The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

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The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods episodes

April 04, 2016 Network Break 81: Arista’s Universal Spine, Huawei’s Big Profits
Take a Network Break and sample our delicious assortment of tech news, including a new product from Arista, financial results from Huawei, & stories on Dell, HPE, Plumgrid, Intel & more.
The post Network Break 81: Arista’s Universal Spine, Huawei’s Big Profits appeared first on Packet Pushers.
42 min
March 29, 2016 The Next Level: Agile Networking Part 1
Agile is a set of principles for software development. If you’ve ever worked with developers or DevOps professionals you’ve probably encountered Agile terminology.
While Agile emerged in the software discipline, its values and goals can be generally applied in other contexts. This episode explores how to use Agile concepts for IT infrastructure projects and to foster better collaboration.
Today’s guest is James Rhodes III, a delivery lead who has been in the IT industry since the late ’80s. He has experience in software, networking, and project management. He’s currently managing a team of infrastructure engineers.
Show Notes:
Agile Principles

* Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
* Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
* Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
* Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
* Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
* The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
* Working software is the primary measure of progress.
* Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
* Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
* Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
* The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
* At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Agile Terms

* Burndown Chart
* Retrospective
* Task Box
* User Stories

0 min
March 29, 2016 PQ Show 75: Talking Network Analytics And Telemetry
Network monitoring has been in the doldrums for decades. The best protocols for network visibility that our industry has produced are SNMP, ping, and syslog. We use SNMP for metrics and ping to test availability, and syslog is an entire data source for device information. All of these have limitations.
However, over the last few years, software defined networking has seen new ways of getting information from our devices, and new tools and techniques are emerging to help network operators get better data and make more sense out of it.
Today we have a couple of folks to talk about the state of network monitoring and analytics. We’ll discuss why things like SNMP aren’t enough, how analytics and telemetry differ from traditional monitoring, what data sources are available, and how we can put that data to good use.
Our guests are Avi Freedman, Founder and CEO at Kentik, and Bill Beckett, Founder and CSO at Saisei.
Show Notes:
A. Define Analytics & Telemetry Compared To Network Monitoring

* I’ve got SNMP, why isn’t that enough?
* Flexible data sources
* What kind of data? Routing? Counters? Control-plane ‘deep’ counters like Q depth? Detailed config data (like LACP hash params+functions)?
* How often? Streaming or pull? What about streaming?
* Self-defined data formats
* Network-centric or application-centric instead of device-centric or “hop by hop” performance

B. Implementation Factors

* OpenConfig/NetCONF/YANG
* sFlow/NetFlow/IPFIX
* DPI
* Other data sources?
* Streaming bus?
* REST APIs

C. Data Wrangling

* Data platforms – one or many?
* Streaming data buses to feed multiple tools?
* How to interoperate?
* How to use for multiple purposes (BI, ops, security, performance)?

D. Use Cases

* Debugging/root cause? How to use the data for that?
* Alerting and prediction over the data?
* Security?
* Performance?
* Other?

E. Visualization & Presentation

* Viable UI design
* UX flow and presentation
* Onboarding
* Business – linking performance to dollars, reducing asset values

Links:
PQ Show 46 – Saisei & Network Performance Enforcement – Packet Pushers
PQ Show 71: Kentik & Real-Time Network Visibility (Sponsored) – Packet Pushers
What is Juniper-Grafana? – GitHub
0 min
March 23, 2016 Infotrek Episode 2: Getting Started In Programming
Programming is a hot topic in the networking and infrastructure engineering world today, but why? Are engineers going to be required to learn how to write software? How does the industry expect to benefit from engineers having programming skills?
In this Infotrek episode, after covering the weekly news items, we talk about the future of engineer skill sets and who may or may not benefit from learning how to write code.

Your Hosts:
John W Kerns is a Hybrid Engineer focused on network and data center (systems, virtualization, etc.) technologies.
Derek Pocoroba, CCIE 18559, is the Director of Enterprise Networking and focuses on network architecture and design for customers.
Mike Aossey is the Director of Practice Management and works day to day overseeing SMEs and architecting VoIP solutions.
John, Derek, and Mike are all colleagues at a VAR based in Southern California.
Newsy News
HP announces new hyperconverged system – The Register

Apple is getting out of the public cloud and building its own infrastructure – Venture Beat
EMC wins suit against Pure over dedupe patent – EWeek
Google talks about its home grown load balancers – EWeek
Google shares software network load balancer design – Google Cloud Platform Blog
Topic: Getting Started in Programming

* Everybody is talking about it. What is the big deal?
* Why would an infrastructure engineer be interested in programming?
* What types of engineers would benefit the most from learning it? Who would benefit least?
* What languages are best for different types of engineers? Any languages that have little value?
* What will the next generation of infrastructure engineer skill sets look like?
* Where are some good places to start learning?

