Cisco UCS – Zero to Hero in 5 Short Years

Posted on June 4, 2014 by NetworkCanuck

I’d love to call Randy Seidl and ask him for an interview. The problem is, I don’t have the street cred that it would take to even make it past his administrative assistant. You see, Mr. Seidl used to work for Hewlett-Packard as their “Senior Vice President of the Americas, Enterprise Servers, Storage, and Networking”.

He doesn’t work for HP any more.

From YouTube/Cisco: “The Worst Predictions in History”

“A year from now the difference will be UCS is dead and we have had phenomenal market share growth in the networking space.”

This is a quote taken from this article over at CRN just prior to HP’s 2010 partner conference, just one year after Cisco launched the UCS platform. HP’s strategy at this point was to try to take market share away from Cisco in their core switching business. I suppose this was a natural response considering Cisco’s foray into enterprise servers was aimed to strike a blow at the heart of HP’s business. HP’s strategy aimed to empower their partners to offer significant discounts and trade-in allowances for any existing Cisco customers, hoping to woo them away from the teal giant. 2-for-1 and 3-for-1 deals weren’t uncommon, and it seemed HP was ready to cut off their nose to spite their face just to grab more of the Ethernet switching pie.

5 years later Cisco remains atop the Ethernet switch market with a 60.4% share.

But we’re not here to talk about Ethernet switching. We’re here to talk about Cisco UCS.

Happy Birthday Unified Computing System

The official Cisco Unified Computing System press release came in March of 2009. By 2010, which marked my first Cisco Live event in Las Vegas, UCS had a lot of hype among the Cisco faithful. I returned home from the conference excited about UCS, because at my day job we were in the process of jumping head-first into virtualization and were looking at different options for servers and storage.

I shared my enthusiasm for UCS but was told Cisco would never touch HP or IBM in market share for servers. We bought Dell.

In just 5 years, Cisco UCS has vaulted to the #1 spot in the Americas(40.9%), and #2 Worldwide (26.3%) for x86 Blade Servers, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker for 2014Q1.

HP has fallen from 47.7% to 34.9% in that time.

IBM has plummeted from 34.4% to 10.2% in that time.

Also according to the IDC report, Cisco has the highest industry growth in the total worldwide server market, with 39% revenue growth on a cumulative four quarter basis ending in 2014Q1. This, while HP, IBM, Dell, Oracle, and Fujitsu all report flat or declining results.

Cisco UCS also presently holds 94 performance benchmark records.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

5 years after launch, and 4 years after Mr. Seidl’s bold prediction that UCS would be dead in a year, the numbers reveal the truth of the success of the UCS platform. Cisco UCS has established itself as a key player in the enterprise server market, not only in the Americas, but Worldwide, and growth continues every quarter as the Cisco UCS product team continue to drive innovation and performance within the platform.

Cisco’s UCS business unit deserves a round of applause and a lot of credit.

The numbers don’t lie, but I’d still really like to ask Randy Seidl what he thinks of those numbers.

The official press release can be found here: http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1426059

Cisco Live 2014 – San Fran-tastic!

Posted on June 2, 2014 by NetworkCanuck

My 5th Cisco Live is in the books and this was a fantastic week of reconnecting with friends, meeting new ones, and drinking from the technology fire hose.

This was my first visit to San Francisco and although I didn’t get to be a tourist very much, what I did see of the city was great. My hotel wasn’t in the greatest part of the downtown area, but even so the walk to and from Moscone never seemed too scary.

As I mentioned in my pre-show post my schedule this year was packed with sessions, meetings and events, much more than previous years. I arrived on Sunday and the whirl wind week of activity began immediately.

Registration and Arrival Tweetup

I managed to get to Moscone in time to register and pick up my badge and bag before the 5:00 pm closing on Sunday. After checking into my hotel and dropping off most of my gear, I went straight back to Moscone South for the Welcome Tweetup. This had grown exponentially over the last few years and the 2014 Tweetup was no exception. It’s always great to be face to face with the people you interact with all year on Twitter and other social media platforms, and this year was made that much more special with the #CiscoChampion program adding a number of new people to the mix.

