Microsoft's Build dev con sells out in 1 minute

Price hike clearly didn't make anyone blink

Microsoft today sold out its Build developers conference in about a minute, the company said.

"Last year we sold out in 20 minutes and in 1 minute this year. Sorry for everyone can't attend in person," tweeted Steven Guggenheimer, the executive who leads Microsoft's developer evangelism group.

Ticket sales opened today at 9 a.m. PT (noon ET), with prices $100 higher, a 5% increase, than in recent years.

The almost-instant sell-out was the fastest in Build's history. Microsoft exhausted its ticket supply in about 24 hours and 31 hours in 2013 and 2014, respectively, and as Guggenheimer noted, in under an hour last year.

Unlike at past iterations, this year's Build will not feature Oprah-like product giveaways. "This year, we will forgo hardware in favor of delivering a deeper technical experience for developers," Microsoft said on the page where out-of-luck developers can add their names to a waiting list.

Last year, attendees received a free HP notebook; in 2012, they got a free Surface RT tablet and a Nokia Lumia 920 smartphone. The Surface RT line has been discontinued.

If Microsoft follows past practice, it will live stream Build's opening keynote to all comers, and do the same for select sessions on its Channel 9 site. Other sessions will likely be available on-demand a day or so after they're held.

The firm has yet to disclose a session schedule for Build 2016; like most of its predecessors, it will take place in San Francisco's Moscone Center.

Build 2016 will run March 30-April 1, with the keynote -- typical a two-hours-plus marathon -- starting at 8:30 a.m. PT (11:30 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, March 30.

Click here to view complete Q&A of 70-697 exam

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft 70-697 Training at certkingdom.com

Apple surpasses Microsoft....in vulnerabilities

Wipe that smug look off your face, Apple owners, Microsoft products are a lot safer

For years, Apple users taunted Windows users for all of the malware and security vulnerabilities that plagued the various Windows operating systems. Well, things have changed a bit. Mac OS and iOS now have more vulnerabilities than Windows.

The tabulation comes by way of CVE Details (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which draws on security vulnerabilities reported to the National Vulnerabilities Database, which is run by the U.S. government.

Apple led the way in 2015, with a total of 384 vulnerabilities for Mac OS X, closely followed by iOS with 375. Adobe held the next four spots, with three going to AIR (with AIR, the AIR SDK and AIR SDK and compiler) at 246 each, followed by Internet Explorer at 231. Google Chrome was next with 187 vulnerabilities, followed by Firefox at 178, which just shows that despite decades on the market, browsers are still a mess.

The highest-ranking Microsoft operating system was, in fact, Windows Server 2012 at 155 vulnerabilities. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 had 147, 146 and 151, respectively. After that it was a mix of Acrobat, Linux and other products.

Now, you may note the three Windows desktop operating systems combined come out to 444, except that if you ever look at the patches Microsoft issues, they are common across all of the operating systems. That's why there's only a tiny difference between the three versions.

Vista also made the list, with 135 vulnerabilities, putting it fairly close to its newer versions. So there is overlap. The same applies to the three Adobe AIR entries. Not sure why they split them out but the fact that all three had the exact same vulnerabilities means they were common to all three versions.

It does not help that the Mac OS X platforms are not broken out while Windows versions are. That's probably because there are so many versions of Mac OS X out there.

Steam Analytics lists 10 different versions of Mac OS X, each with tiny percentages of market share. And in fairness, while iOS has a lot of vulnerabilities, none of them are as nasty as the ones found on Android, like the malvertising that could destroy your phone or the Stagefright 2.0 virus.

Which is the silver lining for the Mac and its poor showing. It's important remember that it's not purely the number of vulnerabilities that matter but the severity of them. The vulnerabilities list is just the total number reported, not how bad they are. A bunch of minor stack overflows is nothing compared to malware that completely takes over your system.

But the Apple faithful can no longer make claims to being bulletproof.