0 min
March 22, 2016 The Next Level: Mindfulness And IT
Depending on who you talk to, mindfulness can mean a lot of things, ranging from a rigorous form of Buddhist meditation and spiritual practice to the latest self-help buzzword.
Evidence shows that mindfulness practice can be a useful way to help reduce stress and improve attention and focus. That sounds pretty useful in a high-stress and high-stakes career like IT.
During this episode we interview Buddhist practitioner and security architect Michele Chubirka (@MrsYisWhy) of the Postmodern Security blog to identify the origins of mindfulness and determine whether the utilitarian benefits can, or should, be separated from the spiritual context.
This episode also aims to dispel common misconceptions about mindfulness with examples from Bhante Henepola Gunaratana’s highly reviewed book, “Mindfulness in Plain English.”
Tune in for sanity checks from listeners like you as we discuss case studies and talk about how mindfulness relates to optimizing your performance in work and life.
Sanity Check:
If you find yourself frustrated or scratching your head about something IT management is doing and want to ask about it, send us an email at [email protected]. All sources will be kept confidential and real names will never be used on the air.
0 min
March 15, 2016 The Next Level: Employee, Freelancer, Entrepreneur
Welcome to The Next Level! It’s common for IT pros to ponder alternatives to traditional employment, whether by being a freelancer or starting a business.
On paper it sounds great: Set your own hours, be your own boss, and live by your wits and guile instead of running on the same old corporate treadmill.
But there are also downsides and risks, including irregular income; new responsibilities to grow your business; and a lot more paperwork for billing, taxes, and administration.
On today’s episode we discuss the pleasures and perils of life as an employee, freelancer, and entrepreneur.
Joining us to share their experiences in these roles are Ben Whaley, founder of the consultancy WhaleTech and co-author of the UNIX & Linux System Administration Handbook; and Keith Townsend, Principal of The CTO Advisor and host of The CTO Advisor podcast.
Links:
For more on Ben Whaley, check out:
WhaleTech.co
Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook (Book)

Linux System Administration LiveLessons (Video Training)
Linux Web Operations LiveLessons (Video Training)
For more from Keith Townsend, check out:

The CTO Advisor (Blog)

The CTO Advisor Podcast
0 min
March 09, 2016 Infotrek Podcast Episode 1: Redundancy
Welcome to Infotrek, the newest podcast in the Packet Pushers Community Channel!
Infrastructure engineers think about and deal with redundancy every day. We implement it on everything we touch without considering its inefficiencies, complexity, and whether we should even be using it in a particular situation.
In this episode, after talking over some news items, John, Derek, and Mike dive into what redundancy really is, why we use it, when to not use it, and implementation challenges.
Your Hosts:
John W Kerns is a Hybrid Engineer focused on network and data center (systems, virtualization, etc.) technologies.
Derek Pocoroba, CCIE 18559, is the Director of Enterprise Networking and focuses on network architecture and design for customers.
Mike Aossey is the Director of Practice Management and works day to day overseeing SMEs and architecting VoIP solutions.
John, Derek, and Mike are all colleagues at a VAR based in Southern California.

Newsy News:
Oracle buys Ravello – Fortune
Cisco flexes its HyperFlex hyperconverged muscles – The Register
AT&T will start selling you cable TV over the Internet – CNN
The Future Of Wi-Fi Is 10,000 Times More Energy Efficient – Wired
Show Topic: Redundancy
-What is infrastructure redundancy and why is it important?
-When is redundancy necessary?
-When is it appropriate to not use it?
-How is it usually implemented?
-What are typical implementation challenges?

* N+1 is very inefficient when N=1 (you can only use 50% capacity)
* As N becomes larger, a N+1 redundancy model becomes more efficient

-Is nested redundancy necessary?

* For example, dual supervisors in a pair of chassis in VSS
* Dual power supplies in a failover device pair

-How can redundancy be tested after it is implemented?

* What are typical problems found during testing?

0 min
March 09, 2016 Datanauts 026: Achieving VMware’s Highest Certification – The VCDX
On today's Datanauts episode we talk about the VCDX, the highest certification available from VMware. Chris Wahl, who has two, shares his experiences on preparation and taking the exam.
The post Datanauts 026: Achieving VMware’s Highest Certification – The VCDX appeared first on Packet Pushers.
0 min
March 08, 2016 The Next Level: Challenges Aligning IT And The Business
To maximize the value that IT adds to our organizations, it’s critical for us to be cognizant of business requirements and to focus our technology capabilities on meeting them.
It can be hard to keep this top of mind when racing against the clock to fix a network outage or meet a big project deadline.
So right now, while you are listening to The Next Level, we’re going to hone in on the business end of IT and get strategies for how technology can be better put to business use.
Today we are joined by Denise Donohue and Russ White, the authors of The Art of Network Architecture: Business-Driven Design. This well-reviewed book provides unique insights into modern network design models that put the business needs at the center of a network architecture.
Denise Donohue is a Business Architect at NetCraftsmen, Cisco Press author, and CCIE. Follow Denise on Twitter and check out her posts at NetCrafstmen. Russ White is a Network Architect, author, CCIE, CCDE, and CCAR. You can follow Russ on Twitter or check out his blog ntwrk.guru.
Show Notes:
-Breaking down silos

* Learning to ask questions
* Engineers need to broaden our knowledge

-Focus on the problem

* What are you trying to solve?
* Don’t just fight the last war – create new ways to fight
* Plan to move out of your comfort zone. This applies to the whole business, not just specific engineers. This is a culture issue that takes time

-Think seriously about when the technology pushes your business architecture
-Evaluate technologies not just based on what’s new, but also where you want to concentrate your internal efforts. Is this the right time to take the time and energy change your processes?

* Be nimble as a business – as technology changes, you’re going to have to change the way your business does business
* Take control of the flow of technology in your network (build your own/minimize feature set so that can use any vendor)
* Outsource IT – move everything to the cloud. Still takes network to get there, but is much simpler than building a data center, and buffers you from technology changes in the data center

-Remember that you are an IT company no matter what your business does.
0 min
February 26, 2016 Show 277: Riverbed’s Role In Wireshark, Security & More (Sponsored)Drew Conry-Murray
On today's podcast we learn about Riverbed's open source efforts, including its corporate sponsorship of packet analyzer Wireshark, its open APIs that automate performance analysis processes enabled by Wireshark and other solutions, and how security teams can use Wireshark.
The post Show 277: Riverbed’s Role In Wireshark, Security & More (Sponsored)Drew Conry-Murray appeared first on Packet Pushers.
43 min

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