Packet Pushers - Datanauts

This is the first in an occasional Datanauts series we’re calling “Found On The Internet.” The idea is to gather up things that we’ve read online that maybe don’t make up a full show, but that we want to talk about.

Today’s topics include the Future of Ops, CockroachDB, and OpenStack growing up.

Our guest to help us discuss these subjects is Rebecca Fitzhugh, Technical Marketing Engineer at Rubrik. She’s also an author and blogger.

Sponsor: Incapsula

Incapsula is a cloud-based service from Imperva that protects and accelerates your Web sites with services including DDoS and bot protection, traffic inspection, load balancing, and CDN. Incapsula protects over 4 million Web properties, from individual bloggers to the Fortune 50. Datanauts listeners can try Incapsula free! Just go to incapsula.com/packetpushers.

Show Notes:

The Future of Ops – Tyler Treat

Cockroach Labs demos CockroachDB at OpenStack Summit – Cockroach Labs

CockroachDB In Comparison – Cockroach Labs

Hello World – Cockroach Labs

OpenStack isn’t dead. It’s boring. That’s a good thing. – Major.io

On today’s episode the Datanauts rocket ventures into the treacherous asteroid field that is IT security.

And like an asteroid field, security is constantly in flux. We defend, and the attackers change tactics. We figure out the new attacks, and the rules change yet again. And so it is that the security architectures of old are not the security architectures of today. And the security architectures of today are not likely to be the security architectures of tomorrow.

Our guests are James Holland, a systems engineer; and Aaron Miller, a systems engineer manager. Both work for Palo Alto Networks, but this isn’t a sponsored show. The discussion traces the evolution of security architectures and approaches, the importance of application awareness, and the impact of virtualization, which can both create new risks and provide new opportunities.

We also look at where security is going, how cloud and virtualization will continue to shape your security infrastructure, and how skill sets will have to adapt to support more automation.

This episode of the Datanauts examines Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the context of AWS. A proper IAM framework is essential to ensure that the right people access the right resources in AWS, but setting up and managing policies can be…daunting.

The Datanauts are joined by Cole Morrison, a lead engineer at Fieldboom, who wrote a detailed series of posts on how to get a handle on IAM in AWS. They talk about why you want IAM in the first place, how it works, and then drill into setting up policies for AWS infrastructure.

Sponsor: ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer is agentless log analytics and configuration management software that supports up to 50 different firewall appliances. It helps network administrators to centrally collect, archive, and analyze their security device logs, and generate forensic reports. For more information and a free 30-day trial, check out www.fwanalyzer.com/packetpushers.

Sponsor: Incapsula

Incapsula is a cloud-based service from Imperva that protects and accelerates your Web sites with services including DDoS and bot protection, traffic inspection, load balancing, and CDN. Incapsula protects over 4 million Web properties, from individual bloggers to the Fortune 50. Datanauts listeners can try Incapsula free! Just go to incapsula.com/packetpushers.

Show Links:

Available Global Condition Keys – AWS

AWS Service Actions and Condition Context Keys for Use in IAM Policies – AWS

AWS IAM Policies in a Nutshell – Cole Morrison

AWS IAM Policies in a Nutshell: The Principal – Cole Morrison

AWS IAM Policies in a Nutshell: The Action – Cole Morrison

AWS IAM Policies in a Nutshell: The Resource – Cole Morrison

AWS IAM Policies in a Nutshell: The Condition – Cole Morrison

Today on the Datanauts we’re talking about in-memory databases. The idea is that you can load up a host with lots of RAM, cram your database in there, and get more transactions due to the lower latency.

But if the system is distributed, you’ve strewn database parts across multiple hosts, so you lose some of that CPU-to-RAM latency advantage. Or do you?

It’s an interesting design problem with some complex constraints, and it’s the focus of today’s podcast. Our guests are Swapnil Bawaskar, principal engineer at Pivotal; and Jim Bedenbaugh, Advisory Data Engineer at Pivotal.

Swapnil, Jim, and the Datanauts define in-memory databases, describe how they differ from traditional databases, and talk about use cases. They drill into the system architecture for in-memory DBs, including hosts, distributed systems, and failure scenarios. They also discuss practical issues including general operations, metrics, and backup and restoration.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

If you’ve listened to the Datanauts or read Chris Wahl’s blog, you know that he’s a big fan of PowerShell. On today’s episode, Chris shares his adventures at the recent PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit.

Chris and Ethan talk about just what PowerShell is, why the language is becoming so popular, its relationship to Ops (and a little Dev), and how folks can get started exploring all the glory that is PowerShell.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

Show Links:

PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2017

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches – Donald Jones and Jeffrey Hicks

Jeffrey Snover AMA at PS/DevOps Summit 2017 – Brian Bunke Blog

CommunityLightningDemos2017 – Rambling Cookie Monster via GitHub

 

Vester – Wahl Network via GitHub

Today on the Datanauts we explore the depths of vSphere 6.5 host resources to help you maximum performance of your virtual infrastructure and provide a deeper understanding of essentials such as CPU, memory, storage, and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA).

