ecosystem.

We started Project Galileo in 2014 with the idea that we need to protect voices that are targeted for working in sensitive areas. As such, we give these voices the resources to protect themselves online against powerful opponents. Whether their opponent’s aim is to intimidate, silence, or steal sensitive information, cyber attacks can cause significant damage to organizations that work in areas such as human rights, independent media, education, and social justice. As the world moves online — a factor accelerated by COVID-19 — access to powerful cybersecurity tools is critical for organizations around the world. Continue reading

Real-Life Network-as-a-Graph Examples

After reading the Everything Is a Graph blog post, Vadim Semenov sent me a long list of real-life examples (slightly edited):

I work in a big enterprise and in order to understand a real packet path across multiple offices via routers and firewalls (when mtr or traceroute don’t work – they do not show firewalls), I made OSPF network visualization based on LSDB output. The idea is quite simple – save information about LSA1 and LSA2 (LSA5 optionally) and that will be enough in order to build a graph (use show ip ospf database router/network on Cisco devices).

Real-Life Network-as-a-Graph Examples

After reading the Everything Is a Graph blog post, Vadim Semenov sent me a long list of real-life examples (slightly edited):

I work in a big enterprise and in order to understand a real packet path across multiple offices via routers and firewalls (when mtr or traceroute don’t work – they do not show firewalls), I made OSPF network visualization based on LSDB output. The idea is quite simple – save information about LSA1 and LSA2 (LSA5 optionally) and that will be enough in order to build a graph (use show ip ospf database router/network on Cisco devices).

Why the cloud will never eat the data center

Sometimes it’s hard to see gradual changes in technology paradigms because they’re gradual.  Sometimes it helps to play “Just suppose…” and see where it leads. So, just suppose that the cloud did what some radical thinkers say, and “absorbed the network”. That’s sure an exciting tag line, but is this even possible, and how might it come about?Companies are already committed to a virtual form of networking for their WAN services, based on VPNs or SD-WAN, rather than building their own WANs from pipes and routers.  That was a big step, so what could be happening to make WANs even more virtual, to the point where the cloud could subsume them?  It would have to be a data-center change.To read this article in full, please click here

Why the cloud will never eat the data center

Sometimes it’s hard to see gradual changes in technology paradigms because they’re gradual.  Sometimes it helps to play “Just suppose…” and see where it leads. So, just suppose that the cloud did what some radical thinkers say, and “absorbed the network”. That’s sure an exciting tag line, but is this even possible, and how might it come about?Companies are already committed to a virtual form of networking for their WAN services, based on VPNs or SD-WAN, rather than building their own WANs from pipes and routers.  That was a big step, so what could be happening to make WANs even more virtual, to the point where the cloud could subsume them?  It would have to be a data-center change.To read this article in full, please click here

Why the cloud will never eat the data center

Sometimes it’s hard to see gradual changes in technology paradigms because they’re gradual.  Sometimes it helps to play “Just suppose…” and see where it leads. So, just suppose that the cloud did what some radical thinkers say, and “absorbed the network”. That’s sure an exciting tag line, but is this even possible, and how might it come about?Companies are already committed to a virtual form of networking for their WAN services, based on VPNs or SD-WAN, rather than building their own WANs from pipes and routers.  That was a big step, so what could be happening to make WANs even more virtual, to the point where the cloud could subsume them?  It would have to be a data-center change.To read this article in full, please click here

Technology Advancements that Led to the Success of NASA’s Mars Rover Landing

Space exploration is one of the most unique and innovative things in the world. With each passing mission NASA employs new and advanced technology in their space missions. Space missions aren’t always a success however with latest technology, NASA has been enjoying some great success.

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

Mars has a very thin atmosphere so it was necessary for NASA to come up with a powerful object that could fly around the planet and take photographs. This ingenuity Mars helicopter can easily fly around the red planet so that the astronauts can take pictures even far away from their landing base.

MOXIE

MOXIE is one of the most important technologies that is going to revolutionize the space program. MOXIE is a technology that is going to convert the carbon dioxide in Mars atmosphere to oxygen. This will be a great way to have unlimited amount of oxygen once NASA plans to start a base on Mars.

In addition to the above two technologies, NASA also uses new technologies for entry in to the atmosphere. descent and then landing.

Range Trigger

Good landing is very important when you are trying to land on another planet. You need to hit all the Continue reading

Introducing OSPF Support in NSX-T 3.1.1

NSX-T has revolutionized the data center and plays a key role in modern data center fabrics. Its unmatched capabilities are key elements in any effort to modernize networking in the data center.

NSX-T version 3.1.1 will go down as a critical milestone in this journey, as it supports OSPF version 2.

Based on RFC 2328, Open Shortest Path First Version 2 (OSPF v2) provides fast convergence, scalability, and is widely known among network architects and their operations teams. As a result, it is one of the most popular link state routing protocols in enterprise networks and data centers.

Interconnecting your physical networking fabric with NSX-T was possible using static routes and BGP. OSPF is now an option to consider leveraging dynamic routing protocols in the data center. By supporting OSPF as a dynamic routing protocol, existing NSX for vSphere customers can migrate seamlessly to NSX-T.

In this blogpost, we will demonstrate how to implement OSPFv2 within NSX-T in your data center.

