The Fat Pipe - All Packet Pushers Pods

Today on the Datanauts we’re talking about in-memory databases. The idea is that you can load up a host with lots of RAM, cram your database in there, and get more transactions due to the lower latency.

But if the system is distributed, you’ve strewn database parts across multiple hosts, so you lose some of that CPU-to-RAM latency advantage. Or do you?

It’s an interesting design problem with some complex constraints, and it’s the focus of today’s podcast. Our guests are Swapnil Bawaskar, principal engineer at Pivotal; and Jim Bedenbaugh, Advisory Data Engineer at Pivotal.

Swapnil, Jim, and the Datanauts define in-memory databases, describe how they differ from traditional databases, and talk about use cases. They drill into the system architecture for in-memory DBs, including hosts, distributed systems, and failure scenarios. They also discuss practical issues including general operations, metrics, and backup and restoration.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

Today’s Priority Queue continues our discussions about network modeling and programmability. Our guest Michael Kashin has been working with YANG models, python, and a variety of supporting tools to programmatically install network device configurations, spending time with both Junos and IOS XE.

In his detailed series of posts on networkop.co.uk, Michael has painstakingly explored and explained how to work with network models, showing how they tie to the future of network configuration. In this episode, we discuss many of Michael’s discoveries.

If you skipped it, you might want to listen to Priority Queue episode 111 first, where I discuss YANG, NETCONF, and network model standardization efforts in the IETF with Benoit Claise. That would be a good foundation for today’s episode.

Show Links:

Getting Started With NETCONF and YANG on Cisco IOS XE – NetworkOp

Introduction to YANG Programming and RESTCONF on Cisco IOS XE – NetworkOp

Configuring Cisco IOS XE With YDK and OpenDaylight – NetworkOP

Configuring Cisco IOS XE With YANG-based YAML Files – NetworkOp

Using YANG Models in Ansible to Configure and Verify State of IOS-XE and JUNOS Devices – NetworkOP

PQ Show 111: YANG Models & Telemetry At IETF 98 – Packet Pushers

If you’ve listened to the Datanauts or read Chris Wahl’s blog, you know that he’s a big fan of PowerShell. On today’s episode, Chris shares his adventures at the recent PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit.

Chris and Ethan talk about just what PowerShell is, why the language is becoming so popular, its relationship to Ops (and a little Dev), and how folks can get started exploring all the glory that is PowerShell.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

Show Links:

PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2017

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches – Donald Jones and Jeffrey Hicks

Jeffrey Snover AMA at PS/DevOps Summit 2017 – Brian Bunke Blog

CommunityLightningDemos2017 – Rambling Cookie Monster via GitHub

 

Vester – Wahl Network via GitHub

Today’s Priority Queue dives into three IETF draft projects around routing:

* BIER (Bit Index Explicit Replication), which describes a new mechanism for multicast forwarding

* RIFT (Routing In Fat Trees), a dynamic routing protocol for Clos and Fat Tree topologies

* BGP+SFC (BGP + Service Function Chaining), which describes the use of BGP as a control plane for service function chaining using a new address family

Ethan Banks is joined by Alia Atlas, a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper and a Routing Area Director at the IETF; and Antoni (Tony) Przygienda, a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper and chair of the IETF’s BIER project.

Alia and Tony will provide overviews of each project, discuss the problems they’re designed to solve and how they work, and update us on the status of each effort.

Strap in, because it’s going to get nerdy!

This podcast was recorded on site at the IETF 98 conference in March 2017 in Chicago. Thanks to Huawei, which covered travel and accommodations to enable the Packet Pushers to attend and record some shows and spread the news about what the IETF is up to.

Today on the Datanauts we explore the depths of vSphere 6.5 host resources to help you maximum performance of your virtual infrastructure and provide a deeper understanding of essentials such as CPU, memory, storage, and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA).

Our guests are Frank Denneman and Niels Hagoort, authors of the forthcoming book “vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive.”

You can follow the progress of the book and get updates and announcements via Twitter and Facebook. And for more nerdy goodness, check out Frank Denneman’s blog (including his NUMA deep dive series) and Niels’s blog Cloudfix.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

Today’s Priority Queue delves into the topic of hackathons at the IETF. Hackathons may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a body whose objective is to document specifications and standards, but hackathons play a role in the development of some standards.

Our guest is Charles Eckel, who works for Cisco’s DevNet team and chairs the IETF’s hackathon program. We talk about why the IETF engages in hackathons and what the organization means by ‘rough consensus, running code.’

Charles also discusses how the rise of open source enables groups like the IETF to not just produce documents, but also functioning code that implements a standard. By developing code, the IETF generates feedback that can be fed back into a draft, and can produce reference implementations to share with a broader audience. This can help drive standards adoption in the tech community.

