Day 8 - Virtual - Monthly Missions - Contests & Missions

For me, "virtual" is a buzzword being used to sell me the idea that things are simple and easy to configure.

Many years ago, networking people achieved some virtualization by running VLANs in order to segregate traffic through their switches, saving money from having to build separate layer-2 infrastructures. Today, we are facing the challenge of deeper network virtualization: I have physical routers running several virtual routers with many virtual routing instances with hundreds of virtual switches, all combining to support thousands of virtual LANs. In the heart of these virtual networks, we have firewalls and other security devices all with their own virtual contexts and configuration.

Some challenges simply come from scale: show arp can return tens of thousands of rows, but you have to use just the right SNMP community to reach the right context to look at the routing table you want. Polling may not even complete in a "reasonable" time.

But other challenges come from complexity. How do I know that the subnet has been deployed properly with the right routing, firewall rules, and DHCP configuration? Why does it take several people to deploy a new subnet into a virtualized network? Why can’t one simply “vmotion” a subnet from building to another (in a different city) and have it just work?

What are your challenges as the whole infrastructure stack becomes more nebulous, complex, and virtual?

Top Comments

Parents

adatole over 6 years ago

(Courtesy Note: The following comment discusses items of an overtly religious nature. If that's not your thing, you are welcome to scroll along. I don't want anyone to feel like I'm pushing a particular worldview on them unexpectedly.)
What is real, and what is virtual? Is it a matter of perspective?
Two competing religious narrative elements that get discussed frequently are:
1) the inability of humans to comprehend God in any way, and therefore a general prohibition against creating images of God which would "limit" God's infinity in the mind of the viewer
...and...
2) the repeated use of anthropomorphic terms to describe God (the Hand of God, the Finger of God, God's outstretched Arm, etc).
Combine that with the description - appearing near the very start of Torah/Bible/Pentateuch/Old Testament that humans were created b'tzelem Elokim (in the image of God) and you have a conundrum of... well, biblical proportions.
Does God have a hand, arm, etc? Or is the Torah lying for the sake of metaphor? (If true, either one of these would lead to a series of issues that threaten to tear apart the validity of the entire text). On top of that, isn't the Torah doing exactly what we are prohibited from - describing God using imagery which is intrinsically limiting?
In his book "World Mask", Rabbi Akiva Tatz presents the ideas of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, or "the Rambam) that cuts to the heart of what is "virtual".
Maimonides, Rabbi Tatz explains, teaches that we have the relationship all wrong. It's tempting to read the Torah and think "God has a hand just like ours.". But that's not it. The Torah's language is God has the REAL hand - whatever that means on a cosmic level - and what we have - the thing we call a hand - is the pretend, metaphorical, VIRTUAL item. What we call a "hand" is a pale reflection of a true hand. A simplistic scaled-down version that helps us understand, at a rudamentary level, what a hand is supposed to be.
Some potential take-aways for me are:
1) it's important to recognize that our perspective, our point of view, always has the chance of coloring our view of a situation. But just because it can doesn't mean it must. If we acknowledge the potential of bias, we can get past it.
2) what is real and what is ephemeral are not always so clear or cut-and-dried. What is true for a moment may not be what is enduringly true.
...and finally...
3) Points 1 and 2 can be applicable to our work, to our relationships, to the phase our kids (or parents) may be going through as much as it can apply to the grand cosmic drama.
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Comment

adatole over 6 years ago

(Courtesy Note: The following comment discusses items of an overtly religious nature. If that's not your thing, you are welcome to scroll along. I don't want anyone to feel like I'm pushing a particular worldview on them unexpectedly.)
What is real, and what is virtual? Is it a matter of perspective?
Two competing religious narrative elements that get discussed frequently are:
1) the inability of humans to comprehend God in any way, and therefore a general prohibition against creating images of God which would "limit" God's infinity in the mind of the viewer
...and...
2) the repeated use of anthropomorphic terms to describe God (the Hand of God, the Finger of God, God's outstretched Arm, etc).
Combine that with the description - appearing near the very start of Torah/Bible/Pentateuch/Old Testament that humans were created b'tzelem Elokim (in the image of God) and you have a conundrum of... well, biblical proportions.
Does God have a hand, arm, etc? Or is the Torah lying for the sake of metaphor? (If true, either one of these would lead to a series of issues that threaten to tear apart the validity of the entire text). On top of that, isn't the Torah doing exactly what we are prohibited from - describing God using imagery which is intrinsically limiting?
In his book "World Mask", Rabbi Akiva Tatz presents the ideas of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, or "the Rambam) that cuts to the heart of what is "virtual".
Maimonides, Rabbi Tatz explains, teaches that we have the relationship all wrong. It's tempting to read the Torah and think "God has a hand just like ours.". But that's not it. The Torah's language is God has the REAL hand - whatever that means on a cosmic level - and what we have - the thing we call a hand - is the pretend, metaphorical, VIRTUAL item. What we call a "hand" is a pale reflection of a true hand. A simplistic scaled-down version that helps us understand, at a rudamentary level, what a hand is supposed to be.
Some potential take-aways for me are:
1) it's important to recognize that our perspective, our point of view, always has the chance of coloring our view of a situation. But just because it can doesn't mean it must. If we acknowledge the potential of bias, we can get past it.
2) what is real and what is ephemeral are not always so clear or cut-and-dried. What is true for a moment may not be what is enduringly true.
...and finally...
3) Points 1 and 2 can be applicable to our work, to our relationships, to the phase our kids (or parents) may be going through as much as it can apply to the grand cosmic drama.
- Cancel
- Vote Up +4 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel

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