I really enjoy discussing network design and deploy details with colleagues, customers and fellow network engineer.
I find these discussions challenging, stimulating. An open, sincere and collaborative discussion gives a chance to better understand the real needs, fears, doubts of other professionals and to validate knowledge, expose gaps and most of all I learn a lot.
This is still valid when discussing Data Center design or simpler topics like how to cable switch stacks.
I’ve been working on a data center migration from regular switches to a Cisco ACI fabric in the last couple of months. I can’t say that’s enough to be defined as an ACI expert but I’ll share here what I learned from the experience.
The project started with a Network Centric approach for an one-to-one migration from the previous network. After the migration new VRFs are being created in App Centric mode with contracts.
Beginning June 2017 Cisco introduced the Continuing Education Program as a new way to recertify expert level certifications.
Asset management, documentation and monitoring are important parts of any IT Ops team but at the same time they are boring, repetitive, error prone.
Last summer I spent some time investigating the possibility to integrate open source projects I like to create a Minimum Viable Product for asset management/monitoring and learn something during the process.
Network changes tool to prevent disasters.
This week I’ve attended a training about Cisco ACI DCAC9K .
Based on my personal experience no training can cover all the topics or all the use cases but I think this training with a cover-to-cover read of Deploying ACI can help to build the basis to start the ACI journey with strong fundamentals.
Scenario As most IT professionals I usually configure network devices in a lab environment before the actual installation at customer site.
I try to limit the installation as much as possible to a simple box moving process, spending most of the change window in a previously defined validation process.
In this particular case I deal with a data center core network that includes 8 Nexus 9k switches configured in 4 VPC pairs and a bunch of links between them.
My new post about Cisco Network Assurance Engine: From Download to Value in 60 Minutes (or less) has been published, read it on GestaltIT Tech Talks .
This story starts with a phone call at night. If you worked in IT long enough you know what it means.