I woke up at three o’clock this morning with a thought racing around my brain – am I building a Hosting Cathedral or Cloud Bazaar ? My data centre is like a cathedral – regimented rows of seats, full of disciplined and controlled resources all looking towards the technical priests for inspiration and direction. Each [...]
◎ Comparing Arista and Brocade VXLAN VTEP Hardware Termination
19th September 2012 by 3 Comments
Arista has announced the 7150S device. It’s low latency, 10 Gigabit and VXLAN terminating. What’s interesting to me is that Brocade and Arista are solving the same problem in different ways. Ivan has determined that Arista have decided to use the Intel chipset (I’m guessing the SM6000?) and then enable the tunnel termination features in the software.
What Is the Definition of a Switch Fabric ?
30th June 2011 by 36 Comments
The marketing people in IT tend to be overwhelmed by complexity and deep technology. For many liberal arts graduates, they take the drowning option and latch onto certain terms and then grossly abuse it. The most egregious abuse today is “cloud” but “fabric” comes a close second. In this series of posts I want to look at what is a FABRIC and provide a canonical look at what it does and how it works for us.
Review: HP and Optical Backplanes
15th May 2011 by 13 Comments
There were a lot of cool things at InterOp, but not much that was new from the big vendors. For example, Cisco didn’t announce anything, probably waiting announce at Cisco Live in July where they can control the press and message much more tightly. However, HP announced the A10500 switch (action pictures ) which is a new campus switch and Gnodal arrived with new products.
However in the centre of the HP stand there was something very cool – a prototype E8212 ProCurve switch with a fully optical backplane. 
Citrix Branch Repeater : WCCP or Not to WCCP That Is the Question?
8th March 2011 by 4 Comments
Whether ’tis nobler in the network to suffer un-accelerated traffic during an outage or to take arms in the form of Policy Based Routing. When you decide to†deploy†Citrix Branch Repeaters (CBR) you have to†deploy†at either end of the WAN to accelerate and compress traffic between these endpoints. Therefore it would seem sensible to have some [...]
Cisco ACE – Enterprise Load Balancing on a Stick Using Source NAT – Part 3
14th February 2011 by 4 Comments
A detailed look at configuring a Cisco ACE module to do load balancing on a stick. This time with basic configuration for dual VIPs and dual NATs.
Cisco ACE – Enterprise Load Balancing on a Stick Using Source NAT – Part 2
9th February 2011 by 21 Comments
A detailed look at configuring a Cisco ACE module to do load balancing on a stick. This time with basic configuration for a single VIP.
Cisco ACE – Enterprise Load Balancing on a Stick Using Source NAT – Part 1
8th February 2011 by 6 Comments
A detailed look at configuring a Cisco ACE module to do load balancing on a stick.
Network Design – Creativity and Compromise
9th October 2010 by 9 Comments
Of all the disciplines that are needed by a ëNetwork Consultantí, the one of design is by far the most difficult for me. For years I wondered why I found designing solutions difficult. I’m a CCIE with over 15 years experience; Iíve worked with some great networking people and on some very complex networks. Iíve got a stack of excellent books, Iíve even read some of them, yet I still find it difficult to be decisive and confident when designing.
10 Networking Books to Read Before You DieÖ.
25th September 2010 by 17 Comments
Are all networking books over 10 years old obsolete? Kevin Bovis a Technical Services Director with Cisco Gold Partner provides 10 examples that would suggest that some networking books are worth keeping and can provide a bit of credibility to an ageing Technical Manager.