Click here to view complete Q&A of MB2-706 exam

Certkingdom 20% Discount Promotion Coupon Code: 45K2D47FW4

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MB2-706 Training at certkingdom.com

How to stop Windows 10 asking you to give feedback

If you've signed up to the Windows Insider program, you're enjoying preview builds of Windows 10 before the vast majority of people. Whether you are on the Fast or the Slow Ring, getting hold of Insider preview builds is a great way to stay on the cutting edge -- but it comes with its drawbacks.

One of these -- aside from the need to download gigantic updates from time to time -- is that Windows 10 will constantly pester you for feedback. While it could be argued that this is very much the point of the preview program, some of you will almost certainly just want to get on with using Windows 10 without being asked 'Would you recommend this build to a friend?' or 'What do you think of the latest features of Windows 10?'. If you want to kill the feedback popups, here's how to do it.

What's important about feedback is letting Microsoft know when something goes wrong or doesn’t work as expected. But rather than feeling harangued into answering simple Yes / No / Maybe style questions, it makes far more sense to seek out the Feedback app and go into more details about problems you have encountered, when you encounter them. If you wait to be asked about your experience, you may well have forgotten what irked you. Take back control. Be pro-active. Hit the Feedback app, and ditch the nagging.

· Fire up Settings from the Start menu.

· Open up Privacy and move to the Feedback & diagnostics section.

· From the Feedback frequency drop down menu, select how often you're happy for Windows to hassle you -- cut it down to a daily or weekly occurrence, or select Never to kill it completely.

Close Settings, and you're done.

Click here to view complete Q&A of 70-341 exam

Certkingdom 20% Discount Promotion Coupon Code: 45K2D47FW4

Best Juniper Certification, Juniper Training at certkingdom.com

Hosted bare metal emerges as alternative to IaaS cloud

When a VM in a public cloud isn’t good enough, some turn to physical servers

AppLovin is a 4-year old marketing platform that places advertisements in mobile apps. And it’s a data-intensive business to say the least.

When AppLovin learns of an advertising opportunity in an app, the company has 100 milliseconds to decide if it will bid on the spot in a real-time auction. If it wins the bid, it consults a database storing billions of user preferences to serve an ad personalized to that user. AppLovin processes about 30 billion to 50 billion actions per day, all of which need to happen in millisecond timeframes and on a global basis.

The company started as a customer of Amazon Web Services' IaaS public cloud. But in the past few years CTO John Krystynak – an early VMware employee - has moved AppLovin’s operations to another platform: Hosted bare metal infrastructure.

Bare metal servers are non-virtualized compute infrastructure, meaning that unlike a public cloud there is no hypervisor that creates virtual machines. Through provider Internap, AppLovin’s engineers can spin up as many bare metal servers as it needs, and it’s not sharing any of that infrastructure with other customers in a public cloud.

“Once you get to a point where you’re trying to optimize the infrastructure at a granular level, you really want to understand the whole infrastructure stack you’re running on,” Krystynak says.

AppLovin isn’t alone in embracing hosted bare metal infrastructure. Earlier this year Forrester’s Vice President and principle analyst for infrastructure and operations professionals Richard Fichera published a report titled “Consider bare metal as a viable cloud option.” Many vendors have recently begun offering bare metal options, including IBM through its acquisition of SoftLayer, Rackspace, Internap, and others.

“Bare-metal clouds offer a way for I&O pros to deploy workloads that demand dedicated hardware for performance and isolation reasons with all the operational advantages of VM-based infrastructure-as-a-service cloud services,” Fichera wrote in the report.

Network World
But as hosted bare metal has emerged as an attractive option, analysts don’t believe they’re a panacea that will replace IaaS. Instead, they encourage users to consider it another tool in the toolbox of enterprise IT.

Different use cases
Vendors typically offer hosted bare metal infrastructure similar to how IaaS cloud is consumed: Users access an online portal, request resources and pay for it by the hour or month. There are some important differences between IaaS and bare metal though. They’re meant for different types of workloads.

Bare metal infrastructure is great for high-performing workloads that strain compute and memory capacity. VMs from a public cloud are great for highly variable workloads that spin up and down frequently. Neither is better than the other, they’re just for different use cases.

