Automating SAN Zoning with Schprokits

I’m always on the lookout for ways to simplify the configuration of integrated systems through automation. I also currently work for a systems integrator, and I take any opportunity I can get to automate a process, a la “assembly line”, creating a consistent, predictable outcome.

One particular task that both integrators and customers alike are having to do manually is the act of Fibre Channel Zoning. For those that aren’t familiar, Fibre Channel doesn’t work in the same way that Ethernet does (i.e. Flood and Learn). In order to get two nodes to communicate over a SAN fabric, a configuration must be put into place to allow them to talk – roughly equivalent to a Layer 2 ACL. Each server’s HBA must be given permission to access a storage target on the fabric, which means that any time compute power is added or removed, this configuration needs to be revisited. This is a prime candidate for automation.

This article will show how I am using Schprokits to simplify zoning configuration. I am tightly adhering to the idea that this kind of information should be pulled directly from live infrastructure (in this example, I’m using Cisco UCS), not a (usually) stagnant spreadsheet, or Continue reading

Show 215 – SDN Training & Certifications with Wendell Odom

Software defined networking (SDN) has arrived in the form of vendor released products. If you follow this show, you know that these products are largely incompatible. Certainly there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to SDN technologies today. In SDN’s awkward tween years, what are network engineers trying to stay current to do? […]

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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
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The post Show 215 – SDN Training & Certifications with Wendell Odom appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Automating SAN Zoning with Schprokits

Since this post was written, the company behind Schprokits has unfortunately gone out of business. Though this approach is no longer something that you can read and follow along with, I have left this post active as an academic exercise in network automation. I hope it is useful in some way. I recorded an in-depth explanation of the process (~42 mins), and it can be found here, as well as at the end of this post.

Automating SAN Zoning with Schprokits

Since this post was written, the company behind Schprokits has unfortunately gone out of business. Though this approach is no longer something that you can read and follow along with, I have left this post active as an academic exercise in network automation. I hope it is useful in some way. I recorded an in-depth explanation of the process (~42 mins), and it can be found here, as well as at the end of this post.

Lima, Peru: CloudFlare’s 29th data center

Just when you thought we’d reached the end, CloudFlare’s Latin America data center expansion continues. Hot on the heels of our recent expansion into Santiago, São Paulo, and Medellin, this holiday season commences in Lima with our 29th data center globally, and our fourth in Latin America.

Latin America is the fastest growing source of traffic to CloudFlare's network, with nearly 10x growth in just the last twelve months. Our new data center in Lima reduces the latency to access any site using CloudFlare, increases web performance for users in the region from Iquitos to Tacna, and adds another point of redundancy. It also increases the capacity and surface area of the CloudFlare network to absorb massive cyber attacks. This is of particular benefit to CloudFlare customers the Presidency of Peru and the ONPE, Peru’s National Election Office. In the lead up to the Peruvian elections this month, CloudFlare partnered with the Government of Peru to ensure that local elections go off without a hitch — no easy feat when voter turnout is expected to reach nearly 90%. Whether you are running a site, mobile app, or national election we have an offering for you.

Coming Continue reading

A tale of two perspectives: IT Operations with NSX

This year I had the honor and privilege to co-present a session at VMworld 2014 with my esteemed colleague Scott Lowe. As many of you know, Scott is a celebrity at VMworld and one of the most famous virtualization bloggers and the author of many best selling books on VMware vSphere.

In this session Scott and I pretended to be colleagues at a company that decided to deploy VMware NSX for their software-defined data center. I played the role of the “Network Guy”, and of course Scott played the role of the “Server Guy”. So then, how do we work together in this environment?

  • How do we gain operational visibility into our respective disciplines using existing tools?
  • How do we preserve existing roles and responsibilities?
  • What opportunities exist to converge operational data for cross-functional troubleshooting?
  • How does the Network team gain hop-by-hop visibility across virtual and physical switches?
  • How can the Network and Server teams work together to troubleshoot issues?

These are just some of the questions we attempt to role play and answer in this 35 min session:

***Update: this VMworld session video was removed from YouTube by VMware and is no longer available.***

A tale of two perspectives: IT Operations with NSX

This year I had the honor and privilege to co-present a session at VMworld 2014 with my esteemed colleague Scott Lowe. As many of you know, Scott is a celebrity at VMworld and one of the most famous virtualization bloggers and the author of many best selling books on VMware vSphere.

