Technology Short Take 90
Published on 10 Nov 2017 · Filed in Information · 569 words (estimated 3 minutes to read)Welcome to Technology Short Take 90! This post is a bit shorter than most, as I’ve been on the road quite a bit recently. Nevertheless, there’s hopefully something here you’ll find useful.
Networking
- VMware recently released an updated to PowerCLI (version 6.5.3), and with it comes a set of cmdlets that provide low-level access to the NSX-T REST API. Romain Decker provides a walkthrough. Have fun automating!
- Looking for some “MPLS 101”-type material? Jon Langemak has you covered.
- I really enjoyed David Gee’s series on the network automation engineer persona (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4). David really unpacks the changes that are happening in the networking space and describes the key skills the “next-generation network engineer” will have. Good stuff!
- This post by Patrick Ogenstad on Ansible action plugins for Cisco IOS is just outside my comfort zone with regards to Python knowledge and skill, but it’s only by pushing the boundaries that we learn, right?
- Romain Decker discusses the ten things you should know before starting with NSX-T.
- Mark Betz digs into some Kubernetes networking concepts in detail.
Security
- Tony Reeves shares a procedure for setting up encryption in vSAN 6.6.
- Major Hayden talks about ansible-hardening, a new role that grew out of an OpenStack-related security role. However, as Major points out in his article, the role works anywhere, OpenStack cloud or not.
- Here’s a quick note about AWS security groups and traffic flows. Definitely worth reading.
Cloud Computing/Cloud Management
- Google is rolling out Kubernetes 1.8 to Google Container Engine; this blog post talks about some of the new features and functionality.
- Lior Kamrat has a multi-part series on an architecture that blends Mesosphere DC/OS, Azure, Docker, and VMware vSphere. Check out the beginning of the series here.
Operating Systems/Applications
- Kevin Lynch of the Squarespace Engineering team has a great write-up on Linux container scheduling; this post provides some in-depth information on the various components and considerations involved.
- After a recent complaint by yours truly on Twitter regarding notifications on Windows 10, I was directed to this article. I haven’t tested it yet, but it does look promising.
- VMware recently released version 2.0 of Photon OS. Unfortunately, Photon OS 2.0 has some issues running on VMware platforms, so visit William Lam’s site for the workarounds.
- This article by Christian Posta on when not to do microservices is, in my opinion, a well-balanced view on when microservices offer versus when they don’t.
- Larry Smith Jr. shows how to take data in CSV and convert it to YAML for consumption by Ansible.
Storage
- I’m clearly behind the times in some of my reading, as this great article by J Metz was just brought to my attention recently. J does a good job of laying out the various competing forces that drive product/technology evolution and selection in the storage space, though one might argue these same forces are at work in other areas besides just storage.
Virtualization
- Frank Denneman’s enormously useful and very successful vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive book is now available as a free e-book, courtesy of Rubrik. Check out Frank’s blog for more details.
Career/Soft Skills
- You’ve heard me talk about Spousetivities many times; here are some thoughts from a Spousetivities participant.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to hit me up on Twitter if you have feedback or would like to share a link I should include in a future Technology Short Take.