The last two weeks have been filled with conferences. RSA happened June 6-9 and Cisco Live was June 12-16. There were also gatherings for Splunk, Juniper, and others around the same time in San Francisco and Las Vegas. While the general mood of the conferences seemed to be focused on how good it was to get people back in person the reality of what that looks like a world still affected by a global pandemic came into focus after everyone started getting back home. RSA, according to reports, has seen reported COVID infections as high as 20% of attendees based on informal polling numbers. CIsco Live, which boasted over 16,000 people in Vegas, is seeing simliar numbers. While I was able to make it through the conference without testing positive many others that I was interacting with didn’t. Which calls into question the practice of having live in-person events during the pandemic. This and more on this week’s Rundown. Head over to gestaltit.com for show notes.
0:50 | NVIDIA Opens Up DOCA through OPI
NVIDIA announced this week that they are becoming a founding member of a new Linux Foundation project designed to foster networking software APIs. The project is called Open Programmable Infrastructure, or OPI for short. OPI is tasked with created standards-based solutions for data processing units, or DPUs, NVIDIA is stepping up by leveraging their DPU programming interface known as DOCA as the base for their efforts. DOCA has been widely available previously as part of the NVIDIA development process but will be more openly licensed as part of this announcement. The ultimate goal is to increase DPU adoption across the industry and potentially increase the marketshare for projects like Bluefield. Chris, is this a bold move by NVIDIA?
Read More: NVIDIA Accelerates Open Data Center Innovation
4:21 | Cloudflare Bugs Out BGP
Cloudflare had a change management issue. Unlike when you have them in your organization, though, theirs was noticed. Monday the provider made a change that was expected to increase the resilience in their data centers. Instead, the change resulted in all their Internet routes being withdrawn from BGP. It took over an hour for Cloudflare to determine what happened and revert the change that allowed the prefixes to be reinstalled in the BGP table. Per the investigation in the linked article from The Register, it would appear that the newer system of Cloudflare’s resilience protocols, called MCP, was incompatible with the changes. Tom, any thoughts on how someone like Cloudflare could have bungled this one?
Read More: Cloudflare explains how it managed to break the internet
8:35 | PCIe 7.0 Ramps Up Bandwidth
The latest generation of PCIe has been announced. Version 7, which is expected to be released sometime in 2025. The specification doubles the amount of bandwidth and data transfer rates from the previous generation. PCI-SIG, the organization behind the PCIe specification, has stated their plan is to double the transfer rates of PCIe every three years. PCIe 5 is the current shipping generation of the specification, with PCIe 6 expected to be released some time later this year.
Read More: PCIe 7.0 to quadruple the bandwidth of current-gen devices
13:26 | Alkira Debuts Multicloud Networking-as-a-Service
Cloud networking startup Alkira announced this week that they are jumping into the market to offer multicloud networking to their customers. The service offering allows you to create networks to connect workloads running in AWS, GCP, or Azure. Unlike competitors like Aryaka or Megaport, Alkira is using the public Internet as a part of the transport instead of their own private offering. The system will automatically configure connections between the different providers to allow you to smoothly move workloads back and forth. Tom, is this the magic cloud connector we’ve all been waiting for?
Read More: Cloud Area Networking : The Fastest Way to the Cloud
18:13 | RSA and Cisco Live: Viral Events
The last two weeks have been filled with conferences. RSA happened June 6-9 and Cisco Live was June 12-16. There were also gatherings for Splunk, Juniper, and others around the same time in San Francisco and Las Vegas. While the general mood of the conferences seemed to be focused on how good it was to get people back in person the reality of what that looks like a world still affected by a global pandemic came into focus after everyone started getting back home. RSA, according to reports, has seen reported COVID infections as high as 20% of attendees based on informal polling numbers. CIsco Live, which boasted over 16,000 people in Vegas, is seeing simliar numbers. While I was able to make it through the conference without testing positive many others that I was interacting with didn’t. Which calls into question the practice of having live in-person events during the pandemic. Chris, are we headed back to a world of virtual conventions?
Read More: RSAC branded a ‘super spreader event’ as attendees share COVID-19 test results
30:51 | The Week Ahead
Cloud Field Day 14 – June 22 through 24
HPE Discover – June 28 through 30
Mobility Field Day 7 – July 13 through 15
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. It broadcasts live on Facebook every Wednesday at 12:30pm ET. To watch along, “Like” our Facebook page. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
