AUTOMATION Stories
Accelerating Past the 6 Key Challenges of Deploying 5G
Published on: 2019-02-21
Network operators and vertical industries are under attack from both traditional and non-traditional competitors. To get - and stay - ahead, they must continuously reinvent their differentiating strengths and capabilities - in other words their DNA. This is particularly critical as 5G comes into ...
SDxCentral’s Weekly Roundup — February 22, 2019
Published on: 2019-02-21
Here are the week's strays and stragglers we roped for you: Ethernity Networks launched a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based virtual private network (VPN) gateway. Splunk withdrew from Russia. The application management company will no longer sell its software and services to companies ...
What is hyperconvergence?
Published on: 2019-02-07
Hyperconvergence is an IT framework that combines storage, computing and networking into a single system in an effort to reduce data center complexity and increase scalability. Hyperconverged platforms include a hypervisor for virtualized computing, software-defined storage, and virtualized ...
5G: more than just a simple network upgrade
Published on: 2019-02-07
Posted by Arthur Cole on February 07, 2019 5G wireless connectivity is certainly faster and wider than current 4G infrastructure, which gives the impression that it is merely an incremental step in the performance we can expect from our existing services. But this is not entirely the case.
Durham County goes Cisco for enterprise network ops and security proficiency
Published on: 2019-01-23
The government in Durham County, N.C., was spending hours and hours manually provisioning its network and keeping security policies current, so it decided two and a half years ago to upgrade for the sake of efficiency and security.
2019: Look for improvements to software-defined data-center networks
Published on: 2018-12-10
To help IT pros attain top performance for their software-defined data-center networks (SDDCN), we have identified 10 crucial technology areas to watch and evaluate during 2019. SDDCN performance requires advanced network software to provision, manage and secure high-speed traffic flows, and ...
Why dynamic mapping is changing network troubleshooting for the better
Published on: 2017-05-15
Effective network troubleshooting requires experience and a detailed understanding of a network’s design. And while many great network engineers possess both qualities, they still face the daunting challenge of manual data collection and analysis.The storage and backup industries have long been ...
Achieve Business Harmony and Compliance Through Automated Policy Enforcement
Published on: 2019-02-21
I was doing some compliance research recently and came across the following statistic from the Veritas Truth in Cloud Study: "76% of organizations believe that their cloud service providers take care of all data privacy and compliance regulations." Once I had a chance to collect my jaw from the ...
Move to DNA or ACI?
Published on: 2019-02-21
Relationship of Cisco ONE to DNA and ACI Digital business relies upon a new digital network, in enterprise networking and the data center. This new network requires a software-based and policy-driven approach, automation, built-in security, proactive monitoring and troubleshooting.
Automation: Tools vs Languages
Published on: 2019-02-20
When it comes to expressing intent in automation workflows, there is validation in both using a task or workflow engine and also knocking it together using scripting in some language. I try not to get involved in tool or language wars, but quite honestly sometimes can't help myself.
Security Teams Deserve a Better Approach
Published on: 2019-02-20
For many organizations, security teams are the first line of defense against all known and unknown threats. The core function of these teams is to identify, investigate and mitigate threats across their entire digital domain. As adversaries become more automated and complex, security teams are ...
Destination Cloud: Start Secure, Stay Secure With the Latest VM-Series Enhancements
Published on: 2019-02-19
The cloud is here to stay. According to Deloitte's 2018 global CIO survey , 90 percent of CIOs and C-suite executives say their organizations are using cloud-based services. The cost and efficiency gains are undeniable. But it's not enough to cross your fingers and hope a security breach doesn't ...
Tech Bytes: Thousand Eyes Shares Lessons Learned From A CenturyLink Outage (Sponsored)
Published on: 2019-02-18
CenturyLink suffered a major outage in December 2018 that affected services in large swathes of North America. On today's Tech Bytes episode, sponsored by ThousandEyes, we look at the causes of the outage and lessons learned, including the importance of ISP redundancy and why management networks ...
Managing Automation – Fighting Fear of Job Justification
Published on: 2019-02-14
Dear Employees We have decided to implement automation in our environment because robots and programs are way better than people. We will need you to justify your job in the next week or we will fire you and make you work in a really crappy job that doesn't involve computers while we light cigars...
Tech Field Day in Barcelona
Published on: 2019-02-13
I was in Barcelona last week, there was a Cisco Live as you might know. During the Cisco Live unfortunately I couldn't meet with people as I was invited them by Tech Field Day and recorded many great sessions together. Cisco announced ACI in Cloud and there was presentations about it.
5G-Ready Network Today Requires a Secure, Automated Cloud Architecture
Published on: 2019-02-12
Imagine playing an immersive VR video game on your cell phone with friends around the world, in real time, with zero delays, while traveling in a self-driving car. It's not that far-fetched: this is just one of the many possible scenarios that the future holds with the emergence of 5G.
Event-Driven Automation: The TL;DR No One Told You About
Published on: 2019-01-31
Event-Driven automation is an umbrella term much like "coffee" (also see here, it turns out I've used coffee anecdotes way too much). How many times do you go to a popular chain and just blurt out "coffee". At 5am, it might be the nonsensical mysterious noise automagically leaving one's mouth ...
