Virtualization 1 of 4 – Hypervisor

In broad terms, virtualization of computing resource is about isolation of resources, at different levels. There are five levels of virtualization: In my context I deal mostly with OS level and HAL (hardware abstraction layer) level of virtualization. In loose terms, the word containerization refers to OS level virtualization, while the word virtualization is exclusively … Read moreVirtualization 1 of 4 – Hypervisor

How NFS works

I touched on NFS in several previous postings, and here is a deeper dive of this particular protocol. NFS is built on top of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and therefore it is important to understand RPC first. In fact NFS is one of the most prominent user of RPC and the best example for learning … Read moreHow NFS works

EMC Isilon

EMC has several product lines for different use cases in enterprise data storage. Like may other IT solutions, the website is clouded with marketing terms and slogans, and is purposefully not technical. This makes it difficult for technical staff to grasp the advantage of its product in a glimpse. I personally have to know their … Read moreEMC Isilon

Performance Analysis

Overview In 2015, Brendan Gregg posted two great articles on Netflix blog: Linux Performance Analysis in 60 seconds, and Linux Perfomrance Tools. They have great value when I was in a urgency to spot performance issues. The articles cover the essential tools for performance troubleshooting, including: We will dive into each of them in the … Read morePerformance Analysis

Capture filter and Display filter in Network Analyzer

Capture filter is set before collecting packets. It is applied at the time of data acquisition and it impacts the size of the capture. It does not have as many variations as display filter and is usually not aware of protocols above TCP/UDP layer. A common form of capture filter is BPF (Berkerly Packet Filter) … Read moreCapture filter and Display filter in Network Analyzer

Networking Basics 3 of 3 – common network protocols and technologies

The 5 layer TCP/IP model (or its more rigorously defined alternative OSI model) leads to a whole world of network protocols. Understanding these new protocols requires one to map it out agains the network layers (e.g. at Layer 4 whether it is TCP or UDP, etc) . VPN is a whole family of technologies with … Read moreNetworking Basics 3 of 3 – common network protocols and technologies