Lessons Learned: Automating Site Deployments

Some networking engineers renew their ipSpace.net subscription every year, and when they drop off the radar, I try to get in touch with them to understand whether they moved out of networking or whether we did a bad job.

One of them replied that he retired after building a fully automated site deployment solution (first lesson learned: you’re never too old to start automating your network), and graciously shared numerous lessons learned while building that solution.

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Using pidof and pgrep to list process IDs

The pidof and pgrep commands provide listings of process IDs (PIDs) for process names that you provide as arguments. This post shows how to use these commands and illustrates the differences between them with a series of examples.pidof There are a number of ways to determine the PID of a process running on a Linux system, but the easiest is probably a command called pidof. Read this as “PID of” and you’ll have an easy time remembering it. Using this command, you can get the PID of a process by typing “pidof” and specifying the process name. For example:$ pidof bash 1262005 If you were to run the ps command without arguments, you will get a list of the processes that you’re running in your current shell. The command below shows where the response above comes from:To read this article in full, please click here

Nutanix expands hybrid-cloud features to support unstructured data

Nutanix has expanded the capabilities of its Objects and Files unstructured-data storage offerings with new hybrid-cloud capabilities for deploying a scale-out storage fabric across their various cloud environments.These new storage services are built on the recently launched Nutanix Clusters, which support Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software running in AWS and, eventually, Microsoft Azure. New features include cloud tiering for object storage, hybrid-cloud file storage, and simplified disaster recovery.“IT teams around the world are quickly moving to hybrid environments, and they’re looking for technology solutions to help them facilitate this transition, to help them manage disparate technologies and simplify operations,” says Rajiv Mirani, chief technology officer of Nutanix in a statement. “We recently extended our hyper-converged-infrastructure software to public cloud with the launch of Nutanix Clusters to help companies do just that. Now the focus is on strengthening the overall platform, including delivering an easy-to-use, scale out storage fabric across their different cloud environments.”To read this article in full, please click here

Bias in word embeddings

Bias in word embeddings, Papakyriakopoulos et al., FAT*’20

There are no (stochastic) parrots in this paper, but it does examine bias in word embeddings, and how that bias carries forward into models that are trained using them. There are definitely some dangers to be aware of here, but also some cause for hope as we also see that bias can be detected, measured, and mitigated.

…we want to provide a complete overview of bias in word embeddings: its detection in the embeddings, its diffusion in algorithms using the embeddings, and its mitigation at the embeddings level and at the level of the algorithm that uses them.

It’s been shown before (‘Man is to computer programmer as woman is to homemaker?’) that word embeddings contain bias. The dominant source of that bias is the input dataset itself, i.e. the text corpus that the embeddings are trained on. Bias in, bias out. David Hume put his finger on the fundamental issue at stake here back in 1737 when he wrote about the unjustified shift in stance from describing what is and is not to all of a sudden talking about what ought or ought not to be. Continue reading

Bookmarked Articles

Have you ever read a great article and thought. "That was interesting!" Then one day in the future you want to share said article with someone else and cannot for the life of you find it? To fight that tyrany, I am keeping the links to interesting articles I have read on a multitude of...continue reading

Bookmarked Articles

Have you ever read a great article and thought. "That was interesting!" Then one day in the future you want to share said article with someone else and cannot for the life of you find it? To fight that tyrany, I am keeping the links to interesting articles I have read on a multitude of...

Aruba unveils new data-center orchestration software, switches

Aruba has taken the wraps off new orchestration software and switches that target users looking to build and support distributed data-centers.Aruba Fabric Composer software simplifies leaf-and-spine network provisioning across the company’s CX switches and automates operations across a wide variety of virtualized, hyper-converged, and HPE compute and storage environments.The Fabric Composer runs as runs as a virtual machine and eliminates the need for networking teams to manually configure CX switches. It offers workflow automation and a view of workflows supported by networking fabrics, switches, hosts and other resources, said Steve Brar, senior director of product marketing for Aruba.To read this article in full, please click here

Aruba unveils new data-center orchestration software, switches

Aruba has taken the wraps off new orchestration software and switches that target users looking to build and support distributed data-centers.Aruba Fabric Composer software simplifies leaf-and-spine network provisioning across the company’s CX switches and automates operations across a wide variety of virtualized, hyper-converged, and HPE compute and storage environments.The Fabric Composer runs as runs as a virtual machine and eliminates the need for networking teams to manually configure CX switches. It offers workflow automation and a view of workflows supported by networking fabrics, switches, hosts and other resources, said Steve Brar, senior director of product marketing for Aruba.To read this article in full, please click here

