Top5 03/04/2014
Whether you were traveling to RSA or elsewhere last week, heads down in a stack of projects a mile high, or just didn’t have the time to dig through the virtual onslaught of information bouncing around … I’ve got your back. There has been an uptick in hawesome at DC Central Headquarters. New bloggers, videos, articles, and frankly far too many things for even me to list, and we all know I’m about as overly circumlocutory as it gets. Also I like $5 words, even when they’re not necessitous. Buckle up, buttercup, this ride could get bumpy. That being the case, I’ve done my best to sift through the sea of goodness, dragging by sheer will alone into my life raft only the most choice offerings of logic, wit and information. My intention, all along, to share with all of you my rich bounty. Here it is, and here’s hoping your delectation knows no bounds as you read this week’s Top5:
iControl REST 101 – Creating Objects
Having already covered an intro into what iControl REST is as well as how to list items easily (both previous articles linked within), it’s time to start actually enacting change on your device. The third in the series, this installment of iControl REST 101 focuses on actually creating objects with cURL. If you haven’t heard about iControl REST yet, it’s the speedy, light weight, easy to use new version of the iControl API. You can programmatically control your F5 devices in just about any fashion you’d like, which has pretty much always been the case. What’s new, however, is how simple the process is thanks to the REST based API. This series is intended to get you up to speed on how to make use of it, so take a look and start digging in. Inside you’ll find the single command required to begin adding configuration objects like pools, VIPs…even iRules, to your devices. What are you waiting for?
TCP Congestion Control: The Mobile Network of Today, It’s Time to Improve
While I’m often found prattling on about things like programming in iRules or REST based APIs, because let’s face it I’m just that flavor of geek, there are many other things that twirl my beanie enough to make it to my little corner of your inbox here in the Top5. One such thing is the idea that this killer post from Dawn is talking about: adding efficiency at a level that is near ubiquitous. Somewhere that it will effect nearly everything traversing the network. Something with even more pervasiveness and reach than the herculean HTTP. You know, something like, oh I don’t know … TCP. One of the things at which the uber engineers deep in the subterranean laboratories of F5 have been hard at work is tweaking our implementation of this grand master of all protocols to get a little more juice out of it. By improving overall TCP performance, anything sitting on top of it (see: nearly everything) stands to benefit. How does congestion control play into things? Why are we talking about TCP in relation specifically to the mobile network which, as you know, is the fastest growing network segment out there? For that you’ll have to read the article, but trust me, it’s worth your time.
RSA Impressions: The Intersection of Security and SDN
Lake Baikal, the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the Mariana Trench – Merely a few things that can be considered shallow in relation to the depths to which it can be said that I am not “a security guy”. That’s not to say that security doesn’t interest me, rather that I just think wrong for security. When I see massively pervasive logging, huge amounts of data collection, systems needing to communicate to be integrated, I immediately think “Automation! Yay!”. Those, however, are fighting words in the eyes of many security types, as Lori so astutely points out in her commentary about some of the things she saw at RSA. I get that security folk historically hate me for my appreciation … love … adoration … worship of programmability, flexible solutions, and automation. That doesn’t mean it can’t benefit them, and all of us. As more and more data is collected, and let’s be clear that some of the most guilty parties in regards to data collection and logging are security systems, there is more information to be sorted, cataloged, identified and acted upon. Surely you aren’t logging all of that stuff for your health, right? You want to, given the right set of criteria and circumstance, make some kind of change. Lori has some good thoughts on automation, SDN, security and the way those three potentially disparate concepts interact. If I were you I’d go read up and see what you think.
DNS Express and Zone Transfers
John Wagnon, quickly becoming the “full meal deal” king when it comes to showing off cool technical concepts, is at it again. I say full meal deal king because he has a knack for digging into a particular feature or technology and showing you, from beginning to end, how to get things up and running. This time he has chosen DNS express and zone transfers, and the result is equally as awesome as his other forays into in-depth elucidation. He’ll walk you through GTM provisioning, zone creation, DNS Express configuration, zone transferring and even testing. You can have pretty much no idea what you’re doing with GTM or DNS Express, and sit down with just this article and walk away with a working, useful box. How handy is that, right? That should be more than enough to sell you, but in case it’s not, and in honor of RSA last week, how about the note he adds to his post. The one that reminds us that BIND has 71 individual vulnerabilities as of the time of this article. Did it just get cold in here, because I got a chill up my spine at that thought. Get to it, read the article, and see about making your world just a little bit better, and potentially safer, with GTM and DNS express.
The Application Delivery Network Must Promote Innovation
If ever a single sentence from a brand new DevCentral blogger has caught my attention and made me leap for the “follow” function, it is this “A programmable and scalable application delivery fabric with application services can bridge the gap” I’m in. Right then, right there, I’m in. I don’t care what the fabric looks like, or even what the gap is…I’m on board. Okay, maybe I’m marginally more discriminating than that, but the rest of Mohan’s inaugural article is near equally as impressive. He’s got an excellent handle on the role that application delivery really plays. It’s a lot more than just a functioning network tap for applications to plug into. It is about optimization, flexibility, rapid deployment, security, scalability, application fluency and more. Most of those are things that are mentioned in this article in far more detail. If you want to peruse a solid description of just what an application can and should expect from a properly tuned and implemented delivery network, or delve into why such things are vitally important for continued application and business innovation, this is where your next five minutes should go.