Equinix unveils Tinkerbell open source bare metal provisioning platform

Equinix unveiled Tinkerbell, an all-in-one open source bare metal provisioning platform that is now a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox project.

Equinix describes Tinkerbell as a collection of microservices that together help organizations transform static physical hardware into programmable digital infrastructure regardless of manufacturer, processor architecture, internal components, or networking environment. Tinkerbell currently powers thousands of daily provisions at Equinix Metal, an interconnected and secure bare metal service. 

Tinkerbell has four major components: a DHCP/TFTP server (Boots), a metadata service (Hegel), an in-memory operating system installation environment (Hook) and a workflow engine (Tink). There is also an optional fifth component: a power and boot service (PBnJ) that communicates with the Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs). The workflow engine is comprised of a server and a command line input (CLI), which communicates via remote procedure calls (gRPC).

The latest release of Tinkerbell includes a number of new or improved capabilities:

• New Component: Hook is a next-generation in-memory operating system installation environment that builds on extensive experience. Hook was developed with community participation and is based on popular projects including Docker's LinuxKit. Hook allows end users to quickly rebuild action images, significantly reducing build times from approximately 45 minutes to 90 seconds. Hook also reduces memory footprint while making rebuilding action images for different processor architectures significantly easier. Deployment metrics are available via Prometheus endpoints, allowing operators to monitor their provisioning workflows with their preferred metrics tooling.
• Composable Workflows via Shared Actions: Using the CNCF Artifact Hub, Tinkerbell users can now share and reuse common workflow actions just as they would with container images on Docker Hub. Common Tinkerbell actions are now written in Go and delivered as binaries to make it easier to author new workflows while reducing memory footprint. These actions can also make use of new functionality from Hook to decrease provisioning times through technologies like kexec.
• Cluster API for Tinkerbell: By supporting Cluster API, Tinkerbell is adopting the leading community provider for provisioning Kubernetes clusters, increasing interoperability and decreasing the learning curve for those already familiar with Cluster API. After successful community testing, Cluster API for Tinkerbell (CAP-T) will now be extended to implement the full API.
• Out-of-the-Box Support for Major Operating Systems – Tinkerbell's support for major operating systems such as VMware ESXi, RedHat Enterprise Linux, Windows Server, Flatcar Linux, Ubuntu, CentOS 8, Debian and NixOS has been tested by the community. New configurable actions provide the ability to deploy any operating system on Tinkerbell as covered in the updated Operating System documentation.

The latest Tinkerbell release also includes an updated sandbox that allows users to get up and running with a validated version of the Tinkerbell stack, binaries for both x86 and Arm processors, and introduces a new capability allowing users to swap in and out components. The Tinkerbell sandbox is available through a local development environment on HashiCorp Vagrant Cloud.

https://tinkerbell.org

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Ericsson hits 315 Mbps upload speed with 5G Massive MIMO

Ericsson hit a new benchmark for 5G with Massive MIMO by delivering a single user uplink data rate of 315 Mbps.

The new performance level opens the door for applications such as the sharing of 4K/8K video content captured by consumers with 5G mobile devices.

Ericsson reached near theoretical peak uplink single user throughput leveraging the SU-MIMO technology and uplink (UL) 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) in New Radio (NR) Standalone (SA) mode. This was built on top of Ericsson’s industry leading Uplink Booster implementation and the UL SU-MIMO algorithm automatically adapts the waveforms to further increase the coverage range. It provides the best combination of user data rate, cell capacity, interference suppression and capacity for the uplink.

Accomplished leveraging the 5G Distributed Innovation Network and with various Time Division Duplex (TDD) patterns in Ericsson’s North America headquarters in Plano, Texas, the demonstration reached a peak data rate of 315 Mbps. With a test license of 100 MHz from 3700 MHz to 3800 MHz and a mobile test device powered by the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X60 5G Modem-RF System, Ericsson established a live C-Band network with a commercial 64T64R Advanced Antenna System (AAS) radio on the building rooftop, supported by 5G core software.

“We continue to accelerate 5G across many frontiers,” said Paul Challoner, Vice President of Networks Product Solutions, Ericsson North America. “Ericsson has the expertise and track record to offer the best performing 5G networks globally. We have demonstrated performance enhancements in the downlink and with this demonstration, we have now made a significant breakthrough in the uplink data rates, improving user experience when uploading data to the network.”

https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/6/2021/4/ericsson-accelerates-5g-massive-mimo-single-user-uplink-data-rate-record

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Dell looks to spin off its 81% stake in VMware

Dell Technologies announced plans to spin-off its 81% equity ownership interest in VMware, resulting in two independent companies. The sale could occur by the end of the year depending on regulatory matters.

“By spinning off VMware, we expect to drive additional growth opportunities for Dell Technologies as well as VMware, and unlock significant value for stakeholders," said Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer, Dell Technologies. “Both companies will remain important partners, providing Dell Technologies with a differentiated advantage in how we bring solutions to customers. At the same time, Dell Technologies will continue to modernize its core infrastructure and PC businesses and embrace new opportunities through an open ecosystem to grow in hybrid and private cloud, edge and telecom.”

