BT SD-WAN Gets a Leg Up With Cisco-Viptela Tech
The managed SD-WAN service allows BT’s enterprise customers to design, deliver, and evolve their SD-WAN. It improves upon BT's previous attempt to bootstrap old Cisco routers and IWAN to create an SD-WAN overlay.
Juniper vQFX10K on ESXi 6.5
A quick and dirty post on running the Juniper vQFX on VMWare ESXi.
You might be wondering why ESXi seeing as we’re all cloudy types. ESXi is purely a case of laziness. Each server in my control has ESXi 6.5 installed. This becomes tin management at the most basic level.
Part of my home network has a DMZ which has several public IP addresses and I expose systems and VNFs externally over the internet. More recently thanks to the IP fabric craze, part of what I’m exploring is easy integration and feature enhancement on Juniper vQFX instances. Two choices exist:
- Install vQFX on servers with KVM
- Install on ESXi
I went for the easy ground (because why make it harder than it has to be?) Turns out, it wasn’t as straight forward as it should be, although not difficult. Just a niggle.
Installation Process
Grab yourself the RE and PFE images from the Juniper download site:
https://www.juniper.net/support/downloads/?p=vqfxeval I Grabbed the 18.1 RE and the 17.4 PFE image.
Next, extract the two
.vmdkfiles from the
.boxfiles. You can use the trusty tar tool to extract the files required. Below are two files Continue reading
Command Module Deep Dive for Networks
Enterprise customers often ask the Ansible Network team about the most common use cases for network automation. For this blog post I want to talk about one of the most used (and most versatile) set of network modules: the command modules. The command modules let you run networking commands with Ansible, the same way a network engineer would type them on the command line. With Ansible, though, the output doesn’t just fly by the terminal window to be lost forever; it can be stored and used in subsequent tasks. It can also be captured in variables, parsed for use by other tasks, and stored in host variables for future reference.
Today we’re going to cover basic use of the network command modules, including retaining command output with the register parameter. We’ll also cover scaling to multiple network devices with hostvars and adding conditional requirements with the wait_for parameter and three related parameters: interval, retries, and match. The takeaway from this blog post is that any repeatable network operations task can be automated. Ansible is more than configuration management, it allows network operators the freedom to decouple themselves from routine tasks and save themselves time.
There are command modules Continue reading
PQ 150: HCI Networking With Big Switch’s Big Cloud Fabric (Sponsored)
One promise of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is ease of management. Break down the silos, put all the components into a unified whole displayed on a single pane of glass, and voila! Apps are served.
But networking hasn t been integrated as effectively into HCI as the other components of the IT stack. Networking, even in an HCI world, tends be difficult. And with the dynamic needs of HCI, networking just isn’t keeping up.
The days of standing up the network and letting it run are past, because a best effort, rough approximation of how the network should behave isn t something you have to settle for anymore.
Discussing integration of HCI with networking is Big Switch Networks, our sponsor for today s Priority Queue. Prashant Gandhi, Chief Product Officer at Big Switch, is our guest.
We talk about why “best-effort” networking isn’t suited for HCI, and look at HCI-specific operational issues and use cases including container networking and multi-tenancy.
For hands-on experience with Big Cloud Fabric, register for BSN Labs, a demo environment in the cloud that lets you experience the technical differentiation, management CLI, and GUI of Big Cloud Fabric.
Show Links:
Video: The Network is Nominal – Two Beer Networking
Working or Not Working. There is no such as a good network, just a working network.
Dispelling the Myth of Ageism in IT
In this video, network architect and author Denise Donohue explains that contrary to common perceptions, older people can thrive in IT.
Port Scanning Techniques: An Introduction
In this excerpt from "Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook-Second Edition," learn the basics of port scanning for network security.
2018 Global Internet Report – Take our survey on the Future of the Internet
Last year, the Internet Society published a comprehensive study to better understand the forces of change that will shape the Internet over the next five to seven years: The 2017 Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future. By focusing attention on the significant potential of the Internet for innovation and sustainable development, but without denying or shirking the challenges it also introduces, the 2017 report has become a powerful tool in the global awareness and advocacy work of the Internet Society and its chapters.
