Certifications

Big Switch Networks Certification

So for the last 10 Months I’ve been working with a company called Big Switch Networks.  What’s Big Switch Networks? Well it’s a Data Center Infrastructure company who prides themselves as one of the original pioneers of SDN. Their Infrastructure offering is actually Software that is installed and operated on whitebox switching platform offered by HPE, Dell, Accton/Edgecore, and others. …

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AHA Projects, Certifications

AHA – Cisco Re-Certification Journey

I’m sure you remembered a posting I did titled: ‘Probably the easiest way to NOT to lose you’re CCIE! I’m giving it a try.’,right? Well, I started that journey few months back.  The first thing I needed to do was to determine which courses I wanted to take to fulfill the re-certification requirement; but more importantly, how I wanted the course…

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AHA Projects

BGP and Static Route redistribution using HPE Comware

Very interesting situation I came across in recent days.  Let’s take a look at the diagram below: The diagram shows: An AGGR-switch which is an HPE Comware based switch. It has connections to the Core-X and EDGE-Switch(es) Core-X is the Core network, which are Cisco devices… [I don’t have Cisco devices at the moment, Comware is being used to illustrate…

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HPE, In the News, Software Defined

HPE Composable Fabric

Current Landscape As technology change rapidly within the Industry – Companies and Organizations are trying to balance between CAPEX & OPEX; it’s probably safer to say – looking to lower CAPEX &OPEX. Which, in turn, lowers their TCO [total cost of ownership]. As this becomes, if not already, a common theme – Enterprises are entertaining the idea of a ‘Cloud-like’…

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AHA Projects

AHA Project: Lab WorkBench

As IT Professionals (regardless of career level) we started – at some point,  by taking  a PC apart and putting it back together.. Including laptops, servers, etc.  We installed RAM, HDs, PCI card, CD/DVD drives, BIOS battery – you name it. For me it was fun sitting on the ground putting these pieces together. Hanging a spot lamp from nearby…

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Arista, Automation, Software Defined

AAA: Automation, Ansible, Arista – 101 basic, from Network Engineer to NetOps Engineer

Paradigm shift in IT… The landscape on how we view Networking is changing.  These days, and days/months/years to follow, automation seems to be a key aspect on how Network Infrastructure should be ran. When we look closer – it’s now the responsibility of the workload (i.e. application) to dictate how the ‘fabric’ should be laid out across our Data Centers.…

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HPE

Nutanix, HPE Partner on Private Cloud Service and Hyperconverged Appliances

HPE GreenLake will offer a pay-as-you-go private cloud service that runs on Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software. Nutanix has teamed up with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to make its hyperconverged software available as a managed private cloud service and on HPE-branded appliances. Analysts say the partnership, announced today, benefits both companies in their effort to broaden their appeal to enterprise customers…

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Network Services

Walk Like a Packet… Talk Like a Packet

For sometime now, I’ve gotten several questions on how a data flows from one end-device to another. Whether it’s from a student, colleague, and even customers. Interestingly enough – I’ve heard that this question is also asked as part of technical interviews for various IT positions (Pre-Sales, NOC, SOC, SD-WAN, etc…) In all likelihood this question comes up all the…

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