Postman Collection for vRealize Network Insight APIs
Published on: 2019-01-24
When developing automation and using APIs, Postman is a very welcome tool. I use it to test out API calls and to make sure I format the calls correctly, before translating it to the code of whatever I'm working on.
NAE: Some Help Dealing with Brain Block
Published on: 2019-01-17
For years, thanks to the gift of misaligned perception, I've been mentally blocked. I've avoided things like Machine Learning because my perceived skill with mathematics is weak, avoided programming languages like C# because the perceived uphill hike to get familiar is high and avoided front end ...
Orange Matter: Silo-Busting and Dream-Dashing
Published on: 2019-01-14
I've been blogging for Solarwinds recently, posting on Orange Matter, with a cross-post to the Thwack Geek Speak forum. I love automation, but it seems that dreams of a smooth customer experience can be destroyed by the persistence of engineering silos in many organizations.
Orange Matter: Automation Paralysis
Published on: 2019-01-11
I've been blogging for Solarwinds recently, posting on Orange Matter, with a cross-post to the Thwack Geek Speak forum. This post examines how it's easy to get so focused on automating the small stuff we have difficulty turning that into the more cohesive automation solution that we'd like to have.
Ways to Automate VXLAN
Published on: 2019-01-10
More and more sites are deploying Cisco Nexus 9K-based fabrics. Basically, if the time has come for datacenter switch refresh, you have two choices: Nexus 7700 etc. with a "classic Nexus" design (core, distribution, Top of Rack, FEX), or Nexus 9K-based fabrics. Fabrics are cool and look like a ...
Orange Matter: Where is Your Configuration Source of Truth?
Published on: 2019-01-09
I've been blogging for Solarwinds recently, posting on Orange Matter, with a cross-post to the Thwack Geek Speak forum. The post linked here looks at where we define our source of truth for device configurations; is it the device itself? Should it be?
NAE: Automation and Time
Published on: 2019-01-08
Time is the enemy of everything in the field of IT. It doesn't matter whether you are a designer or operator. Time is your sworn enemy. In all the training and certifications I've ever done, all that is missing is a knighting ceremony in which a sword is laid on your shoulders and you're sworn ...
New Year, New Post, NFDx!
Published on: 2019-01-07
You may be thinking "Wait, he hasn't posted in ages.. how lazy is he?" but thankfully I haven't been entirely slothful for the last seven months. Most recently I authored a series of six posts related to SDN and automation on the Solarwinds Orange Matter blog.
YANG, OpenAPI, Swagger and Code Generation
Published on: 2018-10-23
Sometimes during exploration or projects, I want to take a YANG model and convert it along with related dependencies to a Swagger format (think OpenAPI if you're not familiar with this) so I can create a REST or RESTConf API interface.
My Home Automation Gear
Published on: 2018-12-30
I've mostly kept this blog around virtualization technology. Over the last few months, I've had more and more conversations about home automation and how my house is tricked out. A lot of people seem to be interested in my setup, so I'm going to start sharing more on the gear, workflows & results.
SD-WAN – Glorified DMVPN?
Published on: 2018-12-28
I had an interesting discussion with Jon Cooper in the Network Collective Slack. The discussion was around SD-WAN. We were discussing if SD-WAN is just a "glorified DMVPN" or if it's something more than that. Note that this was a
Plexxi Recognized on CRN’s Data Center 100 List (again)
Published on: 2018-02-26
It's no secret that the demands on modern data centers are changing and that companies want networks that are agile, flexible, and simple. Plexxi embraces this approach to networking when developing the solutions we provide to our customers and partners. As a result, once again CRN, a brand of ...
Plexxi Recognized on CRN’s Data Center 100 List
Published on: 2018-02-26
NASHUA, N.H., February 26, 2018 - Plexxi, the leader in Hyperconverged Networking (HCN), announced today that CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Plexxi to its 2018 Data Center 100 list. This annual list recognizes technology suppliers that excel at powering, supporting and protecting ...
Intent-Based Network Automation with Ansible
Published on: 2017-09-06
The latest in all the networking buzz these days is Intent-Based Networking (IBN). There are varying definitions of what IBN is and is not. Does IBN mean you need to deploy networking solely from business policy, does IBN mean you must be streaming telemetry from every network device in ...
Juniper Nxtwork 2018 – Recap
Published on: 2018-10-22
The other week I had the privilege of attending Juniper Nxtwork 2018 in Las Vegas, NV. I have attended the previous two Nxtwork events (2016 and 2017) and this year's event outdid them in every way. What made this year's event so much better you might ask?
Intro into Fortinet WLAN configuration
Published on: 2018-09-30
Simple, secure, sensible - Koroush Saraf, Fortiner VP of Product Management, emphasized these words in his recent MFD3 presentations. While any vendor can claim their products share these attributes, it's usually the complexity of workflow that reveals the betrayal of one or all of these ...
Automating My World
Published on: 2018-07-23
I've told this story 984828934 time in the past year, but bear with me. We got a new director-type last year, and he has challenged all of us to do things differently. As in everything. Anything that we're doing today should be done differently by next year.
An Update for my Adoring Fans
Published on: 2018-06-05
I feel like a teenage girl with a fashion blog who hasn't posted in 6 months and comes back with "I know I haven't posted in a while..." Sigh. It's been right at a year since I actually published a post, so I figured I would give everyone an update.