The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Today the Datanauts peer inside AWS. Amazon has created a powerful suite of cloud services and built a online empire by renting compute, storage, and other services to enterprises and startups alike.

But just because everything lives in the cloud doesn’t mean practical design considerations go away. If you’re considering AWS, the Datanauts and guest Alex Galbraith examine the pros and cons of storage, networking, and scaling so you can get the best design for the least amount of money within the capabilities that Amazon provides.

Alex is a solutions architect for a global service provider. He also blogs at Tekhead.it. It was a series of blogs by Alex that spurred this conversation.

They discuss issues such as  IOPS limits in EBS, write and read limitations in S3, how Amazon Direct Connect and VPCs work, and how to make the most of auto-scaling groups.

*Please note that during the storage discussion, Alex mentioned that you had to dismount the  volume when resizing elastic block storage volumes. But after this podcast was recorded, Amazon announced that this isn’t the case anymore.

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Show Links:

AWS Tips And Gotchas Series – Alex Galbraith

Elastic Block Store (EBS) – Amazon

Elastic File System (EFS) – Amazon

Amazon EC2 Instances – Amazon

EC2 Spot Instance Termination Notices – Amazon

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) – Amazon

Placement Groups – Amazon

Request Rate and Performance Considerations – Amazon

The Priority Queue dives into the applicability of machine learning to networking. Our guest is David Meyer, Chief Scientist and Fellow at Brocade.

Machine learning (ML) implies that some magic software algorithm learns about your network and can then make smarter decisions, but the reality is more complicated. We define what ML is, contrast it to traditional programming, and explore where we are in the ML hype cycle.

David also outlines areas in networking where ML can be applied, and introduces some of the math that underpins the science of this discipline. He also offers some tips to spot weasely marketing around machine learning when applied to networking products.

Links:

Machine Intelligence and Networking – David Meyer presentation (PDF)

Coursera Machine Learning Course – Andrew Ng

Datanauts 059: The Machine Learning Hype Cycle – Packet Pushers

Today’s Datanauts episode is all about data and data models, and why they matter. Deciding how to model your data ahead of time can pay off down the road. It helps ensure that the people who are using the data get what they need from it, and can reduce technical debt.

Our guest is data expert Karen Lopez, senior project manager and architect at InfoAdvisors. She and the Datanauts discuss various definitions of data models, CAP Theorem and the pros and cons of various database types, and database architectures.

She also discusses her role in the NASA Datanauts program, a community of data scientists and advocates who work with NASA’s open data and promote data science education.

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Show Notes

The Big Data Modeling Question…

What Are Conceptual, Logical and Physical Data Models?

7 Databases in 70 Minutes

Big Data, NoSQL & Data Modeling – 10 Tips for Data Modeling Success on Modern Data Projects

InfoAdvisors

Follow Karen Lopez on Twitter

NASA Datanauts

Greg Ferro and Drew Conry-Murray were delegates at Networking Field Day 14 this January in Silicon Valley. On today’s Priority Queue episode, we’re joined by two other delegates, Eyvonne Sharp and Kevin Myers, to talk about the technologies and products that were presented at the three-day event

We also discuss the impact that emerging technologies such as whitebox and automation will have on the enterprise.

Eyvonne is a consulting networking engineer in the healthcare sector. She blogs at ESharp.net. Kevin is a network architect who currently focuses on WISP/wireline service providers and large enterprise data centers. You can read his blog at StubArea51.net.

Four Categories

We shaped our discussion around four technology categories that were represented at the event: SD-WAN, whitebox switching, analytics, and automation/orchestration. Within these categories we examine the business needs driving the technology; talk about use cases and what kinds of organizations might benefit from the technology; and share opinions on the vendors, their products, and their messaging.

SD-WAN

* Riverbed

* Silver Peak

Whitebox

* Barefoot Networks

* Big Switch Networks

Analytics

* Kentik

* Nyansa

Automation/Orchestration

* Anuta Networks

* Juniper Networks

Thanks to the team at Tech Field Day for inviting us to participate! You can watch all the vendor presentations from the event here.

Today on the Priority Queue, 5G, the much lauded successor to the 4G wireless mobile specification. A variety of spectrum is proposed to address many use cases, so 5G isn’t just any one thing. 5G is in testing now and will see production rollouts over the next several years.

Which brings us to our question today. Is 5G going to help with the rural broadband problem? To help us understand the role that 5G will play in rural broadband Internet access is Alex Marcham. Alex is a network engineer, and shares his writing and research on wireless networking at NetworkArchitecture2020.com.