There are other important differences too – perhaps the most notable one is price. SoftLayer’s Bare Metal cloud offering costs $0.37 per hour for a four-core server with 8GB of RAM. Its IaaS virtual machine starts at $0.038 per hour with 1GB of RAM. Microsoft Azure has VMs that start at $0.018 per hour. A massive price difference, but a big performance difference too.

No more noisy neighbor
Krystynak says one of the things that frustrated him most about operating in an IaaS public cloud four years ago was the concept of “noisy neighbors.” In a public cloud, customers share infrastructure and sometimes other customers can impact the performance of virtual machines running on the same server. In a bare metal environment, customers get access to the full server, so there are no neighbors, noisy or otherwise.

Does hosted bare metal have a place in your IT environment?
Noisy neighbors are a minor and rare inconvenience for most users that is fairly easy to remediate, says a spokesperson for operational analytics company Datadog. But for customers like AppLovin who are pushing the infrastructure to the max, any inconsistency in performance, even if minor, can become problematic.

In recent months an interesting new use case has emerged for hosted bare metal offerings: Application containers. “There’s really no reason to put a VM under a container unless you’re really trying to isolate it for security,” says Rackspace CTO John Engates. “Otherwise, if you can take the VM out of the equation, you can put containers right on the bare metal, and we have customers doing that.”

Fichera in his Forrester report notes that bare metal infrastructure is a compelling option for latency-sensitive workloads, or users who are currently using large sized VMs that are constantly loaded.
What it’s not good for
Bare metal has its disadvantages though. For one, customers don’t get the same agility from bare metal servers as they do with virtual machines. IaaS public cloud resources spin up very quickly compared to bare metal servers. There also are not as advanced management tools for bare metal servers – so for example replicating machine images for backup and testing is more difficult. And they require using physical networking and storage, whereas VMs can take advantage of more-agile virtual networking and storage. And most workloads don’t need access to the whole server – it’s overkill.

Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst Lydia Leong says any debate between IaaS and hosted bare metal harkens back to the debate from the early and mid 2000s about whether workloads should run on virtualized infrastructure or not.

Bare metal infrastructure has its place – especially for workloads with large memory footprints, like an SAP HANA in-memory database. Batch computing can also benefit from bare metal performance.

But the IaaS public cloud providers like AWS have gotten really good at offering bare-metal-like performance in their virtualized environments, and they have options for customers to get bare-metal like performance in its public cloud. IaaS cloud providers gain important management, security and efficiency advantages by using hypervisors. So, while the hosted bare metal market is gaining traction, it doesn’t appear to be threatening the meteoric growth of the IaaS public cloud market.

Click here to view complete Q&A of MB2-706 exam

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MB2-706 Training at certkingdom.com

210-065 Implementing Cisco Video Network Devices v1.0

---

QUESTION 1
Refer to the exhibit.



Which configuration item shown in the exhibit should be used to assign the internal and external video communication server address for this group of users?

A. User Settings > Video Address pattern
B. Administrative Tools > User Settings
C. Configuration Template > Edit Template
D. User Import > Configuration

Answer: C

---

QUESTION 2
Which three features are supported by Cisco TMSPE? (Choose three.)

A. Simplified provisioning
B. LDAP user import
C. Scheduling via Microsoft Outlook
D. FindMe
E. Jabber for Windows
F. Automatic endpoint upgrades

Answer: A,B,D

---

QUESTION 3
Which four features are provided by Cisco TelePresence Management Suite? (Choose four.)

A. Scheduling of video conference calls
B. Built-in-bridge functionality for multiparty video conferences
C. SIP-H.323 protocol interworking
D. Centralized management of conference resources
E. SMTP email event notification
F. Endpoint configuration backup and restore
G. Cisco TelePresence endpoint automated redundancy
H. Automated resource optimization

Answer: A,D,E,F

---

QUESTION 4
Management wants to modify Cisco TMS to allow users to configure the call behavior with their associated devices and dial from a single ID. Which feature needs to be enabled and configured?

