Interesting links (2012-02-19)
Let's start with Startup of the Week - Dmitri Kalintsev decided to blog regularly. Make sure you add him to your RSS reader.
And here are the interesting articles accumulated in my Evernote notebook in somewhat random order:
Cloud
Software Defined Networks (SDNs) - A History Lesson: Someone finally found a great SDN analogy: VoIP software in the 90's. All sorts of promises were made and only a few ideas survived the reality check.
Data Center
Living Root Bridges: This is how you build sustainable spanning tree bridging (thank you @dgourlay). Not to mention that everything is a root bridge.
Will OpenFlow Solve the Financial Crisis?: A tongue-in-the-cheek view of OpenFlow/SDN from a seasoned industry veteran who has witnessed more than a few hype cycles.
FC and FCoE versus iSCSI – “Network-centric” versus “End-Node-centric” provisioning: An empiric approach to the "is FC better than iSCSI" debate. Once you have a running FC network, it's way easier to add new servers than provisioning iSCSI.
Fragmentation Needed: 10Gb/s Server Access Layer - Use The FEX!: To FEX or not to FEX - Chris Marget is trying to help you solve that mystery.
Good Habits For Basic Ethernet Switchport Provisioning In A Cisco IOS Environment: A fantastic step-by-step best practices guide to Data Center server port provisioning by Ethan Banks. A definite must-read.
OpenFlow, Software Defined Networking and Standards - Is it the process open and reasonable ?: How open is OpenFlow by Greg Ferro. Enough said - you know it's going to be good (and make sure you follow all the links and read the comments).
Peeling The Onion Layer By Layer | Embrane: Description of differences between L2-3 (Nicira) and L4-7 (Embrane) virtual networking ... straight from Dante Malagrino.
How the Network and a F-4 Phantom II are Alike: Another very smart engineer explaining why the complexity should be moved to the network edge … but of course the networking vendors disagree trying to sell you yet another even-more-complex gadget. Bonus feature: why is your network like F4.
Peeling the Nicira Onion | Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds: Good analysis from Brad Casemore, discussing the positioning of Nicira, Big Switch, VMware and a few others. My key takeaway: Virtualization is like onion - the more you look at it, the more your eyes burn.
Loved, Hated, but Never Ignored #OpenFlow #SDN: Jason is getting better with every post. This time he nicely nailed the big OpenFlow issue: you're trading HW vendor lock-in with controller vendor lock-in.
Routing
Junosphere Now Accepting Credit Cards: Juniper made a significant improvement to Junosphere. While it still takes a while to get it working (they say 1-2 weeks), it's infinitely better than having to work through a reseller.
IS-IS and OSPF Difference Discussions: Bedtime reading for the true nerds: IS-IS and OSPF differences in all the gory details you never wanted to know.
Other topics
Edison vs. Tesla: two approaches to problem solving « Scott Berkun: You probably know one of my favorite mantras: "Knowledge, not recipes!" Scott Berkun rephrases it as "Be a Tesla, not an Edison"
Twitter Zen: My Tips For Newbies – @SFoskett – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat: A fantastic bag of tips & tricks from Stephen Foskett.
Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?: A few fantastic explanations of our continuous failure to estimate the actual duration of any complex IT project.
And don't forget: interesting links are now available as a shared Evernote notebook. Enjoy!
Oh, noes! :) And here was I, hoping to continue to slack it off.. :)