Intel has a new program called Intel On Demand that will allow customers of its new Xeon Scalable Processors to unlock specialty processing engines for an extra fee.

Intel has not disclosed what it will cost to access the On Demand features, which are activated through Intel Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), a newly added function using authentication keys to activate the additional features.

For most customers, the standard Xeon core is all they need. But some may want the specialty processing engines included in the latest Xeon generation, codenamed Sapphire Rapids. The chips are available now to OEMs but will have a formal launch Jan. 10, 2023.

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Two networking technologies – secure access service edge (SASE) and wireless— lead a  list of six core trends that will impact enterprise infrastructure and operations activity in 2023, according to new research revealed by Gartner analysts at its IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference this week.

Implementing SASE, a term coined by Gartner, has been ongoing but is expected to grow substantially in the next year. Gartner forecasts that worldwide SASE spending will hit $9.2 billion in 2023, a 39% increase from 2022.

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The coming year could be a very big one for the open-source network operating system SONiC as it garners start-up support and increasing interest from major networking vendors.

The Linux-based Software for Open Networking in the Cloud decouples network software from the underlying hardware and lets it run on hundreds of switches and ASICs from multiple vendors while supporting a full suite of network features such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), remote direct memory access (RDMA), QoS, and Ethernet/IP. 

It was developed and then open-sourced by Microsoft, which in April turned the project over to the Linux Foundation and its 450,000 developers. The vendor community supporting SONiC has been growing, too, and includes Dell, Arista, Nokia, Alibaba, Comcast, Cisco, Broadcom, Juniper Apstra, Edgecore, Innovium, Nvidia-Mellanox, Celetica and VMware.

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In today challenging business and economic environment, everybody's looking for a deal. Yet there is one "bargain" that network managers should avoid at all costs – low-priced network devices that turn out to be counterfeit.

No competent network manager would intentionally purchase a faux network component, but that doesn't mean it never happens. "If signs of counterfeit parts were obvious, this issue would probably be resolved quickly," says John Loucaides, senior vice president of strategy at security technology provider Eclypsium.

Virtually every type of network device is shadowed by one or more unauthorized doppelgängers. Fake drop-in replacements are particularly prevalent. "This enables a wide variety of cheaper parts to be used in a non-obvious way, maximizing the benefit of providing a counterfeit device," Loucaides says. Sometimes, however, only a single component within a device is counterfeited. "Given a financial motive, this is likely the most expensive part being substituted for a cheaper part," he says.

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Just a few weeks ago Gartner analysts said that sustainability and issues around it  would transcend all of the strategic technology trends for 2023.

This week at its IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference Gartner described how corporate data centers might make sustainability a practical reality.

“IT leaders must avoid wasting value through the premature replacement of IT infrastructure,” said Philip Dawson, vice president and analyst at Gartner, at the conference. “They can do that by using real-time health analytics to maximize the useful life of data-center assets.”

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Cloud services and hosting provider Rackspace Technology acknowledged Tuesday that a recent incident that took most of its Hosted Exchange email server business offline was the product of a ransomware attack. The company shut the service down last Friday.

It was not initially clear what had caused the outage, but Rackspace quickly moved to shift Exchange customers over to Microsoft 365, as this part of the company’s infrastructure was apparently unaffected.

Rackspace offers migration to Microsoft 365

Rackspace said today that there is “no timeline” for restoration of Exchange service, but it is offering Exchange users technical assistance and free access to Microsoft 365 as a substitute, though it acknowledged that migration is unlikely to be a simple process for every user. Rackspace said that, while the migration is in progress, customers can forward emails sent to their Hosted Exchange inboxes to an external server, as a temporary workaround.

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The job of a network engineer just keeps getting more complicated. Mission critical applications are competing for bandwidth. The sheer number of devices is exploding, driven by IoT. And the network itself if being extended to the cloud, the edge and to the home office.  

And then there’s cybersecurity to worry about. Attacks are on the rise across the board, and attackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities or backdoors, upping the need for solid and secure networking to act as an early warning system for cybersecurity defenses.

Thankfully, there are many great tools available to help network engineers complete their never-ending tasks. And many of them are available for free. Here’s our list of 12 killer network tools that won’t break the bank. 

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The reliability of services delivered by ISPs, cloud providers and conferencing services (a.k.a. unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS)) is an indication of how well served businesses are via the internet.

ThousandEyes is monitoring how these providers are handling the performance challenges they face. It will provide Network World a roundup of interesting events of the week in the delivery of these services, and Network World will provide a summary here. Stop back next week for another update, and see more details here.

