The Fat Pipe - All Packet Pushers Pods

The following is a transcript of the audio you can listen to in the player above.

Welcome to Briefings In Brief, an audio digest of IT news and information from the Packet Pushers, including vendor briefings, industry research, and commentary.

I’m Ethan Banks, it’s March 8, 2019, and here’s what’s happening. I had a briefing with Instana a few weeks ago.

Old School APM

The Instana folks reached out to me, because as a guest on the CloudCast earlier this year, I lamented that there are no application performance monitoring tools that correlate infrastructure with app performance in the cloud native era. Instana thought that wasn’t quite fair, and wanted to walk me through what they could do.

What is Instana, then? Maybe it’s key to look at what Instana is not. Instana is not old-school application performance management or APM. Many of the Instana folks came from that world, but traditional APM tools function most effectively with infrastructure that’s static. That is, you build out a network and servers and storage, and it’s likely to sit there for years. Applications aren’t likely to change much, either, with only occasional releases.

In that sort of environment, you can set up monitoring, and it works fine for a long time. You can build dependency trees, knowing they aren’t going to change much. And, you can keep up with the tweaks needed to the monitoring as infrastructure slowly evolves or new apps are rolled out.

Cloud Native Monitoring Challenges

Cloud native applications are not like this. Instead of a few large apps, you have many small apps (microservices) talking to each other to deliver a larger app to the business. These microservices are built programmatically, probably spun up by an orchestrator, and there’s a decent chance that orchestrator is Kubernetes.

And why is all of this happening? Because instead of quarterly or even annual software releases, application updates are being released all the time. Small changes are deployed to minimize risk, and done in a way that can be rolled back if there are problems. Therefore, new app instances are being spun up constantly. That means there’s new infrastructure to be monitored…constantly. No human can keep up with this infrastructure consumption model.

This is why old-school APM products don’t work effectively in a cloud-native environment.

Meet Instana

Enter Instana. Instana is modern, automated application performance management. How do they do this? An agent sits on a host or in a container, and performs continuous real-time discovery and monitoring of all components. “But wait,” you say. “I have to install an agent? That doesn’t sound very automatic.” Right. Agent installation can be automated, too–when Kubernetes spins up a new instance, the Instana agent installs along with it.

What does this agent do? It monitors over 100 different technologies such as Docker, Java, Tomcat, Kafka, Cassandra, MongoDB, nodeJS, RabbitMQ, Lambda functions, and much more. The focus is on modern application stacks, and there’s a support matrix on Instana’s website.

One the agent is running, it starts discovery and data collection automatically. In the briefing, Instana showed me an agent installation. The agent then discovered Kubernetes and started monitoring a pod. That led to the discovery of Docker containers. Container monitoring led to discovery of processes. Monitoring processes led to discovery of JVM. That led to monitoring of Spring Boot App. And no human had to do anything to make all of that happen.

The data that is gathered by the agent is sent to a centralized spot for analysis, which is where the Instana magic happens. You get…

* Automatic distributed tracing. A user makes a request to an app,

The following is a transcript of the audio you can listen to in the player above.

Welcome to Briefings In Brief, an audio digest of IT news and information from the Packet Pushers, including vendor briefings, industry research, and commentary.

I’m Ethan Banks, it’s March 8, 2019, and here’s what’s happening. I had a briefing with Instana a few weeks ago.

Old School APM

The Instana folks reached out to me, because as a guest on the CloudCast earlier this year, I lamented that there are no application performance monitoring tools that correlate infrastructure with app performance in the cloud native era. Instana thought that wasn’t quite fair, and wanted to walk me through what they could do.

What is Instana, then? Maybe it’s key to look at what Instana is not. Instana is not old-school application performance management or APM. Many of the Instana folks came from that world, but traditional APM tools function most effectively with infrastructure that’s static. That is, you build out a network and servers and storage, and it’s likely to sit there for years. Applications aren’t likely to change much, either, with only occasional releases.