We now want to work with you as our most important stakeholders on a new report that takes a closer look at one of those forces and how it may impact the future, namely Consolidation in the Internet Economy. Understood as growing forces of concentration, vertical and horizontal integration, and fewer opportunities for market entry and competition, this topic includes the impact of consolidating forces on all stakeholders as well as on the Internet’s underlying and evolving technology.
We have selected this theme because findings from last year’s report, and developments since its release, indicated increasing concerns about a growing concentration of power in the Internet Economy. They point to market and technical forces that may be Continue reading
VMware Cloud on AWS Adds Frankfurt Region, Hybrid Cloud Starter Version
Stretched Clusters, which aims to protect mission-critical applications against data center and availability zone outages, is now available.
Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Integration With NSX-T Data Center: A lab study with Tips
Contributions from: Alka Gupta, Prasad Kalpurekkal
Pivotal Container Service (PKS) aims to simplify how enterprises deploy, run and manage Kubernetes clusters on any cloud. For detailed documentation of PKS installation and configuration, go here. For details on configuring PKS with NSX-T Data Center, go here.
Every enterprise wants to run containers in production. However, primary questions being asked are: “How do I get Kubernetes to work in my data center? How do I simplify deployment of Kubernets clusters? What about Networking and Security? ”
PKS answers these questions with a feature set tailored to the requirements of the enterprises. Read about PKS features in detail here.
One of the features PKS offers is tight integration with NSX-T Data Center, enabling advanced networking and security for container based emerging application architectures, just as it does for traditional 3-tier apps. In these environments, NSX-T Data Center provides Layer 3 container networking and advanced networking services such as built-in load balancing, micro-segmentation, multi-tenancy, central visibility with a central SDN controller, network topology choices and more. We demonstrated this at the Network Field Day 17 which you can see here.
In this blog, we call out the work done at VMware Global Solutions Partner lab on configuring Pivotal Continue reading
Former Qualcomm Chairman Paul Jacobs Launches a 5G Startup Called XCOM
The new startup won't detract from Jacobs' efforts to acquire Qualcomm and take it private. He's still intent on doing that.
IPv6 Buzz 001: Sixth World IPv6 Launch Anniversary
Ed Horley, Tom Coffeen, and Scott Hogg discuss the state of IPv6 adoption in 2018, reflecting on the sixth anniversary of the World IPv6 Launch.
The post IPv6 Buzz 001: Sixth World IPv6 Launch Anniversary appeared first on Packet Pushers.
IPv6 Buzz 001: Sixth World IPv6 Launch Anniversary
Ed Horley, Tom Coffeen, and Scott Hogg discuss the state of IPv6 adoption in 2018, reflecting on the sixth anniversary of the World IPv6 Launch.Martello Sells $7.5 Million in Private Shares, Preps Its SD-WAN For What’s Next
The company is taking steps to go public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in the next few months as a move to boost its SD-WAN and M&A activities.
Introducing “Kernel of Truth” — a Cumulus Networks podcast!
There’s no doubt that we’re in the gilded age of podcasts. Anyone you ask has at least one or two podcasts that they love to listen to and won’t stop talking about! But you’re probably tired of hearing that one friend repeat every single episode of “This American Life.” You need a new, engaging show that focuses on thought leadership and the topics in data center networking that you care about. Something to liven up your commute and make a long work day fly by. Something to help you stay up to date and relevant in your networking knowledge, hear about real examples of innovation in the data center and turn you into a super star employee that shoots up the career ladder. If that’s what you’ve been looking for, your search is finally over.
Seven years ago, Cumulus Networks took the world by storm and rocked the data center. Today, we’re giving the podcasting world a healthy dose of Cumulus goodness — introducing the official Cumulus Networks podcast, “Kernel of Truth!”
Why are we starting a podcast? In addition to wanting to share our thoughts and insight about all things networking, including automation, disaggregation, data center interconnect Continue reading
Cisco Invests in Avi Networks Series D and Resells Avi’s Technology
Avi says Cisco provides Layer 2 to 4, and Avi provides Layer 4 to 7. The joint solution allows Cisco to offer a full networking stack from Layers 2 to 7 across any environment.