Social Media Lounge 2014

The appearance of the SDNicorn marked the beginning of what was going to be a week filled with networking (in several terms), socializing and yes, even some shenanigans.

Sessions and Cisco Live Online

If you’ve ever attended Cisco Live or other events like it, you’ll know it’s near impossible to schedule in all the breakout sessions that you want to attend. There are simply too many of them. I’ve had a couple of years where I was focused on a particular technology, mostly because of a specific planned project at my day job, but when I can I prefer to have as much variety in my schedule as possible. Cisco has made this far less stressful because selecting one session over another doesn’t mean I have to miss the content for the one I didn’t attend in person, it simply means I can view it later on Cisco Live Online (formerly Cisco Live 365). This is a fantastic resource all year long, and I find myself going back to watch and re-watch content from the various Cisco Live events worldwide.

This year’s sessions included some Collaboration, UCS, Virtualization, and Nexus sessions. Also, thanks to Robert Novak (@gallifreyan) over at rsts11.com I was provided a complimentary 4-hour lab, and I chose to attend the Intelligent WAN (IWAN) Hands-On Lab. The IWAN lab was fun, given that I got to spend some time working with gear and software that I don’t normally get to play with, particularly UCS-Express (in the form of ISR-2911’s with UCSe blades), and Cisco Prime Infrastructure. A lot of this lab focused on Cisco Prime and seemed more of a DMVPN lab mixed with some WAAS and QoS, but it was still a great learning experience.

#CiscoChampions

Throughout the week there were some fantastic opportunities facilitated via the Cisco Champions group. These included an excellent (and revealing at times) team building event, a live Cisco Champions Radio episode hosted by Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja) in which a large number of us piled into the smallest room possible to record a really entertaining podcast, a tour of the Cisco NERV truck, and a briefing on the upcoming Cisco Modeling Labs (CML) product.

For me, these activities were more about connecting with a group of people who I’ve “met” through the Cisco Champions program via Google+, Twitter, and podcasts, but hadn’t yet met in person. I was absolutely blown away by the diversity of this group and the opportunity to meet face to face and share some conversation, some knowledge, and a quite a few good laughs as well.

#BaconIT

The fine folks over at @CiscoDC along with infamous bacon advocate Amy Lewis hosted an awesome party at the Cable Car City Pub on Monday evening. This was a fun social event that gave everyone an opportunity to wind down after the first full day of sessions and enjoy meeting some more of the social media personalities, Cisco Champions, and Cisco staff. The evening included some bacon-related giveaways, including subscriptions to the bacon of the month club. There was even a food table replete with….bacon.

@CommsNinja tossing bacon to the huddled masses

INE Rewired

INE once again hosted a customer appreciation event that included some excellent prizes (congrats to @bbaize on winning a Macbook Air!) and some more food and drinks. After mercilessly harassing Mark Snow (@highspeedsnow) and Brian McGahan (@brianmcgahan) I managed to procure one of the VIP tokens that provided access to an exclusive section of the Mezzanine Nightclub. They also used the evening to preview their upcoming revised and retooled training platform which promises to be a tremendous platform for studying and certification along your chosen Cisco track. The Rewired platform offers an interactive community approach to learning, including badges, achievements and looks to add a bit more “fun” to the task of studying for a Cisco exam. I’m really looking foward to the launch of this product, and attendees of the event were told they would have beta access sometime in the upcoming months.

Achievement Unlocked: VIP Coin

Mezzanine Nightclub

Customer Appreciation Event

The annual CAE is always a great time, and this year was no exception. We invaded AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, and were treated to some awesome food, a few beverages, and live performances from Lenny Kravitz and Imagine Dragons. I would have loved to see Kravitz as the headliner, but then again I’m old. He played a fantastic show, playing many of his hits from the 90’s and 00’s. Imagine Dragons’ set got off to a rocky start when the power went out to their amplifiers, but after a brief “Please Standby” everything got back underway. The rocked out the remainder of the evening and the evening’s finale was a brilliant fireworks display launched from a ship in the San Francisco Bay beside the park.


