The Fat Pipe - All Packet Pushers Pods

You’re listening to Briefings in Brief from the Packet Pushers, an audio digest of IT news and information, including vendor briefings, industry research, and commentary.

I’m Drew Conry-Murray, It’s April 30th 2019 and here’s what’s happening.

Earlier this month Versa Networks announced Versa Titan, an SD-WAN and security offering that can be consumed in two ways: as a service from MSPs, VARs, or system integrators; or as a product to be deployed and operated directly by customers.

Whichever approach customers take, Versa’s goal is to make deployment dead simple through pre-configured branch appliances, a cloud-based controller, and a mobile app for activating appliances and monitoring the system.

Versa operates the controller infrastructure, or a head-end in Versa’s parlance, in its own data centers on behalf of providers and do-it-yourself customers. Service providers can brand the customer interface if they so choose.

Cloud Services Gateway

As part of the solution, Versa is announcing the Cloud Services Gateway, a branded appliance for branch and remote offices or retail locations that runs Versa’s SD-WAN and security software, including a next-gen firewall and UTM.

The appliance, which supports PoE, can also provide Wi-Fi for branch locations. The appliance comes pre-configured with dynamic path selection policies already in place, but customers or providers can access a portal to change those policies as they like.

The SD-WAN component provides table-stakes functionality including support for broadband, MPLS, and LTE links; dynamic path selection based on applications and policies; traffic conditioning using techniques such as forward error correction and packet replication; and analytics.

Aiming To Stand Out

In case you hadn’t noticed, the SD-WAN market is now more crowded than a Florida beach during spring break, so SD-WAN vendors are putting significant effort into differentiating themselves.

By emphasizing ease of use and fast deployment, Versa aims to lure MSPs looking for quick wins, as well as customers who have connectivity needs but may not have a large IT staff to manage a stand-alone SD-WAN deployment.

On the security front, Versa isn’t the only vendor that touts integrated security functions. Cato Networks, for example, offers native security features such as a next-gen firewall as well as a private network backbone. Open Systems, which recently sponsored a Packet Pushers Heavy Networking episode, also offers a service-based SD-WAN solution with security baked in.

Meanwhile, Foritnet, which makes appliances, is essentially putting SD-WAN features into its firewall and UTM boxes. Other SD-WAN vendors will happily regale you with tales of partnerships, integrations, and home-grown security capabilities.

With all that said, if Versa Networks sounds like it’s worth further investigation or might earn a spot on your shortlist, you can go to versa-networks.com to get more details.

That was Briefings in Brief from the Packet Pushers. For more IT podcasts, blogs and news created for engineers, visit packetpushers.net where you can subscribe for free. And for even more great information, become a member at ignition.packetpushers.net.

Perhaps you want to run your Dev and QA in the cloud, where you can burst for capacity as needed and shrink when you don’t. Meanwhile, Staging and Production are living the on-prem life in their climate controlled cabana.

How do you keep this hybrid environment consistent across clouds? Is this even a good idea? What could possibly go wrong?

Joining me today to share his experience building a hybrid environment is Mike Nelson, a Solutions Architect for Rubrik, a Microsoft MVP, and a VMware vExpert.

We discuss:

* Hybrid design planning

* Implementation

* Evolving the solution to include more teams and scenarios

* Impediments to a successful design

* Troubles with implementation and sticker shock

* Realizing that not one size fits many

Show Links:

Mike Nelson on Twitter

Your Host

Ned Bellavance

Today's Day Two Cloud tackles the challenges of building a hybrid dev and test environment with guest Mike Nelson. We discuss planning and implementation, impediments to a successful design, dealing with sticker shock, and other issues.

Open Systems integrates security and SD-WAN as a service, including next-gen firewalls and Web gateways. They're the sponsor for today's Heavy Networking podcast. We discuss Open Systems' architecture, how it applies SD-WAN and security policies to traffic, and how Open Systems differentiates itself in this crowded market.

Today on Heavy Networking, we welcome Open Systems, a new SD-WAN sponsor to the show.

Open Systems is among the new breed of SD-WAN solutions emphasizing integrated security and SD-WAN as a service.

We’re going to talk about what the Open Systems solution is all about, so that you walk away knowing why they should be part of your upcoming SD-WAN proof of concept.

Our guest is Moritz Mann, Head of Product Management at Open Systems.

We discuss:

* Open Systems’ origins as an MSP and security provider

* Its SD-WAN-as-a-service approach

* The company’s architecture, including a controller, intelligent edge devices, and the overlay

* Security capabilities, including a next-gen firewall, a Web gateway, and monitoring

* The service’s threat-hunting capabilities

* How Open Systems differentiates itself through customer service and security

* Its support for routing protocols

To see Open Systems for yourself, request a free assessment at https://www.open-systems.com/packetpushers. You can also get an Open Systems beanie and download a Gartner report on the economics of SD-WAN.

Show Links:

Open Systems

Open Systems on Twitter

Open Systems on LinkedIn

Moritz Mann on LinkedIn

NetQ Platform

* NetQ platform is the central platform that receives real-time telemetry data, providing visibility, network validation and trouble-shooting. The platform can run in a Virtual Machine or on the Cumulus NetQ hardware appliance.

