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Archives for September 2012

Open Rack 1.0 Specification Available Now – Open Compute Project

By Filed Under: Blog

I’m still watching the development of the Open Rack specification as part of the Open Compute Project with a lot of hope and excitement. The development os a power bus and changed back to 600mm wide rack is good news. I like the “hardware API” concept because certain “cloud experts” might actually listen:

The Open Rack is more than just a server cabinet; it’s also an abstraction layer between the server and the rack, like a hardware API. The rack’s modular equipment bay — which contains the compute, storage, and other related hardware — provides a large degree of flexibility when it comes to configuration. The Open Rack design guide provides specifications and guidelines to show suppliers of IT equipment how they can build systems compatible with the Open Rack.

It’s probably too early to consider this today, but in the future, this looks like an exciting change in our data centre physical plant.

 

 

via Open Rack 1.0 Specification Available Now – Open Compute Project.

Official: Cisco Says The ACE is not dead. It’s just resting.

By Filed Under: Blog, Cisco

Spoke with a Cisco spokesperson regarding the ACE and what it’s product future looks like. Here is the official statement:

Cisco routinely reviews its business to determine where it needs to align investment based on growth opportunities. In assessing the data center market, which is undergoing a fundamental transformation with virtualization, cloud, and new service delivery models, Cisco is re-evaluating traditional load-balancing approaches, including its ACE product line, to ensure it continues meeting customer needs in this environment. Cisco will continue to support our current product portfolio. Cisco is not exiting the market, but as the market is evolving we are looking at new ways to deliver our load balancing technology. We will share additional details as they become available

Yeah, OK. PR babble. Get over it.

As I said in my earlier article, Dim Future of the ACE and WAAS I take the view that Cisco is quitting the proprietary hardware business for the Application Control Engine.

Five years ago, 10 gigabit per second load balancing performance required custom silicon. Cisco loves to make it’s own silicon. And then embedding it into the Catalyst 6500 product line made sense.  

Today, you can get that sort of performance from an OEM Intel based motherboard and some good quality control on manufacturing. Look at A10 and Barracuda for these products.  However, the custom silicon makes developing software harder, expensive and slow. Slow is the worst of these because the product is inflexible and unable to change, adapt and add new features. That’s what is preventing the ACE product line from moving forward. 

So, moving the ACE kernel over to Intel motherboards would make sense. More features, faster and for cheaper. They just need to retool the development chain. 

If I was cynically minded, Cisco could be testing the market to see if enough customers (read, big customers) complain and kick up a big stink. 

The EtherealMind View

I’d expect to see the ACE on C-Series servers or an OEM server in the near future. The Cisco ACE doesn’t look likes it’s dead yet. It’s just resting

Warning: Cisco has been known to kill products after taking months to make a final decision. I’m by no means convinced that the ACE has a future, but I can see that Cisco might need to keep the product around as part of the overall data centre strategy.  

PS: Monty Python reference again. WINNING.

Internets of Interest for 25th September 2012

By Filed Under: Bookmarks

 

Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 25th September 2012 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them:

Requiem for the ACE « The Data Center Overlords – Tony Bourke goes deep on the history of the Cisco ACE Load Balancer and consider what is happening to the product and why.

However, there was a statement Cisco sent to CRN confirming the rumor, and my conversations with people inside Cisco have confirmed that yes, the ACE is dead. Or at least, that’s the understanding of Cisco employees in several areas. The word I’m getting will be bug-fixed and security-fixed, but further development will halt. The ACE may not officially be EOL/EOS, but for all intents and purposes, and until I hear otherwise, it’s a dead-end product.

Very good post. Note that Tony has been teaching and focussing on load balancers for 10 years or so.

Boom: Pins – Apple Lightning Cable and Connector –

These assumptions also underlie the oft-cited intention of “waiting for the $1 cables/adapters”. But, recall that Apple specifically said that Lightning is an all-digital, adaptive interface. USB3 is not adaptive, although it can be called digital in that it has two digital signal paths implemented as differential pairs. If you abandon assumptions 1 and 2, assumption 3 becomes just silly. Remember, the SlimPort designers put a few simple digital signals on the connector and converted them – just a cm or so away – into another standards’ differential wire pairs by putting a chip inside the plug.

Source Code Pro | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net – Download the Adobe Source Code Pro Font from Sourceforge

A set of monospaced OpenType fonts designed for coding environments

Cisco Blog » Blog Archive » Cisco Announces New Nexus 1100 Series Virtual Services Appliances –

Gary Kinghorn from Cisco wraps up the latest announcements from the team that does the Nexus 1000 platform and some Borderless Network products including vSG, ASA v9.0, Cloud Router and more. Good launching point to catch up with the flurry of announcements.

Cisco ACE is not EOL or dead ? Needs 40 Million Volts

By Filed Under: Response

Steven Schuchart from Cisco Analyst Relations leaves a comment over at Nerd Twilight to let us know that the Cisco ACE isn’t dead. Presumably, it’s about to get “40 million volts through it” to prove it’s “not dead”

Yup I understand that there has been a lot of confusion and difficulty regarding ACE in the press and a lot of generally unnamed Cisco sources. That’s our fault, we were not proactive enough about this.

However, I am telling you, as a representative of Cisco’s Analyst Relations team responsible for ACE, that we have NOT discontinued the current generation of ACE.

My current view is that Cisco is likely to be ditching the proprietary hardware of the ACE30 and probably the 4710 etc to move to Intel motherboards like the C-Series to reduce costs and increase commoditisation.The second part is to develop add ons to Nexus 1000V like Virtual Security Gateway in vPath 2.0.

Most of the major vendors are doing this – witness HP Storage who have moved almost all their storage platforms to commodity Intel server hardware over the last two years.

The head count reductions and closures likely reflect the change to software focus and probably not the end of the product. Still, Cisco has closed a lot of products down over the years and its hard not to believe that Cisco will continue to fail to execute on products and pull them from the market. We have plenty practical experience is Cisco abandoning products because it’s suits them.

via Cisco Puts ACE in the Hole (or Maybe Not) | Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds.

 

(Monty Python reference FTW!)

Response:Source Code Pro – monospaced terminal font from Adobe

By Filed Under: Blog, Operation

Blog post from Adobe that discusses the background behind the Source Code monospace font and why it’s different. Today, my preferred monospace font for terminal use is Consolas but I’ll be trying this out for a while since it’s free and freely available. Once problem with Consolas is that it doesn’t anti-alias very well. That’s a nice gift from Adobe to the community.

The font goes to a lot of trouble to visually differentiate between similar characters such  l, 1 and I and aids better troubleshooting.

Certainly it’s better than any of monospaced fonts that ship by default in MS Windows and working in putty with those fonts can be a serious problem.

Announcing Source Code Pro « Typblography.

You can find the font download on Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcecodepro.adobe/

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