Myself and @pidooma	Party Tweeps
#BaconIT lady @CommsNinja	Birthday Hats
Lenny!	@Lauren and @ColdStorageGuy photobomb

Final Tweetup and Farewell

The Thursday of Cisco Live is always bittersweet as the final sessions of the week wrap up, the last of the prizes are given away at the World of Solutions, and everyone heads to the airport to scatter across the world back to their homes. This year was no exception.

The farewell Tweetup was held at the Social Media ~~Hub~~ Routed Bridge (no idea, ask @amyengineer) and everyone had an opportunity to take a few more photos, play a few more hands of Cards Against ~~Humanity~~ #CLUS, and say their goodbyes. As is tradition the group photo at the Cisco Live sign marked the end of the week, and I bid farewell to my fellow Twitterers, Champions, and friends, and headed to the airport.

Sayonara at The Sign

Cisco Live 2014 was for me, the best Cisco Live yet. They seem to get better every year and I’m not quite sure how that happens, but it’s true. From the moment I left San Francisco I started to look forward to next year, and Cisco Live 2015 in San Diego.

See you there!

Cisco Live 2014 – #CL5K Information

Posted on May 19, 2014 by NetworkCanuck

For those still waiting on official word about the when and where of this year’s Cisco Live 5K Fun Run – here it is.

The run will take place Wednesday morning at 7am at Rincon Park. It’s pretty much straight up Folsom street from Moscone Center to the bay, and the park has a huge red and yellow bow & arrow sculpture to identify it. We will be running along the San Francisco Bay Trail to Pier 39 and back.

A map of the run can be found here: https://goo.gl/maps/MDqKP

Come and walk, run, heckle, prod, or anything else you can think of in support of this year’s run. It won’t be as crazy as the Bay to Breakers but it’s always a fun run with a group of great people.

All Aboard for SFO – Cisco Live 2014

Posted on May 16, 2014 by NetworkCanuck

Cisco Live 2014 is only two days away and although I like to think I’ve planned everything out well in advance, I’ll likely be doing a lot of last minute panicked preparation early Sunday before my flight.

This will be my fifth Cisco Live, my first one being the 2010 event in Las Vegas. Things have changed for me significantly since that first conference, and every year it just seems to get better and better. To be honest it’s become the one networking/professional development event I absolutely cannot miss every year, such that I pay for the majority of the trip myself.

Budget Scarcity

Working as I do in the public sector, where budgets seemingly shrink every year, while costs and expenses rise, I do not have the benefit of a large professional development budget. Much of the training and certification I have done over the years has been self-paced, self-funded, and conducted in my home office and lab. This includes the costs incurred for Cisco Live. What budget I do get every year (usually between $1000-$1500 CAD) I put towards the conference registration costs. This does help put a dent in even the early-bird conference price of $1995 USD, and I appreciate the fact that I get anything at all towards my continued education.

Travel can be expensive but I’ve managed to get pretty thrifty over the years, and more often than not find pretty good deals on hotels that aren’t part of the Cisco Live “official hotel list” but are in close proximity to the conference location and other amenities.

In 2011 for example, I was able to stay The Excalibur in Las Vegas which is literally across the street from the Luxor, Mandalay Bay, and MGM Grand, which are all official Cisco Live hotels, for about 1/3 the price. The tram running along the strip provided fast transport over to the Mandalay Bay for the conference events.

This year was an even bigger challenge with hotel prices in San Francisco bordering on insane. There was no possible way I was going to be able to attend this year if I had to book one of the official hotels which ranged from $170 to $399 per night.