* Intended for the data centre. Not an end to end automation solution (although possibly that is under development)

* NetQ 1 focussed on configuration and validation for such activities as BGP and EVPN configuration. And tracking IP addresses, VLANs and server status etc other general operational tasks.

* Cumulus claims that NetQ performs 3 primary functions:

* DATA COLLECTION – Real-time and historical telemetry and network state information

* DATA ANALYTICS – Deep processing of the data

* DATA VISUALIZATION – Rich Graphical User Interface (GUI) for actionable insight

* Agent driven – install agent onto Linux hosts including your Cumulus Linux devices.

* Integration with some third parties – Slack, syslog-ng, pagerduty. More to come I suspect

Larger Issues ?

* It’s pretty. Seriously, its visually nice.

* SDN is much more than deployment and configuration of network devices.

* In many ways, its more important to have analytics and monitoring tools to improve your knowledge about what is actually happening on the network and improving the mean time to innocence aka its not the network.

* Smaller companies can easily compete with bigger companies when making software. Mid-sized enterprises with modest networking requirements in the data centre, do not need the more complex products from Cisco which would require Cisco ACI with NAE, or Tetration to have an equivalent solution.

NetQ Platform

* NetQ platform is the central platform that receives real-time telemetry data, providing visibility, network validation and trouble-shooting. The platform can run in a Virtual Machine or on the Cumulus NetQ hardware appliance.

* Intended for the data centre. Not an end to end automation solution (although possibly that is under development)

* NetQ 1 focussed on configuration and validation for such activities as BGP and EVPN configuration. And tracking IP addresses, VLANs and server status etc other general operational tasks.

* Cumulus claims that NetQ performs 3 primary functions:

* DATA COLLECTION – Real-time and historical telemetry and network state information

* DATA ANALYTICS – Deep processing of the data

* DATA VISUALIZATION – Rich Graphical User Interface (GUI) for actionable insight

* Agent driven – install agent onto Linux hosts including your Cumulus Linux devices.

* Integration with some third parties – Slack, syslog-ng, pagerduty. More to come I suspect

Larger Issues ?

* It’s pretty. Seriously, its visually nice.

* SDN is much more than deployment and configuration of network devices.

* In many ways, its more important to have analytics and monitoring tools to improve your knowledge about what is actually happening on the network and improving the mean time to innocence aka its not the network.

* Smaller companies can easily compete with bigger companies when making software. Mid-sized enterprises with modest networking requirements in the data centre, do not need the more complex products from Cisco which would require Cisco ACI with NAE, or Tetration to have an equivalent solution.

Today's Network Break examines Apple's AWS spending; discusses a G7 pronouncement that wants Internet companies to provide access to encrypted data; reviews quarterly financials from Juniper, Amazon, and Microsoft; and more IT news.

Take a Network Break!

On today’s show we parse Apple’s spending on AWS and why it may be worth it, read between the lines of a G7 communication that wants Internet companies to provide access to encrypted data, and track whether core Internet routers have hit 786,000 IPv4 routes in their tables.

Pica8 releases new switch management software, Russia looks to homegrown technology for its 5G deployment, and Britian’s National Security Council gives Huawei a green light to sell to UK operators–just not in the network core.

Hertz sues Accenture for a botched site rollout, and Juniper, Amazon, and Microsoft release quarterly earnings.

Sponsor: ExtraHop

ExtraHop is the enterprise cyber analytics company delivering performance and security from the inside out. ExtraHop offers complete visibility with machine learning to help you make quick, confident decisions about your IT environment. Explore the ExtraHop Performance Platform at extrahop.com/packetpushers.

Sponsor: TeleGeography

We’re also sponsored by TeleGeography,  a telecommunications market research firm. TeleGeography wants you to know about its  WAN Cost Benchmark. This is a tool that lets you model your hybrid WAN expansion plans and compare costs based on over 2 million data points. Head to benchmark.telegeography.com to learn more.

Gluware Intent

Join the Packet Pushers  in New York City on Tuesday, May 14th for a live event with Gluware. This half-day event will feature technical talks on data center automation,  you’ll hear from Gluware customer Merck, and more. After the event you can mingle with your IT peers, Gluware hosts, and the Packet Pushers. Tickets are free but the spaces are limited. Get details and sign up at packetpushers.net/gluware.

Show Links:

Apple spends more than $30 million on Amazon’s cloud every month, making it one of the biggest AWS customers – CNBC

Corey Quinn Twitter Thread

Combating the Use of the Internet for Terroist and Violent Extremist Purposes – G7 (PDF)

Leaders of the G7: A Safer World Means Strong, Secure Communication – Internet Society

G7 Comes Out in Favor of Encryption Backdoors – Schneier on Security

Canada says Facebook broke privacy laws and ‘refused to act responsibly’ – The Guardian

News release: Facebook refuses to address serious privacy deficiencies despite public apologies for “breach of trust” – Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Nornir is a Python-based framework that automates fussy, backend details to let you focus on business logic. On today's Heavy Networking, we explore this project, how it works, and what it can do in your network, with three of Nornir's contributors.