The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

While performing a routine sensor sweep of the Gargleblaster nebula, the crew of the Datanauts starship noticed that many of the tasks are manual in nature and could, with a little effort, be automated with some scripting.

However, every time we moved on from one part of the nebula to another, a different error would crop up with the script’s code. Isn’t there some way that we can automatically test our code to make sure that more time is spent drinking a frothy ale instead of all this debugging?

On today’s episode with talk with Adam Bertram, a Microsoft MVP and author of The Pester Book.

He is currently a Senior Systems Automation Engineer working with PowerShell, Desired State Configuration, and various other DevOps tools to coordinate reliable software deployments for a biotech company. You can find his work at adamtheautomator.com.

We start by defining a unit test for scripts, and how unit testing differs from integration, functional, regression tests, and others.

Then we dive into why you’d want to test your scripts (testing isn’t just for developers!), and how to create these tests.

We also talk about the notion of test-driven development, and dive into Pester, which is a testing framework for PowerShell.

Show Links:

Adam Bertram on Twitter

Adam The Automator.com

The Pester Book – Adam Bertram

On this episode of Priority Queue, which is sponsored today by Cisco, we tackle the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

This new regulation lays out data privacy and protection obligations for organizations that handle data of EU citizens, including loss prevention, breach notification requirements, and serious fines and penalties for violations.

We delve into GDPR requirements with Equilibrium Security and IGXGlobal, an ePlus Technology Company, two Cisco partners who share practical insight and advice for dealing with GDPR.

Our guests are Anish Chauhan, Director at Equilibrium Security; and Alex Goldstein, Security Architect at IGXGlobal, an ePlus Technology Company.

We’ll discuss how to break down and understand requirements, the importance of a risk assessment and gap analysis, and how to use security and management tools to comply with the regulations.

Show Links:

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Cisco

Equilibrium Cyber Security Services

Equilibrium on Twitter

Equilibrium Cyber Security Podcasts – Equilibrium

IGXGlobal Security Online Visibility Assessment

2017 DBIR: Understand Your Cybersecurity Threats – Verizon Enterprise Solutions

Cisco Encrypted Traffic Analytics – Cisco

Today on the Datanauts podcast, we land on planet Mentorship to drive around in our exploratory rovers. Why? Mentoring came up on Twitter a while back.

Some of you are for it. You invest in your co-workers and your organization by sharing with others what you know. Some of you are against mentoring, arguing that you don’t have the time and aren’t getting paid to teach other people.

And then the Twitterverse connected us to Don Jones, who wrote a book called, “Be The Master.” Seems like a great excuse to fire up the microphone on our rovers and explore planet Mentorship in more detail.

Besides being an author, Don is an an IT pro and PowerShell expert who has created a variety of PowerShell training materials.

We talk about how a master/apprenticeship approach can be more effective than formal education, selfish reasons for being a mentor, how to address imposter syndrome, and how to get support for mentorship at work.

Show Links:

Don Jones.com

Be The Master.com

Don Jones on Twitter

Become The Master Or Go Away – Don Jones.com

Be the Master with Don Jones – RunAsRadio

Today on the Priority Queue, some practical Python for network engineers.

My guest is Billy Downing, and we walk through an example of how to use Python to deploy BFD, or Bidirectional Forwarding Detection.

We start by describing BFD and how it works, and then explore how to use Python to make it go in your network.

Billy is a data center engineer who works for the Department of Defense. Check out his blog at NetworkTechStudy.com.

Show Links:

NetworkTechStudy.com – Billy Downing’s blog

Learning Python from a Network Engineer’s Perspective – NetworkTechStudy.com

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) – IETF

ason Edelman is my guest on the Full Stack Journey, where we talk about his transition from a traditional network engineer to focus on automation.

If you work for a Value Added Reseller (VAR) as an engineer, the value being added is YOU.

What is VAR life? Projects, customer meetings, deadlines, bills of materials, RFP responses, and trying to turn the promises of sales unicorns into an actual design you can install for the customer.

