Scott Lowe

APRIL 15, 2022

Xavier Avrillier walks readers through using Antrea (a Kubernetes CNI built on top of Open vSwitch—a topic I’ve touched on a time or two) to provide on-premise load balancing in Kubernetes. Servers/Hardware. Cabling is hardware, right? Ulrich Speidel shares some of the findings after the volcanic eruption in Tonga.

Linux 74

Linux Load Balancer IPv6 Licensing 74

Scott Lowe

MAY 27, 2022

Servers/Hardware. marks the first release of the open source container orchestration platform that is signed using Sigstore (more details here ). For relevant storage news, I’d recommend having a look at J Metz’ Storage Short Take 42. network virtualization). Cloud Computing/Cloud Management.

Virtualization 79

Virtualization Storage Programming Network 79

Scott Lowe

MARCH 2, 2020

Redpill Linpro talks to readers about their new routers running Cumulus Linux. Servers/Hardware. This article is about hardware, just not the hardware I’d typically talk about in this section—instead, it’s about Philips Hue light bulbs. I need to move it back to Windows from Linux. Virtualization.

Linux 60

Linux Windows Hardware Network 60

Scott Lowe

MAY 17, 2019

Courtesy of Tigera, Alex Pollitt shares some guidelines on when Linux conntrack is no longer your friend. Servers/Hardware. Apparently Dell’s new docking stations support firmware updates via Linux. This article has good information on safely using /tmp and /var/tmp on systemd-powered Linux distributions.

Linux 60

Linux Dell Open Source Licensing 60

Scott Lowe

OCTOBER 5, 2018

Servers/Hardware. The big news in the hardware space recently was the article regarding the purported Chinese hardware supply chain attack. Of the (innumerable) articles commenting on the hardware hack, this article by Joe FitzPatrick and this ErrataSec article caught my eye. This has generated a lot of discussion.

Hardware 60

Hardware Open Source Vmware Linux 60

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 27, 2023

Back in October of last year, Tom Hollingsworth weighed in on Hedgehog , the networking company that has set out to commercialize SONiC, a Linux-based NOS used extensively in Azure. Servers/Hardware What do you think of the ThinkPhone ? Rory McCune shares some information on configuring Caddy , a Go-based open source web server.

Programming 90

Programming Open Source Cloud Devops 90

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 14, 2016

Cumulus VX, if you aren’t aware, is a community-supported virtual appliance version of Cumulus Linux aimed at helping folks preview and test “full-blown” Cumulus Linux (which, of course, requires compatible hardware). Servers/Hardware. Nir Yechiel posted an article on using the Cumulus VX QCOW2 image with Fedora and KVM.

Vmware 60

Vmware Devops Storage Linux 60

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 6, 2013

Here’s a good source. Servers/Hardware. While written for OS X, most of these tips apply to Linux or other Unix-like operating systems as well. Mike Preston has a great series going on tuning Debian Linux running under vSphere. Want some additional information on layer 2 and layer 3 services in VMware NSX?

Vmware 60

Vmware Storage Linux Network 60

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 27, 2019

Servers/Hardware. Cole Atkinson discusses the fact that osxfuse is no longer open source , and the ramifications of this development on open source in general. I recently spotted Multipass , a virtualization solution for working with Linux instances. Networking. Michael Gasch shares his tmux setup.

Open Source 60

Open Source Vmware Authentication Storage 60

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 29, 2016

Andrey Khomyakov shares some information on automating the setup of whitebox switches running Cumulus Linux in part 2 of this series on learning network automation. Servers/Hardware. Alpine Linux 3.5 This is notable (for me, at least) primarily because a growing number of Docker images are based on Alpine Linux.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Open Source Data Center 60

Scott Lowe

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

It was good to read this post on Cumulus Linux first impressions by Jeremy Stretch. I’m a fan of Cumulus, but I’m admittedly a Linux guy (see here ) so you might say I’m a bit biased. Jeremy is a “hard-core” networking professional, and so hearing his feedback on Cumulus Linux was, in my opinion, useful.

Vmware 69

Vmware Linux Storage Virtualization 69

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 28, 2016

The rise of Linux in importance in the networking industry continues, with Arista announcing enhancements to Arista EOS to support—among other things—Docker containers. As a partial counterpoint to the increased use/visibility of Linux in the networking industry, check out Ivan’s take on Dell’s OS10 announcement. Servers/Hardware.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Open Source Devops 60

Scott Lowe

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

Components involved include the open source Kuma service mesh (in turn leveraging Envoy), anycast BGP, and mutual TLS (mTLS). Servers/Hardware. William Lam takes a look at some potentially interesting homelab hardware. Rory McCune writes about a CVE in the Linux kernel that could allow for container escape in Kubernetes.

