VIRTUAL 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 ...
Rakuten Lines Up an Ambitious Virtualized Mobile Network Plan
Published on: 2019-02-21
Japan's Rakuten has partnered with tech heavyweights to power its fully virtualized, software-defined mobile service. The company plans to launch service later this year, with CTO Tareq Amin stating that the new network will "innovate at the speed of software and scale at the speed of cloud."
T-Mobile to deploy full 5G coverage in The Hague during 2019
Published on: 2019-02-21
The Dutch telco said the deployment of this technology will allow the city to deploy several smart city initiatives The Hague is set to become the first Dutch city to receive full 5G coverage, as local carrier T-Mobile announced plans to start the roll out the technology this year.
ZTE unveils 5G fronthaul outdoor optical transportation product
Published on: 2019-02-21
ZTE has unveiled what it claims is the industry's first 5G fronthaul 200G outdoor optical transport network product. The Chinese vendor said that the ZXMP M721 OD62 is easy to install and maintain and can be applied to the metro edge layer.
Is Hosted UC Really the Way to Go?
Published on: 2019-02-20
Is the hosted UC cloud really the way to go? In a two-word answer, "It depends." I'm writing this post based on my personal experience with hosted UC solutions and presenting a slightly different perspective beyond the hype of the UC cloud.
Cisco Highlights 'Cognitive Collaboration' at Analyst Summit
Published on: 2019-02-20
We have so much data available today and now we need help understanding what it means. Last week, Cisco's Collaboration Technology Group (CTG) held an analyst-only event in the John T. Chambers Executive Briefing Center in San Jose, Calif.
How managed network services are evolving to simplify the global WAN
Published on: 2019-02-20
Fundamentally, the way that carriers (i.e. telcos) deliver managed network services hasn't changed in decades. The core architecture of this network, known as hub and spoke, consists of branches talking to the data center over a managed network with a separate firewall in the middle.
Edge security: There’s lots of attack surfaces to worry about
Published on: 2019-02-19
The problem of edge security isn't unique - many of the issues being dealt with are the same ones that have been facing the general IT sector for decades. But the edge adds its own wrinkles to those problems, making them, in many cases, more difficult to address.
Why I’m excited for Apple’s Wi-Fi 6 iPhones
Published on: 2019-02-19
Don't fret too much when Apple fails to introduce a 5G iPhone this year, it's not terribly important that it does. Wi-Fi 6, on the other hand... The latest edition of Cisco's Mobile Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2017 - 2022) makes several predictions around 5G.
Software-defined connectivity planned for colocation data centers
Published on: 2019-02-08
Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80 percent of enterprises will migrate entirely away from their on-premises data centers. Instead they'll follow the current trend of moving workloads to colocation, hosting and the cloud, leading them to shut down their traditional data centers.
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.
What does 2019 hold for the DCI?
Published on: 2019-01-25
Posted by Arthur Cole on January 25, 2019 The data center interconnect (DCI) is emerging as the next big architectural challenge for network service providers, a result of the enterprise's growing reliance on distributed cloud architectures for increasingly heavy production workloads.
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 ...
How to secure your Azure network
Published on: 2018-10-16
Cloud services like Azure offer a lot of security features straight out of the box, especially if you're using their platform services. But virtual infrastructures are much like physical infrastructures, connecting virtual machines with software-defined virtual networks. Thus, they need the same ...
Aruba Wireless Controllers: Architecture & Configurations
Published on: 2019-02-21
A little bit of training, some researching, and a lot of time on the GUI is what I found to be the recipe in getting comfortable with Aruba Wireless Controllers. Even though I spent more time configuring the controllers via GUI, knowing the syntaxes I now find it much simpler to do it via the CLI.
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 ...
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.
Certifications Are About Support
Published on: 2019-02-07
You may have seen this week that VMware has announced they are removing the mandatory recertification requirement for their certification program. This is a huge step from VMware. The VCP, VCAP, and VCDX are huge certifications in the virtualization and server industry. VMware has always wanted ...
SDN Ate My Hamster
Published on: 2019-02-04
I posted a Tweet the other day which gained a lot of attention in the networking community: As SDN gains more traction, people start fearing for their jobs. Some jobs will decrease in demand and some will disappear entirely. However,
Time for a change!
