All posts by Nick Phelps

Featured, Network Infrastructure, SDN

How to Prepare Your Environment for the Software Defined Networking Era

In preparation for my upcoming webinar, here is another video  I did a few months back around how to prepare your environment for software defined networking. Regardless of which SDN solution you choose, there is a lot of backend work that needs to be done. Before you get into the weeds around specific products, you need to take a step back. To be successful, you’re going to need to have a level of understanding about your applications you’ve never needed before. I will cover this briefly in my webinar, but if you are planning on attending, this is a good one to watch first to help set the stage.

 

 

Register for Nick’s webinar, “VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: When to Use Each, When to Use Both.” In the webinar, Nick will cover:

  • The current state of the SDN market
  • VMware NSX & Cisco ACI overview
  • When it makes sense to use each, or even both
  • Next steps to get your environment prepared for SDN initiatives

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Network Infrastructure, SDN

How to Prepare Your Environment for the Software Defined Networking Era

In preparation for my upcoming webinar, here is another video  I did a few months back around how to prepare your environment for software defined networking. Regardless of which SDN solution you choose, there is a lot of backend work that needs to be done. Before you get into the weeds around specific products, you need to take a step back. To be successful, you’re going to need to have a level of understanding about your applications you’ve never needed before. I will cover this briefly in my webinar, but if you are planning on attending, this is a good one to watch first to help set the stage.

Register for Nick’s webinar, “VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: When to Use Each, When to Use Both.” In the webinar, Nick will cover:

  • The current state of the SDN market
  • VMware NSX & Cisco ACI overview
  • When it makes sense to use each, or even both
  • Next steps to get your environment prepared for SDN initiatives

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Cisco ACI, Featured, Networking & Security, SDN, VMware NSX

VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: Which SDN solution is right for me?

I posted this video a while back on VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI and it’s proven to be a pretty popular topic. I will be holding a webinar on 10/6 to talk about this topic in more detail so I figured I would repost the video for people to view again. If you enjoy this video, I would highly recommend registering for the webinar. I’ll be able to go in more detail and answer any questions throughout the presentation.

 

Register for Nick’s Webinar, “VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: When to Use Each, When to Use Both.” In the webinar, Nick will cover:

  • The current state of the SDN market
  • VMware NSX & Cisco ACI overview
  • When it makes sense to use each, or event both
  • Next steps to get your environment prepared for SDN initiatives

 

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Cisco ACI, Networking & Security, SDN, VMware NSX

VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: Which SDN solution is right for me?

I posted this video a while back on VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI and it’s proven to be a pretty popular topic. I will be holding a webinar on 10/6 to talk about this topic in more detail so I figured I would repost the video for people to view again. If you enjoy this video, I would highly recommend registering for the webinar. I’ll be able to go in more detail and answer any questions throughout the presentation.

If you missed Nick’s webinar, you can download it here!

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Cisco, Cisco ACI, Featured, Network Infrastructure, Networking, Public Cloud, SDN

Part 2: Cisco Live 2015 Recap – AWS Direct Connect, VIRL Facelift & More!

It was another great Cisco Live event this year! My colleague Dan Allen wrote a post summarizing the key takeaways he got out of the event. I wanted to add in some of my own to supplement his. As you probably know, it was John Chambers last Cisco Live event as CEO – which makes it especially cool that I got this picture taken with him!

cisco live

Expanded DevNet Zone

Last year Cisco introduced the DevNet zone which was focused on giving people hands on access to Cisco’s most ground breaking technology that could be construed as science fiction unless they opened their toy box and let people see and touch what they’ve been hiding in it. This year we got to play with Internet of Things development environments, API driven SDN solutions, virtual network simulation toolkits and drone technologies hosted by the co-founder of iRobot. Last year, it was 4 little booths in between two restrooms with giveaways to get people to come in. This year, it consumed a whole section of the convention center with over 20 booths, 6 interactive labs and different exhibits and guest speakers delivering presentations on the future of technology.

Programmability and automation were a part of every session no matter what the topic was

It didn’t matter if you were attending entry-level or advanced breakout sessions, IT management track courses or developer workshops; everything you attended at Cisco Live this year had something to do with automation, programmability, cloud connectivity or application awareness. This was very different from any of the 8 Cisco Live events I’ve attended throughout my career. If you’re a technologist and have any doubt in your mind that this is where the industry is headed, you’d better start learning new skills because, like it or not, our customers and the customers of our customers are, or will soon be, believers and consumers of these technologies and consumption models.

