Increase the Awesome

I’m sitting at my desk right now (9pm Sydney time), waiting for my 3am change window that I need to be onsite at the data centre for. Now I am supposed to be working on a presentation I am giving on Friday entitled “Automation, Orchestration, and SDN”. I’ve been given about 20 minutes to cover these topics, so I’m spending quite a bit of time trying to get the right mix of content without geeking out too far for the intended audience (C-levels, project managers and lead engineers).

While trying to get the mix just right, my mind keeps going back to a comment I made last week on the “APAC Virtualization Roundtable” podcast (Episode 74 “SDN & Virtualisation from a Network Engineers perspective”)…

“Increase the awesome, remove the mundane!”

While initially sounding facetious, this comment is kind of where my brain has been going of late when trying to work out where I should focus my energies. While I’m thinking of ways to apply this idea to many aspects of my life, I would like to present them in the context of the presentation I am about to give (and the same context to which Continue reading

DCCP – Datagram Congestion Control Protocol

How does the internet work - We know what is networking

DCCP transport layer protocol is used to control the datagram congestion. It provides an excellent procedure to stop the internet fall down, if it is caused by the congestion. In fact, this protocol is a brilliant competitor to be used as a substitute of UDP protocol. DCCP account DCCP congestion control trait by means of a reliable acknowledgments delivery (in form […]

DCCP – Datagram Congestion Control Protocol

Agile Writing – Week 1 – Getting Started with JIRA, GreenHopper and Markdown

I finished reading The Phoenix Project at the beginning of May and it has had a profound affect on my outlook towards work. Not only was this a great read, but while I was reading I kept getting ideas on how I could implement the three ways at work. This diary documents the transition to an Agile Writing workflow.

Why bother?

Before I start covering the how, I thought I would spend a little time on the why. Agile is something that is usually associated with Software Development and you might be thinking "What has this got to do with writing?". I write technical documentation for a living, but I've been a long time have-a-go programmer and I recently had the pleasure of working on a professional software project. One of the things that amazed me was how Agile mad them so much more efficient.

  • Scope creep was eliminated through issue and requirements management
  • Many application releases gets product in the customer's hands sooner
  • Team maintains a constant velocity and is always striving to be more efficient
  • Everything that can be automated, is.

It is actually quite easy to draw parallels between application development and writing technical documentation. A Continue reading

Consider an International Relocation

Over three years ago I saw an opportunity to take an assignment to my company HQ in Seattle. After debating this for some time with my wife we took the plunge and moved to the US. The question is, “was it worth it?”. For me the answer is an overwhelming ‘yes’.  I’m moving back to […]

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John Harrington

John is an experienced data center engineer with a background in mobile telecoms. He works as a network test engineer for a large cloud service provider, and is gradually accepting that he's a nerd. He blogs about network technology and careers at theNetworkSherpa.com. You can reach him on twitter at: @networksherpa

The post Consider an International Relocation appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John Harrington.

Route Distinguishers and Route Targets

People new to MPLS VPN are often unclear on what functions route distinguishers and route targets serve, and the difference between the two. Let's see if we can clear up some of that confusion. If you could use a refresher on VRF fundamentals, I encourage you to first check out my earlier articles on the topic, Intro to VRF lite and Inter-VRF Routing with VRF Lite.

Route Distinguisher

As you know, VRFs allow IP address space to be reused among isolated routing domains. For example, assume you have to connect to three customer sites, all of which are using 192.168.0.0/24 as their local network. We can assign each customer its own VRF so that the overlapping networks are kept isolated from one another in their respective routing domains.

This works well, but we need a way to keep track of which 192.168.0.0/24 route belongs to which customer. This is where route distinguishers come in. As its name implies, a route distinguisher (RD) distinguishes one set of routes (one VRF) from another. It is a unique number prepended to each route within a VRF to identify it as belonging to that particular VRF or customer. Continue reading

Angry SDN hipsters.

Some folks seem to get a little too hung up on one philosophy or another -- too blind to see good in any other form except the notions that have evolved in their mind.  I'm hoping I'm not one of them.  I do have opinions, but which I believe are rational.

The counter culture of networking waves the SDN banner.  That acronym seems to belong to them.  They don't know what it stands for yet, but one thing they seem to be sure of is that nothing good can come by allowing networking innovations to evolve or even to exist in their birthplace.