In that sort of environment, you can set up monitoring, and it works fine for a long time. You can build dependency trees, knowing they aren’t going to change much. And, you can keep up with the tweaks needed to the monitoring as infrastructure slowly evolves or new apps are rolled out.

Cloud Native Monitoring Challenges

Cloud native applications are not like this. Instead of a few large apps, you have many small apps (microservices) talking to each other to deliver a larger app to the business. These microservices are built programmatically, probably spun up by an orchestrator, and there’s a decent chance that orchestrator is Kubernetes.

And why is all of this happening? Because instead of quarterly or even annual software releases, application updates are being released all the time. Small changes are deployed to minimize risk, and done in a way that can be rolled back if there are problems. Therefore, new app instances are being spun up constantly. That means there’s new infrastructure to be monitored…constantly. No human can keep up with this infrastructure consumption model.

This is why old-school APM products don’t work effectively in a cloud-native environment.

Meet Instana

Enter Instana. Instana is modern, automated application performance management. How do they do this? An agent sits on a host or in a container, and performs continuous real-time discovery and monitoring of all components. “But wait,” you say. “I have to install an agent? That doesn’t sound very automatic.” Right. Agent installation can be automated, too–when Kubernetes spins up a new instance, the Instana agent installs along with it.

What does this agent do? It monitors over 100 different technologies such as Docker, Java, Tomcat, Kafka, Cassandra, MongoDB, nodeJS, RabbitMQ, Lambda functions, and much more. The focus is on modern application stacks, and there’s a support matrix on Instana’s website.

One the agent is running, it starts discovery and data collection automatically. In the briefing, Instana showed me an agent installation. The agent then discovered Kubernetes and started monitoring a pod. That led to the discovery of Docker containers. Container monitoring led to discovery of processes. Monitoring processes led to discovery of JVM. That led to monitoring of Spring Boot App. And no human had to do anything to make all of that happen.

The data that is gathered by the agent is sent to a centralized spot for analysis, which is where the Instana magic happens. You get…

* Automatic distributed tracing. A user makes a request to an app,

It’s the end of the month. Your new shiny application has been running the cloud. Customers are happy, the performance seems great. What could possibly go wrong?

Did I mention it’s the end of the month? You know what comes at the end of the month? Your bill. And just like sticking a fork in an outlet, the results can be shocking.

When building an app in the cloud, cost might not be the first thing you consider, but it cannot be the last. So let’s talk about optimizing cloud for performance and cost, a.k.a how I learned to keep customers and finance happy without going insane.

My guest is Iris Classon, a developer and Microsoft MVP at Konstrukt.

We talk about building an app in Azure, learning some costly lessons about pay-as-you-go, and when to move an application to another platform.

Cost Management Tips:

* Monitor your costs with subscriptions and tagging

* Use the right service based on your requirements

* If you don’t use it, delete it!

Show Links:

Iris Classon on Twitter

Iris Classon’s blog

Your monthly cloud bill can be shocking. On today's Day Two Cloud we talk with Iris Classon about how to optimize your cloud deployment for cost without killing performance--i.e., how to keep customers and finance happy without going insane.

On today's sponsored Heavy Networking, VIAVI Solutions joins the Packet Pushers to discuss the intersection of network performance management (NPM) and security. We discuss how network and security teams can leverage VIAVI's packet capture capabilities, how it enriches flow records with additional data to provide valuable context, and how the concept of end user experience informs VIAVI's approach to NPM.

Welcome to Packet Pushers Heavy Networking. In this sponsored show with VIAVI Solutions we dive into the intersection of Network Performance Management (NPM) and security.

VIAVI has a substantial portfolio of products, but today’s episode focuses on the Observer family–including Apex, GigaStor, and GigaFlow–for NPM and security use cases.

We discuss how VIAVI performs full packet capture for detailed analysis of performance and security events, how VIAVI enriches flow records with additional data to provide valuable context, and how the concept of end user experience informs its approach to NPM.