Automation represents perhaps the clearest embodiment of Benjamin Franklin’s legendary “time is money” aphorism -- and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven networks are one area where it’s relatively easy to see the near-term benefits that give new meaning to Franklin’s simple phrase.

Network automation simplifies operations for network teams and reduces configuration errors. So, it stands to reason that greater automation through AI will deliver a more predictable and reliable network that seemingly can speed up time while saving lots of money. We turned to the CIO Experts Network of IT professionals and industry analysts to collect their views on AI-driven networks and how the technology is likely to change the lives of network teams.

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Business spending on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is growing by leaps and bounds as organizations strive to improve efficiency, simplify, and automate processes, and build more proactive capabilities. Global spending on AI-centric systems is on track to surpass $300 billion in 2026, with the U.S. accounting for more than 50% of the total, according to IDC forecasts. But the success of these investments may ultimately hinge on trust.

A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study points out that “determining that the AI system is trustworthy because it meets its system requirements won’t ensure widespread adoption of AI. It is the user, the human affected by the AI, who ultimately places their trust in the system.”

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday suffered an outage at one of its four regions in the US, just days after the close of its annual re:Invent conference where it announced a multitude of new and updated services.

The outage, which according to the company lasted for about 75 minutes between 11:34 AM and 12:51 PM Pacific Time, resulted in internet connectivity issues to and from the US-East 2 region.

The loss in connectivity for certain instances at the Ohio region, which was identified by AWS around 12:26, also saw several people taking to Twitter to complain about it.

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You might not be challenged very often to convert numbers from one numbering system to another but, when you are, you can do it with either of two fairly easy commands on the Linux command line.

Converting in your head can be taxing, especially for longer numbers. While the decimal numbering system allows any digit in a number to have any of ten values (0-9), digits in hexadecimal numbers can have 16 (0-F), digits in octal numbers only eight (0-7) and digits in binary numbers only two (0-1).

And, whether you like it or not, from time to time you are likely to run into numbers displayed in hex or octal, and knowing how to convert them from one number base to another can come in handy.

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By now you’ve probably heard about Mastodon, the open-source microblogging platform that’s been gaining popularity since Elon Musk took over Twitter.

A major feature of the platform is it’s de-centralized, distributed architecture that provides resilience, but a downside is that it can cause congestion and increase latency for the unprepared.

Here’s how Mastodon works. Its servers (instances) operate semi-independently of each other, and users register with servers geared toward communities that interest them. But users can follow and interact with others from across the Fediverse—users hosted on other Mastodon instances as well as other services utilizing the open-source ActivityPub protocol from the Worldwide Web Consortium.

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I’ll start with an understatement: The pandemic has profoundly affected edge computing.

For over two years, edge computing has accelerated growth at the distributed edge due to the rise in remote work and the changing demand for various applications.

For example, I learned that there is a limit on the WiFi bandwidth at home – something I hadn’t even thought about until my family relied on our Internet at home 24/7.

Edge computing is about moving into unconventional spaces for critical digital infrastructure. Whether on a manufacturing floor (industrial edge computing), an outdoor location, or a retail stock room – the rack becomes the data center.

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One of the biggest complaints consumers have about the in-store retail experience is long checkout lines. As a result, consumer interest in technologies that allow them to bypass checkout lines is high. In the article “Self-Checkout is Changing the Retail Landscape,” digital analyst firm eMarketer cites a survey that found 71% of consumers were interested in scan-and-go apps and 61% were interested in unmanned stores.

Based on that data, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that ResearchandMarkets.com forecasts a 10.2% compound annual growth rate for the self-checkout market between 2020 and 2025.

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sort of curbside pickup and contactless checkout options for customers reluctant to shop indoors. Companies needed more automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with everything from efficiently responding to peaks in demand, to managing the ongoing labor shortages.

As the post-pandemic retail world takes shape, we can expect most, if not all, of the leading retailers to heavily invest in computing resources. This digital infrastructure will support customer-centric applications such as click-and-go technologies, streamlined point-of-sale interactions, and intelligent inventory management.

With the rise in e-commerce, consumers recognize that their purchasing options are greater than ever before — and so are their expectations. A survey from last year found that 65% of consumers want the ability to scan items in a store to see product details on their phone, 50% expect some form of contactless payment options, and 20% want to be able to try on clothes using “virtual mirrors” on their devices using augmented reality features.

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Secure access service edge (SASE) is a network architecture that provides a security-focused alternative to SD-WAN. First outlined by Gartner in 2019, SASE converges SD-WAN services with a range of Security-as-a-Service offerings. Gartner now forecasts that by 2024 at least 40% of enterprises will consider adopting SASE.