A. Smart Scheduler
B. Low-touch Provisioning
C. FindMe
D. CMR Provisioning

Answer: C

---

QUESTION 5
A network engineer wants to automate the monitoring of Cisco TelePresence TX systems. Which step should the engineer take first?

A. Configure Cisco TMS on the codec.
B. Configure Medianet on the codec.
C. Configure NTP on the codec.
D. Configure Multiway on the codec.
E. Configure SNMP on the codec.

Answer: E

Click here to view complete Q&A of 210-065 exam

Best Cisco 210-065 Certification, Cisco 210-065 Training at certkingdom.com

200-601 IMINS2 Managing Industrial Networks for Manufacturing with Cisco Technologies

200-601 IMINS2
Managing Industrial Networks for Manufacturing with Cisco Technologies

Exam Number 200-601 IMINS2
Associated Certifications CCNA Industrial
Duration 90 Minutes (65 - 75 questions)

This exam tests concepts and technology commonly found in the automated manufacturing environment. This exam tests candidates on the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) and ProfiNET industrial protocols and the underlying support network infrastructure design to maximize efficiency within Industrial Ethernet.

Exam Description
The exam Managing Industrial Networks for Manufacturing with Cisco Technologies (CCNA IMINS2) certification exam (200-601) is a 90 minute, 65 – 75 question assessment. This exam tests concepts and technology commonly found in the automated manufacturing environment. This exam tests candidates on the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) and ProfiNET industrial protocols and the underlying support network infrastructure design to maximize efficiency within Industrial Ethernet.

The following topics are general guidelines for the content likely to be included on the exam. However, other related topics may also appear on any specific delivery of the exam. In order to better reflect the contents of the exam and for clarity purposes, the guidelines below may change at any time without notice.

1.0 IP Networking 20%
1.1 Describe the difference between enterprise environments and industrial environments
1.2 Describe the components for making the data flow highly available and predictable in an industrial environment (QoS, IP addressing, protocol, and hardware resiliency)
1.3 Interpret and diagnose problems that are related to QoS
1.4 Describe the differences between redundancy and resiliency requirements / approaches between the Enterprise and the plant floor
1.5 Differentiate the capabilities of switch types
1.6 Describe the life cycle of a multicast group
1.7 Describe and configure the operation and use cases for NAT
1.8 Describe and configure the operation and use cases for static routing
1.9 Describe and configure VLAN trunking to a virtual switch
1.10 Describe and configure Layer 2 resiliency protocols (Spanning Tree, REP, Flex Links, and Etherchannels)
1.11 Configure switch ports ( macros, threshold alarms)

2.0 Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) Knowledge and Configuration 19%
2.1 Explain the CIP connection establishment process
2.2 Explain producer/consumer models and implicit/explicit message models
2.3 Recognize communication abilities and capacities in different hardware/hardware generations (revisions)
2.4 Identify and describe the technologies that enable CIP Motion and CIP Safety
2.5 Identify the applicability, limitations, and components of a DLR implementation
2.6 Implement multicast features for CIP within a LAN
2.7 Optimize RPI on a CIP connection given a set of parameters
2.8 Enable and configure IEEE 1588 PTP at the system level
2.9 Configure the Stratix using the Add On Profile (AOP) in Studio 5000

3.0 ProfiNET Knowledge and Configuration 19%
3.1 Describe the differences in ProfiNET support between Cisco catalyst and Cisco Industrial Ethernet (IE) switches
3.1.a Support for VLAN 0
3.1.b Support for ProfiNET LLDP
3.1.c Support for GSDs (integration into SIMATIC STEP 7)

3.2 Describe the operation and purpose of ProfiSAFE
3.3 Describe the three basic ProfiNET devices and conformanceclasses
3.4 Describe the ProfiNET application classes and communication channels
3.5 Describe DHCP and how it can be used for IP addressing of devices and configuration pushes
3.6 Describe ring network requirements for ProfiNET
3.7 Enable ProfiNET on the switch
3.8 Enable Layer 2 QoS to ensure ProfiNET is prioritized
3.9 Integrate the Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switch in SIMATIC STEP 7
3.10 Configure and monitor ProfiNET alarm profiles on IE switches

4.0 Security 12%
4.1 Describe the defense in-depth approach to securing the industrial zone
4.2 Identify how a security component (hardware/software) applies to a network device to meet the network security definition of defense in depth
4.3 Describe network device hardening
4.4 Describe the concept and mechanisms of implementing logical segmentation
4.5 Identify possible options to control traffic between zones (ACLs, firewalls, VLANs)

5.0 Wireless 10%
5.1 Describe the differences between 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
5.2 Describe the components that you need to build multiple wireless networks on a single access point
5.3 Describe the difference between autonomous and controller-based access points and wireless workgroup bridges
5.4 Demonstrate a typical switchport configuration for autonomous and controller-based access points
5.5 Describe the limitations of using a workgroup bridge with a control communication

6.0 Troubleshooting 20%
6.1 Troubleshoot advanced Layer 1 problems such as mechanical deterioration, electromagnetic noise issues, and infrastructure mismatches
6.2 Troubleshoot VLAN trunking
6.3 Troubleshoot an error disabled port
6.4 Troubleshoot basic spanning tree port state and root priority problems
6.5 Troubleshoot Layer 3 problems by inspecting route tables and NAT tables
6.6 Troubleshoot Layer 3 problems in a VRF-lite enabled environment
6.7 Demonstrate the ability to find the location of a device within a multi-switch network given an IP address
6.8 Identify methods for troubleshooting a communication problem in a CIP environment
6.9 Troubleshoot CIP using an Ethernet/IP browse tool, command line, and a web browser
6.10 Troubleshoot device communications performance
6.11 Identify the source of cable and device faults in a DLR
6.12 Identify methods for troubleshooting a communication problem in a ProfiNET environment
6.13 Troubleshoot ProfiNET using SIMATIC STEP 7 to view network topology, use the switch command line

Click here to view complete Q&A of 200-601 exam

Best Cisco 200-601 Certification, Cisco 200-601 Training at certkingdom.com

SDN and NFV: The brains behind the “smart” city

In major metropolitan areas and smaller cities alike, governments are adopting software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) to deliver the agility and flexibility needed to support adoption of “smart” technologies that enhance the livability, workability and sustainability of their towns.

Today there are billions of devices and sensors being deployed that can automatically collect data on everything from traffic to weather, to energy usage, water consumption, carbon dioxide levels and more. Once collected, the data has to be aggregated and transported to stakeholders where it is stored, organized and analyzed to understand what’s happening and what’s likely to happen in the future.

There’s a seemingly endless list of potential benefits. Transportation departments can make informed decisions to alleviate traffic jams. Sources of water leaks can be pinpointed and proactive repairs scheduled. Smart payments can be made across city agencies, allowing citizens to complete official payments quickly and reducing government employee time to facilitate such transactions. And even public safety can be improved by using automated surveillance to assist the police watch high-crime hotspots.

Of particular interest is how healthcare services can be improved. There is already a push to adopt more efficient and effective digital technology management systems to better store, secure and retrieve huge amounts of patient data. Going a step further, a smart city is better equipped to support telemedicine innovations that require the highest quality, uninterrupted network service. Telesurgery, for example, could allow for specialized surgeons to help local surgeons perform emergency procedures from remote locations — the reduction of wait time before surgery can save numerous lives in emergency situations, and can help cities and their hospital systems attract the brightest minds in medical research and practice.

The smart city of today
While the smart city is expected to become the norm, examples exist today. Barcelona is recognized for environmental initiatives (such as electric vehicles and bus networks), city-wide free Wi-Fi, smart parking, and many more programs, all of which benefit from smart city initiatives. With a population of 1.6 million citizens, Barcelona shows that smart city technologies can be implemented regardless of city size.

But even smaller cities are benefitting from going “smart.” In 2013 Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with a population of only 71,000, began using a web-based data management tool along with smart sensors to track the way electricity, water, fuel and consumables are being utilized, then compared usage between municipal facilities to identify ways to be more efficient. Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 170,000, along with its investment to provide the fastest Internet service in the U.S., has recently begun developing smart city solutions for education, healthcare and public safety.

How do cities become smart? The most immediate need is to converge disparate communications networks run by various agencies to ensure seamless connectivity. To achieve this, packet optical based connectivity is proving critical, thanks largely to the flexibility and cost advantages it provides. Then atop the packet optical foundation sits technology that enables NFV and the applications running on COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) equipment in some form of virtualized environment. SDN and NFV allow for the quick and virtual deployment of services to support multiple data traffic and priority types, as well as increasingly unpredictable data flows of IoT.

Decoupling network functions from the hardware means that architectures can be more easily tweaked as IoT requirements change. Also, SDN and NFV can yield a more agile service provision process by dynamically defining the network that connects the IoT end devices to back-end data centers or cloud services.

The dynamic nature of monitoring end-points, location, and scale will require SDN so that networks can be programmable and reconfigured to accommodate the moving workloads. Take for example, allocating bandwidth to a stadium for better streaming performance of an event as the number of users watching remotely on-demand goes up—this sort of dynamic network-on-demand capability is enabled by SDN. Additionally, NFV can play a key role where many of the monitoring points that make the city "smart" are actually not purpose-built hardware-centric solutions, but rather software-based solutions that can be running on-demand.

With virtual network functions (VNF), the network can react in a more agile manner as the municipality requires. This is particularly important because the network underlying the smart city must be able to extract high levels of contextual insight through real-time analytics conducted on extremely large datasets if systems are to be able to problem-solve in real-time; for example, automatically diverting traffic away from a street where a traffic incident has taken place.

SDN and NFV may enable the load balancing, service chaining and bandwidth calendaring needed to manage networks that are unprecedented in scale. In addition, SDN and NFV can ensure network-level data security and protection against intrusions – which is critical given the near-impossible task of securing the numerous sensor and device end points in smart city environments.
Smart city business models

In their smart city initiatives, cities large and small are addressing issues regarding planning, infrastructure, systems operations, citizen engagement, data sharing, and more. The scale might vary, but all are trying to converge networks in order to provide better services to citizens in an era of shrinking budgets. As such, the decision on how to go about making this a reality is important. There are four major smart city business models to consider, as defined by analysts at Frost & Sullivan (“Global Smart City Market a $1.5T Growth Opportunity In 2020”):

Build Own Operate (BOO): In a BOO model, municipalities own, control, and independently build the city infrastructure needed, and deliver the smart city services themselves. Both operation and maintenance of these services is under the municipality’s control, often headed up by their city planner.

Build Operate Transfer (BOT): Whereas in a BOO model, the municipality is always in charge of the operation and management of smart city services, in a BOT model that is only the case after a little while – the smart city infrastructure building and initial service operation is first handled by a trusted partner appointed by the city planner. Then, once all is built and in motion, operation is handed back over to the city.

Open Business Model (OBM): In an OBM model, the city planner is open to any qualified company building city infrastructure and providing smart city services, so long as they stay within set guidelines and regulations.

Build Operate Manage (BOM): Finally, there is the BOM model, which is where the majority of smart city projects are likely to fall under. In this model, the smart city planner appoints a trusted partner to develop the city infrastructure and services. The city planner then has no further role beyond appointment – the partner is in charge of operating and managing smart city services.

SDN and NFV: The keys to the (smart) city
With the appropriate business model in place and the network foundation laid out, the technology needs to be implemented to enable virtualization. Virtualized applications allow for the flexibility of numerous data types, and the scalability to transport huge amounts of data the city aims to use in its analysis.

SDN and NFV reduce the hardware, power, and space requirements to deploy network functions through the use of industry-standard high-volume servers, switches and storage; it makes the network applications portable and upgradeable with software; and it allows cities of all sizes the agility and scalability to tackle the needs and trends of the future as they arise. Like the brain’s neural pathways throughout a body, SDN and NFV are essential in making the smart city and its networks connect and talk to each other in a meaningful way.

Click here to view complete Q&A of 98-361 exam

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft 98-361 Training at certkingdom.com