Storage 79

Storage Hardware Policies Open Source 79

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 11, 2016

In this post you’ll find a collection of links to articles discussing the major data center technologies—networking, hardware, security, cloud computing, applications, virtualization…you name it! (If Thinking of using a hardware VTEP (VXLAN Tunnel Endpoint) with VMware NSX? Servers/Hardware. Welcome to Technology Short Take #70!

Vmware 60

Vmware Hardware Storage Linux 60

Scott Lowe

MAY 25, 2017

Servers/Hardware. Here’s a quick post on nftables , the (eventual) Linux replacement for iptables. Check out this blog on work done to bring firmware updates into the land of Linux. This was the source of some confusion in the past; the move to Moby sidesteps those concerns. Fun read if you’re into custom builds.

Linux 60

Linux Open Source Network Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

MAY 25, 2017

Servers/Hardware. Here’s a quick post on nftables , the (eventual) Linux replacement for iptables. Check out this blog on work done to bring firmware updates into the land of Linux. This was the source of some confusion in the past; the move to Moby sidesteps those concerns. Fun read if you’re into custom builds.

Linux 60

Linux Open Source Network Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Next, Intel talks about how they have worked to expose hardware features into OpenStack. This involves work in libvirt as well as OpenStack, so that OpenStack can be aware of CPU functionality (which, in turn, might allow cloud providers to charge extra for “premium images” that offer encryption support in hardware).

Intel 60

Intel Storage Open Source Hardware 60

Scott Lowe

JULY 5, 2019

Servers/Hardware. Although I’ve by and large moved away from Apple hardware (I still have a MacBook Pro running macOS that sees very little use, and a Mac Pro running Fedora), I did see this article regarding a new keyboard for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. It provides the basics behind X.509v3 Kubernetes 1.15

Storage 60

Storage Hardware Open Source Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 23, 2017

Servers/Hardware. As opposed to just encrypting data at the transport level (although Acra does that between components of its architecture) or just encrypting data at the storage level (using an encrypted file system or similar), Acra targets encrypting data at the table/row/column level within a database. Check back next time!

Open Source 60

Open Source Storage Vmware Network 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 17, 2016

At DevOps Networking Forum 2016, I had the opportunity to share a presentation on some Linux networking options. Matt Oswalt recently unveiled (and open sourced) a framework called ToDD, which stands for “Testing on Demand: Distributed”. Servers/Hardware. Have fun reading! Networking. Read more about it here.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Network Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 14, 2016

Cumulus VX, if you aren’t aware, is a community-supported virtual appliance version of Cumulus Linux aimed at helping folks preview and test “full-blown” Cumulus Linux (which, of course, requires compatible hardware). Servers/Hardware. Nir Yechiel posted an article on using the Cumulus VX QCOW2 image with Fedora and KVM.

Devops 60

Devops Vmware Storage Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 2, 2017

Skydive is (in the project’s own words) an “open source real-time network topology and protocols analyzer.” Servers/Hardware. Here’s a walkthrough to install Arch Linux on VirtualBox. Here’s a list of some open source Docker-related tools that developers may find useful. What’s that? See here.).

Linux 60

Linux Devops Open Source Virtualization 60

Scott Lowe

FEBRUARY 9, 2018

Servers/Hardware. I’m a 1Password user (just wish they’d release a “real” Linux client and bring back support for local vaults to all platforms), so seeing this article on how Agile Bits (the company behind 1Password) is using Terraform with AWS was pretty cool. Nothing this time around (sorry!). Virtualization.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Network Storage 60

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 28, 2016

The rise of Linux in importance in the networking industry continues, with Arista announcing enhancements to Arista EOS to support—among other things—Docker containers. As a partial counterpoint to the increased use/visibility of Linux in the networking industry, check out Ivan’s take on Dell’s OS10 announcement. Servers/Hardware.

Vmware 60

Vmware Open Source Linux Devops 60

Scott Lowe

OCTOBER 5, 2012

Erik Smith, notably known for his outstanding posts on storage and FCoE, takes a stab at describing some of the differences between SDN and network virtualization in this post. I found this series of posts to be helpful when I was working on configuring LACP with Open vSwitch (I hope to have a blog post on that up soon).

