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Working with VMware NSX – The setup

I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks playing around with VMware’s NSX product.  In this post, I’d like to talk about getting the base NSX configuration done which we’ll build on in later posts.  However, when I say ‘base’, I don’t mean from scratch.  I’m going to start with a VMware environment that has the NSX manager and NSX controllers deployed already.  Since there isn’t a lot of ‘networking’ in getting the manager and controllers deployed, I’m not going to cover that piece.  But, if you do want to start from total scratch with NSX, see these great walk through from Chris Wahl and Anthony Burke…

Chris Wahl
http://wahlnetwork.com/2014/04/28/working-nsx-deploying-nsx-manager/
http://wahlnetwork.com/2014/05/06/working-nsx-assigning-user-permissions/
http://wahlnetwork.com/2014/06/02/working-nsx-deploying-nsx-controllers-via-gui-api/
http://wahlnetwork.com/2014/06/12/working-nsx-preparing-cluster-hosts/

Anthony Burke
http://networkinferno.net/installing-vmware-nsx-part-1
http://networkinferno.net/installing-vmware-nsx-part-2
http://networkinferno.net/installing-vmware-nsx-part-3

Both of those guys are certainly worth keeping an eye on for future NSX posts (they have other posts around NSX but I only included the ones above to get you to where I’m going to pick up).

So let’s talk about where I’m going to start from.  My topology from where I’ll start looks like this…

Note: For reference I’m going to try and use the green Continue reading

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A simple SameGame implementation

Doing something interesting to practice.

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Priority Queue – SDN and The Reseller Channel

What is the future of SDN Vendors ? Will all the startups eventually close down to just a few choices or can there be a vibrant ecosystem which can allow for many vendors to survive ? The discussion took a left turn and became an strong discussion of whether resellers will survive the arrival of SDN.

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The post Priority Queue – SDN and The Reseller Channel appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

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How to run X applications on a guest VM in the cloonix network simulator

To run a program that uses a graphical user interface on a guest virtual machine running in the cloonix open-source network simulator, log into the guest VM from the host computer using SSH and forward the X11 display. Then, any X11 program you run on the guest VM using that SSH session, such as Wireshark, will display its X windows on the host computer.

Initial setup

First, we create a cloonix network simulation with at least one guest VM. In this example, we created three guest VMs named Cloon1, Cloon2, and Cloon3.

See previous posts related to using cloonix, if you need help setting up the example network.

Connect to guest VM via SSH

Open a new terminal window on the host computer. We do this so we can run X windows from the guests on the host. As discussed in the Cloonix v24 overview post, cloonix uses a patched version of the Dropbear SSH client so we use the dbssh command that is installed in the cloonix tree directory, ~/Netsims/cloonix-24.11.

The Dropbear SSH client automatically forwards X windows from the client machine to the server machine so Continue reading

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My CCIE Journey

I use to post this blog on my friends blog and I just wanted to put it here since this journey was one of the biggest professional experience of my life. I am starting this blog and will dedicate some time (mostly late at night ..) to write articles (without any flashiness) for every engineers […]

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Cisco Virtual IOS on GNS3

The tutorial discuss the use of  GNS3 software to run Cisco Virtual IOS (vIOS). Cisco vIOS is  shipped and supported as a part of the Cisco's One Platform Kit (onePK) that is distributed in form of virtual machine. It might be downloaded with Cisco.com account. Currently, it is not required to have Cisco account associated with service contracts, Bill-to IDs, or product serial numbers in order to download onePK.

Software Prerequisites

• Host OS - any 64 bit Linux OS
• Qemu emulator and virtualizer compiled with x86_64 support
• KVM
• GNS3 0.8.7 - the last version that has Qemu support included
• Cisco all-in-one-VM-1.2.1-194.ova virtual machine

Minimum Hardware Requirements

• CPU with hardware virtualization support (AMD-V or VT-X virtualization extensions)
• Storage - 10 GB
• RAM - 2000 MB
• RAM vIOS - 384 MB

Script for Extracting vIOS from All-In-One VM

Here is a Linux bash script that helps you to extract vIOS  vios-adventerprisek9-m.vmdk  from  all-in-one VM file. Download all-in-one.ova file from here  and assign executable privileges to the script.