In this session Scott and I pretended to be colleagues at a company that decided to deploy VMware NSX for their software-defined data center. I played the role of the “Network Guy”, and of course Scott played the role of the “Server Guy”. So then, how do we work together in this environment?

  • How do we gain operational visibility into our respective disciplines using existing tools?
  • How do we preserve existing roles and responsibilities?
  • What opportunities exist to converge operational data for cross-functional troubleshooting?
  • How does the Network team gain hop-by-hop visibility across virtual and physical switches?
  • How can the Network and Server teams work together to troubleshoot issues?

These are just some of the questions we attempt to role play and answer in this 35 min session:

***Update: this VMworld session video was removed from YouTube by VMware and is no longer available.***

A tale of two perspectives: IT Operations with NSX

This year I had the honor and privilege to co-present a session at VMworld 2014 with my esteemed colleague Scott Lowe. As many of you know, Scott is a celebrity at VMworld and one of the most famous virtualization bloggers and the author of many best selling books on VMware vSphere.

In this session Scott and I pretended to be colleagues at a company that decided to deploy VMware NSX for their software-defined data center. I played the role of the “Network Guy”, and of course Scott played the role of the “Server Guy”. So then, how do we work together in this environment?

  • How do we gain operational visibility into our respective disciplines using existing tools?
  • How do we preserve existing roles and responsibilities?
  • What opportunities exist to converge operational data for cross-functional troubleshooting?
  • How does the Network team gain hop-by-hop visibility across virtual and physical switches?
  • How can the Network and Server teams work together to troubleshoot issues?

These are just some of the questions we attempt to role play and answer in this 35 min session:

***Update: this VMworld session video was removed from YouTube by VMware and is no longer available.***

A tale of two perspectives: IT Operations with NSX

This year I had the honor and privilege to co-present a session at VMworld 2014 with my esteemed colleague Scott Lowe.  As many of you know, Scott is a celebrity at VMworld.  He’s one of the most famous virtualization bloggers and the author of many best selling books on VMware vSphere. Together, we presented what […]

Should I Really Program My Network?

In my presentation @ SDN Meetup in Stockholm, I tried to answer a simple question: “Should I really program my network?” and obviously had to start with an even simpler one: “What is SDN?”

The video of the presentation is already available on YouTube, and you can watch the slides on my content web site.

Also, make sure you watch other presentations from that event, particularly David Barroso’s SDN Internet Router.

Cisco VIRL released into the wild

virlAfter much waiting from all of us, Cisco has released, on “cyber Monday” no less, VIRL. As you may remember, VIRL was the talk of CLUS 2013, and many of us have been eagerly waiting for this tool ever since. For those of you out of the loop, VIRL enabled users to rapidly design, configure and simulate Cisco network topologies. With this we can run IOSv (IOS Virtual) IOS XRv, CSR1000v (Which runs IOS-XE), and NX-OSv (ala the previously leaked Titanium). The cool factor really starts to come into play when you look at how fast you can deploy the base network configurations. Cisco has leveraged OpenStack, KVM, and AutoNetkit along with their VM Maestro GUI to allow you to quickly create network topologies, and have the base configurations built automagically. The downside is we are missing some features that some of us are rather used to including, Serial interfaces, Cisco ASA, and L2 Support. Hopefully these will arrive in the future, although I’ve heard no rumors of such as of yet….

Pricing is done in two tiers, both of which are annual subscriptions. The personal edition is $199.99/year (But you can save $50 currently by using the virl50 Continue reading

How to install Mininet 2.2 beta

Most people who use the Mininet network simulator will download and set up the Mininet virtual machine image. However, there are times when we may want to use a different version of Mininet than the one already installed in the Mininet VM.

For example, we may want to use the newest features of Mininet currently being developed. The Mininet project releases beta-quality source code that user can download and install themselves.

This post will show how to install Mininet 2.2 Beta on a virtual machine image running Ubuntu Server. The steps described below should work for any version of Mininet that the user wants to install.

Do not install Mininet on your host computer

Warning: Do not install Mininet on your host computer. Install in in a virtual machine.

