{"id":31414,"date":"2019-10-31T21:41:08","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T18:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/blog\/cisco-live-2019-emea-tehnicheskie-sessii-vneshnee-uproshhenie-s-vnutrennim-uslozhneniem\/"},"modified":"2019-10-31T21:41:08","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T18:41:08","slug":"cisco-live-2019-emea-tehnicheskie-sessii-vneshnee-uproshhenie-s-vnutrennim-uslozhneniem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/en\/blog\/administrirovanie\/cisco-live-2019-emea-tehnicheskie-sessii-vneshnee-uproshhenie-s-vnutrennim-uslozhneniem","title":{"rendered":"Cisco Live 2019 EMEA. Technical sessions: external simplification with internal complexity","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cisco
\n
\nI am Artem Klavdiev, the technical leader of the HyperCloud hyper-converged cloud project at Linxdatacenter. Today, I will continue the story about the global conference Cisco Live EMEA 2019. Let's immediately move from the general to the specific, to the announcements presented by the vendor during the specialized sessions.<\/i><\/p>\n

This was my first participation at Cisco Live, with the mission to attend the technical program events, immerse myself in the world of advanced technologies and solutions, and establish myself at the forefront of specialists involved in Cisco's product ecosystem in Russia.
\nImplementing this mission in practice turned out to be quite challenging: the technical session program was extremely packed. It was physically impossible to attend all round tables, panels, workshops, and discussions, which were divided into numerous sections and started in parallel. Everything was discussed: data centers, networks, cybersecurity, software solutions, hardware \u2013 any aspect of Cisco and the vendor's partners' operations was presented in a separate section, with a huge number of events. I had to follow the organizers' recommendations and create my own personal agenda for the events, reserving seats in the halls in advance. <\/p>\n

I will elaborate on the sessions I managed to attend.
\n<\/a><\/noindex><\/p>\n

Accelerating Big Data and AI\/ML on UCS and HX<\/h2>\n

\"Cisco
\n
\nThis session was dedicated to reviewing Cisco's platforms for developing artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions. It was a semi-marketing event with some technical elements included. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The essence is this: today, IT engineers and data specialists spend a significant amount of time and resources designing architectures that combine legacy infrastructure, several stacks to enable machine learning, and software to manage this complex. <\/p>\n

Cisco aims to simplify this task: the vendor focuses on changing traditional patterns of data center management and workflows by enhancing the integration of all necessary components for AI\/ML. <\/p>\n

As an example, a case of collaboration between Cisco and Google<\/a><\/noindex>: companies combine UCS and HyperFlex platforms with leading industry software products for AI\/ML such as\u00a0KubeFlow<\/a><\/noindex> to create a comprehensive on-premise infrastructure. <\/p>\n

The company explained how KubeFlow, deployed based on UCS\/HX in conjunction with the Cisco Container Platform, transforms the solution into what the company's employees referred to as the \"Cisco\/Google open hybrid cloud\" \u2013 an infrastructure where symmetric development and operation of the working environment for AI tasks can be implemented simultaneously on-premise and in Google Cloud.<\/p>\n

Session on the Internet of Things (IoT)<\/h2>\n

\n\"Cisco
\n
\nCisco actively promotes the need for IoT development based on its own networking solutions. The company discussed its Industrial Router product \u2013 a special line of compact LTE switches and routers with enhanced reliability, moisture resistance, and no moving parts. These switches can be integrated into any object in the surrounding world: transportation, industrial sites, commercial buildings. The main idea is: \"Deploy these switches at your locations and manage them from the cloud using a centralized console.\" The line operates on Kinetic Software for optimizing remote deployment and management. The goal is to enhance the manageability of IoT systems. <\/p>\n

ACI-Multisite Architecture and Deployment (ACI or Application Centric Infrastructure, and network micro-segmentation)<\/h2>\n

\n\"Cisco
\n
\nSession focused on the concept of infrastructure oriented towards network micro-segmentation. This was the most complex and detailed session I attended. The general message from Cisco was as follows: previously, traditional IT system components (network, servers, storage systems, etc.) were connected and configured separately. The engineers' task was to integrate everything into a unified manageable working environment. UCS changed the situation \u2013 the networking part became a separate domain, while server management was centralized from a single panel. It doesn\u2019t matter how many servers \u2013 10 or 10,000, any number can be controlled from a single management point, managing and transferring data occurs through a single cable. ACI allows the integration of both networking and server management into one control console.<\/p>\n

Thus, network micro-segmentation is a crucial feature of ACI that allows granular separation of applications within a system with varying levels of interaction between themselves and the outside world. For example, two virtual machines managed by ACI cannot communicate with each other by default. Interaction is enabled only by opening a so-called \"contract\" that allows for detailed access lists for fine (in other words, micro) network segmentation. <\/p>\n

Micro-segmentation enables precise tuning of any segment of IT systems by isolating any components and linking them together in various configurations of physical and virtual machines. Groups of endpoint groups (EPG) are created, to which filtering and traffic routing policies are applied. Cisco ACI allows grouping these EPGs in existing applications into new micro-segments (uSeg) and configuring network policies or VM attributes for each specific element of the micro-segment.<\/p>\n

For instance, you can assign web servers to a certain EPG to apply the same policies to them. By default, all computing nodes in the EPG can freely communicate with each other. However, if the web EPG includes web servers for development and production stages, it might make sense to prohibit them from communicating with each other to prevent failures. Micro-segmentation with Cisco ACI allows creating a new EPG and automatically writing policies based on VM name attributes such as \"Prod-xxxx\" or \"Dev-xxx.\"<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, this was one of the key sessions of the technical program.<\/p>\n

Effective evolution of a DC Networking (Evolution of Data Center Networks in the Context of Virtualization Technologies)<\/h2>\n

\"Cisco
\n
\nThis session was logically linked to the session on network micro-segmentation, and also covered the topic of container networking. Overall, it discussed the migration from one generation of virtual routers to another \u2013 with architectural schemes, connection schemes between different hypervisors, etc. <\/p>\n

Thus, the ACI architecture \u2013 VXLAN, micro-segmentation, and a distributed firewall, which allow configuring the firewall for a conditional 100 virtual machines.
\nThe ACI architecture allows these operations to be performed not at the level of the virtual OS, but at the level of the virtual network: it is safer to configure a specific set of rules for each machine not from the OS manually, but at the level of the virtualized network, making it safer, faster, and less labor-intensive, etc. The best control over everything happening is at each segment of the network. What's new:<\/p>\n