The way I see evolving the network fabric is through improving on the best of the past.  Every profession I know from medicine, finance, law, mathematics, physics, you name it -- all of them are building their tomorrow on a mountain of past knowledge and experience.  So I'm sure my feeling the same about the network doesn't make me outdated, just maybe not a fashionable SDN hipster.




Some angry SDN hipsters say that the core network needs to be dumbed down.  They must have had a "bad childhood," technically speaking.  One too many Cisco 6500's stuffed with Continue reading

Service Profiles and Service Profile Templates in Cisco UCS PowerTool

I had a few scripts that were written WAY before PowerTool was out of beta, and the only way I knew how to generate a Service Profile Template was to use manual XML calls. For instance: $cmd = "<configConfMos inHierarchical='true'> <inConfigs> <pair key='org-root/org-" + $orgName + "/ls-" + $serviceProfileName + "' > <lsServer agentPolicyName='' biosProfileName='' bootPolicyName='" + $bootPolicyName + "' descr='' dn='org-root/org-" + $orgName + "/ls-" + $serviceProfileName + "' dynamicConPolicyName='' extIPState='none' hostFwPolicyName='' identPoolName='" + $UUID_POOL_NAME + "' localDiskPolicyName='default' maintPolicyName='default' mgmtAccessPolicyName='' mgmtFwPolicyName='' name='" + $serviceProfileName + "' powerPolicyName='default' scrubPolicyName='' srcTemplName='' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' type='initial-template' usrLbl='' uuid='0' vconProfileName=''> <vnicEther adaptorProfileName='VMWare' addr='derived' adminVcon='any' identPoolName='' mtu='1500' name='" + $VNIC_A_NAME + "' nwCtrlPolicyName='' nwTemplName='" + $VNIC_TEMPLATE_A_NAME + "' order='3' pinToGroupName='' qosPolicyName='' rn='ether-" + $VNIC_A_NAME + "' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' switchId='" + $switchId + "'> </vnicEther> <vnicEther adaptorProfileName='VMWare' addr='derived' adminVcon='any' identPoolName='' mtu='1500' name='" + $VNIC_B_NAME + "' nwCtrlPolicyName='' nwTemplName='" + $VNIC_TEMPLATE_B_NAME + "' order='4' pinToGroupName='' qosPolicyName='' rn='ether-" + $VNIC_B_NAME + "' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' switchId='" + $switchId + "'> </vnicEther> <vnicFcNode addr='pool-derived' identPoolName='" + $WWNN_POOL_NAME + "' rn='fc-node' > </vnicFcNode> <vnicFc adaptorProfileName='VMWare' addr='derived' adminVcon='any' identPoolName='' maxDataFieldSize='2048' name='" + $VHBA_A_NAME + "' nwTemplName='" + $VHBA_TEMPLATE_A_NAME + "' order='1' persBind='disabled' persBindClear='no' pinToGroupName='' qosPolicyName='' rn='fc-" + $VHBA_A_NAME + "' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' Continue reading

Cisco VM-FEX and the Nexus 1000v

Many of those that have supported a vSphere-based virtualization infrastructure for any length of time have probably heard of the Cisco Nexus 1000v. I’ve written a few posts that mention it, and I’ve been deploying the product quite successfully for the past few years. Even cooler, the Nexus 1000v is now available for Hyper-V as well. For those that are not familiar with the idea of distributed switches in general, I’ll overview the concept briefly.

