ExtremeXOS, Arista and Cisco vIOS-Layer2 Virtual GNS3 Lab

ExtremeXOS is a network operating system used in Extreme Networks network switches. Virtualized version of ExtremeXOS - EXOS virtual machine vmdk image can be used to build virtual lab without need to use hardware switches. Although ExtremeXOS virtual machine can be downloaded for free only certain features are known to work. For this reason software should not be used for testing any actual networking setups or performance tests.

The tutorial consist of two parts. The part one explains how to configure Qemu emulator to run ExtremeXOS virtual machine. In part two, ExtremeXOS VM is connected to virtual lab run by GNS3 software. In this lab, features such as VLANs, 802.1q trunks and OSPF routing protocol are tested between multilayer switches from different vendors - Cisco, Arista and Extreme Networks.

Host Software and Hardware Requirements

  • Linux x86-64,
  • Qemu emulator version 2.1.2 (qemu-system-x86_64, qemu-system-i386 ) or later,
  • GNS3 version 1.1 or later,
  • RAM - at least 4 GB,
  • CPU with hardware virtualization support (VT-x or AMD-V)

Virtual Machines Software and Hardware Requirements

  • ExtremeXOS VM 15.3.2, exosvm.vmdk,
    RAM 256 MB ,CPU x86-64
    Qemu additional parameters: -nographic -enable-kvm
  • Vios_l2-ADVENTERPRISEK9-M), Version 15.0, vIOS-L2.vmdk,
    RAM 512MB, Continue reading

PQ Show 37 – Fancy Network Adapters with Solarflare

As servers get faster, network speed and latency is impacted by the performance of network adapters inside the server. There are many after market options for radically improving the throughput and latency performance and we discuss them in this 20 minute show.

Author information

Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post PQ Show 37 – Fancy Network Adapters with Solarflare appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Mininet Internals and Network Namespaces

Mininet is a very powerful virtual network emulation system that’s generally used in SDN development environments. With Mininet, a complex network with hundreds of switches can be simulated in a laptop and this opens up testing real-life network usecases. I have covered Mininet usage in 1 of my earlier blogs on tools used with Opendaylight. … Continue reading Mininet Internals and Network Namespaces →

QFX5100 default config

Just for reference, here’s the config a QFX5100 comes with out of the box.  

Notes:

Initially the switch tries to get an IP address on the vme0 and irb interfaces so that it can do an auto-image-upgrade, but that failed in the lab since no server (nor the appropriate DHCP options) were available.   The result was an irritating repeated message on the console about this.  To get rid of that, “deactivate chassis auto-image-upgrade”.   This is probably for use if the QFX switch is part of a Q-Fabric – presumably it is trying to upgrade itself over the management network to the version the rest of the QFabric is running.

All interfaces are in the default VLAN, even though their membership is not reflected in the config.

All interfaces have RSTP enabled.

Unfortunately all interfaces are listed twice if they’re  dual-mode (i.e. SFP or SFP+).  This makes the initial config very long.  Obviously this can be deleted.

version 13.2X51-D20.2;
system {
    host-name QFX5100-4;
    arp {
        aging-timer 5;
    }
    root-authentication {
        encrypted-password "REMOVED"; ## SECRET-DATA
    }
    login {
        user imtech {
            uid 2000;
 Continue reading

Network Break 23

This week we are sponsored by Solarwinds NPM and topics: its Net Neutrality, Facebook's Data Centre Design, Resellers and SDN, Amazon tilts at the Enterprise, Project Squared, and Too Many Salesman.

Author information

Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post Network Break 23 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Installing CoreOS

If you haven’t heard of CoreOS it’s pretty much a minimal Linux distro designed and optimized to run docker.  On top of that, it has some pretty cool services pre-installed that make clustering CoreOS pretty slick.  Before we go that far, let’s start with a simple system installation and get one CoreOS host online.  In future posts, we’ll bring up more hosts and talk about clustering. 

The easiest way to install CoreOS is to use the ‘coreos-install’ script which essentially downloads the image and copies it bit for bit onto the disk of your choosing.  The only real requirement here is that you can’t install to a disk you’re currently booted off of.  To make this simple, I used a ArchLinux lightweight bootable Linux distro.  So let’s download that ISO and get started…

Note: I use a mix of CoreOS VMs and physical servers in my lab.  In this walkthrough I’ll be doing the install on a VM to make screenshots easier.  The only real difference between the install on either side was how I booted the ArchLinux LiveCD.  On the virtual side I just mounted the ISO and booted Continue reading

Thanks for being there!

A third of my readers are celebrating Thanksgiving today, and I’d like to use the opportunity to say what I always wanted to say but somehow never got to it. Let’s make it short: Thank you! Without you, there would be no ipSpace.net.