OSPF Support in NSX-T

Providing connectivity between users and applications in a data center is crucial. The main purpose of any routing protocol is to dynamically exchange or share information regarding the reachability of a network.

Continue reading

Hackers Targeting Router Devices: Is Your Household Vulnerable?

Sponsored Post: Pinecone, Kinsta, Bridgecrew, IP2Location, StackHawk, InterviewCamp.io, Educative, Stream, Fauna, Triplebyte

Who's Hiring? 

• 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 Ansible and LXC, check us out and apply here.


• SysOps Engineer: As Kinsta’s SysOps Engineer, you’ll play a key role in caring for the health of our servers, preventing issues, and responding immediately to mitigate any problems in our infrastructure. If you have experience in hosting and with the WordPress stack, have worked with Ubuntu or Debian-based systems, and cutting-edge technologies, such Ansible and LXC, you should definitely check us out and apply here!


• JavaScript Developer: Kinsta’s Development Team aims to create truly effective solutions for our customers and our internal teams. We believe the only way to maintain and scale Continue reading

Linux Kernel vs. Memory Fragmentation (Part I)

AI Is RISC-V’s Trojan Horse into the Datacenter

If the workload-specific datacenter dominates in the near term, it could be RISC-V’s time to shine. …

AI Is RISC-V’s Trojan Horse into the Datacenter was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

AnsibleFest 2021 CFP is Open

AnsibleFest will be a free, virtual two day event again this year on September 29-30. You can expect all the usual highlights, like customer keynotes, breakout sessions, direct access to Ansible experts and more. We will also be bringing back tracks from last year like Network, Security, Developer and more to give you exactly the type of information you need for wherever you are in your Ansible journey. 

Do you have a story to share about how you're using Ansible?

The Call for Proposals will be open from June 8-29. We will be choosing a variety of sessions across all subjects and skill areas. Notifications will be sent out in July for session approval status. Share your automation story with us today!

Want to be the first to hear the latest updates about AnsibleFest? Then sign up to stay connected and up-to-date on all things on the AnsibleFest page.

Modify HTTP request headers with Transform Rules

HTTP headers are central to how the web works. They are used for passing additional information between the client and server, such as which security permissions to apply and information about the client, allowing the correct content to be served.

Today we are announcing the immediate availability of the second action within Transform Rules, “HTTP Request Header Modification”, available for all Cloudflare plans. This new functionality provides Cloudflare administrators with the ability to easily set or remove HTTP request headers as traffic flows through Cloudflare. This allows customers to enrich requests with information such as the Cloudflare Bot Management ‘Bot Score’ prior to being sent to their servers. Previously, HTTP request header modification was done using a Cloudflare Worker. Today we’re introducing an easier way to do this without writing a single line of code.

Luggage tags of the World Wide Web

Think of HTTP headers as the “luggage tag” attached to your bags when you check in at the airport.

Generally, you don't need to know what those numbers and words mean. You just know they are important in getting your suitcase from the boarding desk, to the correct Continue reading

Unequal-Cost Multipath with BGP DMZ Link Bandwidth

In the previous blog post in this series, I described why it’s (almost) impossible to implement unequal-cost multipathing for anycast services (multiple servers advertising the same IP address or range) with OSPF. Now let’s see how easy it is to solve the same challenge with BGP DMZ Link Bandwidth attribute.

I didn’t want to listen to the fan noise generated by my measly Intel NUC when simulating a full leaf-and-spine fabric, so I decided to implement a slightly smaller network:

Unequal-Cost Multipath with BGP DMZ Link Bandwidth

In the previous blog post in this series, I described why it’s (almost) impossible to implement unequal-cost multipathing for anycast services (multiple servers advertising the same IP address or range) with OSPF. Now let’s see how easy it is to solve the same challenge with BGP DMZ Link Bandwidth attribute.

I didn’t want to listen to the fan noise generated by my measly Intel NUC when simulating a full leaf-and-spine fabric, so I decided to implement a slightly smaller network:

VMware Redefines Security After a Surge in Attacks

Enterprise virtualization software giant VMware says it is “redefining” security as it seeks to help customers meet the challenges associated with a skyrocketing number of threats, more numerous attack vectors, and having fewer human resources at their disposal to help keep attacks at bay. “So what we’re asking all of these IT security teams to do is essentially to do more — and there’s a lot more complexity,” 2020 Threat Landscape report results, 81% of the survey respondents reported a breach during the past 12 months — with four out of the five breaches (82%) deemed material. At the Continue reading

Tools 8. Visual Analysis of the Network Path with Open Source Databases and Python

Hello my friend,

Over the past several articles we have taken a look into the most popular tools for the network troubleshooting. To be precise, we have covered an approach to find your public IP address in a programmable way, how to measure your Internet connectivity speed with Speedtest, how to measure the connectivity speed between your endpoints using iPerf, rapid check of hosts presence in the network with fping, how to check the quality of the path through the network with MTR, and how to see what are in the packets you have in your network. Covering these tools for you and sharing ideas about automation with them led us to creating a new open source tool, which we are happy to share with the community. This time we decided not to think long on its name and just called it the Traceroute Analyzer.

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What is the network automation?

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