Researchers find “massive” security flaws in cloud architectures

by ·0 Comment

October 27th 2011

Researchers find “massive” security flaws in cloud architectures

Very interesting article published by Network World today highlighting the massive security flaws discovered in many cloud architectures.
The full article is here

Moving services to the cloud can save businesses money and can convert capex costs to ongoing opex, however major consideration does need to be given in the critical areas of security of your data, and service availability. The preceding article suggests that the integrated security architectures of some cloud services is not as good as the vendors would like you to think they are.

Barry Hesk

Cisco IOS Subnet Calculator

by ·0 Comment

Oct 24 2011

Cisco IOS Subnet Calculator

Quick one this morning. IOS has loads of pretty much undocumented features (e.g. using the “do” command in config mode) that make life so much easier. We’ve come across another one – the “terminal ip netmask-format” command. This allows you to display the netmask on an interface is one of three formats – bit-count (slash notation), decimal and hex. Avoids the constant use of all of those subnet calculators!

Router#terminal ip netmask-format bit
Router#show int f0/0.1
FastEthernet0/0.1 is up, line protocol is up
Hardware is Gt96k FE, address is 001b.d58f.76de (bia 001b.d58f.76de)
Internet address is 10.1.200.254/24
MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit/sec, DLY 100 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
Encapsulation 802.1Q Virtual LAN, Vlan ID 1.
Keepalive set (10 sec)
ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
Last clearing of “show interface” counters never
Router#terminal ip netmask-format decimal
Router#show int f0/0.1
FastEthernet0/0.1 is up, line protocol is up
Hardware is Gt96k FE, address is 001b.d58f.76de (bia 001b.d58f.76de)
Internet address is 10.1.200.254 255.255.255.0
MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit/sec, DLY 100 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
Encapsulation 802.1Q Virtual LAN, Vlan ID 1.
Keepalive set (10 sec)
ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
Last clearing of “show interface” counters never
Router#terminal ip netmask-format hex
Router#show int f0/1.1
FastEthernet0/0.1 is up, line protocol is up
Hardware is Gt96k FE, address is 001b.d58f.76de (bia 001b.d58f.76de)
Internet address is 10.1.200.254 0xFFFFFF00
MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit/sec, DLY 100 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
Encapsulation 802.1Q Virtual LAN, Vlan ID 1.
Keepalive set (10 sec)
ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
Last clearing of “show interface” counters never

Barry Hesk

Cisco announces new Nexus Switches and ASA

by ·0 Comment

20th October 2011

Cisco announces new Nexus Switches

Cisco today announced their latest iteration of the Nexus coverged storage and data switches.

Network World have a good article covering the announcements

In summary:

  • New switching fabric called imaginatively, “fabric-2” which scales to 550GB per slot – more than twice the thoughput on the original fabric.
  • New Nexus 3016 which provides 16 ports of 40GB Ethernet.
  • New Nexus 4048 – provides 48 10/100/1000 Mbps ports plus 10GB uplinks
  • Fabricpath support for the Nexus 5500 series providing multiple active layer 2 paths across a “top of rack” topology
  • ASA 1000V firewall – Cisco’s first purely software based firewall – using the same underlying technology as the 1000V switch

Price points are said to be “competitive” – which for Nexus probably means “expensive”.

Barry Hesk

Cisco and HP working together again..?

by ·0 Comment

17th October 2011

Cisco and HP working together again..?

Following their well documented falling out a couple of years ago when Cisco moved aggressively into the Data Centre server market to compete directly against HP, the two companies haven’t exactly been on speaking terms. Indeed, HP’s acquisition of 3COM was almost definitely a reaction to this spat and Cisco no longer re-badge any of HP’s technology in the MCS 7800 server range, with all of these units coming from IBM.

However, maybe things are changing. Cisco and HP have collaborated on the Cisco Nexus B22 Fabric Extender for HP. This unit offers tight integration between HP BladeSystem and Cisco Nexus 5000/7000 switches.

More details on the solution are available here.

Maybe a solution for world peace may be possible after all then….

Barry