$ chmod +x extract_vios.txt

Then you can run the script as it is shown below.  The only user input is selecting path to all-in-one VM file Continue reading

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EFF lies about NetNeutrality

The EFF has completely and thoroughly repudiated JP Barlow's "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace", such as in this tweet:

TAKE ACTION: Congress is trying sneak through a dangerous amendment that will kill Net Neutrality. Call right now: https://t.co/lmObQjG49N
— EFF (@EFF) July 15, 2014

This tweet is lie. Congress can't "kill Net Neutrality" because Net Neutrality doesn't currently exist. Net Neutrality proponents don't want to maintain the status quo, but radically change the Internet, converting it from the private network it is now into a public utility, regulated by the government.

What the left-wing populists tell you about Net Neutrality is a lie. Corporations aren't doing the evil things they claim. There is no technical idea behind it like "end-to-end". Net Neutrality is just the political belief that corporations are inherently evil and that the government must run the Internet.

Internet "fast lanes" are not a bad thing. They already exist, and the Internet can't function without them. Sniff your home traffic and then traceroute every IP address your system communicates with. You'll find that 90% of you home traffic goes to a server in your local city. That's because most websites use a fast lane to the Continue reading

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Mellanox and bad CLI choices

I’ve been working on Mellanox S-Series switches lately in a largish network with several hundred 10GbE server ports. On the whole, the product has performed beyond my cynically low expectations and the product has good capabilities overall but the command line interface (CLI) is a really poor user experience. How about this gem for configuring […]

The post Mellanox and bad CLI choices appeared first on EtherealMind.

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Port mirroring on VMware vSwitch/dvSwitch (dvMirror)

Port mirror is a traditional features available on physical switch to capture port traffic and redirect to a remote destination. A remote destination can be (using the Cisco convention): A physical port located on the same physical switch (Switch port Analyzer or SPAN port). The traffic is simply copied to the destination port too. A physical port […]

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Security Dessert Models

I had the good fortune last week to read a great post from Maish Saidel-Keesing (@MaishSK) that discussed security models in relation to candy.  It reminded me that I’ve been wanting to discuss security models in relation to desserts.  And since Maish got me hungry for a Snicker’s bar, I decided to lay out my ideas.

When we look at traditional security models of the past, everything looks similar to creme brûlée.  The perimeter is very crunchy, but it protects a soft interior.  This is the predominant model of the world where the “bad guys” all live outside of your network.  It works when you know where your threats are located.  This model is still in use today where companies explicitly trust their user base.

The creme brûlée model doesn’t work when you have large numbers of guest users or BYOD-enabled users.  If one of them brings in something that escapes into the network, there’s nothing to stop it from wreaking havoc everywhere.  In the past, this has caused massive virus outbreaks and penetrations from things like malicious USB sticks in the parking lot being activated on “trusted” computers internally.

A Slice Of Pie

A more modern security Continue reading

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IOU Web Interface 1.2.2-23

iou-web is released “as-is” without warranty of any kind. iou-web does not include any Cisco IOU/IOL binaries or other materials under Cisco NDA. I’m not responsible for what you do with iou-web software. I DON’T OWN NOR HAVE ACCESS TO TOPOLOGY, INITIAL CONFIGS, IOU/IOL BINARIES OR ANY OTHER MATERIAL UNDER CCIE EXAM NDA OR COPYRIGHTED […]

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How Service Providers are Outpacing Enterprises in SDN Deployments

How Service Providers are Outpacing Enterprises in SDN Deployments

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by Steve Harriman, VP of Marketing - July 15, 2014

Service providers are well ahead of enterprises in SDN deployments. The numbers confirm this according to Jim Duffy in his Network World article “Enterprise SDN use lags service providers.” ACG Research estimates that sales of SDN products for live service provider deployments will reach $15.6 billion by 2018, while those that may become live will reach $29.5 billion. Use of production SDNs by enterprises and cloud/service provider data centers will be a fraction of that according to Infonetics Research: $3.1 billion by 2017. 

Why are service providers so far ahead of enterprises? To paraphrase the oft-used political aphorism: It’s the business model, stupid. Duffy said it best in his article: “To service providers, the network is the business. To enterprises, the network enables or supports its core business.” 

To a network service provider, technology is the revenue generator in a competitive market. Better solutions and better technology lead to lower costs (and more profits), and/or competitive differentiation. 

Of course, competitive differentiators tend to become commodities over time, and we’ve seen that happen repeatedly Continue reading

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OTV AEDs Are Like Highlanders

While prepping for CCIE Data Center and playing around with a lab environment, I ran into a problem I’d like to share.

I was setting up a basic OTV setup with three VDCs running OTV, connecting to a core VDC running the multicast core (which is a lot easier than it sounds). I’m running it in a lab environment we have at Firefly, but I’m not going by our normal lab guide, instead making it up as I go along in order to save some time, and make sure I can stand up OTV without a lab guide.

