Let's answer the big question: "What's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?" Kidding, it's easier to cover the question: "Why automate?" So let's get started! Here I'm going to start a few easy and quick ways to benefit from automation, with a slight networking …

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I have mentioned in a previous blog post that I'm not using any ACLs on my tunnel broker VM This is usually pretty bad, but again, we can get those protections outside of the VM - I'm using this to prove out how NSX-T can provide utility in this situation. Solution Overview VyOS is a fantastic platform, with a ton of …

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First things first - let's cover some IPv6 basics. What's Different Many aspects of IPv6 is actually much easier than most people would expect - since there's such a large addressing space, entire fields of work with IPv6 go away. Custom CIDR / Subnetting Remember how you had to do binary math, and use your crystal …

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First off, let's cover what's been built so far: To set up an anycast vIP in NSX-T after standing up your base infrastructure (already depicted and configured), all you have to do is stand up a load balanced vIP at multiple sites. NSX-T takes care of the rest. Here's how: Create a new load balancing pool. Create a new …

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Before getting started, let's cover what different IP message types exist in a brief summary, coupled with a "day in the life of a datagram" as it were. Unicast: One source, one well-defined destination. Most network traffic falls into this category. Mayfly perspective: Source device originates packet, and …

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Since most of NSX-T runs in a firewall mode of sorts, it's probably worthwhile to discuss on of the less well-known routing protocol features - Graceful Restart. As published for BGP, IETF RFC 4724 outlines a mechanism for "preserving forwarding traffic during a BGP restart." This definition may be a little …

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Now that the primary infrastructure components for NSX-T are in place, it is now possible to build-out the actual functions that NSX-T is designed to provide. A friendly suggestion, make sure your Fabric is healthy before doing this: NSX-T differs from NSX-V quite a bit here. Irregular topologies between edge routers …

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Since NSX-T 2.5 just came out, it's about time to do a full rebuild and getting started guide. NSX-T differs greatly from NSX-V in that the initial setup is quite a bit more complicated and doesn't have many guardrails or direct paths to initial set-up. We'll be skipping the appliance deployment, because if you have …

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With the previous post, I covered traditional data center networking, and some of the reliability compromises made to accommodate typical workloads. Here I'll be outlining my take as a series of blog posts on the next iteration of data center network design, Spine and Leaf: Lab Diagram What came before Introduction: …

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Now that NSX-T Datacenter 2.5 is downloadable, it's time to try this out in my home lab. First things first, if you log in more than 90 days out, you'll be locked out of the appliance completely. If you make any changes the normal linux way (passwd and chage) the appliance will automatically revert it in about a …

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