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VMware NSX Use Case – Simplifying Disaster Recovery (Part 1)

Nicolas Vermandé (VCDX#055) is practice lead for Private Cloud & Infrastructure  at Kelway, a VMware partner. Nicolas covers the Software-Defined Data Center on his blog www.my-sddc.om,

This series of posts describes a specific use case for VMware NSX in the context of Disaster Recovery. The goal is to demonstrate the routing and programmability capabilities through a lab scenario. This first part presents the NSX components and details the use case. The second part will show how to deploy the lab and the third part will deal with APIs and show how to use python to execute REST API calls to recreate the required NSX components at the recovery site.

Introduction

When considering dual datacenter strategy with VMs recovery in mind, one important decision is whether to adopt an active/active or active/standby model. The former is generally much more complex to manage because it requires double the work in terms of procedures, testing and change controls. In addition, capacity management becomes challenging as you need to accommodate physical resources to be able to to run all workloads within whatever site. On top of that, stretched VLANs are sometimes deployed across datacenters so that recovered VMs can keep their IP addresses. This Continue reading

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Response: Improving Flow Based Hashing on ECMP with Cuckoo hashing

There are many algorithms that can be used to for flow-based hashing to provide the best load balancing method over multiple IP or Ethernet connections but I recently learned that Cuckoo Hashing the preferred method.

The post Response: Improving Flow Based Hashing on ECMP with Cuckoo hashing appeared first on EtherealMind.

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CCIE RSv5 ATC Continues Wednesday, July 23rd

The CCIE Routing & Switching Advanced Technologies Class v5 resumes Wednesday, July 23rd at 8:00 AM PDT (15:00 UTC) at live.ine.com, where we will be discussing MPLS Layer 3 VPN. In the meantime, you will find the streaming and download playlists have been updated and now includes over 63 hours of content.

We have some other great news as well. The CCIE R&S v5 Rack Control panel has been released with the built-in telnet, loading and saving configs and one click device configurations and reset requests. Also, new content will be posted this week to the workbook, including all new troubleshooting labs.

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[SDN Protocols] Part 1 – OpenFlow Basics

Let’s get into our first topic. And what better place to start than with the protocol that arguably started the SDN madness that we’re experiencing today – OpenFlow! I got fairly carried away with writing about this protocol, and understandably so – this is a complicated topic.

That’s why I’ve split this post (which is already part of a series – very meta, much deep) into two parts. This post – Part 1 – will address OpenFlow’s mid to high-level concepts, exploring what it does, why/how the idea of control plane abstraction may be useful, and  some details on how hardware interaction works. The second post – Part 2 – will dive a little deeper into the operation of OpenFlow on supporting physical and virtual switches, and the differences in some popular implementations of OpenFlow.

 

The State of Modern Control Planes

Before we get into the specifics of OpenFlow, it’s important we address the relationship between the control plane and the data plane, and how OpenFlow changes this relationship. You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that one of SDN’s key traits is the “separation” or “abstraction” of the control plane from the Continue reading

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DevOps Will Adopt Networking

Too many times the question has been asked “How do I adopt DevOps and will I need to become a programmer?”. My own beliefs are almost flipped upside down and my money is on DevOps adopting you; possibly without you even realising it. If you’re reading this, it’s a sign of it already happening or at least the thought process! The answers lead to the questions. There is no spoon.

So what’s NetDevOps? Networking + DevOps. Simples. It’s a thought process and a movement. Not an intended starting point, but a natural end point. A natural and evolutionary extension to your skill set, not a new one.

Instead of rushing towards a “golden bullet” product, it might prove a valid route to start thinking about the network as data derived from configuration schemas. Even if it’s a set of side line exercises from what you do day to day, thinking about the network in data or ‘code’ is a step towards what most magic products are aimed to obfuscate you against. Remember what it was like learning IOS back in the day? CatOS? Linux? First time you used a bash shell? This movement is no different.

