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With SDN, Do We Still Need CCIEs?

"With SDN, we don't need CCIEs anymore. Anyone can run the network with a simple click-and-drag GUI." Really.

"SDN makes the knowledge of traditional networking is not relevant anymore. We need more people who can write code instead." Wow.

"SDN with Openflow removes all the current routing protocols. So why wasting your time to study CCIE?" Speechless.

Let's start with definition.

According to Wikipedia, SDN is "...an approach to building computer networks that separates and abstracts elements of these systems..." There are two important keywords there: separate, and abstraction. Separate means decouple Control Plane and Data/Forwarding Plane function. If in 'traditional networking' both Contol and Data functions are contained within a single device, SDN makes the separation so the Control plane can be moved to a device or system that is located at the central of the network. More intelligent control function that can see the whole network end-to-end.

And the Control plane can be customized, manipulated, re-programmed and so on, regardless the state of the Data plane. This is the first level of the abstraction.

Why is abstraction important? Because we want to separate the complexity. Think about building multiple layers that separate Continue reading

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The real Slim Shady

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Live digital threats

I wanted to bring these free tools to my blog to keep track of them, as most probably I will forget about, and to share with anybody interested in gathering information in the security areas. First tool was revealed to my in tweet from Greg Ferro: Blog post: Response: Digital Attack Map http://t.co/rEhfYAN77c pic.twitter.com/0O1L6kELsK — […]

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Network Function Abstraction Redux (Now with DevOps!)

I wrote a few days ago about how cool projects like OpenDaylight are abstracting network functions into consumable policies that non-network folks can use (and that’s a good thing!). I felt this quick follow-up was necessary. Providing the right tools to the application folks that allow network provisioning to occur as quickly as anything else that’s software-defined, such as servers, while keeping those tools light on the learning curve, is exactly what the apps folks have been wanting from the network for the last 10 years or so.

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Network Function Abstraction Redux (Now with DevOps!)

I wrote a few days ago about how cool projects like OpenDaylight are abstracting network functions into consumable policies that non-network folks can use (and that’s a good thing!). I felt this quick follow-up was necessary. Providing the right tools to the application folks that allow network provisioning to occur as quickly as anything else that’s software-defined, such as servers, while keeping those tools light on the learning curve, is exactly what the apps folks have been wanting from the network for the last 10 years or so.

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Cisco switches and smartport macros

Smartport macros are not more than some templates you can define on Cisco switches that will apply the same configuration on multiple ports. It’s not a subject that needs too many discussions, but it can be useful for your Cisco certification preparation or real life Cisco switch administration. Configuration is very simple and it goes […]

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Real world SDN: VMware NSX on Packet Pushers

If you like to listen to geeky networking podcasts on your way to the office, this is surely one not to miss. Scott Lowe and I appeared as guests on the Packet Pushers podcast, sponsored by VMware, and hosted by Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro to discuss the technical details of VMware NSX, and the […]

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Installing VMware tools on Cisco ACS

As of ACS v5.4 Cisco has finally included VMware tools for their ADE OS. Unfortunately, when you upgrade, they do not get installed automatically as the installation is triggered during the initial install. This post is for those of us that have upgraded to version 5.4 and didn’t choose to do a fresh install.

First of all, you need to get your hands on the Root Patch. This Root Patch allows you root shell access to the ADE OS, which is just a customized version of Redhat Linux. You can get this patch from TAC by asking them nicely, or telling them you need to install VMware tools on your ACS 5.4 install. I’m sure if you’re clever you can find a copy out in the wild as well. But your mileage may vary…

Installing the ACS Root Patch

This part is pretty simple. Using the ADE OS application installer, install the package using a predefined repository…

acs/eladmino# application install RootPatch-ACS-5-4.tar.gz ftp 
Save the current ADE-OS running configuration? (yes/no) [yes] ? 
Generating configuration...
Saved the ADE-OS running configuration to startup successfully
Initiating Application installation...

Application successfully installed
acs/eladmino# 

Using the Root Patch

After the install, you Continue reading

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Five Functional Facts about OTV

Following on from my previous “triple-F” article (Five Functional Facts about FabricPath), I thought I would apply the same concept to the topic of Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV). This post will not describe much of the foundational concepts of OTV, but will dive right into how it actually functions in practice. A reasonable introduction to OTV can be found in my series on Data Center Interconnects.

So without any more preamble, here are five functional facts about OTV.

#1 – OTV Adds 42 Bytes of Overhead

OTV, being an encapsulation technology, adds additional headers to the encapsulated payload. Without rehashing too much of the basics, OTV extends a Layer 2 domain across a Layer 3 cloud. In order to preserve the Layer 2 semantics on either side of the cloud, OTV scoops up the entire Layer 2 packet on one side, transports it across the cloud in the middle, and puts it on the LAN in the other side. This preserves the entire Ethernet header including the original source/dest MAC, and even the CoS bits and VLAN tag.

