The Network Shokunin

So, why study for a Cloud Networking certification? So, that was a wake-up call! Just taken my first attempt at the AWS Networking Specialty exam and it was an experience! I've been saying to my team for some time that in order to really understand the networking within cloud environments, and to get the optimum experience for customers in those environments, you need to really appreciate how applications are deployed, and the elements in AWS and Azure you need to make those applications reliable and scalable, And if ever I needed confirmation of that, I got it this morning.  The exam has 60 questions for which you're given 3 hours to complete them.  You shouldn't need that, but my goodness, it's tough and just illustrates how the paradigm shift to Cloud highlights what we have known for years - DC (and thus Cloud) networking is all about enabling application flows. If you're planning on looking into this (and as a networker you should - whether you believe ...

(#2 of 7) In the first post in this series , I shared a summary of my fundamental design principles which I try to apply to every network design I am involved in.  The follow-ups to that summary post will discuss these at greater length - this one addresses Network Availability. The network exists to provide the transport for endpoints to be able to consume services in a "remote" location.    Whether the endpoints are application servers in racks in a DC trying to consume database entries, wireless clients accessing an application in the data centre, sensors collecting data and dropping that data into storage, and regardless of location of the services themselves - public cloud, private cloud, co-lo DC - the fundamental measure of success of the network is availability of the service to the endpoint and thus the user. Clearly then availability can't be considered a simple measure of the network as a whole - it takes a number of capabilities and properties ...