Storage 92

Storage Vmware Linux Virtualization 92

Scott Lowe

APRIL 19, 2019

Milind Gunjan shares some tips for troubleshooting Linux bridged networking on a KVM host. Servers/Hardware. Tim Hinrichs discusses securing the Kubernetes API with Open Policy Agent. This article discusses four open source secrets management tools. configurations. Nothing this time around! Nothing this time.

Open Source 60

Open Source Tools Policies Cloud 60

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 19, 2018

Barry Peddycord shares an update on Ansible support for the Cumulus Linux NCLU. Servers/Hardware. Via Maish Saidel-Keesing, I saw this post about 10 open source Kubernetes tools for highly effective SRE and Ops teams. Ariya Hidayat shows how to run Debian under WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Virtualization.

Vmware 60

Vmware Open Source Linux Cloud 60

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 6, 2019

The one caveat to his approach that may be worth mentioning is that some policies (a PodSecurityPolicy or the use of Open Policy Agent) may prevent the user from launching a Pod connected to the host’s network namespace. Servers/Hardware. Here’s an article from Marko Saric on his switch from macOS to Linux.

Vmware 60

Vmware Network Linux Hardware 60

Scott Lowe

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

To help resolve this issue, Cumulus Networks (and possibly Metacloud, I’m not sure of their involvement yet) has release an open source project called vxfld. Servers/Hardware. Running Hyper-V with Linux VMs? Ben Armstrong details what versions of Linux support the various Hyper-V features in this post.

Linux 60

Linux Network Vmware Disaster Recovery 60

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 16, 2017

Servers/Hardware. Here’s a quick post on nftables , the (eventual) Linux replacement for iptables. Check out this blog on work done to bring firmware updates into the land of Linux. This was the source of some confusion in the past; the move to Moby sidesteps those concerns. Cloud Computing/Cloud Management.

Open Source 60

Open Source Network Linux Engineering 60

Data Center Knowledge

JULY 23, 2013

Fusion-io Accelerates Flash Apps With Open Source Contributions. Fusion-io Accelerates Flash Apps With Open Source Contributions. To reduce complexity NVMKV eliminates the need to continually convert native key-value I/O to block I/O used in disk storage. Fusion-io: Making Apps Faster With Flash Storage.

Open Source 177

Open Source Data Center Storage Disaster Recovery 177

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 8, 2016

This is an interesting project to watch, I think—it’s porting OVN (Open Virtual Network) from a “traditional” OvS back-end to an IOVisor-based back-end (IOVisor implements the data plane in eBPF). Servers/Hardware. I noted that a Vagrant provider for vRealize Automation was recently released as an open source project.

Vmware 60

Vmware Storage Intel Virtualization 60

Scott Lowe

MAY 4, 2017

Servers/Hardware. Ryan Kelly shows readers how to configure Harbor (open source container registry project) to use Amazon S3 for storage. Ajay Chenampara shares his workaround for storing GitHub credentials on Linux. (If This article gives an overview and brief introduction to eBPF. Nothing this time around.

Vmware 60

Vmware Storage Network Examples 60

Scott Lowe

APRIL 27, 2018

Cilium, the open source project working to bring eBPF-powered networking and security to Kubernetes environments, has hit the 1.0 Servers/Hardware. The Kubernetes blog has some more details on the Container Storage Interface (CSI) in Kubernetes 1.10, which has moved from alpha to beta as part of the 1.10 Virtualization.

Vmware 60

Vmware Storage Open Source Security 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 1, 2019

VyOS is an open source Linux-based network operating system.). Servers/Hardware. Paul Fitzgerald shows how to use Hyper-V and Docker to build a VyOS 1.2.0 Matt Cowger shares how to use MetalLB with the Unifi USG to take advantage of Kubernetes LoadBalancer functionality in your home lab. Virtualization.

Operating Systems 60

Operating Systems Authentication Network Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

OCTOBER 14, 2017

Servers/Hardware. I’ll keep an eye open for links to include next time around. The popular open source container registry project, Harbor , has released a new version (version 1.2). Abdullah Abdullah shares some thoughts on design decisions regarding NSX VXLAN control plane replication modes.

Load Balancer 60

Load Balancer Vmware Hardware Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 8, 2014

Welcome to Technology Short Take #43, another episode in my irregularly-published series of articles, links, and thoughts from around the web, focusing on data center technologies like networking, virtualization, storage, and cloud computing. Servers/Hardware. Open Source Tools and Projects I Should Learn. Networking.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Virtualization Network 60