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DCI with LISP for Cold Migrations

Let’s step back for a minute. So far in this series of blog posts on DCI, I’ve been focusing on extending the Layer 2 domain between data centers with the goal of supporting hot migrations — ie, moving a virtual machine between sites while it’s online and servicing users.

Is that the only objective with DCI?

Well if it was, there wouldn’t be a need for this blog post :-) Cold migrations have valid use cases too. Cold migrations occur when the virtual machine is shut down in one site and then booted in a new site. As part of that operation, typically an orchestration layer (such as VMware’s Site Recovery Manager) will poke and prod the VM to make it ready for operation in the new site. Most notably, it takes care of changing the VM’s IP address and default gateway.

Cold migrations do not have a requirement for the same IP subnet in both sites. This is because there’s no need to maintain active user sessions during the migration. Different IP subnets in the sites means no stretched Layer 2 which means no risk of combining failure domains!

What if that orchestration layer didn’t have to poke Continue reading

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Cisco onePK Screencast

As a follow-on to my previous article on onePK – Cisco onePK: Now I Get It – I recorded a screencast in which I talk about what a onePK-enabled network is capable of. I also demonstrate two applications which make use of onePK to gather telemetry from the network and also program the network.

• MTU Checker – Verifies that when the MTU of an interface is changed on the CLI, that the adjoining interface MTU matches
• Routing For Dollars – Programs the forwarding table of the routers in the network based on the cost – in terms of dollars – of the various links in the network

Please leave a comment below with any questions or feedback.

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Copyright Joel Knight. All Rights Reserved.
www.packetmischief.ca

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Cisco onePK: Now I Get It

I had an opportunity recently to sit in a Cisco onePK lab and it opened my eyes to exactly what Cisco is doing with onePK, why it’s going to be so important as Software Defined Networking (SDN) continues to gain traction, and why onePK is different than what anyone else is doing in the industry.

onePK is a key element within Cisco’s announced Open Network Environment SDN strategy. onePK is an easy-to-use toolkit for development, automation, rapid service creation and more. It enables you to access the valuable data inside your network via easy-to-use APIs.

Source: www.cisco.com/go/onepk

Since having my own eyes opened, I’ve been pondering how to explain my new found understanding in a way that others will grasp. In particular to business decision makers (BDMs) and technical decision makers (TDMs). I’m really, really, struggling to come up with a good analogy for BDMs. I’m still working on that one. Surprisingly, I’m also struggling to come up with a sound analogy that will work with the majority of TDMs that I know. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised at that since all the TDMs I deal with are on the infrastructure side of things (networks, storage, Continue reading