Juniper reinforces its intent-based networking with Apstra buy

Looking to shore-up its intent-based networking software portfolio, Juniper has said it will buy Apstra for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2014, Apstra’s claim to fame is its flagship Apstra Operating System (AOS) software which was developed from the start to support IBN features. Once deployed, AOS keeps a real-time repository of configuration, telemetry and validation information to constantly ensure the network is doing what the customer wants it to do.AOS also includes automation features to provide consistent network and security policies for workloads across physical and virtual infrastructures. Its intent-based analytics perform regular network checks to safeguard configurations and is hardware agnostic so it can be integrated to work with products from Cisco, Arista, Dell, Microsoft and Nvidia/Cumulus.To read this article in full, please click here

Social Networking Tips For Introverts

Are you an introvert and think that social networking is not for you? Then you need to think again as this is definitely not the case. Although a lot of introverts believe that they are not perfect for networking, we have seen many introverts who master the arts of networking. So, how did they actually achieve it? How did they gain the confidence of talking to a stranger? Are you also wondering all of these questions? If yes, then don’t worry, we have got you covered. Just keep reading and you will find everything that you need to know below.

Prepare In Advance

Going to a social networking event without any prior plan or preparation is just a waste of time. When you will not be able to achieve anything at the event, it will demotivate you more. This is why you need to have a plan in action. When you are prepared in advance, it will give you the confidence to talk to other people as well. So, the most important thing to do if you are an introvert is to have a plan in advance.

Take The Help From Others

You might feel nervous walking in a room Continue reading

Current Work in BGP Security

I’ve been chasing BGP security since before the publication of the soBGP drafts, way back in the early 2000’s (that’s almost 20 years for those who are math challenged). The most recent news largely centers on the RPKI, which is used to ensure the AS originating an advertisements is authorized to do so (or rather “owns” the resource or prefix). If you are not “up” on what the RPKI does, or how it works, you might find this old blog post useful—its actually the tenth post in a ten post series on the topic of BGP security.

Recent news in this space largely centers around the ongoing deployment of the RPKI. According to Wired, Google and Facebook have both recently adopted MANRS, and are adopting RPKI. While it might not seem like autonomous systems along the edge adopting BGP security best practices and the RPKI system can make much of a difference, but the “heavy hitters” among the content providers can play a pivotal role here by refusing to accept routes that appear to be hijacked. This not only helps these providers and their customers directly—a point the Wired article makes—this also helps the ‘net in a larger way Continue reading

Navigating Change

All you have to do is take a look around you and it becomes obvious that people just simply don’t like change. Conversely, all you have to do is look around you and it becomes obvious that our industry is in almost a constant state of change. How do we reconcile these things? How can we adapt to the ever changing world around us, and how can we utilize this knowledge to be more effective influencers of change within our organizations and within our jobs.

Links

Show Notes

Now this topic, like many of the topics that have become episodes on Network Collective lately, was prompted by a conversation in the Network Collective Slack. It has an IPv6 bend to it, as IPv6 seems to be the change the industry continually likes to avoid, but the avoidance of change isn’t something new. Nick, I’m going to start with you. Do you think the aversion to change in our industry is just a reflection of being human, or do you think there is more to it than that.

Network Break 313: Salesforce Snaps Up Slack; HPE To Decamp For Houston

This week's Network Break analyzes the implications of Salesforce's Slack acquisition, discusses why HPE is moving its HQ to Houston, new ASICs from Broadcom, the distastefulness of Dell selling security add-ons for its supply chain, the shakiness of IETF funding, and more tech news.

The post Network Break 313: Salesforce Snaps Up Slack; HPE To Decamp For Houston appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The Week in Internet News: Two-Thirds of World’s School Children Lack Access

Homework canyon: Two-thirds of the school children across the globe don’t have Internet access, according to a new report, India Today says. The report from the United Nations Children’s Fund and the International Telecommunication Union says the lack of access is a major problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. “That so many children and young people have no internet at home is more than a digital gap, it is a digital canyon,” said UNICEF Chief Henrietta Fore. “Lacking connectivity prevents young people from competing in the modern economy.”

A quantum breakthrough: A Chinese research team has built a quantum computer capable of performing computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer, The Independent reports. The Chinese feat comes about a year after a Google team passed the same milestone, although the Chinese quantum computer uses a different setup than Google’s.

Research by smartphone: Smartphone users in 17 countries, including the U.K., Australia, South Africa, and Germany, are donating excess smartphone computing time to the DreamLab app, which uses the computing power to research treatment for people suffering from long-term COVID-19 effects. The study is being run by Imperial College London and the Vodafone Foundation charity, Continue reading

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