Why are products Continue reading

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Okay, Maybe it IS the Network (Infographic)

Okay, Maybe it IS the Network (Infographic)

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by Steve Harriman, VP of Marketing - July 22, 2014

“It’s NOT the network.” If you work in networking, this refrain is familiar to you. While we all know the network is sometimes the cause of performance issues, often network engineers spend too much time proving the negative. However, the infographic below, based on a survey of 250 enterprise networking professionals in North America (and 22% in Europe), indicates that the network is the logical first place to look when troubleshooting performance issues. This is because both the scope and size of networks are growing to keep up with the demands of new architectures as well as business requests, making it increasingly more complex to deliver applications and services. These results and others are from a new Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research paper titled “Managing Networks in the Age of Cloud, SDN, and Big Data: Network Management Megatrends 2014.” 

As authors Jim Frey and Tracy Corbo write in the paper’s introduction: 

“Networks have never been more critical to the success of IT and the business. New virtualization and Cloud technologies and services are remaking the face of IT and the Continue reading

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[SDN Protocols] Part 1 – OpenFlow Basics

Let’s get into our first topic. And what better place to start than with the protocol that arguably started the SDN madness that we’re experiencing today - OpenFlow! I got fairly carried away with writing about this protocol, and understandably so - this is a complicated topic. That’s why I’ve split this post (which is already part of a series - very meta, much deep) into two parts. This post - Part 1 - will address OpenFlow’s mid to high-level concepts, exploring what it does, why/how the idea of control plane abstraction may be useful, and some details on how hardware interaction works.

0

[SDN Protocols] Part 1 – OpenFlow Basics

Let’s get into our first topic. And what better place to start than with the protocol that arguably started the SDN madness that we’re experiencing today - OpenFlow! I got fairly carried away with writing about this protocol, and understandably so - this is a complicated topic. That’s why I’ve split this post (which is already part of a series - very meta, much deep) into two parts. This post - Part 1 - will address OpenFlow’s mid to high-level concepts, exploring what it does, why/how the idea of control plane abstraction may be useful, and some details on how hardware interaction works.

0

[SDN Protocols] Part 1 – OpenFlow Basics

Let’s get into our first topic. And what better place to start than with the protocol that arguably started the SDN madness that we’re experiencing today - OpenFlow! I got fairly carried away with writing about this protocol, and understandably so - this is a complicated topic. That’s why I’ve split this post (which is already part of a series - very meta, much deep) into two parts. This post - Part 1 - will address OpenFlow’s mid to high-level concepts, exploring what it does, why/how the idea of control plane abstraction may be useful, and some details on how hardware interaction works.

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[SDN Protocols] – New Series

The networking industry in the last few years has seen an explosion in buzzwords, slide decks, new technologies, and SDN product announcements.  The honest truth is that the networking industry is still in a great state of flux, as we collectively discover what SDN means to us.

There’s a lot of new terms floating around, and what makes things even harder to keep up with, the marketing engines are alive and well – muddying the waters, and making it nearly impossible to get technical facts straight. I’m fortunate enough to know a few people that remind me that what matters most is when the rubber meets the road (which usually manifests itself in “shut up and code”).

To that end, I am kicking off a series that will be completely dedicated to explaining the various protocols and technologies you might encounter in researching SDN.

 

Who Can Use This Series?

If you’re into open source implementations, all of this will be immediately relevant. Much of what I’ll be exploring pertains to the nitty-gritty under-the-covers operation of these protocols, and will often use real-world examples rooted deeply in open source, Continue reading

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[SDN Protocols] – New Series

The networking industry in the last few years has seen an explosion in buzzwords, slide decks, new technologies, and SDN product announcements. The honest truth is that the networking industry is still in a great state of flux, as we collectively discover what SDN means to us. There’s a lot of new terms floating around, and what makes things even harder to keep up with, the marketing engines are alive and well - muddying the waters, and making it nearly impossible to get technical facts straight.

0

[SDN Protocols] – New Series

The networking industry in the last few years has seen an explosion in buzzwords, slide decks, new technologies, and SDN product announcements. The honest truth is that the networking industry is still in a great state of flux, as we collectively discover what SDN means to us. There’s a lot of new terms floating around, and what makes things even harder to keep up with, the marketing engines are alive and well - muddying the waters, and making it nearly impossible to get technical facts straight.

