Firewall at the perimeter

Saw this in a packet pushers email and thought it was funny:



"This is what the average perimeter firewall looks like to hackers." - Ben Story (@ntwrk80)

Arrcus NOS offering

I really like the development model Arrcus took with its ArcOS. "64-bit memory addressing top to bottom and that all features and functions were multithreaded as well so they could not only run functions on merchant or custom switch/routing silicon, but also offload functions to either X86 or Arm adjunct processors."  In my opinion modularity is key and ArcOS appears to have this in spades.  Also I like that they took the extra effort to develop their own routing engine vs leveraging FRR.  I think the key is going to be can they deliver a solid product at a significantly cheaper cost than say Cisco yet provide a better experience than say Cumulus. 

https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/01/24/aspiring-to-be-the-windows-not-the-linux-of-networks/

Also WELL worth your time to listen:
https://packetpushers.net/podcast/pq-160-inside-arcos-the-internet-scale-carrier-grade-network-os-sponsored/

Haven't written in a while

As time permits I'd like to get back on the bandwagon and write some blog posts to help me document technologies I've learned in the past and what I'm currently investing time in.  I find that writing things down helps me structure and remember information of importance to me.  Some of the topics I'll be covering include (not in a particular order):

1. PowerShell
2. S2D
3. Azure
4. Cloud vs. On Prem
5. Hyper-V
6. Architecting a DataCenter
1. Clos network design
1. Routing
2. Layer 2
3. Vxlan
4. eVPN
5. Converged vs separate storage/compute
2. Server
3. Storage options
4. Power
5. Cabling

IaaS on prem and in the cloud 2019 preview

This was a really good prognostication article on the changes to Private and Public clouds in 2019.  I really need to invest in time learning Kubernetes and Docker this year.  So many things to learn so little time :) 

Read this article, it's worth your time:  https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/01/09/containers-killed-the-virtual-machine-star/

Serverless Latency

Serverless applications really interest me.  What is the current guidance on use cases, best practices, etc..?  Anyways I stumbled upon this post and found it extremely interesting as it dives deep in to Serverless latency, its causes, and ways to work around performance issues.

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/12/14/SF-4

Excelero a company to watch

As the technology world continues to move towards software defined everything Excelero's NVMe-oF storage platform is really interesting.  I really like the RDMA aspects of it and don't find that a significant cost or issue.  I also like the new Erasure Coding option for data protection.  It appears to be VERY similar to Storage Spaces Direct EC.  For more information read:  https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/10/31/broadening-the-appeal-of-distributed-nvm-express-storage/

Windows Kernel improvements

Really interesting read on how Microsoft has improved the kernel to take best advantage of large numbers of logical CPU's. Latest milestone is 896 cores with 1792 logical processors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-Kernel-Internals/One-Windows-Kernel/bc-p/278805#M18