Upon completion of the spin-off, Michael Dell will remain chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies, as well as chairman of the VMware board. Zane Rowe will remain interim CEO of VMware, and the VMware board of directors will remain unchanged.

Dell Technologies and VMware also plan to enter into a commercial agreement that will preserve the companies’ unique and differentiated approaches to the co-development of critical solutions and alignment on sales and marketing activities. VMware will continue to use Dell Financial Services to help its customers finance their digital transformations.

An investor presentation is here: https://investors.delltechnologies.com/static-files/09096f9a-3f71-4059-b7bb-8c38b6a25904a

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Open Grid Alliance envisions an "edge-in" Internet

A new industry group called the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) announced its plans "to evolve the Internet to be a global, shared platform that distributes compute, data, and intelligence to when and where it’s needed, on demand.

OGA, which counts Dell Technologies, DriveNets, MobiledgeX, PacketFabric, Vapor IO and VMware as founding members, will pursue an "edge-in" vision for the Internet.

“The Internet was built from the core out. Now we need to rebuild it from the edge in,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of edge infrastructure company Vapor IO. “The alliance will accelerate a decades-long journey of innovation at all levels of the stack, from fiber optics to workload automation. We want to align thought leaders, technologies and investments to bring forth applications that simply cannot be delivered on the Internet we have today. The Open Grid is for everybody; it will only emerge from deep industry collaborations, and that’s why we formed the Open Grid Alliance.”

As part of its charter, the OGA will embrace technologies that distribute the economics and flexibility of the cloud through the network edge all the way to end users, making it possible to build new classes of applications that support billions of intelligent devices, the data that they generate, and the new networking infrastructure that underpins their seamless operation.

The OGA will define key principles for the Open Grid and identify interoperable technologies that adhere to those principles. It will document how these technologies will impact cloud providers, developers, vendors, communication service providers (CSPs), internet service providers (ISPs), and end users. The OGA will promote collaboration and open architectures that will enable the dynamic geo-distribution of workloads.

“As human experiences evolve from basic content consumption to real-time immersive collaboration, we see the Internet evolving toward a compute grid and eventually, an intelligence grid. This evolution will enable highly-interactive intelligence applications to be distributed around the globe, on demand,” said Kaniz Mahdi, vice president of advanced technologies, VMware. “We’ve never built something of this scale, and it will require bridging of disparate technologies with multiple levels of abstraction. This will only be possible with a deeper level of collaboration across wireless, cloud, and networking industries.”

“The business of the internet has been the greatest predictor of value creation in our digital economy and created a whole new way of doing business. It removed geographic barriers and changed the way we connect,” said Vish Nandlall, vice president, Technology Strategy and Ecosystems for Dell Technologies. 

“New immersive technologies, interactive applications, and industry 4.0 solutions present a new challenge to the way applications meet subscribers in infinite locations. It requires network functions to be distributed across the connectivity grid at a high elasticity and scale,” said Ido Susan, CEO of DriveNets. 

"A true Open Grid will enable consistency and predictability across multiple clouds and mobile telecom networks with the highest quality of performance. This will make it possible to build next-generation applications and services that leverage the wireless cellular network infrastructure," said Jason Hoffman, CEO of MobiledgeX. "Telecommunications providers require applications that can scale globally and dynamically across highly distributed networks and infrastructure. The Open Grid Alliance is starting one of the most important industry conversations."

“We believe connectivity should be democratized and automated,” said Dave Ward, CEO of PacketFabric. “An Open Grid will incorporate the latest in network automation to deliver applications where and when they're needed. The ability to provision network routes on demand will play a critical role. We're proud to support the Open Grid Alliance in its efforts to bring together multiple industries to architect the most affordable infrastructure that connects users and devices to clouds and private network interconnections."

http://www.opengridalliance.org

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OpenStack marks 23rd release - Wallaby

The OpenStack community released Wallaby, the 23rd version of the most widely deployed open source cloud infrastructure software, bringing enhanced security and integration with other open source technologies. More than 17,000 code changes authored by over 800 contributors from 140 different organizations were merged into the release.

In addition to delivering a wide range of improvements to the stable and reliable OpenStack core and its highly flexible project integration capabilities, Wallaby delivers security enhancements including fallback permissions and RBAC improvements in Ironic, Glance and Manila, and the community focused this cycle on migrating the RBAC policy format from JSON to YAML. Additionally, the Ironic project has extended functionality for UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), including secure erase for NVME.