0

[SDN Protocols] – New Series

The networking industry in the last few years has seen an explosion in buzzwords, slide decks, new technologies, and SDN product announcements. The honest truth is that the networking industry is still in a great state of flux, as we collectively discover what SDN means to us. There’s a lot of new terms floating around, and what makes things even harder to keep up with, the marketing engines are alive and well - muddying the waters, and making it nearly impossible to get technical facts straight.

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Want Better Wi-Fi!

I talk to thousands of people every year that are wanting. They want bigger homes, more relations, bosses without attitudes, faster cars, and more powerful firearms. While a seemingly random list, one “want” at the top of almost everyone’s list...

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My Private Cloud Block Architecture Diagram

Here is a block diagram showing the functional areas in private & public cloud that I use when working with clients. I'm often explaining the full picture of cloud building especially in relation to how the network can be orchestrated to fully accelerate the cloud process. I hope you find it useful.

The post My Private Cloud Block Architecture Diagram appeared first on EtherealMind.

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VMware bug: inconsistent LACP views

There is a bug which makes LACP related views inconsistent. Latest 5.5U1 vCenter is still affected Create a LAG interface (dvSwitch -> Settings -> LACP): Now open the “Migrate network traffic to LAGs” and enable lag1 interface as standby port (Manage Distributed Port Groups -> Teaming and failover -> select the port group): Let the process […]

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NetDevOps – The Journey Begins

 

The cultural divide between delegation of network control such as in the case of Cisco ACI, or VMware’s NSX is a cause for questioning. These are off the shelf products designed to solve a problem that exists today but introduce new problems to the organisations that acquire them. Who controls the network and at what stratum(1)? In the case of automation and orchestration products, who creates the templates? Who is allowed to trigger automation and orchestration events and even more importantly, when is that person allowed to do it? As the virtual networks are virtual, does control belong with the virtualisation team? Hrmmm. Lots of questions. Many of these are dependent on the company, customer and situation and might not be solved with the most marketed product. A regimented set of answers doesn’t exist, nor do I think there will ever be out of hyper scale data centre environments.

It has taken years for the DevOps community to understand how to handle the requirement of rapid and agile deployment. We’re not the first ones to go through this pain. Can you imagine a tightly controlled ITIL governed network suddenly being comfortable with partial or fully automated approach to network Continue reading

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Omg Hotel Pennsylvania sucks

Customer service is a tradeoff you get with price, thus I'm not terribly offended by things such as that recent terrible Comcast support call. If you don't want shitty service/product, then pay more. Often simply paying 10% more yields something vastly better.

The only problem is finding those "deals".

I'm at the HopeX conference, so to make life easier, I decided to stay at the venue, the Hotel Pennsylvania. Since it's a late booking, the price was $199 a night for an "upgraded" room. The room was horrible. It was tiny, the walls in the bathroom were crumbling as the damp seeped into the concrete, the furniture was scraped and dented, and the room's one tiny window looked out onto other rooms only 20 feet away. I could bear all that -- but the "non-smoking" room stank of smoke to the point that I couldn't fall asleep. So at 1:30am I gave up and checked out.

I went two (short) blocks down to the Hotel Affinia, which cases $224 for a room that's twice the size and "upscale": everything is nice new and pretty, and this non-smoking room doesn't smell a bit like smoke. It doesn't even smell like the Continue reading

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The New Ansible Tower Command Line Tool

Today we're happy to announce a new update to Ansible Tower CLI (link) that provides near 100% coverage of all REST functions within Ansible Tower from a CLI perspective.  The CLI tool can also be imported and used as a library from other python programs.   Tower CLI is open source, under the Apache 2.0 license, so it can be easily mixed into other projects, and we're also happy to take pull requests and ideas on this project.

 

Continue reading

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802.1x on Cisco Catalyst 2950

A very short post about 802.1x (dot1x) on Cisco Catalyst 2950 series. Configure RADIUS and enable dot1x on the switch: aaa authentication dot1x default group radius aaa accounting dot1x default start-stop group radius dot1x system-auth-control Then enable dot1x on all interfaces (additional security commands are added in the example below): interface FastEthernet0/1 switchport mode access […]