So to begin with, we’re putting a (potentially) full-sized Ethernet frame – with headers – inside another Ethernet frame. That Continue reading

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Show 165 – Running Code Is What Defines The Rules

Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro are joined on this week’s Packet Pushers podcast by Teren Bryson, Paul Stewart, and Michele Chubirka. This is a community show, meaning it’s just a bunch of engineers chatting about the industry and our experiences. No vendors looking over our shoulders at all. Here’s what we yammer on about. Topics […]

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The post Show 165 – Running Code Is What Defines The Rules appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

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OpenDaylight and Those Pesky Southbound APIs

In case you’ve noticed I’ve been pretty quiet - I’d be lying if I said my day job wasn’t at least partially to blame. However, a good chunk of my free time has also been spent jumping back into the software development game. I was never really a “programmer” in the common sense - I’ve always written code strictly as part of an infrastructure effort. My first “job” that involved writing code was on a VoIP team for a retail company, creating web service-type applications that interacted with the voice infrastructure; think “IVR” on steroids.

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OpenDaylight and Those Pesky Southbound APIs

In case you’ve noticed I’ve been pretty quiet - I’d be lying if I said my day job wasn’t at least partially to blame. However, a good chunk of my free time has also been spent jumping back into the software development game. I was never really a “programmer” in the common sense - I’ve always written code strictly as part of an infrastructure effort. My first “job” that involved writing code was on a VoIP team for a retail company, creating web service-type applications that interacted with the voice infrastructure; think “IVR” on steroids.

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F5 LTM Encrypted Cookie Insert Persistence

The purpose of a load balancer is to distribute client connections to multiple servers to increase load capacity and provide high availability. One common requirement of load balanced applications, since most application servers maintain session information on the local box, is that a client must stay locked to a single server for the duration of […]

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The post F5 LTM Encrypted Cookie Insert Persistence appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Eric Flores.

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Five Functional Facts about OTV

Following on from my previous “triple-F” article (Five Functional Facts about FabricPath), I thought I would apply the same concept to the topic of Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV). This post will not describe much of the foundational concepts of OTV, but will dive right into how it actually functions in practice. A reasonable introduction to OTV can be found in my series on Data Center Interconnects.

So without any more preamble, here are five functional facts about OTV.

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BGP &#8211 Suppress-Inactive and Next-Hop Matches

This post represents the solution and explanation for quiz-16. Advertising inactive BGP routes can, sometimes, depend on other conditions. This article presents some scenarios with inactive BGP prefixes, suppress-inactive and RIB-NH Matches.

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Last Day to Buy a Poster is October 31

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Cisco UCS SDK for Python, and Building in Windows

So I’m tackling a little side project - and that is to replicate my Cisco UCS configuration scripts, currently in PowerShell, but instead in Python. While the UCS API is actually an XML interface on the Fabric Interconnects, Cisco has created a module of cmdlets called PowerTool so that this service can be easily consumed, rather than deal with XML serialization directly. For instance, once authenticated, you can do cool stuff like get a list of all Service Profiles on a system:

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Cisco UCS SDK for Python, and Building in Windows

So I’m tackling a little side project - and that is to replicate my Cisco UCS configuration scripts, currently in PowerShell, but instead in Python. While the UCS API is actually an XML interface on the Fabric Interconnects, Cisco has created a module of cmdlets called PowerTool so that this service can be easily consumed, rather than deal with XML serialization directly. For instance, once authenticated, you can do cool stuff like get a list of all Service Profiles on a system:

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Review: Information Storage and Management

EMC Education Services Safari | Amazon   I’m a routing geek. Not a storage, compute, SONET, web design, and mobile phone geek — a routing geek. But even routing geeks need to know something about the stuff that attaches to the network right? In the spirit of learning something new, I recently picked up (and […]

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Java is to JavaScript as Car is to Carpet – a Beginner’s Guide

Some recent discussions at work have led me to the surprising realization that lots of people working in IT don't understand that Java and JavaScript are almost completely unrelated to each other. This is actually a fairly important misunderstanding to correct:  it leads to wasted troubleshooting efforts, such as downgrading or upgrading Windows Java installations in response to browser JavaScript errors.

I found the title of this blog entry in a StackOverflow post: "Java is to JavaScript as Car is to Carpet". That's pretty much it, in a nutshell. For the record, the only things that Java and JavaScript have in common are:

1. They are both programming languages.
2. The word "Java".
3. Both came out of the web technology explosion of the early 1990s.
4. Both are frequently encountered in the context of web browsers.

Java is a compiled programming language that was originally developed with a major goal of allowing similar or identical codebases to run on different platforms without needing to be recompiled. It does this by compiling to "bytecode" rather than platform-specific machine code, which then typically runs inside a so-called "Java Virtual Machine". Java was originally developed and controlled by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), but it has Continue reading