The Packet Pushers and Alex discuss all the technologies that come under the 5G umbrella, licensed and unlicensed spectrum, how radio waves translate into bandwidth, and some of the physical issues (line of sight, obstructions, weather) can affect wireless networking–among other topics.

 

The latest entry in our Design & Build series digs deeper into DMVPN. Today’s focus is on using certificates for endpoint authentication.

Our guest for this conversation is Nick Moody, a network and security engineer with experience in the enterprise, the public and financial sectors, and service providers.

We discuss the use of pre-shared keys to authenticate endpoints, which is one deployment method, and examine the security drawbacks of this option.

We explore the advantages of certificate authentication (security and scalability), address the challenges of working with a public-key infrastructure (PKI), and get into details on certificate management.

Nick Moody blogs at NetAssured.

For more on DMVPN and to find the other podcasts in this series, check out our Design & Build page.

The Infotrek podcast gets into cutovers, and tackles recent news including a police request for recordings from an Amazon Echo, free music vs net neutrality, and false alarm Facebook alerts.

Your hosts discuss:

* What is a cutover?

* When do cutovers typically happen and why do they happen at those times?

* How to prepare for a cutover

* Contact sheet (list of personnel involved and contact info)

* Change plan

* List of all equipment/devices being modified

* Backdoor access information

* Step by step changes followed by verification steps

* Notes about each step and its purpose

* Break up changes into independent phases to avoid complete rollback

* Documentation and diagrams

* Contingency/rollback plans

Your Hosts:

John W Kerns is a network and systems engineer based in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. His background is in two traditionally stovepiped skill sets; systems administration and switching/routing/security. Most of his time is spent as an implementation engineer for a medium sized VAR. You can visit his blog at blog.packetsar.com or follow him on Twitter @PackeTsar.

Derek Pocoroba is a Director of Enterprise Networking in the San Diego area. His background is heavy in enterprise networking and he holds CCIE #18559 Routing & Switching. Derek spends much of his time as a solutions architect, focusing on network architecture and design for his customers. You can visit his blog on PacketPushers and LinkedIN or follow him on Twitter @dpocoroba.

Mike Aossey is a Director of Practice Management in the Orange County, CA area. His background spans across many different technologies in IT, but he focuses mostly on collaboration and programming. Mike spends his time day to day overseeing SMEs and architecting VoIP solutions. You can visit his blog on  www.aossey.net or follow his rants on Twitter at @aossey.

The Packet Pushers Design & Build series continues with DMVPN. DMVPN is a proprietary technology from Cisco for hub-and-spoke connectivity using multipoint VPNs.

Our guest is Eugene Khabarov, a network engineer and CCIE. We talk with Eugene about the basics of DMVPN, including GRE and the Next Hop Resolution Protocol (NHRP), and explore features for dynamic routing and IPSec encryption.

We also drill into deployments and use cases, and examine routing considerations and the pros and cons of using various routing protocols with DMVPN. Eugene also gets into scalability issues, shares experiences (failures and successes) from a real-world project, and discusses alternatives.

Eugene also joined us for our inaugural Design & Build show, episode 234 on network mergers.

Show Links:

suiCCIEde –  Eugene Khabarov’s Blog

BRKSEC-3052 – Advanced DMVPN Designs (2013 London) – Cisco Live

DMVPN Explained – INE

DMVPN Phase 3 – INE

Cisco FlexVPN DMVPN, Part 1 – Overview and Design – Michael Kashin

FlexVPN QoS – Michael Kashin

FlexVPN Configuration – Michael Kashin

Designing A Multi-Region, Multi-Hub Phase 3 DMVPN With BGP – Matt Love

Show 234 – Design & Build #1 – Network Mergers – Packet Pushers

Today on Packet Pushers, a cloud migration you might not have considered before — your PBX.  PBX in the cloud? “Risky,” you think. “Complicated,” you think. “Voice quality,” you think. Those are reasonable thoughts popping into your head.

To help us talk through the risks and rewards of putting your PBX in the cloud is Richard DeFabritus, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sonus Networks, our sponsor for today’s show. In this discussion, we’ll focus on Microsoft’s Office 365 Cloud PBX.

We talk about the reasons companies are moving the PBX to the cloud, including quicker provisioning, lower capital expense, and ease of management. We also address risks such as poor call quality and users’ fear of change.

The discussion also drills into the critical elements of a cloud PBX plan, the pros and cons of hard cutovers vs. gradual migration, and how Session Border Controllers (SBCs) can help.