Fifty Shades of High Availability

A while ago we had an interesting exchange of ideas around inserting high-availability network appliance into a public cloud environment (TL&DR: it was really hard until AWS introduced Gateway Load Balancing), and someone quickly pointed out we’re solving the wrong challenge because…

Azure Firewall […] is a fully stateful firewall-as-a-service with built-in high-availability.

Somehow he wasn’t too happy when I pointed out that there’s more to high availability than vendor marketing ;)

Fetching Linux system details with screenfetch and neofetch

Two very useful tools for extracting essential details on your Linux system OS and hardware are screenfetch and geofetch.Each of these tools is actually a lengthy bash script that fetches the information from your system for you and presents it in an attractive manner with the distribution logo on the left and details on the right--essentially "screen shots" of your system. Neither is likely to be installed on your system by default, but each can be installed with a single command.screenfetch You can install screenfetch with sudo apt install screenfetch or sudo yum install screenfetch. Screenfetch is a script with nearly 6,500 lines. It will automatically detect your distribution and display the distribution, kernel, uptime, number of packages installed, shell you're using, overall and available disk space, CPU, GPU and memory (in use and available). It also displays an ASCII art rendition of the logo related to whatever distribution it's run on, but you can turn this off if you want to see just the list of details.To read this article in full, please click here

The Redemption Of AMD In HPC

Many of the technologists at AMD who are driving the Epyc CPU and Instinct GPU roadmaps as well as the $35 billion acquisition of FPGA maker Xilinx have long and deep experience in the high performance computing market that is characterized by the old school definition of simulation and modeling workloads running on federated or clustered systems.

The Redemption Of AMD In HPC was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

A Python learning path for network engineers

Python programming is now a required skill for network engineers. I recorded videos of myself as I learned and practiced Python programming. I think these videos, along with the links to learning resources associated with each video’s topic, serve as a good learning guide for network engineers getting started with Python programming.

This post collects links to all ten videos I created. Over the course of these videos, I wrote a program called Usermapper that reads a configuration file and builds an XML authentication file for the Guacamole web proxy. I also used the Git version control system and posted the code in my Usermapper GitHub repository

Topics I need to learn

I learned some programming during my Electrical Engineering degree program many years ago. After I graduated, except for some basic scripting, I’ve not had to do any programming.

These videos do not cover the basics of Python. I strongly suggest you read a book about Python, or watch some video training (see suggestions below) before you start working through these videos. Before I started recording this first video, I read the O’Reilly book, Learning Python, and wrote a blog post about what I learned in the first Continue reading

Cisco’s Nightingale: Cloud-neutral orchestration and automation are primary goals for 2021

While Todd Nightingale has been Cisco’s Enterprise Networking & Cloud business chief since March, some of the directions he wants to take the company’s biggest business unit—namely superior cloud-neutral orchestration and automation—are already evident.The COVID-19 pandemic and the enterprise response to it are big drivers for near-future enterprise networking technology. But the ideas of cloud  connectivity and pushing simplicity and agility in the network, while they are already important, implementation has accelerated for most customers, Nightingale said in a recent interview.To read this article in full, please click here

Full Stack Journey 048: Where Is IT Headed In 2021?

On today's episode of the Full Stack Journey podcast, host Scott Lowe is joined by fellow Packet Pusher podcast host Drew Conry-Murray for a lively discussion on the trends they see on the horizon in the industry, and how IT professionals can prepare themselves for those trends, including network automation and orchestration, emerging tools, and more.

Full Stack Journey 048: Where Is IT Headed In 2021?

On today's episode of the Full Stack Journey podcast, host Scott Lowe is joined by fellow Packet Pusher podcast host Drew Conry-Murray for a lively discussion on the trends they see on the horizon in the industry, and how IT professionals can prepare themselves for those trends, including network automation and orchestration, emerging tools, and more.

The post Full Stack Journey 048: Where Is IT Headed In 2021? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Assigning Node Labels During Kubernetes Cluster Bootstrapping

Given that Kubernetes is a primary focus of my day-to-day work, I spend a fair amount of time in the Kubernetes Slack community, trying to answer questions from users and generally be helpful. Recently, someone asked about assigning node labels while bootstrapping a cluster with kubeadm. I answered the question, but afterward started thinking that it might be a good idea to also share that same information via a blog post—my thinking being that others who also had the same question aren’t likely to be able to find my answer on Slack, but would be more likely to find a published blog post. So, in this post, I’ll show how to assign node labels while bootstrapping a Kubernetes cluster.

The “TL;DR” is that you can use the kubeletExtraArgs field in a kubeadm configuration file to pass the node-labels command to the Kubelet, which would allow you to assign node labels when kubeadm bootstraps the node. Read on for more details.