We also examine the critical role Observer can play in security operations, including the forensic value of high-fidelity packet capture, and why it’s essential for network and security teams to to work from the same data sources.

Our guests from VIAVI are Charles Thompson, Sr. Director, Product Management; and Mike McGrath, Partner Director.

Show Links:

VIAVI Solutions

VIAVI on Twitter

VIAVI on LinkedIn

Today's episode of IPv6 Buzz answers listener questions including why NAT isn't necessary for security, and the feasibility of scanning a v6 network to discover devices. Thanks for the questions and keep them coming!

AWS Transit Gateways, an evolution of Transit VPCs, centralize VPN connectivity to multiple VPCs, allowing for greater scale and simpler connectivity and management. Today's Heavy Networking drills into this topic with guest Nick Matthews, an AWS solutions architect. We also examine Global Accelerator and TLS termination on Network Load Balancer.

Today on Heavy Networking, we return to the subject of networking in AWS, with a focus on AWS Transit Gateways.

The Transit Gateway is an evolution of Amazon’s transit VPC. It centralizes VPN connectivity to multiple VPCs, allowing for greater scale as well as simplified connectivity and management of the VPNs that connect VPCs.

Nick Matthews is our inside guide to this service. He’s a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS.

Nick will also peel back the onion on other networking features including Global Accelerator, TLS termination on Network Load Balancer, and odds and ends such as Client VPN.

In addition, Nick shares details about the technology and architecture that underpins Amazon’s networking services.

This is not a sponsored show. More and more listeners are involved with cloud networking, so this episode aims to help you understand what you’re getting into.

We first heard from Nick back in show 387. If you’d like some insight into what’s really happening under the hood of AWS networking, that’s a good place to start.

Sponsor: ITProTV

Get dozens of hours of free technical training from ITProTV. ITProTV offers online instruction in CompTIA, Cisco, VMWare, Microsoft and more. You can stream courses live and on demand on your favorite device. Sign up for a free membership at itpro.tv/packet-pushers and try it with no obligation.

Show Links:

Weekly 387: AWS Networking – A View From The Inside – Packet Pushers

Nick Matthews on Twitter

AWS Transit Gateway – AWS Blog

AWS re:Invent Session NET402: AWS Transit Gateway & Transit VPCs, Ref Arch for Many VPCs – Nick Matthews at AWS re:Invent via YouTube

Shuffle Sharding: Massive and Magical Fault Isolation – AWS Blog

AWS Global Accelerator – AWS Blog

AWS VPC Sharing – AWS Docs

AWS Client VPN – YouTube

AWS C5n – 100g instances – AWS

Network Load Balancer Now Supports TLS Termination – AWS

New – TLS Termination for Network Load Balancers – AWS News Blog

A collection of AWS re:Invent videos and p...

Welcome to Tech Bytes, a short, sharp sponsored conversation about new products, emerging technologies, and all things IT.

Today we talk about the intersection of NetOps and SecOps and how network teams can help respond to security incidents and assist the security team.

VIAVI Solutions is our sponsor. Charles Thompson, Sr. Director, Product Management at VIAVI joins us for the conversation.

We discuss how network teams are now expected to assist in security investigations and forensics. Packet capture and analysis tools are essential as a source of truth to understand the scope of an incident, what happened, and what users, devices, or systems were impacted.

We also look at the notion of enriched flow records, which VIAVI can provide with its GigaFlow product, and how end user experience scoring can help remediate network performance and security problems.

Show Links:

VIAVI Solutions

Observer GigaFlow – VIAVI Solutions

Tech Bytes: How VIAVI Measures End User Experience To Improve Performance Management (Sponsored) – Packet Pushers

Leading Validation Authority puts Observer GigaStor to the Test in Latest Report – VIAVI Solutions

State Of The Network 2017 Infographic – VIAVI Solutions (PDF)