Demo: End to end, hop by hop, physical and virtual network flow visibility with NSX

You’ve probably heard it before. The myth goes something like this: “With software based overlays, troubleshooting in real-time where a flow is going with ECMP hashing on the fabric is going to be a real problem.” The implied message being that this can only be possible with special hardware in a new proprietary fabric switch.

I’ve heard this one a number times, usually while seated comfortably in a session presented by a vendor who’s invested in the failure of software-centric network virtualization such as VMware NSX. As if this person has never heard of Netflow? Or maybe they assume you won’t bother to do the research, connect the dots, and in fact discover all that is possible.

Well, guess what? I decided to do the research :-) And I put together a short demo showing you just how simple it is to get this troubleshooting capability with generally available software, using any standard network switch, constructed in any standard fabric design (routed Leaf/Spine, L2 with MLAG, etc).

I presented this demo to the VMworld TV crew and embedded it here for your convenience:

How does it work?

It’s really simple, actually. Here’s what I explain in the video:

The Continue reading

Demo: End to end, hop by hop, physical and virtual network flow visibility with NSX

Five Reasons To Be At Interop New York

This guest post is by Drew Conry-Murray, Director of Content & Community at Interop and a good friend of the Packet Pushers. SPECIAL NOTE: Interop is offering the Packet Pushers community a 25% discount on Total Access and Conference Passes or a FREE Expo Pass for the New York show. Register today with the code PACKETP to receive the discount. The […]

Author information

Sponsored Blog Posts

The Packet Pushers work with our vendors to present a limited number of sponsored blog posts to our community. This is one. If you're a vendor and think you have some blog content you'd like to sponsor, contact us via [email protected].

The post Five Reasons To Be At Interop New York appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

Basics – Docker, Containers, Hypervisors, CoreOS

Containers virtualize at the operating system level, Hypervisors virtualize at the hardware level. Hypervisors abstract the operating system from hardware, containers abstract the application from the operation system. Hypervisors consumes storage space for each instance. Containers use a single storage space plus smaller deltas for each layer and thus are much more efficient. Containers can boot and be […]

The post Basics – Docker, Containers, Hypervisors, CoreOS appeared first on EtherealMind.

SLAAC May Save Your Life

A chance dinner conversation at Wireless Field Day 7 with George Stefanick (@WirelesssGuru) and Stewart Goumans (@WirelessStew) made me think about the implications of IPv6 in healthcare.  IPv6 adoption hasn’t been very widespread, thanks in part to the large number of embedded devices that have basic connectivity.  Basic in this case means “connected with an IPv4 address”.  But that address can lead to some complications if you aren’t careful.

In a hospital environment, the units that handle medicine dosing are connected to the network.  This allows the staff to program them to properly dispense medications to patients.  Given an IP address in a room, staff can ensure that a patient is getting just the right amount of painkillers and not an overdose.  Ensuring a device gets the same IP each time is critical to making this process work.  According to George, he has recommended that the staff stop using DHCP to automatically assign addresses and instead move to static IP configuration to ensure there isn’t a situation where a patient inadvertently receives a fatal megadose of medication, such as when an adult med unit is accidentally used in a pediatric application.

This static policy does lead Continue reading

Windows ISATAP Client, Part 3

In Part 2 we did the initial ISATAP configuration for our Cisco router. Here we’ll show the config we use on our Windows clients and server. netsh interface isatap set router 203.0.113.30 netsh interface isatap set state enabled Normally I tell system admins to never hard-code IP addresses into their application; always use DNS names! […]

Author information

Dan Massameno

Dan Massameno is the president and Chief Engineer at Leaf Point, a network engineering firm in Connecticut.

The post Windows ISATAP Client, Part 3 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Dan Massameno.

Debian/Ubuntu PMTUD & uRPF

Log analysis GUI tools

Network Infrastructure as Database

A while ago I wrote about the idea of treating network infrastructure (and all other infrastructure) as code, and using the same processes application developers are using to write, test and deploy code to design and implement networks.

That approach clearly works well if you can virtualize (and clone ad infinitum) everything. We can virtualize appliances or even routers, but installed equipment and high-speed physical infrastructure remain somewhat resistant to that idea. We need a different paradigm, and the best analogy I could come up with is a database.

Q and A with Neela Jacques, OpenDaylight Executive Director

Q&A with Neela Jacques, OpenDaylight Executive Director

As OpenDaylight makes progress towards spurring adoption of SDN and NFV via an open platform, we asked Executive Director Neela Jacques his latest thoughts on the project’s current status, the state of SDN management, and what’s next.   

1. For people who may not be familiar with OpenDaylight, what is your mission?
OpenDaylight is an open source project that is creating a common, open platform for SDN and NFV. We’re a community of developers uniting competitors to work collaboratively to overcome networking’s toughest challenge -- technology fragmentation and duplication. By creating an open codebase for SDN and NFV, OpenDaylight is a vehicle for vendors to build their unique products, service and support offerings on top of a common, core set of technologies.   