Each VDC will set up an adjacency with the other two, with the core VDC providing unicast and multicast connectivity.  That part was pretty easy to setup (even the multicast part, which had previously freaked me the shit out). Each VDC would be its own site, so no redundant AEDs.

On each OTV VDC, I setup the following as per my pre-OTV checklist:

• Bi-directional IPv4 unicast connectivity to each join interface (I used a single OSPF area)
• MTU of 9216 end-to-end (easy since OTV requires M line cards, and it’s just an MTU command on the interface)
• An OTV site VLAN which requires:
  • Continue reading

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Using Big Tools for Small Problems

BGP in the data center? And MPLS? Are you insane? Well, maybe, yes. But then again, I’ve been known to do a lot of crazy things in my time. Isn’t MPLS a core and edge service provider technology, while VXLAN is an enterprise data center technology? But let’s begin with this idea that technologies are […]

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JTRIG weekend projects

The Intercept has released a page of JTRIG tools and techniques. I thought I'd comment on them.

Largely, this is a long list of small projects. Few of these projects require more than a couple lines of code, or would take an average hacker more than a weekend to accomplish.

For example, there is CHANGELING, which says "Ability to spoof any email address and send email under that identity". That's the sort of thing you'd ask as an interview question for a cybersec company. You'd expect the candidate to produce this in 20 minutes.

Some sound like big projects, but they are in fact just leveraging existing large open-source projects. A tiny amount of scripting on top of a project like OpenBTS would deliver big, scary results, such as fuzzing GSM.

I point this out because people have the misapprehension that the intelligence services have advanced "cyber-weapons". That's not true. Instead, what's going on is like Rambo stuck in a jungle with only a knife, who can fashion anything into a weapon, from twigs to rocks. That's what you see going on here: given the existing base of open-source (and closed-source) code, cyber-warriors fashion new tools with a little bit Continue reading

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Upcoming speaking schedule

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Running RIPv2 with INE Topology with IOU/IOL

The Problem or Task I wrote the initial topology introduction on INE’s topology with IOU here. Task Enable RIPv2 on all 155.1.0.0 and 150.1.0.0 interfaces and disable auto-summary. Seems simple...

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Replacing an MPLS WAN with an Internet VPN Overlay

I received an email last week from a reader seeking advice on a fairly common predicament:

Our CIO has recently told us that he wants to get rid of MPLS because it is too costly and is leaning towards big internet lines running IPSEC VPNs to connect the whole of Africa.

As you can imagine, this has caused a huge debate between the networks team and management, we run high priority services such as Lync enterprise, SAP, video conferencing etc. and networks feel we need MPLS for guaranteed quality for these services but management feels the Internet is today stable enough to run just as good as MPLS.

What is your take on the MPLS vs Internet debate from a network engineer's point of view? And more so, would running those services over Internet work?

This is something I struggled with pretty frequently in a prior job working for a managed services provider. MPLS WANs are great because they provide flexible, private connectivity with guaranteed throughput. Most MPLS providers also allow you to choose from a menu of QoS schemes and classify your traffic so that real-time voice and video services are treated higher preference during periods of congestion.

Unfortunately, Continue reading

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Reboot & update your router in half the time with warm reloads!

Reloading a router can sometimes feel right like an eternity, usually when you issue a reload you can step away get a cup of coffee sit back down and the router should be just about be ready. For quite a while now (well since before 12.4 which lets admit is a long time ago) we’ve […]

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Brazil’s Winning Internet

Another World Cup is in the books, and it’s fair to say that most people will remember 2014 for the inglorious and improbable performance of the host nation, losing 7-1 and 3-0 in its semifinal and consolation matches. Brazil’s sad exit capped off a year of soul-searching about the nation’s massive investment in hosting the World Cup (and the Olympics yet to come).

But Brazil shouldn’t lose sight of one important silver lining to their World Cup cloud: the startlingly vibrant development of the Brazilian Internet, and the critical role Brazil now plays in the Internet connectivity and ICT development of South America.

Preparations for the World Cup and the Olympics may have helped light a fire under Brazil’s Internet infrastructure providers. Here’s a plot of the growth of the set of autonomous systems (that is, enterprises and service providers who originate IPv4 address space under their own registered Autonomous System Number) in Brazil over time. For comparison, we’ve also included the same statistic for South Africa. By this measure, the two World Cup host countries couldn’t be more different!

Brazil and South Africa invite comparison because of their many parallels: Continue reading