My schedule is so packed every year I actually don’t spend a lot of time in my hotel, so it’s basically a place to sleep for a few hours before beginning another day of social networking, learning, and fun. With that in mind I booked a room at a hostel-style hotel called The Winsor that’s a decent walking distance away from The Moscone Center. I’ll have a small room with pretty much just a bed and a sink, and a shared bathroom. The reviews on various travel sites said the neighborhood wasn’t great but the hotel was decent, even if it looks a bit shady.

Some examples:

“Decent hotel, but absolutely scary street/neighborhood!”

“The hotel is of course very basic, but definitely acceptable (including in terms of cleanliness) given the excellent price.”

The proximity of liquor, beer, and cigarettes will be convenient, at least.

Evolution

The first year I attended Cisco Live in 2010 I was purely alone. I didn’t know anyone, I wasn’t very active on social media, and I had no idea what to expect from the conference. I focused on maximizing my time in breakout sessions with the intent of learning as much as possible in the week I was there. I lurked on Twitter and saw there seemed to be a community within a community here and quickly saw some of the same names interacting with each other, with mention of “tweetup” and “Tom’s Corner”.

In between 2010 and 2012 I spent a lot of time following some of the more active names from that first event. People like Tom Hollingsworth (@networkingnerd), Jeff Fry (@fryguy_pa), Amy Arnold (@amyengineer), Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett), Tony Mattke (@tonhe), Eric Peterson (@ucgod), and Jennifer Huber (@jenniferlucille) just to name a few.

I discovered the Packet Pushers podcast where a lot of these folks got together with Greg Ferro (@etherealmind) and Ethan Banks (@ecbanks) to discuss current topics and trends in networking, and started listening to the back catalog of recordings.

I learned about Tech Field Day and it’s delegate program and with it another list of names of people I started to follow and interact with on Twitter.

As I built both the group of people that I followed on Twitter as well as those who followed me, I began to feel a real sense of community within these groups and carried that forward into the next visits to Cisco Live.

#CiscoChampion

By 2013 in Orlando the trip to Cisco Live felt less like attending a trade show and more like a reunion with a large group of friends. “Tom’s Corner” had evolved into the Social Media Lounge, and it was clear that Cisco was putting a lot of effort into social media and this large subculture of networkers who populated it. The welcome Tweetup was the largest it had ever been and once again it was a welcome opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new people as the social media crowd grew even larger.

I had been approached by Cisco’s Social Media Marketing Manager just before the Orlando show as a candidate for the Cisco Champions program. I welcomed this as an opportunity to continue to grow with social media as a platform to discuss, inform and debate current topics within the networking world. I’ve been able to participate in some great podcast, product briefings and even managed to have a few blog articles published:

http://blogs.cisco.com/perspectives/los-angeles-unified-school-district-ipads-for-everyone/

http://blogs.cisco.com/perspectives/los-angeles-unified-school-district-hack-the-ipads/

http://blogs.cisco.com/perspectives/ioe-napkin-math-and-your-daily-commute/

Now in 2014, the #CiscoChampions group has grown quite a lot and there are several events scheduled for us in San Francisco. My schedule now is even more jam-packed between regular sessions, social media events, Cisco Champion events, Tech Field Day round-tables and somewhere in there, time to eat and sleep.

Other Events

The Customer Appreciation Event is going to be excellent this year with Lenny Kravitz as the headliner, and Imagine Dragons in support. The #BaconIT meetup with Amy Lewis (@commsninja) should prove to be another great evening with friends and bacon (and maybe a beverage or two). And I’m also looking forward to running in another 5K with Colin McNamara (@colinmcnamara) in support of the Wounded Warriors Project. Rumor has it we might be running across the Golden Gate Bridge!

I’m truly looking forward to another great year, and can’t wait to see you there!

Cisco Live 2014 CAE – A Canuck Connection!

