Tom Hollingsworth is impressed by some of the recent announcement from Barefoot Networks. The first was announced at OCP which saw new support for P4 and Tofino in the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud. Then there was the company’s announced partnership with IP Infusion (another Networking Field Day presenter). Finally Barefoot announced partnerships with Xilinx and Kaloom to bring Tofino and P4 to their switching platforms. For Tom, this sets the company on a firm foundation for the future, one where they don’t try to bring customers to use cases that might not apply, but instead meet customers where they already are.
GraphDBs and Network Automation
In this post Nicola Arnoldi clears up some confusion. For him, when network automation is vital for any organization, it’s important to keep in context what things like Ansible are. This isn’t SDN or an orchestration framework. Instead, taking a cue from Ansible’s recent Networking Field Day presentation, this is just one tool to accomplish automation. These kind of tool are perfect for building a Graph DB of your network resources. This is what underlies Apstra’s intent-based networking, as demoed at Networking Field Day last year.
Data Point: Why Automation Won’t Replace Humans
Ivan Pepelnjak thinks network engineers don’t need to worry about automation replacing them in the near future, given that a forward looking company like Tesla has failed with their complete automation efforts. Instead, he points that network engineers should train themselves to do higher value jobs for organizations, which seems to be a good hedge against automation. He points out some recent Networking Field Day videos on the topic as well.
Big Switch is Changing the Cloud Game
Rita Younger looks at how Big Switch enable customers to build a self-service data center private cloud. They do this by approaching it from a cloud-first strategy to make an automated environment via their virtual private clouds. This was presented during Big Switch’s presentation at Networking Field Day last month.
Nyansa Voyance at NFD18
In this post, Aaron Conaway takes a look at Nyansa’s Voyance, which he saw at Networking Field Day last month. This network analytics solution focuses on user experience. He focuses on how the Voyance Crawler sits inside a network, looking at a variety of data points, from wireless controllers to API calls and more. This is correlated to get a full understanding of how a user experiences a network, and provides suggestions on how to remediate issues.
NFD 18 – Day 2 – RedHat Ansible
Nicola Arnoldi clears up any confusion around what Ansible is and what it is not, relaying what he heard from their Networking Field Day presentation earlier this month. He makes it clear that Ansible is not SDN, nor an orchestrator, but just a powerful tool in your networking toolbox. He goes on to discuss the Ansible Network Engine, Ansible and Openconfig, and the Ansible ML2 plugin for Openstack.
Tech Field Day’s are Much More than Technical
Rita Younger talks about how Tech Field Day goes beyond just the technical after her experience at Cloud Field Day this week. She says she was skeptical about the idea of the Tech Field Day family prior to attending, but now feels very much to be a part of it. She also talks about introverts and extroverts in tech and starting her own Webcast series.
NFD 18 – Day 1 Highlights – IP Infusion and Broadcom
Nicola Arnoldi highlights one of his favorite presentations from Network Field Day, the joint presentation from IP Infusion, Edgecore, and Broadcom. He says that these three have put together the knowledge and product to make everyone feel safe with disaggregation.
Ansible is NOT Programming
Rita Younger was pleasantly surprised by how much she learned from Ansible’s Networking Field Day 18 presentation. She says that Ansible is not a programming language, but rather a tool for automation, augmentation, consumption and simplification, and Ansible is, in fact, a networking company, although their model is not traditional.
Network Break 194: Amazon Spooks Switch Vendors; Big Switch Brings VPCs On Prem
On the Packet Pushers’ Network Break podcast, Greg Ferro features Networking Field Day 18 presenting sponsor Big Switch and their new software designed to enable VPC-like networking in private data centers.
Automating My World
Aaron Conaway talks about how he goes about automating his world and the tools he uses to do it. He mentions Python, Rundeck, and Ansible, who he recently saw present at Networking Field Day 18.
Networking Field Day 18 Wrap-Up
Bruno Wollmann reflects on his first experience at a Tech Field Day event with Networking Field Day 18. He comments on the family-like delegate environment, the jam-packed schedule full of attention-commanding presentations, and the importance for delegates to seize the opportunity to make their Tech Field Day experience the best it can be.
Networking Field Day 18 wrap-up
Nicola Arnoldi ends his Networking Field Day 18 experience by mentioning the presenting sponsors that caught his attention as well as the great people he was thrilled to finally meet.
Friday Musings on Network Analytics
While at Networking Field Day 18, Tom Hollingsworth noticed that the topic of network analytics kept popping up. Here, Tom shares his thoughts on the importance of network analytics as well as how easy it is to get started when analytics integrate into so many platforms you are likely already using.
BiB 48: Gluware at Network Field Day 18
Greg Ferro talks Gluware after their Networking Field Day 18 presentation, describing the company as an automation engine that works well in a brownfield network because it is multi-vendor, multi-technology, and works with existing tools like the CLI. Greg is also excited by, and goes on to describe, a Campus demo where Gluware showed the dot1x template being applied to ports as needed.
Network Field Day 18 – Some Preparation and Review
Greg Ferro does his homework for Networking Field Day 18, giving a brief explanation of his thoughts and the facts about each presenting sponsor. He also goes over what themes he think will be consistent talking points throughout the event, such as Multi-cloud, Kubernetes, and SDN.