Service Profiles and Service Profile Templates in Cisco UCS PowerTool

I had a few scripts that were written WAY before PowerTool was out of beta, and the only way I knew how to generate a Service Profile Template was to use manual XML calls. For instance: $cmd = "<configConfMos inHierarchical='true'> <inConfigs> <pair key='org-root/org-" + $orgName + "/ls-" + $serviceProfileName + "' > <lsServer agentPolicyName='' biosProfileName='' bootPolicyName='" + $bootPolicyName + "' descr='' dn='org-root/org-" + $orgName + "/ls-" + $serviceProfileName + "' dynamicConPolicyName='' extIPState='none' hostFwPolicyName='' identPoolName='" + $UUID_POOL_NAME + "' localDiskPolicyName='default' maintPolicyName='default' mgmtAccessPolicyName='' mgmtFwPolicyName='' name='" + $serviceProfileName + "' powerPolicyName='default' scrubPolicyName='' srcTemplName='' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' type='initial-template' usrLbl='' uuid='0' vconProfileName=''> <vnicEther adaptorProfileName='VMWare' addr='derived' adminVcon='any' identPoolName='' mtu='1500' name='" + $VNIC_A_NAME + "' nwCtrlPolicyName='' nwTemplName='" + $VNIC_TEMPLATE_A_NAME + "' order='3' pinToGroupName='' qosPolicyName='' rn='ether-" + $VNIC_A_NAME + "' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' switchId='" + $switchId + "'> </vnicEther> <vnicEther adaptorProfileName='VMWare' addr='derived' adminVcon='any' identPoolName='' mtu='1500' name='" + $VNIC_B_NAME + "' nwCtrlPolicyName='' nwTemplName='" + $VNIC_TEMPLATE_B_NAME + "' order='4' pinToGroupName='' qosPolicyName='' rn='ether-" + $VNIC_B_NAME + "' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' switchId='" + $switchId + "'> </vnicEther> <vnicFcNode addr='pool-derived' identPoolName='" + $WWNN_POOL_NAME + "' rn='fc-node' > </vnicFcNode> <vnicFc adaptorProfileName='VMWare' addr='derived' adminVcon='any' identPoolName='' maxDataFieldSize='2048' name='" + $VHBA_A_NAME + "' nwTemplName='" + $VHBA_TEMPLATE_A_NAME + "' order='1' persBind='disabled' persBindClear='no' pinToGroupName='' qosPolicyName='' rn='fc-" + $VHBA_A_NAME + "' statsPolicyName='default' status='created' Continue reading

Cisco VM-FEX and the Nexus 1000v

Many of those that have supported a vSphere-based virtualization infrastructure for any length of time have probably heard of the Cisco Nexus 1000v. I’ve written a few posts that mention it, and I’ve been deploying the product quite successfully for the past few years. Even cooler, the Nexus 1000v is now available for Hyper-V as well. For those that are not familiar with the idea of distributed switches in general, I’ll overview the concept briefly.

How Can The Tech Interview Help Fill the Technical Career Gap?

It’s only been a couple of short weeks since this site officially launched. I have to say that I’m thrilled with the initial ‘buzz’ around the site. Many friends from various other technical blogs and social networking circles have shared The Tech Interview with their friends. In addition to thanking everyone for sharing this site, […]

Author information

Paul Stewart

Paul is a Network and Security Engineer, Trainer and Blogger who enjoys understanding how things really work. With nearly 15 years of experience in the technology industry, Paul has helped many organizations build, maintain and secure their networks and systems. Paul also writes technical content at PacketU.

The post How Can The Tech Interview Help Fill the Technical Career Gap? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Paul Stewart.

ACE Management

Was knocking my head against a brick wall trying to configure an ACE for management for a couple of days. Turns out, it does not permit ICMP to it by default.

This is a good place to start:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/data_center_app_services/ace_appliances/vA3_1_0/configuration/admin/guide/access.html#wp1054979

So you need to configure a class map classifying ICMP traffic from specific sources as being interesting, a policy map referencing the class map, an action for matching traffic and then apply that using the “service-policy” command to the interface you want to permit traffic to.

Everything is well as long as it’s only management traffic you want to permit to this address.


Thinking About SDN Packet Processing: You’re the One Talking to a Fish

Barbie films (yes, I really am talking about Barbie in a network blog post) are a big hit with my kids, and surprisingly with me too. I’ll possibly regret telling the world that, but anyway, there’s an exchange in one film* that always make me laugh. It goes like this. Human (Australian accent): “You’re bonkers!” […]

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Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson, the last of four children of the seventies, was born in London and has never been too far from a shooting, bombing or riot. He's now grateful to live in a small town in East Yorkshire in the north east of England with his wife Sam and their four children.

He's worked in the IT industry for over 15 years in a variety of roles, predominantly in data centre environments. Working with switches and routers pretty much from the start he now also has a thirst for application delivery, SDN, virtualisation and related products and technologies. He's published a number of F5 Networks related books and is a regular contributor at DevCentral.

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The post Thinking About SDN Packet Processing: You’re the One Talking to a Fish appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written Continue reading

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