2014-04-27

A Day of Remembrance - Holocaust Day

I just finished watching the opening ceremony of the Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah 
(Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day) were both our President and Prime Minister addressed the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors that are still alive today.

I do not write about politics on this on this blog and I do not do religion either. But every now and again there is something that is close to my heart that I do feel I need to share. Sometimes there are things that make my blood boil that I cannot keep quiet about, so please forgive me.

Less than 10 days ago this made the headlines.

Posters demand Ukraine Jews 'pay new tax or leave'

I do not care if it was a hoax.

I do not care if it was propaganda.

I do not care if it was used as a tool to defame one side of the other in the conflict currently in the Ukraine.

I do care that this reminds me of a dark time in the world’s history where 6,000,000 (that is 6 million) Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust.

My answer to things like this are in the pictures below.

Photo1

Photo2
Photo3

And I would like to explain to you all what it is that you see in these pictures.

Those are two of my daughters, and they are playing hopscotch. This was taken in Netanya, Israel - 10 days ago.

In the background you can see a train car, actually it is a cattle car, a real cattle car that was used in Germany to transport Jews to their death (and this car was brought here to Israel by family survivors as a monument), to the concentration camps, where many of my wife’s family were killed during the Holocaust.

I find it only fitting that such a historical monument is now in Israel, and is being used to teach the young generation about what happened more than 70 years ago. The plan was to exterminate the Jewish race, and today my answer is, 4 generations later, my children play with such monuments in the background, with a the Israeli flag flying right beside it, in their own country – where do not have to fear.

To end my thought I would like to quote Erwin Leiser – from his documentary Mein Kampf (1960)

The narrator's final words, over a general shot of Auschwitz, are,
"It must never happen again -- never again."

2014-04-07

Software-Defined Networks (SDN) and the Cloud

This is a re-post of my article, originally published on The Ravello Blog.

SDNThe advent of the cloud has brought with it major changes in the size and nature of networks. These changes pose new challenges for network management. Software-defined networks (SDN) have the potential for helping network managers cope with their ever increasing workloads.

In the public cloud, the network could be very different from what it is in the datacenter. By enabling the automation of network configuration, Software-Defined Networks make it possible to manage network interfaces in the same way as software.

SDN presents the network administrator with the option of handing some or all aspects of network provisioning and management to a third party. The configuration of the network, which includes things such as host names, IP address and firewall rules, is an essential part of an application’s configuration. The configuration can be performed on-demand through the same interface or using an API.

This approach is particularly relevant for large-scale enterprise deployments, where large workloads necessitate automatic on-the-fly configuration, and sometimes even multiple replicas of identical networks, maintaining complete segregation.

The SDN Market

The main players in today’s SDN market are Cisco and VMware. With the acquisition of NSX, VMware is currently promoting its SDN offering as the next step in the evolution of virtualization. NSX lays down an “overlay” network on top of your existing network with the aim of saving time on configuration, improving performances, and lower costs. Cisco, on the other hand, offers a solution that combines SDN and infrastructure. It enables you to define and enforce policies through application-centric infrastructure.

Unfortunately, SDN implementation is not easy – it is not compatible with default networks, and requires a lot of work on infrastructure.

Prospects for SDN Adoption

Despite the optimism of SDN proponents, it is likely to take time before the adoption of SDNs truly catches on. When the concept of server virtualization was first introduced, it was difficult to convince the enterprise that it was reliable to virtualize their workloads – to recognize their potential and make the necessary adjustments to enable their adoption. Similarly, the spread of SDN adoption will probably be gradual. SDN faces the challenge of overcoming decision-makers’ fears of losing control. It takes time to establish trust in any new technology and changes in organization culture rarely occur overnight. Ongoing developments in network virtualization and SDNs definitely merit monitoring and consideration.