Cisco and Amazon TEAM up to BEEF up AWS Direct Connect

AWS Direct Connect is a part of Amazon’s APN Partner program that consists of ISP’s that provide WAN circuits directly connected to AWS datacenters. That means if you’re a Level3 or AT&T MPLS customer and you have 10 offices and 2 datacenters on that MPLS network, Amazon AWS can now become another site on that private WAN. That’s HUGE! Just look at a small portion of their ISP partner list:

  • AT&T
  • Cinenet
  • Datapipe
  • Equinix, Inc.
  • FiberLight
  • Fiber Internet Center
  • First Communications
  • Global Capacity
  • Global Switch
  • Global Telecom & Technology, Inc. (GTT)
  • Interxion
  • InterCloud
  • Level 3 Communications, Inc.
  • Lightower
  • Masergy
  • Maxis
  • Megaport
  • MTN Business
  • NTT Communications Corporation
  • Sinnet
  • Sohonet
  • Switch SUPERNAP
  • Tata Communications
  • tw telecom
  • Verizon
  • Vocus
  • XO Communications

 

Combine that with a CSR1000v and an ASAv and you have a public cloud that can be managed and utilized exactly like a physical colo that is completely transparent to both your network teams and users.

ASAv in AWS

This little announcement slipped under the radar when it was made a week before Cisco Live but was definitely front and center in the Cisco Solutions Theater in the world of solutions. The ASA1000v has been Cisco’s only answer to a full featured virtual security appliance for the past two years or so. The only problem is that it required the Nexus1000v with which the industry as a whole has been reluctant to embrace (particularly in the public cloud space). Well good news, the ASAv doesn’t require the Nexus 1000v and, therefore, has opened the doors for the likes of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to let us make use of an all Cisco Internet and WAN edge within an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This means you can manage the edge of your AWS VPC the same way you manage the edge of your datacenters and offices. The ASAv supports everything an ASA supports which will soon include the full FirePower feature set. Have you ever tried building a VPN tunnel to an ASA at a customer’s datacenter from the AWS VPC Customer Gateway? I have – not the best experience. Well, not any more – it’s pretty cool!

ACI was big this year, but not as big as last year

I was expecting more of the same from last year on this one. Just about everywhere you looked last year, you saw something about ACI. This year was a more targeted effort both with the breakout session and in the Cisco Solutions Theater. I’m not saying it didn’t get a lot of attention, just not as much as last year and certainly not more. This shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise for anyone used to Cisco’s marketing and positioning tactics, however. Last year was geared toward awareness of the new technology and this year was more geared toward the application of the technology across very specific use cases and advances in it’s capabilities. The honeymoon is clearly over and everyone was focused on how to live every-day life with ACI being a part of it.

APIC can interact with ASA and other non-Cisco devices

The ACI APIC is slowly getting more and more abilities related to northbound programmatic interaction with other Cisco and non-Cisco appliances. For example, it can now instantiate policies and other configuration elements of ASA, Fortigate, F5 and Radware appliances as part of its policy driven infrastructures.

iWAN almost officially tested and supported on CSR1000v

As of next month, the iWAN suite of technologies will be officially tested and supported on the CSR1000v platform which means all of that functionality will now be available in public cloud environments. More to come on iWAN in another post.

CSR1000v

The CSR1000v (Cloud Services Router) is Cisco’s answer to a virtual router. Until now, it’s been sort of an “Oh ya? We can do that too” sort of project. Now it’s a full-fledged product with a dedicated product team. It’s supported across just about every public cloud provider and in every Cisco Powered Cloud partner (Cirrity, Peak 10, etc.).

Additionally, I managed to get the product team to pull back the covers on the roadmap a bit and reveal what Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) will be supported on the CSR1000v soon along with a number of other ISR/ASR features which will make a truly seamless WAN that includes your public cloud resources.

Non-Cisco Cloud News – Azure Virtual Network now supports custom gateways

A big challenge in real adoption of non-Microsoft application workloads in Azure has been the inability to use anything but Azure’s gateway services at the edge of your Azure Virtual Network. Well, Cisco let the cat out of the bag on this one as Cisco CSR’s and ASR’s will soon be supported as gateway devices in Azure VN. For me, this really brings Azure into focus when selecting a public cloud partner.

APIC-EM has more uses than ever

Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (rolls right off the tongue right?), or APIC-EM, is Cisco’s answer to an SDN controller. It’s part of Cisco’s ONE software portfolio and has more uses than ever. Don’t confuse the APIC-EM with the ACI APIC, however. The ACI APIC is the controller and central point of interaction for Cisco’s ACI solution and runs on Cisco C-Series servers. The APIC-EM, however, is truly an open source SDN controller that is free and can run as a VM and interact with just about anything that has an API. That’s right.