Published on: 2019-01-25
I'm close to working at VMware as an NSBU Pre-Sales Systems Engineer for 3 years now. Focusing fully on NSX (and all its family members) has always been a dream come true. I believe the way VMware executes on software-defined networking (SD-everything, really) is the future and good things are ...
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 ...
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 ...
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
Will Cisco Viptela continue to be one of the Leaders in SD-WAN ?
Published on: 2018-12-28
In 2017, Cisco completed Viptela acquisition. It is not a surprise for me that Gartner published Cisco as the Leader in WAN Edge Infrastructure in 2018. This is Gartner's famous Magic Quadrant report. I wrote a post for Silverpeak before. Silverpeak is listed in the Leaders category.
GORUCK Land Navigation Heavy - East AAR
Published on: 2018-12-20
In June my son and I completed our first GORUCK Heavy event, the Land Nav on the west coast in Southern California. You can read the AAR here. It wasn't but a few weeks later that the coordinator of the event started to plan a similar event for the east coast and the location was identified as ...
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 ...
Innovation or Iteration
Published on: 2018-02-16
The word "innovation" gets thrown around a lot these days. I wouldn't blame anyone if the word now evokes a gag reflex similar to how we all eventually reacted to "cloud" a few years back. Every product and presentation seemed to be reworked to make it appear it was a "cloud" product.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Is Hot Garbage For Parity Storage
Published on: 2018-12-17
I love parity storage. Whether it's traditional RAID 5/6, erasure coding, raidz/raid2z, whatever. It gives you redundancy on your data without requiring double the drives that mirroring or mirroring+stripping would require. The drawback is write performance is not as good as mirroring+stripping, ...
Juniper RADIUS-delivered switching filters
Published on: 2018-11-06
I've been experimenting with getting RADIUS to deploy switching filters to Juniper switches recently, as part of a reference architecture demo. The concept is called REACH2020 and combines network virtualisation with the ability to identify network users and devices so that categories of user ...
Installing Moloch on Debian 9 Stretch
Published on: 2018-10-31
A tutorial explaining how to install Moloch, Elasticsearch and Java on Debian 9 Stretch.
“Thirteen hundred APs, no open support tickets” – achieving quality in wireless networks
Published on: 2018-10-08
"Thirteen hundred APs, no open support tickets," Sudheer Matta, VP of Products for Mist Systems, boldly stated during his MFD3 presentation. At the time, he was referencing one of their largest customers specifically, but the company's desire to prevent bugs, create high quality customer ...
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 ...
Resolution Immediacy and Deployment Immediacy – ACI Master Class
Published on: 2018-08-17
When configuring ACI, have you ever wondered what those Resolution Immediacy options [ Immediate | On Demand | Pre-provision] and the Deployment Immediacy options [ Immediate | On Demand] do? Read on to find out. I always like to start with a picture.
Cisco OpFlex
Published on: 2018-06-12
Cisco ACI uses OpFlex to communicate with VMWare DVS/VDS. OpFlex is an extensible policy protocol designed to exchange abstract policy between a network controller and a set of smart devices capable of rendering policy. OpFlex relies on a separate information model understood by agents in both ...
On my way to CLUS
Published on: 2018-06-09
I am excited to be in my first Ciscolive US starting tomorrow in Orlando, Florida. This post is about how I spent my time on the way to CLUS. When I decided I will go to CLUS, I booked my return fl...
The Overlay Problem: Getting In and Out
Published on: 2016-09-30
I've been researching overlay network strategies recently. There are plenty of competing implementations available, employing various encapsulations and control plane designs. But every design I've encountered seems ultimately hampered by the same issue: scalability at the edge. Why Build an ...
Wireless 2017: What We Wanted Then, and What We Want Today
Published on: 2017-12-15
As a wireless engineer, we study the 802.11 protocol. We read how the standard is written, study how it is supposed to work and yet seem to spend our time fighting why it doesn't work. Tweaking power, channels, datarates, toggling features and code versions in hope that things functions the way ...
Classic DC and M-LAG
Published on: 2016-08-29
In the pervious post we talked about BGP in Data Center and how it is a topic of discussion in between the DC and the SP arenas. In this post I will start explaining some classic DC design and laying its shortage which will engage the SP gurus with us, as well it will make sure ...