The leading SASE vendors are a mix of networking incumbents and well-funded startups. These include Cato Networks, Cisco, Fortinet, HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Perimeter 81, Versa, VMware, and Zscaler.

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The bash shell provides a superb functionality when it comes to writing scripts. This includes many ways to loop through a pile of data so that you can get a lot done with one running of a script. Whether you’re looping through a large group of numeric values, days of the week, usernames, words, files, or something else entirely, bash has an option that can make it easy for you.

for, while, and until loops

The first thing you need to know about looping in bash is that there are several basic commands to use. The while loop will loop as long as some particular condition holds true. The until loop will loop until some condition becomes true, and the for loop will run through a series of values regardless of their origin.

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Amazon Web Services has introduced a new CPU customized for high-performance computing (HPC) and the next generation of its Nitro smart networking chip, plus instances that take full advantage of the hardware.

The Arm-based CPU is called the Graviton3E and has been optimized for floating point math, key in HPC, the company announced at AWS re:Invent conference. Amazon said Hpc7g instances powered by the new Graviton3E chips offer up to double the floating point and vector performance compared to the current generation of instances.

The vast datasets that accompany HPC need to be moved around, so Amazon also introduced the fifth generation of its Nitro smartNICs, offering up to twice the network bandwidth and up to 50% higher packet processing-per-second performance compared to current generation networking-optimized instances.

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Compressed Linux files are helpful because they save disk space, but what should you do when you have a series of compressed files and want to determine if any are duplicates? The zdiff and zcmp commands can help.

To begin, if a directory contains two files like those below, it’s easy to tell just from the listing that they are not identical. After all, the file sizes are a little different. The files look like this:

$ ls -l total 200 -rw-r--r--. 1 shs shs 102178 Nov 22 2021 2021.gz -rw-r--r--. 1 shs shs 102181 Nov 22 11:19 2022.gz 

If you compare the files with the diff command, it will confirm that the files differ:

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Firewalls and antivirus can help block internet-based malware from infecting connected enterprise machines, but layering on DNS-based filtering can help avoid some of these threats in the first place. It can also help stop users’ browsing to malware and phishing sites, block intrusive advertising, and serve as adult-content filters.

Because the Domain Name System (DNS) enables individual computers to reach destinations on the internet, services that filter out dangerous or unwanted sites can improve overall network security. DNS services provide a mix of tools to customize what content is filtered and which sites are blocked, among other useful features. This article describes five of these services.  

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ERP giant SAP and industrial automation company Schneider Electric Tuesday announced that they would expand their collaboration in the field of IIoT (industrial IoT) and digital transformation, with a focus on sustainable infrastructure and easy deployment.

The two companies plan to create preconfigured deployment options for IIoT customers—so any company looking for, for example, a field service management tool using augmented reality can simply pick up and use the partnership’s preset hardware and software configuration. (Shop floor operational tech integration, using digital twins for lifecycle management, is also planned.)

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Cisco is set to unveil a new edition of its SD-WAN software that will extend the system’s reach and include new management capabilities.

Among the most significant enhancements to Cisco SD-WAN release 17.10, expected in December, is the ability to use Cisco SD-WAN Multi Region Fabric (MRF) support with existing Software Defined Cloud Interconnect (SDCI) systems to significantly expand the reach and control of the SD-WAN environment. 

MRF lets customers divide their SD-WAN environments into multiple regional networks that operate distinctly from one another, along with a central core-region network for managing inter-regional traffic, according to Cisco. 

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Thanks to some engineering wizardry involving existing technologies, Seagate has introduced a new line of hard disk drives that can match the throughput of a solid state drive.

The drives are part of Seagate’s Mach.2 line, called Exos 2X18. This is the second generation of the Mach.2, coming in 16TB and 18TB capacity and support either SATA3 6Gbps or SAS 12Gbps interfaces.

The drive is essentially two drives in one, with two sets of platters served by two separate actuators, the arms with the drive heads, that work in parallel. So the 16TB/18TB capacity is achieved through two 8TB/9TB drives packed into one 3.5-inch form factor. The Mach.2 line is filled with helium to reduce friction.

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Cisco is taking steps to better control the performance and observability of cloud-based enterprise applications.

At the AWS re:Invent conference this week, Cisco said it has added a feature called business transaction insights to its AppDynamics Cloud system so it can more easily track performance of applications running on the AWS Cloud including on Kubernetes, microservices, and other AWS infrastructure.

Available since June, AppDynamics Cloud is a cloud-native service designed to observe applications and take action to remediate performance problems. It is built on OpenTelemetry, an emerging standard for data collection that helps to visualize and measure application performance from multiple data sources, said AppDynamics Executive CTO Gregg Ostrowski.

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