Changes

Preface: This isn’t going to be a technical posting. This is a personal recap of my professional life over the last 6 years. After more than 6 years I’ve decided to leave my employer for good. An employer which is very loyal and fair to its employees and where I got the chance to grow from of a Senior Systems Engineer Role into a Datacenter Architect over my time there. Before I come to the “why”, a little bit of history. When I start a new job in a new…

Cisco Nexus 9000 as Hardware VTEP for NSX

Finally, after all the waiting and poking around there is now an official guide for using a Nexus 9300 as HW-VTEP for NSX. The recommended NX-OS release is: 7.0(3)I6(1) or later in same main release The supported VMware NSX release is: 6.3.3 and later on the same main release Here is the Link to the guide: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/white-paper-c11-740091.html#_Toc502975411 I hope i have some time in the coming days to deploy it in my lab and test it. But after a first overview the guide look pretty forward.

ACI – Basic Object Workflow

Here’s something I was working on for the last weeks. I saw some examples of such a diagram, but so far non of them really did satisfy me so i made my own. But i had a lot of support from other enginners, even some Cisco SE’s who did take a look and gave me some hints. I can’t really tell all names now, but rest assured I’m very glad you all did look over it! So here it is. If you have comments, please leave a note or drop…

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…

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…

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…