Our guests are Frank Denneman and Niels Hagoort, authors of the forthcoming book “vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive.”

You can follow the progress of the book and get updates and announcements via Twitter and Facebook. And for more nerdy goodness, check out Frank Denneman’s blog (including his NUMA deep dive series) and Niels’s blog Cloudfix.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

The Datanauts rocket returns to the automation solar system for another detailed survey of the whys and hows of automation and coding in operations.

Our intrepid host for this voyage is Lauren Malhoit, a technologist, Cisco employee, and co-host of Cisco’s Techwise TV. She also blogs at AdaptingIT.

We talk with Lauren about APIs, scripting and coding (particularly in Python), and the debate about whether network engineers and other non-developer IT pros need to learn to program. Lauren also offers tools and tips for folks who want to get started with automation and programming.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

Show Links:

Lauren’s Pluralsight courses:

* Cisco ACI Programmability

* Using Cisco ACI with VMware vSphere Integration

* Fundamentals of Using Cisco ACI

Cisco Open Source Projects for the Data Center – GitHub

Programming and Automating Cisco Networks – Ryan Tisher and Jason Gooley (Amazon)

Cisco DevNet

Today on the Datanauts it’s email security. Lots of organizations have outsourced their email to the cloud, and for good reasons: Web access is ubiquitous, email infrastructure can be a pain to manage and secure, and email can take up lots of storage.

But there are also good reasons for keeping email in-house, including privacy and retention requirements, specific security needs, and the ability to maintain control over your infrastructure destiny.

On today’s episode we’ll discuss how to build a robust and secure in-house email infrastructure, talk about the importance of IPv4 and IPv6 support, explore technologies and protocols to validate email servers and thwart spammers, and explain the role of DNS in supporting secure email.

Our guest is Jacob Evans, Sr. Systems Engineer at WebstaurantStore.com. You can follow him on Twitter and check out his blog at www.jacobdevans.com.

Sponsor: ITProTV

ITProTV is an easy, entertaining approach to online IT Training. With ITProTV, you’ll gain access to the most important tools needed to prepare you for IT certification. For a free 7-day trial–and for a limited time get 50% off a monthly membership for the lifetime of your active subscription–visit itpro.tv/datanauts and use code DATANAUTS50.

Show Links:

Sender Policy Framework – OpenSPF.org

Sender Policy Framework for Authorizing Use of Domains in Email, Version 1 – IETF 7208

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)

DMARCian – A DMARC Deployment Tool

DomainKeys Identified Mail – DKIM.org

DomainKeys Identified Mail Signatures – IETF 6376

Automation is the key to speed and scale, but networking has been slower to adopt automation tools and processes than other IT disciplines. Today’s Datanauts episode explores the current state of network automation to try to understand the challenges and limitations in networking, and how the industry is shifting.

Our guest is Ryan Booth, a senior data center engineer at a large financial services company. He blogs at Moving Ones & Zeros.

Ryan and the Datanauts talk about why the majority of networking equipment is still managed by the CLI; the emerging sets of tools, APIs, data models, and community projects that are emerging for network automation, and how network engineers can tackle configuration management and code management.

Sponsor: Interop ITX

Interop ITX, May 15 – 19 in Las Vegas, is the only independent conference for technology leaders. Get a year’s worth of objective IT education in one week. And don’t miss the Packet Pushers’ Future Of Networking Summit at Interop. Visit interopitx.com and use promo code PacketPushers for a 20% discount.

Sponsor: Incapsula

Incapsula is a cloud-based service from Imperva that protects and accelerates your Web sites with services including DDoS and bot protection, traffic inspection, load balancing, and CDN. Incapsula protects over 4 million Web properties, from individual bloggers to the Fortune 50. Datanauts listeners can try Incapsula free! Just go to incapsula.com/packetpushers.

Show Links:

Network To Code

Moving Ones & Zeros

Current Trends in DC Networking – Ansible Basics

Today’s Datanauts episode peers under the covers of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). Our guest is Emad Younis, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer at VMware. He blogs regularly about VCSA including feature updates, bug fixes, and more.

We’ll talk about what’s new in the VCSA 6.5 release, examine the pros and cons of VCSA vs. a traditional deployment, and discuss the carrots and the sticks that VMware is using to encourage migration away from Windows-based vCenter servers.

Sponsor: Interop ITX

Interop ITX, May 15 – 19 in Las Vegas, is the only independent conference for technology leaders. Get a year’s worth of objective IT education in one week. And don’t miss the Packet Pushers’ Future Of Networking Summit at Interop. Visit interopitx.com and use promo code PacketPushers for a 20% discount.

Show Links:

vSphere Blog

VMware Product Walkthroughs

vSphere Youtube 6.5 Playlist

EmadYounis.com

A Look at VMware’s vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5 Release – Wahl Network