2. Do you feel like the move toward open SDN has reached a critical mass? When and how do you see that happening?
In less than 15 months since we formed, OpenDaylight has grown to include 39 member companies and more than 220 developers that are working to unify the networking industry around a common, open, standard code base. Continue reading

Steve Jobs Thinks All Network Engineers Should Learn to Code

…I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer – [they] should learn a computer language, because it teaches you how to think.  It’s like going to law school.  I don’t think anybody should be Continue reading

Let People Choose Their Own Tools

Why is it that people will pay a lot of money for a consultant’s time and expertise, but then hobble them by limiting the tools they can use?

Chris Wahl has written about learning to cope with the default tools and settings:

It’s almost a given that anything I own – personally or via my employer – will not be allowed to touch any piece of software or hardware in the average client environment. It causes too many headaches with compliance rule sets like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)…

This means that I’ve come to rely on whatever tools are universally available. Let’s take PowerShell for example. I have an entire library of scripts that I’ve written over the past several years. More often than not I end up using the vSphere Client or ESXi Shell instead because I can’t get to my scripts. If it’s a highly repetitious task I may just re-create a script by hand, but more often than not, it’s not worth the effort.

I’ve posted similar things to IEOC about the use of aliases on network gear:

I’m a consultant, so I work on a variety of different systems, and can’t rely on having a large list of aliases Continue reading

Fundamentals – PMTUD – IPv4 vs IPv6 – Part 2 of 2

New GNS3 1.0 Beta 1

SXSW Interactive 2015: Vote for CloudFlare’s Submissions

Has your Twitter feed been flooded with “vote for my SXSW panel” tweets? With so much buzz all over the place, we wanted to keep it simple and share all of the presentations and panels affiliated with CloudFlare, in one place. Check out CloudFlare's presentations and panels below. If our topics interest you, casting a vote will take just a few minutes!

How to vote:

1. To sign up go to this link
2. Enter your name & email address, then confirm your account
3. Log in with your new account and go to the “PanelPicker”
4. Click “search/vote” and search for your panel by title
5. VOTE

Please note: Voting ends on September 6th!

PanelPicker voting counts for 30% of a sessions acceptance to SXSW. Our panels cover a variety of topics from a tell-all that reveals the real story behind the male/female co-founder dynamic to exploring ways to protect human rights online. There’s something for everyone so check them out and vote for your favorite! Every vote counts!

Help CloudFlare get to SXSW!

Presentations:

“Lean On” is the New “Lean In”
Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare will sit down with Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and Head of User Experience at CloudFlare for Continue reading

Show 203 – SDN Policy + Congress with Martin Casado & Tim Hinrichs

This week, the Packet Pushers chat with Martin Casado & Tim Hinrichs about policy. What's policy, you ask? In the context of the software defined data center, policy is the big idea that what an IT system needs to do can be expressed in an abstract policy language. The need for abstraction exists because human beings aren't easily able to tell machines explicitly what they need to do build a system that conforms to a given policy.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 2M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks

TwitterGoogle+LinkedIn

The post Show 203 – SDN Policy + Congress with Martin Casado & Tim Hinrichs appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Jack of All Trades

“Jack of all trades, master of none…”

How many times have you heard that in your life? In your career as an engineer? I’ve probably heard it hundreds of times, if not thousands, from working on RADAR and various sorts of radio and other electronics in the US Air Force to as recently as last week. There seems to be a feeling that if you can’t know one thing really well unless you somehow give up on knowing a lot of other things — perhaps there is some sort of limiter in our brains that keeps us from learning more than a certain amount of “stuff” in a single lifetime, or some such nonsense. We’ve all seen the Sherlock Holmes moment, for instance, when Sherlock says something about not remembering something because he has so much other stuff to remember.

And we come back to this idea: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Now I’ll readily admit that I only have so much time to read, and therefore to learn new things. I have four or five wish lists on Amazon, each of which has more than 100 books on it. I have a reading list in Logos Bible Continue reading

Thoughts on GitHub streaking

Thoughts on GitHub streaking

Thought it might be a good idea to brain dump on my thoughts of “Write Code Everyday” and more to the point the [github challenge](http://ryanseys.com/blog/177-days-of-gith

Secret Sunday: The World of Matt Oswalt

Welcome back to Secret Sunday! This week I’m directing your attention to Keeping It Classless, the blog of Matt Oswalt (aka @mierdin). Matt has recently published 3 of 4 planned parts of his SDN Protocols series, and if you’re interesting in … Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please do click through to the source at Secret Sunday: The World of Matt Oswalt and give me a share/like. Thank you!

Rant: Just stop it with the TFTP

TFTP was first defined in 1980. That is a very long time ago in IT, and while it’s s had a good run, it’s time for network engineers to stop using TFTP. It’s slow, insecure, and there are better options available.

TFTP is an unauthenticated, plain-text file transfer protocol. It is commonly used by network engineers to transfer switch configs, or IOS images. No passwords required, just a straight “Get this file ” or “Put this file ”. It uses UDP to transfer data. It is designed to be very simple, and light-weight. This is a large part of why it was popular – TFTP servers or clients could be implemented in low-powered devices, such as switches, VoIP phones, etc. Some systems also use it as part of an initial boot, where TFTP is used to retrieve the initial boot environment.

The main complaints I hear from engineers are “How do I get a TFTP server set up?”, and “Why is this taking so long to transfer?” Server configuration is just a Google exercise, but let’s look at file transfer speed.

Speedy? Not so much

For this test, I have a CentOS 6.x VM running on my laptop. I’m downloading Continue reading