Additional Wallaby release highlights include:

• Several project teams continued to develop OpenStack as an open source integration engine by enhancing support for other open source projects: Kolla (production-ready containers and deployment tools) added support for Prometheus version 2, Magnum (API service) updated versions for Kubernetes and containerd, and Cinder (block storage service) added support for a Ceph backend driver, Ceph iSCSI.
• Tacker (NFV orchestration) added new features to align with the standards defined by ETSI NFV including the addition of APIs for scale, update and rollback operations for virtual network functions (VNF) and fundamental VNF lifecycle management support for subscriptions and notifications.
• Nova (compute provisioning) and Cyborg (accelerator management) integration continues to progress. New functionality gives users the ability to shelve and unshelve augmented servers, Nova servers with Cyborg accelerators attached.
• Cinder (block storage) added new backend drivers, and many current drivers have added support for features exceeding the minimum required driver functions, with revert to snapshot and backend QoS being particularly popular this cycle.
• With Neutron (networking), operators now have the option of routing fixed IP addresses of ports in a network to the external world without being limited by the availability IPv4 address ranges

“Twenty-three releases in, it’s exciting to see a growing, vibrant, global community contributing to OpenStack,” said Kendall Nelson, upstream developer advocate for OpenStack at the OpenInfra Foundation. “The OpenStack community continues to rank among the three most active open source communities in the world, and OpenStack Wallaby showcases how successful community collaboration keeps the software robust and efficient, drives innovation to support emerging use cases, and continually delivers interoperability across projects and platforms.”

https://www.openstack.org/software/wallaby/

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Google Cloud region opens in Warsaw

Google Cloud activated a new region in Warsaw, Poland.

The Google Cloud Warsaw region has three availability zones and offers a portfolio of key Google Cloud products, including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner, and BigQuery.

Warsaw joins the existing 24 Google Cloud regions.

In 2019, Google announced a strategic partnership with Poland’s Domestic Cloud Provider (DCP), which was founded jointly by PKO Bank Polski and the Polish Development Fund.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/accelerating-cloud-adoption-in-poland-with-key-partnership-and-a-new-cloud-region

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Openreach selects STL to supply millions of km of fibre

Openreach has selected Sterlite Technologies Ltd (STL) as a key partner to provide optical cable solutions for its 'Full Fibre' broadband network.

Under the partnership, STL will be responsible for delivering millions of kilometres of optical fibre cable to support the build over the next three years. Financial terms were not disclosed.

STL said it will supply its Opticonn solution – a specialised set of fibre, cable and interconnect offerings designed to drive significant performance improvements, including up to 30 per cent faster installation. Openreach will also have access to STL's Celesta – a high-density optical fibre cable with a capacity of up to 6,912 optical fibres. This compact design is 26 per cent slimmer compared to traditional loose tube cables, allowing 2000 metres of cable to be installed in under an hour. The high density super-slim cable will also help minimise the use of plastic across Openreach's new network.

Kevin Murphy, MD for Fibre and Network Delivery at Openreach, said: "Our Full Fibre network build is going faster than ever. We need partners like STL on board to not only help sustain that momentum, but also to provide the skills and innovation to help us go even further. We know the network we're building can deliver a host of social and economic benefits – from boosting UK productivity to enabling more home working and fewer commuting trips – but we're also trying to make this one of the greenest network builds in the world. So, it's good to know that STL's compact and efficient designs will contribute to this in a significant way."

Commenting on the collaboration, Ankit Agarwal, CEO Connectivity Solutions Business, STL, said: "We are extremely excited to join hands with Openreach as a key optical solutions partner to build Full Fibre broadband networks for millions in the UK. Our customised, 5G-ready optical solutions are ideally suited for Openreach's future-proof network requirements and we believe they will enable next-gen digital experiences for homes and businesses across UK. This partnership will be a major step towards our mission of transforming billions of lives through digital networks."

http://www.stl.tech 

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Qualcomm shows 5G Standalone (SA) mode Dual Connectivity

Qualcomm Technologies has completed 5G data calls that combine millimeter wave (mmWave) with FDD or TDD sub-6GHz spectrum by utilizing 5G Standalone (SA) mode Dual Connectivity. 

The calls were completed with smartphones using 4th-generation Qualcomm® Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System and the Qualcomm QTM545 mmWave Antenna Module.

Qualcomm engineers first aggregated 5G sub-6 GHz FDD with 28GHz mmWave spectrum, then 5G sub-6GHz TDD with 39GHz mmWave spectrum, demonstrating Snapdragon X65’s ability to aggregate low-/mid- and high-bands across key global combinations.

“As the world’s leading wireless innovator, Qualcomm Technologies has continuously pioneered 5G solutions capable of scaling in both performance and global reach,” said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, 4G/5G, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “These milestones combine the massive bandwidth of mmWave with the coverage of sub-6 GHz FDD or TDD bands, enabling consumers and enterprises across the globe to make the most of 5G networks and devices, especially in traditionally congested, bandwidth-hungry spaces.”

The Snapdragon X65 and Qualcomm QTM545 mmWave Antenna Module are currently sampling to customers, with commercial devices expected to launch later in 2021.

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/04/13/qualcomm-announces-successful-data-calls-using-5g-mmwave-and-sub-6-ghz

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