So, it’s over. I’m enjoying my last night in San Fran. Went up to Fisherman’s Wharf (tourist hell, as I call it) and had some crab….. Now I’m sitting at a Starbucks with a great view of the street so I can people watch. That’s my one complaint about San Francisco….everything down here closes at 9. There are some great coffee shops near here but they all closed 2 hours ago. Oh well….
More good sessions today. Brain overload at this point, but good points to take back with me and work on further.
Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch Architecture
Good in-depth discussion on what makes the 7000 tick and the possible hardware configurations and their pros and cons. Near the end we got in to some real detail that I’m not sure I’ll need, but it’s never a bad thing to have more information than you need.
Troubleshooting the Unified Fabric (FCoE)
This session focused on the Nexus 5000 and 2000, since they are currently the only models that handle FCoE. Well, the 2K doesn’t but it acts as an extension to the 5K. Anyway… We covered the processes and tools for debugging L2 data traffic and FCoE across the switch. The trick on these is that you really have several different platforms to manage at once. There is a mini-MDS, basically, in the expansion slot (if you are doing FCoE), then that FC traffic gets encapsulated in to FCoE, and on top of that you also have standard data traffic. Different traffic requires different tools. Also covered were standard debug commands and outputs as well as packet output for looking at things such as DCBX (Data Center Bridging eXchange Protocol) in case the automated feature enumeration isn’t…well…so automatic.
Securing the Virtualized Data Center Environment
This session covered security end-to-end across the entire DC when you use virtualization. Most people think of virtualization as just simple VMware server virtualization but forget things like storage virtualization, device virtualization (think virtual firewalls), etc. So this session was a good overview of everything to consider. How can you use VSANs to segment your storage fabric for the sake of security? What are the implications of using virtual firewalls in an ASA? Do you want to use VDC (Virtual Device Contexts…virtual switches in a Nexus) to segment your network? Very good session.
Conclusion
The conference was great. This was my first Cisco Live/Networkers and I hope to be back next year in Vegas. It’s really hard to get to everything you want and most cases it’s simply impossible due to scheduling. Cisco gets it, and I’m happy to see that. They aren’t just stamping “virtualization” on rehashed products hoping to sell more gear. They are really creating things that help you get the job done and make your environment more productive. I think with the release of vSphere and the Nexus 1000v we’ll see a great deal momentum build.