We’ve worked for VARs at one time or another, as has our guest Eric Gullickson, who is now Enterprise Architect at Vortex Optics. We thought we’d run down the good, the bad, and the ugly of the VAR life on this episode of the Datanauts podcast.

We start the show by distinguishing the different roles a VAR can have. Then we dive into the good, which includes access to new technology, paid certifications, a flexible work schedule, and exposure to a wide variety of businesses and operating environments.

For the bad, the Datanauts and Eric discuss the blunt reality that you have to generate profit, and you may find yourself having to navigate the competing interests of manufacturers, sales, distributors, and customers.

On the ugly side, we swap stories about greasy salespeople, bad project management, and other nightmares.

Show Links:

Eric Gullickson.com

Eric Gullickson on Twitter

In the ten or so years I’ve been blogging, Ivan Pepelnjak has been constant figure in the tech industry. His prolific blogging and sharing of knowledge is one of the inspirations for my own entry into blogging. Over the years, we have usually agreed violently on most things and disagreed on others.

His ipSpace website has grown from a blog into a membership and more recently into a consulting service.

On today’s Priority Queue, Ivan and I talk about automation, intent, product quality and what can be done to improve it, the direction private clouds might take, and whatever else catches our fancy.

Sponsor: Paessler AG

Paessler AG is the maker of PRTG Network Monitor. PRTG monitors your whole IT infrastructure 24/7 and alerts you to problems before users even notice. Find out more about the monitoring software that helps system administrators work smarter, faster, better. Visit paessler.com today.

Show Links:

IPSpace.net

Blog.ipspace.net

Ivan Pepelnjak on Twitter

I do a five minute review of the D-Link DGS-1510-52 managed Ethernet switch.

Want the short version? D-Link has the enterprise in mind here. The switch is loaded with lots of L2 capability including a robust security set. DGS-1510’s are also stackable, feature a non-blocking chipset, and even some limited L3 forwarding capability.

For the price, a switch from the DGS-1510 line might look good in your wiring closet. Interesting. Not quite how I’d expected this to go.

In this five minute audio encapsulation of what’s interesting to the Packet Pushers from the world of networking vendors, Ethan Banks summarizes a shiny new Gluware. Vaguely remember Glue Networks as this company specializing in automation of Cisco IWAN environments? Time has marched on, and Glue Networks has re-branded to Gluware.

Sure, Gluware can still whip a gnarly IWAN deployment into shape, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Gluware can automate your entire network if you like, or just certain parts of it depending on your needs. And they support 16 different network operating systems, so it’s not just a Cisco game they’re playing.

To us, Gluware looks like automation for your brownfield network that you’ll be able to adapt your existing operational processes to. Worth some proof of concept testing if you’re looking for automation that isn’t just Python and hope.

Today the Datanauts explore three key concepts to make cloud management and operations more bearable: automation, understanding new services and capabilities, and security.

Our guest is Kenneth Hui, Technical Marketing Engineer at Rubrik. Ken blogs at Cloud Architect Musings. While our conversation focuses primarily on AWS, many of the principles discussed will apply to any cloud platform.

In part one we parse automation, infrastructure-as-code, and DevOps to understand how these concepts are related, how they differ, and why culture and human behavior matter more than labels.

Part two explores the latest offerings in AWS including serverless, container support, and machine learning.

Part three tackles cloud security essentials including encryption, not exposing S3 buckets, and best practices.

Show Links:

Infrastructure as Code: A Reason to Smile – Thoughtworks.com

DevOps Culture (Part 1) – IT Revolution

The AWS Love/Hate Relationship with Data Gravity – Cloud Architect Musings

Data Encryption in the Cloud, Part 1: Why You Should Care – Cloud Architect Musings

Last Week In AWS – Newsletter

Unsecured server exposed thousands of FedEx customer records – ZDNet

Vault Project – Vault.io

AWS Blogs – Amazon

AWS Security – Amazon

AWS Security Best Practices – Amazon

AWS Faragate – Amazon

AWS Lightsail – Amazon