The Mininet install script may overwrite files in your home directory (depending on what you already have installed)1. If Mininet makes changes that cause problems on an existing virtual machine, you can just delete the VM and try again with a fresh Ubuntu Server image. But, if you install Mininet directly on your host computer you may cause problems.

In my own experience, I tried installing Mininet on my Continue reading

Is the Facebook DC Architecture right for you?

A few weeks ago Facebook announced their new datacenter architecture in a post on their network engineering blog. Facebook is one of the few large web scale companies that is fairly open about their network architecture and designs and it gives many others the opportunity to see how a network can be scaled, even though the scale is well beyond what most will need in the foreseeable future, if not forever.

In the post, Alexey walks through some of the thought process behind the architecture, which is ultimately the most important part of any architecture and design. Too often we simply build whatever seems to be popular or common, or mandated/pushed by a specific vendor. The network however is a product, a deliverable, and has requirements like just about anything else we produce.

Facebook’s and the other web properties’ scale is at a different order of magnitude from most everyone else, but their requirements should sound pretty familiar to many:

  • Intra DC traffic is significantly higher than inter DC or DC to Internet traffic
    • “machine to machine traffic – is several orders of magnitude larger than what goes out to the Internet”
  • Build for growth, the network is not a Continue reading

NG mVPN-Control Plane Overview

In this post we will be exploring the shortcomings of MVPN (Draft Rosen/RFC 6037), with a focus on how NG-MVPN technologies address these limitations. Why NG-MVPN? The base specification for BGP/MPLS VPNs, RFC4364, only addresses unicast, and the first proposal for multicast support in BGP/MPLS VPNs is often known as Draft Rosen (which is now […]

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Diptanshu Singh

Diptanshu Singh

Diptanshu Singh,(3xCCIE,CCDE) is a Sr. Engineer mostly focused on service providers , data center and security. He is a network enthusiast passionate about network technologies so not only is it his profession, but something of a hobby as well.
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The post NG mVPN-Control Plane Overview appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Diptanshu Singh.

OSPF Default-Information Originate – Built-in Loop Prevention with ALWAYS keyword

This post represents the solution and explanation for quiz-24. Quiz Review Quiz #24 opens the discussion about a scenario in which traffic is black-holed when a certain link fails. Let’s summarize the quiz: company ABC runs OSPF internally, in all 3 buildings internet access is provided via 2 Border Routers (BR-B and BR-C) each connected to a separate ISP each BR receives a default route from its directly connected ISP... [read more]

Establish Static Redundancy via DSL Connection

It is a popular method for small businesses to utilize their local ISP’s business class DSL service. It is a also a great rule of thumb to multi-home your connection by using 2 separate ISP’s (Cox and Verizon for example). You would ideally want to either load balance your traffic between the 2 connections or […]

Author information

Korey

Korey

Korey is a Network Engineer and Military veteran with over 8 years of experience in the IT industry. Currently holds the following certifications; CCNP R&S, JNCIA, and CCNA Security. He is interested in advancing his network knowledge and teaching others. Currently works as a Network Engineer and is responsible for day to day operations as well as network design and implementation.
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The post Establish Static Redundancy via DSL Connection appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Korey.

Netflix is using obfuscation to not pay their fair share!

Netflix is using obfuscation to not pay their fair share!

by Scott Sherwood, CEO - December 2, 2014

As a CEO of a company, I would love to have someone subsidize my business and reduce my costs to deliver products to my customers. Yet for-profit company Netflix, which uses more Internet bandwidth than anyone in the world, wants network providers to connect them up for free. Yes, for free. They are using terms such as “Network Neutrality” to make the large telecom providers seem like bad guys, while creating confusion to hide behind their greed. For Netflix, delivery of content is like a cost of goods sold, but they just don’t want to pay their fair share.  

In his in-depth article last week for Forbes – How Netflix Poisoned The Net Neutrality Debate – author Larry Downes traces the origins of today’s fight over network neutrality back to March of this year. He references a blog post by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings that “…urged the FCC to redefine net neutrality, transforming it from a set of last-mile consumer protections to detailed government control of connections at the Internet’s back-end. Rather than pay the transit providers, Netflix wanted to connect directly Continue reading

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