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IPv6 in the Enterprise by Jeff Doyle and Orhan Ergun

[player] Orhan Ergun and Jeff Doyle talks about IPv6 design and deployment considerations in the Enterprise networks. They strongly advice you to consider IPv6 deployment in your network. Why IPv6 in the Enterprise , what are the real business drivers for the IPv6 ? Growth of IPv6 in the Enterprise Networks Jeff Doyle’s advices to […]

The post IPv6 in the Enterprise by Jeff Doyle and Orhan Ergun appeared first on Packet Pushers.

IPv6 in the Enterprise by Jeff Doyle and Orhan Ergun

Orhan Ergun and Jeff Doyle talks about IPv6 design and deployment considerations in the Enterprise networks. They strongly advice you to consider IPv6 deployment in your network. Why IPv6 in the Enterprise , what are the real business drivers for the IPv6 ? Growth of IPv6 in the Enterprise Networks Jeff Doyle’s advices to Service […]

Author information

Orhan Ergun

Orhan Ergun, CCIE, CCDE, is a network architect mostly focused on service providers, data centers, virtualization and security.

He has more than 10 years in IT, and has worked on many network design and deployment projects. Orhan works as a freelance network instructor, for training you can add ' Orhan Ergun ' on skype.

In addition, Orhan is a:
Blogger at Network Computing.
Blogger and podcaster at Packet Pushers.
Manager of Google CCDE Group.
On Twitter @OrhanErgunCCDE
https://www.linkedin.com/in/orhanergun

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The post IPv6 in the Enterprise by Jeff Doyle and Orhan Ergun appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Orhan Ergun.

War Stories: Unix Security

A different kind of war story this time: Unix security blunders. Old-school Unix-types will mutter about how much more secure Unix systems are than Windows, but that glosses over a lot. In a former life I worked as an HP-UX sysadmin, and I saw some shocking default configurations. I liked HP-UX – so much better laid out than Solaris – but it was very insecure by default. Here’s a few things I’ve come across:

Gaining Root

We’d lost the root password for a test HP-UX server. We had user access, but not root. The server was located in a different DC, and we didn’t really feel like going and plugging in a console cable to reset the root password. So we started looking around at how we might get access. After a while I found these two things:

  1. Root’s home directory was ‘/‘ – this was the default on HP-UX
  2. The Remote Login service was running

And now for the kicker:

hpux lhill$ ls -ld /
drwxrwxrwx 30 root wheel 1020 1 Nov 13:57 /

Put those together, and you can see it’s easy to gain root. All we needed to do was create /.rhosts, and add whatever Continue reading

The Pando Tor conspiracy troll

Tor, also known as The Onion Router, bounces your traffic through several random Internet servers, thus hiding the source. It means you can surf a website without them knowing who you are. Your IP address may appear to be coming from Germany when in fact you live in San Francisco. When used correctly, it prevents eavesdropping by law enforcement, the NSA, and so on. It's used by people wanting to hide their actions from prying eyes, from political dissidents, to CIA operatives, to child pornographers.

Recently, Pando (and Internet infotainment site) released a story accusing Tor of being some sort of government conspiracy.

This is nonsense, of course. Pando's tell-all exposé of the conspiracy contains nothing that isn't already widely known. We in the community have long joked about this. We often pretend there is a conspiracy in order to annoy uptight Tor activists like Jacob Appelbaum, but we know there isn't any truth to it. This really annoys me -- how can I troll about Tor's government connections when Pando claims there's actually truth to the conspiracy?

The military and government throws research money around with reckless abandon. That no more means they created Tor than it means they created the Continue reading

How to Customize CORE Network Emulator Services

When running services on nodes in a CORE Network Emulator scenario, we may wish to customize the services configurations.

Some reasons why a user may customize CORE services are:

  • Set up complex network emulation scenarios by adding more configuration information to required services
  • Simplify network emulation scenarios by removing default configurations from CORE Services
  • Enable the CORE GUI to execute user-generated scripts or commands on network nodes while running a simulation
  • Save customized configurations on each node in the CORE Network Emulator configuraion file.

To show how to customize CORE Services, we will work through a detailed tutorial that shows how to customize the IPForward service. We will work through the same steps required to customize any other CORE Service.

The IPForward CORE Service

The IPForward CORE Service provides a script that runs when the node starts in a simulation scenario. The script sets the IP Forwarding kernel parameters so that the node will forward packets from one port to another, according to the routing table on the node. The IPForward script is a default service on the Router node type.

Why customize this service?

The default IPForward CORE service has limited functionality: it can start IP forwarding on a Continue reading

NeDi and Observium

NeDi and Observium are two of my favourites network monitoring tools. I do like to deploy both, they complete each other and since they’re free there is no need to choose. The only problem with the use of two tools is…
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