N5600 – Verify Switching Mode

Usually you don’t have to change the hardware forwarding mode on the Nexus 5600 from the standard cut through to  mode. But if you want to run VxLan on them, you have to. The syntax to change the forwarding mode is pretty forward: N5K1# sh run | inc hardware hardware ethernet store-and-fwd-switching But after the change you need to reload the switch! And here is the problem. If you don’t do the reload immediately, there is was no show command to verify in which switching mode the switch actually is. It seems…

VxLAN BGP EVPN on Nexus 9000v – Part 1

Last Thursday i got a notification that there are new images out for the Nexus 9k. First thing i checked was if there is one too for the Nexus 9000v. And yes, there was it: 7.0(3)I6(1). Next thing to check was if Cisco integrated the highly anticipated feature VxLAN BGP EVPN. And after a bit of searching (since there were no release notes) i found it in the already updated NX-OSv 9000 Guide: Of course I immediately wanted to test it, but i had a real lab available over the weekend, so that had to…

Overview Multicast and VXLAN L2&L3 Support

It took me quite a while to find an official document where you have the chance to get an overview on whats supported on which platform. This week i got lucky 😉 Multicast Enabled Underlay:   VXLAN L2 and L3 Gateways:   The complete presentation with a lot more of VXLAN informations can be found here:  https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/m/sl_si/events/2016/cisco_dan_inovativnih_resitev/pdf/cisco_day_slovenia_2016_vxlan_marian_klas_final.pdf

VXLAN FLOOD&LEARN ON CSR1000v

After getting VXLAN F&L to work on the Nexus 9000v. I thought why not trying the “easier one”, which was already tested a lot of times over the last 1-2 years. And well, i works out of the box. How is it done? CSR1000v as Leafs IOU L3 Router (you can basically use any router that is capable of OSPF/ISIS/EIGRP and PIM) VPCS als clients to ping GNS3 to capture the Ethernet frames for a deeper understanding of what’s going on At first you need basic connectivity and dynamic routing in…

VXLan Flood&Learn on Nexus 9000v with GNS3 2.0

I had quite a lot of troubles with Nexus 9000v on GNS 1.5 with VXLAN. In fact, after finishing the config (with the same Layout used that you see above) it always ended up with the loopback source interface for the NVE Interfaces getting shutdown by the switch. I didn’t had the time to investigate it (beside the fact that i tried to get it work a lot of times …), but this week i upgraded the environment to GNS 2.0. And there was a very welcomed surprise -> It works 🙂 Update: Ariel…

Nexus 9000v on GNS3

Beginning of this year, i learned about the Nexus 9000V and I immediately saw the chance to use it for the CCIE DC preparation (and for some programming tests as well, but that’s for a future blogpost). The 9kV is basically a virtual Nexus 9300 that you can run on ESXi, Virtual BOX and KVM (the qcow2 Version is that one you need for GNS3. Here are the pro’s and con’s for the 9000V, because as always, where’s an upside, there’s also a downside. Pros: Free for testing/training use (you do need a 9k…