Posted on March 12, 2014 by NetworkCanuck

Pretty much every year, the Cisco Live Team post a poll on the Cisco Live web site to potential registrants asking which band they would like to see for the Customer Appreciation Event (CAE). I’m not sure if the polls are a short list of potential performers or if they are just gauging interest in a particular genre of entertainment, but the options all seem to cover a fairly wide range of tastes.

Before attending my first Cisco Live I can remember watching a few YouTube videos of some earlier CAEs, one of which featured none other than KISS. My I was stunned and excited by the opportunity to be relatively up close and personal with a private show by one of the world’s greatest entertainment groups.

The poll one year included Lenny Kravitz, who I voted for, and the results seemed to be largely in favor of him being the CAE performer. Alas that year Kravitz was not ultimately the chosen act, but another great CAE was enjoyed by all in attendance nonetheless. (I had heard rumor that Kravitz had been lined up that year, but a scheduling conflict forced him to back out and another band was selected)

This year I am very excited about the announcement of the entertainment for the CAE. As a proud Canadian, there is a very special link with the artist and my country, even though he resides in the United States. I also know that many of my fellow Cisco Live attendees, bloggers and #CiscoChampions have all been begging for him to be the CAE headliner.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this years Customer Appreciation Event headliner: JUSTIN BIEBER!

I may have to turn comments *off* for this post.

Okay, it’s not The Biebs, although I know there are some of you who are disappointed. The actual CAE artist does have a Canadian connection however in that he recorded an excellent cover of The Guess Who’s “American Woman” in 2000. The Guess Who, not to be confused with England’s “The Who”, are from my hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and I list them among Canada’s greatest accomplishments along with poutine, ~~Pamela Anderson~~ Dan Ackroyd, and The Canadarm.

This year in San Francisco for the 25th Anniversary, the CAE headliner will in fact be Lenny Kravitz at AT&T Park – Home of the San Francisco Giants!

Kravitz is a pure entertainer and an extremely talented artist. Not only as a musician but more recently as an actor. Kravitz is multi-talented singing lead and backup vocals and in many cases recording guitar, bass and drums for his own albums. As a hack ~~musician~~ drummer myself for many years, it’s easy to truly appreciate the dedication to one’s art that this diversity of skill requires.

As networkers and IT professionals, we are all equally dedicated to our own “art” and in the constantly changing world of data networking, we too must continue to develop additional skills and ‘learn new instruments’ as it were, in order to continue to be the best in our fields.

This year at Cisco Live and at the CAE, we are provided not only an opportunity to connect, reconnect, and learn from each other, but to sit back, relax, and enjoy some down time with our peers and colleagues, while enjoying what will likely be an evening of epic entertainment that could easily rival all previous CAEs.

Not to be overlooked is this years special guest – Imagine Dragons! Their 2012 debut release “Night Visions” has had phenomenal success and afforded the band many accolades in 2013, including “Breakthrough Band of 2013” by Billboard and their hit “Radioactive” named “the biggest rock hit of the year” by Rolling Stone.

If you haven’t already, head over to the Cisco Live US page and get registered. Trust me when I say it’s an event you do not want to miss!

This announcement totally makes up for my accomodations!

Note: This is not an official Cisco Live hotel, but I’m traveling on my own dime this year and the San Francisco hotels are pricey…

I look forward to seeing you there!

One Way Audio on Cisco 7925G Wireless Phones

Posted on October 4, 2013 by NetworkCanuck

Knock Knock.

Who’s there?

Voice over Wireless LAN.

Voice over Wireless LAN who?

….

Hello?

….

Hello?

Working with a multitude of different technologies is great. I love it, for the most part. That being said sometimes it can be really frustrating as well. I am neither an expert in voice nor wireless technologies, but I am often times the primary ‘go-to’ person for both of these subjects at work. Now I like working with voice, it’s fun and presents its own interesting challenges sometimes, but for the size of our VoIP deployment, it pretty much just works. Wireless, while still fun to play around with, tends to be my nemesis, as I just haven’t had enough time to really delve into its deeper mysteries. Now, on that rare occasion when the problem is related to both voice AND wireless, things start to get really interesting.

