Ever wonder what it would be like to have a platform dedicated to Continuous Improvement / Testing / Labbing? Cisco's put a lot of thought into good ways to do that, and Cisco Modeling Labs(CML) is the latest iteration of their solutions to provide this as a service to enterprises and casual users alike. CML is the …

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Why should an infrastructure engineer leverage REST APIs? I'm sure most IT workers have at least heard of REST APIs, or heard a sales pitch where a vendor insists that while a requested functionality doesn't exist, you could build it yourself by "using the API". Or, participate in discussions where people …

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NSX-T Edge Transport Node Packet Captures NSX-T Edge nodes have a rudimentary packet capture tool built in to the box. It is important to have a built-in tool here, as GENEVE encapsulation will wrap just about everything coming out of a transport node. NSX-T's CLI guide indicates the method for packet captures - from …

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Load Balancing is Important Load balancing is an important aspect of network mobility. How is a network useful if you can't move around within it? Cellular networks lose their appeal if you drop connectivity every time you roam between towers Wi-Fi networks are designed to facilitate smaller-scale movements. Imagine if …

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It's probably safe to say that service provider networking is pretty unique. One particular design pattern - Looking Glasses - is extremely useful for complex dynamically routed networks. I'd really like to shift the gatekeeping needle here - networks that are complex enough to benefit from a looking glass should move …

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One major advantage to NSX-T is that Edge Transport Nodes (ETNs) are transitive Transitivity (Wikipedia) (Consortium GARR) is an extremely important concept in network science, and in computer networking. In simple terms, a network node (any speaker capable of transmitting or receiving on a network) can have the …

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Continuous Delivery: No Rest for the Wicked Now that we have: A method to generate Desired State Configurations, by defining Declaratively what the device config should be, and combining it with what a device config should have A method to apply configurations automatically, without PuTTY Copy-Pasting We now can …

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Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Ansible Playbooks Writing your own code isn't always the answer Often, communities such as Python will contribute code of substantially higher quality than what you/I can create individually. This is OK. In nearly every case, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist programmers will consume …

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Error presented by VAMI Interface Caveat This is definitely bypassing some form of pre-check, please contact VMware support if it's on a production system! Troubleshooting VCSA 7.0 has moved the upgrade process logging to a new location - the log itself is now at /storage/log/vmware/applmgmt/update_microservice.log …

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So far, we've provided the infrastructure for continuous delivery / continuous integration, but it's been for those other guys. Is that odd? Let's try using the principles provided for more infrastructure-oriented reasons. Let's build a network lab using NSX-T. First, we need some form of a mutable router. Normally, …

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