Networking has become a utility in our daily lives, but it is still evolving as a platform for modern commerce. CFEngine has now taken networking beyond simple automation, by bringing modern self-repairing, model-oriented approaches to WebScale management at the IP layer. Network interface configuration is nothing new in the world of configuration management. CFEngine versions 1 and 2 were plugging the obvious hole in the out-of-the-box experience during the mid 1990s, before operating systems finally got their acts together. In 2007, CFEngine even explored Layer 3 WAN management (IP routing by any other name) as a member of the EMANICS network of excellence - but, back then, the market was not ready. The dominant networking vendors were still largely concerned with proprietary architecture, steeped in feature-based competition. However, the more recent arrival of Linux as a network operating system has changed that. The adoption and development of the Linux kernel by several companies has pulled down the vendor wall to let in Open Source. Significantly, for the industry, the growth fueled by Open Source has led to the birth of modern datacenter engineering, and DevOps. Recently, with the discussion of Software Defined Networking (SDN), and the arrival of DevOps in the networking space, several tool providers have waded into the world of Layer 2 networking - bonds, bridges and VLANs - which is the comfort zone of most system administrators. However, the historically complex Layer 3 routing services have thus far been neglected. In order to change this, CFEngine founder Mark Burgess has been working with Dinesh Dutt of Cumulus Networks to come up with a model of Layer 3 networking based on CFEngine’s Promise Theory approach to scalable management.
Are you a CFEngine user in sunny Los Angeles interested in learning more about the new CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0? If so, you should definitely look into attending a joint meetup being held by the LA CFEngine User Group and the League of Professional System Adminstrators (LOPSA) next Tuesday, July 8th, at 7pm in the Marina Del Ray area. CFEngine System Engineer Nick Anderson will be at the event to speak about some of the new and enhanced features of CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0, such as enhanced inventory and reporting capabilities, improved templating, and new language abstractions. He will also be available to answer any CFEngine questions you might have. You can learn more and register here. We hope to see you there next week!
We had a fantastic webinar last month with CFEngine CTO Mark Burgess and guest speaker Forrester Research, Inc. Vice President and Research Director Glenn O’Donnell. During this wide-ranging discussion, Mark and Glenn discussed the concept of continuous operations, and how great service design combined with automation can empower organizations to survive and thrive in what is becoming know as “The Age of the Customer.” Mark also talked about Promise Theory and gave a short look at CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0. Be sure to check out the recording here!
There is still time to register for one of our upcoming “Introduction to CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0” webinars being held next Tuesday and Wednesday. By attending one of these live webinars, you will learn how CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0 can help you:
Proactively alert on policy drifts in your environment through a simple-to-use, configurable dashboard Gain comprehensive visibility into your IT infrastructure with enhanced compliance and and extensible inventory reporting Leverage new language abstractions to improve administration productivity Achieve painless integration with other IT systems using native JSON support Please visit our registration pages to learn more and sign up today:
Are you interested in learning more about WebScale IT and its increasing relevance to the enterprise datacenter? If so, you should definitely check out the global online event ‘WebScale Wednesday’ being hosted this week by Nutanix. Our CTO and Co-founder Mark Burgess will be participating in this event alongside pioneers and practitioners from companies such as Dell, Twitter, and Citrix for an engaging and interactive discussion around WebScale IT and how it is making its way into the mainstream datacenter. The event stream live from 9am to noon this Wednesday, June 25th, and there are various sessions throughout the morning you can choose to attend. You can learn more about the agenda and speakers at the registration page here. Sign up before the event and get a free t-shirt - we hope to see you there!
Big news today - I am happy to share the news that CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0 has been released! This release is a huge step forward for our company and our customers, with a number of both new and enhanced features designed for providing a secure, scalable, and reliable foundation for IT automation. Customers and users are crucial when it comes to feedback and continuous improvement. The fact that CFEngine 3.6.0 leapfrogs the competition across many facets is testament to an innovative development team working in tandem with customers experiencing and solving real world IT issues together. With 3.6.0 we have addressed some key needs you put forth:
There is still time to register for our upcoming webinar with Forrester Research this Thursday! Please join CFEngine Co-Founder and CTO Mark Burgess and guest speaker Forrester Research, Inc. Vice President and Research Director Glenn O’Donnell for a fascinating look into the principles of continuous operations and service management - and how great service design combined with automation can empower your organization to survive and thrive in what is becoming know as “The Age of the Customer.”
Introduction CFEngine users version their policies. It’s a reasonable, easy thing to do: you just put /var/cfengine/masterfiles under version control and… you’re done?
What do you think? How do you version your own infrastructure?
Problem statement It turns out everyone likes convenience and writing the versioning machinery is hard. So for CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0 we set out to provide version control integration with Git out of the box, disabled by default. This allows users to use branches for separate hubs (which enables a policy release pipeline) and enables Design Center integration.
Companies of all sizes are under pressure to succeed in competitive environments requiring them to move faster with expectations of always-on service from their IT organization. However, these same IT groups are faced with significant challenges from manual processes, homegrown patchwork solutions, disparate systems, and other legacy problems. In order to overcome these issues, companies need to automate their infrastructure in an intelligent way to keep up with the pace of the business while at the same time providing a secure and stable environment to deploy complex multi-tier applications to local or cloud infrastructure. By implementing a solution that enables continuous operations, companies can gain complete visibility and alert capabilities that can automate compliance checks, audits, and remediation using a policy-based approach. Join us for a discussion on Thursday June 19th at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT featuring guest speaker, Forrester Research, Inc. Vice President and Research Director Glenn O’Donnell **** and CFEngine Co-Founder and CTO Mark Burgess as they talk about the principles of continuous operations and how complete visibility combined with phased deployment rollouts can minimize risk and maximize uptime. Most importantly, you’ll also learn about how you can get started on implementing continuous operations within your organization. We hope to see you there! CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TODAY Speakers: Glenn O’Donnell, VP and Research Director Serving Infrastructure & Operations at Forrester Research Glenn serves Infrastructure & Operations Professionals. He is widely regarded as a top thought leader in IT service management, IT operations, and the broader social implications of technology evolution. Glenn’s specialties are in data center automation and operational excellence. He is the co-author of The CMDB Imperative, a book on CMDB best practices. Mark Burgess, Founder and CTO at CFEngine Mark Burgess is the creator and main technical architect of the popular CFEngine open source IT automation software. He was the first person internationally to hold the title of ‘Professor of Network and System Administration’, at Oslo University College. He now leads the research and development of the CFEngine software full time.
Yesterday, I had an amazing opportunity to participate in the inaugural Internet of Things (IoT) Expo held at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The event was conceived by Jeremy Geelan who is also behind the highly successful Cloud Expo events. The IoT Expo was well attended with many excellent keynotes and product demonstrations. Among others, industry leaders such as Tony Shakib (VP, IoT vertical at Cisco), Omri Lachman (Co-Founder and CEO Humavox), and Joe Speed (Director of IoT at the Linux Foundation) gave us very compelling insights into what IoT can achieve, its potential, as well as issues that still need to be solved for. Later in the day, I participated in a panel discussion with Peter Moskovits (Kaazing) and David Nielsen (Cloud Computing Evangelist and Consultant) around the following questions:
