softlayer Archives - benchodroff.com

China cloud deployments and how to automate QingCloud

March 28, 2017February 29, 2020 Benjamin Chodroff

I have explored multiple cloud providers in China, including QingCloud, over the past two years. QingCloud focuses on private enterprises in China but also caters to many startups too. I wanted to find a way to automate a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) setup and thought I would share my script to build out a bastion host in a secure VPC. Automating their infrastructure is incredibly simple given their powerful API partnered with their private network capabilities. Having worked with clouds in Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, VMWare, Aliyun… I am impressed with how easy QingCloud makes establishing a VPC either from their web portal or automated script. Here is my automated deployment script.

Free PPTP in macOS Sierra using Flow VPN

March 7, 2017March 7, 2017 Benjamin Chodroff

Apple disabled native PPTP VPN in macOS Sierra for good reason – it is highly insecure. However, sometimes for reasons completely outside of your control you need to use a PPTP VPN. Luckily, there is a free option through Flow VPN:
https://www.flowvpn.com/download-mac/

Trying AT&T Flow Designer with IBM Watson IoT

February 21, 2017February 21, 2017 Benjamin Chodroff

The AT&T IoT Platform’s “Flow” at https://flow.att.io has recently announced they support IBM Bluemix with Watson IoT Platform. This is a great hybrid cloud strategy for IoT. After taking a quick look, the flow platform is an impressively customized version of Node-RED. Let’s take it for a spin!