This podcast was recorded on site at the IETF 98 conference in Chicago. Thanks to Huawei, which covered travel and accommodations to enable the Packet Pushers to attend and record some shows and spread the news about what the IETF is up to.

The Datanauts rocket returns to the automation solar system for another detailed survey of the whys and hows of automation and coding in operations.

Our intrepid host for this voyage is Lauren Malhoit, a technologist, Cisco employee, and co-host of Cisco’s Techwise TV. She also blogs at AdaptingIT.

We talk with Lauren about APIs, scripting and coding (particularly in Python), and the debate about whether network engineers and other non-developer IT pros need to learn to program. Lauren also offers tools and tips for folks who want to get started with automation and programming.

Sponsor: Liquid Technology

Liquid Technology purchases decommissioned IT hardware, provides secure on and off-site data destruction, as well as fully compliant and green e-waste recycling solutions for your organization. Visit liquidtechnology.net/podcast today for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card.

Sponsor: Illumio

Illumio’s breakthrough adaptive segmentation technology stops lateral threats inside of any data center or cloud. Illumio works seamlessly between any data center and the public cloud and keeps policies in place as applications move between environments and locations, or auto-scale up/down. Check out their website for details at illumio.com/datanauts.

Show Links:

Lauren’s Pluralsight courses:

* Cisco ACI Programmability

* Using Cisco ACI with VMware vSphere Integration

* Fundamentals of Using Cisco ACI

Cisco Open Source Projects for the Data Center – GitHub

Programming and Automating Cisco Networks – Ryan Tisher and Jason Gooley (Amazon)

Cisco DevNet

This week’s Priority Queue was recorded on site at IETF 98 in Chicago. The topic is DNS.

You may think that DNS is “done” but it’s a fundamental mechanism that keeps the Internet running, and there’s lots to talk about regarding scale, security, privacy, and DDoS protection. We’ll also get into mechanisms for DNS authentication and operational issues.

Our guest is Tim Wicinski, co-chair of the IETF’s DNS Operations and DNS Privacy working groups. Join us for a free-flowing conversation about various issues in the world of DNS.

This podcast was recorded on site at the IETF 98 conference in Chicago. Thanks to Huawei, which covered travel and accomodations to enable the Packet Pushers to attend and record some shows and spread the news about what the IETF is up to.

Today on the Datanauts it’s email security. Lots of organizations have outsourced their email to the cloud, and for good reasons: Web access is ubiquitous, email infrastructure can be a pain to manage and secure, and email can take up lots of storage.

But there are also good reasons for keeping email in-house, including privacy and retention requirements, specific security needs, and the ability to maintain control over your infrastructure destiny.

On today’s episode we’ll discuss how to build a robust and secure in-house email infrastructure, talk about the importance of IPv4 and IPv6 support, explore technologies and protocols to validate email servers and thwart spammers, and explain the role of DNS in supporting secure email.

Our guest is Jacob Evans, Sr. Systems Engineer at WebstaurantStore.com. You can follow him on Twitter and check out his blog at www.jacobdevans.com.

Sponsor: ITProTV

ITProTV is an easy, entertaining approach to online IT Training. With ITProTV, you’ll gain access to the most important tools needed to prepare you for IT certification. For a free 7-day trial–and for a limited time get 50% off a monthly membership for the lifetime of your active subscription–visit itpro.tv/datanauts and use code DATANAUTS50.

Show Links:

Sender Policy Framework – OpenSPF.org

Sender Policy Framework for Authorizing Use of Domains in Email, Version 1 – IETF 7208

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)

DMARCian – A DMARC Deployment Tool

DomainKeys Identified Mail – DKIM.org

DomainKeys Identified Mail Signatures – IETF 6376

Free Range Routing (FRR) is open-source routing software that’s been forked from the Quagga open-source project. Designed to run on Linux and Unix systems in a variety of production environments, FRR supports common routing protocols including BGP, IS-IS, LDP, OSPF, PIM, and RIP.

In this Priority Queue we look at the FRR project and its capabilities. We also provide some background on Quagga, why Quagga was forked and the companies behind it, and what people can expect from Free Range Routing going forward.

Our guests are Russ White, a network architect at LinkedIn; Martin Winter, a Quagga tester and co-founder of NetDEF, the Network Device Education Foundation; and Donald Sharp, a member of the technical staff at Cumulus Networks who focuses on routing.

You can learn more about Free Range Routing at its website, and get information on Quagga here.

This podcast was recorded on site at the IETF 98 conference in Chicago. Thanks to Huawei, which covered travel and accomodations to enable the Packet Pushers to attend and record some shows.