Testing with Kind

kind is a great tool for testing this sort of configuration, since kind uses kubeadm to bootstrap its nodes. If you aren’t familiar with kind, I encourage you to visit the kind website; in Continue reading

Network Break 312: AWS Kneecapped By Kinesis; Linux Unlikely For Apple M1

The latest Network Break episode explores AWS's pre-Thanksgiving outage and the lack of fallout, discusses a new AWS firewall service, reports on why Linus Torvalds isn't holding his breath on seeing Linux run on Apple's new M1 SoC, covers the latest tech financial results, and more.

The post Network Break 312: AWS Kneecapped By Kinesis; Linux Unlikely For Apple M1 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

How To Improve Your Negotiation Skills

Strong negotiation skills are extremely important no matter at what level you are in your life. Not only are they needed in the workplace, but they will also help you in other aspects of life as well. This is why you should focus on improving your negotiation skills.

Although improving negotiation skills are essential, a lot of us keep delaying it. We find the idea so overwhelming that we delay taking the necessary steps that are needed to improve our negotiation skills. 

So, if you are also one of those people, then you do not need to worry anymore. You can now improve your negotiation skills just by following the tips mentioned below. Let’s take a look at them.

Prepare Yourself

The first and important step for negotiating successfully is preparing yourself in advance for negotiation. You need to fully understand the situation that you will be facing. Go through all the possible scenarios that might take place at the meeting. When you are prepared in advance for the negotiation, it will give you a clear idea of the things at stake. This is why it is important to prepare yourself in advance.

Do Not Be Afraid To Make Continue reading

Innovation Myths

Innovation has gained a sort-of mystical aura in our world. Move fast and break stuff. We recognize and lionize innovators in just about every way possible. The result is a general attitude of innovate or die—if you cannot innovate, then you will not progress in your career or life. Maybe it’s time to take a step back and bust some of the innovation myths created by this near idolization of innovation.

You can’t innovate where you are. Reality: innovation is not tied to a particular place and time. “But I work for an enterprise that only uses vendor gear… Maybe if I worked for a vendor, or was deeply involved in open source…” Innovation isn’t just about building new products! You can innovate by designing a simpler network that meets business needs, or by working with your vendor on testing a potential new product. Ninety percent of innovation is just paying attention to problems, along with a sense of what is “too complex,” or where things might be easier.

You don’t work in open source or open standards? That’s not your company’s problem, that’s your problem. Get involved. It’s not just about protocols, anyway. What about certifications, training, and Continue reading

Injecting Machine Learning And Bayesian Optimization Into HPC

No matter what kind of traditional HPC simulation and modeling system you have, no matter what kind of fancy new machine learning AI system you have, IBM has an appliance that it wants to sell you to help make these systems work better – and work better together if you are mixing HPC and AI.

Injecting Machine Learning And Bayesian Optimization Into HPC was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

What are data centers? How they work and how they are changing in size and scope

A data center is the physical facility providing the compute power to run applications, the storage capabilities to process data, and the networking to connect employees with the resources needed to do their jobs.Experts have been predicting that the on-premises data center will be replaced by cloud-based alternatives, but many organizations have concluded that they will always have applications that need to live on-premises. Rather than dying, the data center is evolving.It is becoming more distributed, with edge data centers springing up to process IoT data. It is being modernized to operate more efficiently through technologies like virtualization and containers. It is adding cloud-like features such as self-service. And the on-prem data center is integrating with cloud resources in a hybrid model.To read this article in full, please click here

What are data centers? How they work and how they are changing in size and scope

A data center is the physical facility providing the compute power to run applications, the storage capabilities to process data, and the networking to connect employees with the resources needed to do their jobs.Experts have been predicting that the on-premises data center will be replaced by cloud-based alternatives, but many organizations have concluded that they will always have applications that need to live on-premises. Rather than dying, the data center is evolving.It is becoming more distributed, with edge data centers springing up to process IoT data. It is being modernized to operate more efficiently through technologies like virtualization and containers. It is adding cloud-like features such as self-service. And the on-prem data center is integrating with cloud resources in a hybrid model.To read this article in full, please click here

What are data centers? How they work and how they are changing in size and scope

A data center is a physical facility that enterprises use to house their business-critical applications and information. As they evolve from centralized on-premises facilities to edge deployments to public cloud services, it’s important to think long-term about how to maintain their reliability and security.What is a data center? Data centers are often referred to as a singular thing, but in actuality they are composed of a number of technical elements. These can be broken down into three categories: Compute: The memory and processing power to run the applications, generally provided by high-end servers Storage: Important enterprise data is generally housed in a data center, on media ranging from tape to solid-state drives, with multiple backups Networking: Interconnections between data center components and to the outside world, including routers, switches, application-delivery controllers, and more These are the components that IT needs to store and manage the most critical resources that are vital to the continuous operations of an organization. Because of this, the reliability, efficiency, security and constant evolution of data centers are typically a top priority. Both software and hardware security measures are a must.To read this article in full, please click here