VIRL got a facelift

Cisco’s Virtual Internet Routing Lab (VIRL) is getting some real attention. It’s an application that was unveiled to Cisco DevNet partners last year that lets you virtually build Cisco networks with VM’s running real IOS and NX-OS code to simulate a design and test it’s functionality. As a partner, this is huge as we can virtually replicate customer environments as a proof of concept or troubleshooting tool. It’s getting more development support within Cisco.

 

A lot of crucial information and updates came out of this event. If you would like to discuss any in more detail, feel free to reach out!

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Featured, Network Infrastructure, Software Defined Networking

Reader Question: NSX Riding on Physical Infrastructure?

There’s been a lot of traction and interest around software defined networking lately. I posted a video blog last week comparing features and functionality of VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI. A reader left a comment on the post with a really interesting question. Since I have heard similar questions lately, I figured it would be worth addressing it in it’s own post.

The question was:

“Great discussion – one area that needs more exploration is when NSX is riding on top of any physical infrastructure – how is the utilization and capacity of the physical network made known to NSX so that it can make intelligent decisions about routing to avoid congestion?”

Here was my response:

“You bring up an interesting point that I hear come up quite a bit lately. I say interesting because it seems like everyone has a different answer to this challenge and a couple of the major players in this space seem to think they have the only RIGHT answer.

If you talk to the NSX team at VMware, they would argue that since the hypervisor is the closest thing to your applications, you’d be better off determining network flow requirements there and dictating the behavior of that traffic over the network as opposed to reactive adjustments for what could be micro-burst type traffic that could lead to a lot of reaction and not much impact.

If you were to pose the same challenge to the ACI team at Cisco, they would argue that without intimate visibility, control and automated provisioning of active network traffic AND resources, you can’t make intelligent decisions about behavior of application flows, regardless of how close you are to the applications themselves.

I think the short answer, in my mind anyway, to the challenge you outline lies within the SDN/API integration side of the NSX controller. I always need to remind myself that NSX is a mix of SDN and SDN driven Network Virtualization (NV) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). That being the case, the behavior of the NSX NV components can be influenced by more than just the NSX controller. Through mechanisms native to the network like Netflow, NBAR2, IPFIX, etc. we can get extremely granular application visibility and control throughout the network itself and, by combining that with API NSX integration, we can evolve the NSX solution to include intelligence from the physical network thereby enabling it to make decisions based on that information.”

Like I said, an interesting question. There’s a lot to talk about here and everyone (myself included) has a lot to learn. If you have any more questions around software defined networking, leave a comment or reach out to us at socialmedia@greenpages.com and I’ll get back to you.

 

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Cisco ACI, Featured, Network Infrastructure, SDN, VMware NSX

VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: Which SDN solution is right for me?

In a video I did recently, I discussed steps organizations need to take to prepare their environments to be able to adopt software defined technologies when the time comes. In this video, I talk about VMware NSX and Cisco ACI.

VMware NSX and Cisco ACI are both really hot technologies that are generating a lot of conversation. Both are API driven SDN solutions. NSX and ACI are really good in their unique areas and each come at it from a unique perspective. While they are both very different solutions, they do have overlapping functionality.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtdfHGnCovA

 

Are you interested in talking with Nick about VMware NSX or Cisco ACI? Let’s set up some time!

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Featured, Network Infrastructure, Network virtualization, Software Defined Networking

How to Prepare Your Environment for the Software Defined Networking Era

Whether it’s VMware NSX or Cisco ACI, to adopt any software defined networking solution there is a lot of backend work that needs to be done. Before you get into the weeds around specific products, take a step back. To be successful, you’re going to need to have a level of understanding about your applications you’ve never needed before. The key is to take the proper steps now to make sure you can adopt software defined networking technologies when the time comes.

 

Preparing Your Environment for the Software Defined Networking Era

 

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6pVmNrOnCA

 

 

If you’re interested in speaking to Nick in more detail about software defined technology, reach out!

 

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Featured, hybrid cloud, Network Infrastructure, SDN, Software Defined Networking

How Software Defined Networking is Enabling the Hybrid Cloud

By Nick Phelps, Practice Manager, Network & Security

 

Networking expert Nick Phelps discusses how software defined networking is enabling the hybrid cloud & creating the networks of tomorrow.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMIBY1wnUzU

 

 

Interested in learning more about software defined networking? Email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com to set up a conversation with Nick!

 

 

 

 

Featured, Network Infrastructure, SDN, Storage and Information Management, Virtualization

Software Defined Networking Series — Part 2: What Are the Business Drivers?

By Nick Phelps, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U9fCg1Zpio

 

In Part one of this series on Software Defined Networking, I gave a high level overview of what all the buzz is about. Here’s part two…in this video I expand on the capabilities of SDN by delving into the business drivers behind the concept. Leave any questions or thoughts in the comments section below.

 

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