I recently deployed some Cisco 7925G Wireless IP Phones to a number of our sites’ custodians as a replacement for cellular phones. They need to be mobile around the facility in order to troubleshoot issues in places that don’t have a hard line, but don’t require a full-blown cell phone.

Now some caveats; we don’t have sufficient AP coverage for a full-blown VoWLAN deployment, and during testing with the 7925G I did notice some interruption in the call stream when roaming from AP to AP. We also no longer have Cisco as our wireless vendor so I thought there may be some interoperability issues, but felt that 802.11 was after all, a standard right? What could possibly go wrong?

First Reports

The first rumblings of a problem came from some of the custodians saying they had ‘intermittent’ audio. I assumed (somewhat incorrectly) that this meant they were trying to wander around the building or even outside, treating the phone as a cell-phone, and losing sufficient signal from a nearby AP to maintain the call.

I explained to anyone with issues that these were not in fact cellular phones and they needed to stay within reasonable range of an AP to keep their call going. We would add capacity to the wireless as needed in the future, but for now it was the best we could do.

Sent Back

Next I received one of the phones, and it’s charger, in inter-office mail with a sticky note saying simply: “doesn’t work”. I tested the phone with a few different numbers and it seemed fine. I sent it back to the person who mailed it with a note: “works fine”.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

Definitely Broken

I next heard from another analyst who said all calls from the phone at one site were completely dropping. No audio at all. We tested and found that audio coming from the 7925’s was fine, but they were having problems receiving audio. The initial call setup seemed fine and there were a few seconds of clear two-way audio, but almost immediately the receiving audio was failing.

One-way audio – the bane of any voice engineer’s existence. Coupled with the fact that these were wireless phones as well, made troubleshooting the issue even more complicated.

I had initially thought this might be a QoS issue but the wired phones at the site were fine. Wireshark confirmed QoS wasn’t an issue but I could clearly see in the captures that the RTP to the handsets stopped shortly after calls began, resulting in one-way audio.

Viewing the Call Statistics on the phone also confirmed there was definitely some sort of problem. Jitter was extremely high, Receiver lost Packets were many, and the MOS was around 2.

Settings

I began playing around with the WLAN settings on the 7925G handsets, trying to find what might be causing the issue. Some suggestions from folks on Twitter pointed at forcing the phones to use 2.4 GHz only, while others insisted they would work fine on 5 GHz. Hard setting the frequency didn’t appear to resolve anything, so I continued the ever popular troubleshooting technique of randomly turning options on and off.

I came across the setting labeled “Call Power Save Mode” which was set by default to “U-APSD/PS-Poll” and also presented the option “None”.

Now, I had no idea what this option did, but I set it to “None” and performed a test call. Lo and behold, the issue appeared to go away. Two way audio persisted through the entire call, and call statistics on the handset were dramatically improved. Jitter was down to 2/22, only 2 dropped packets, and MOS was up to 4.5.

U-APSD/PS-Poll

So what exactly does this option do? U-APSD or Unscheduled Asynchronous Power Save Delivery is a mechanism that allows frames to be queued on a wireless access point in order to save power on a wireless client. When there is no data for the client to receive, it can go back into standby mode, allowing it to save power and battery life.

From Cisco’s Voice over Wireless LAN Design Guide:

The primary benefit of U-APSD is that it allows the voice client to synchronize the transmission and reception of voice frames with the AP, thereby allowing the client to go into power-save mode between the transmission/reception of each voice frame tuple. The WLAN client frame transmission in the access categories supporting U-APSD triggers the AP to send any data frames queued for that WLAN client in that AC. A U-APSD client remains listening to the AP until it receives a frame from the AP with an end-of-service period (EOSP) bit set. This tells the client that it can now go back into its power-save mode. This triggering mechanism is considered a more efficient use of client power than the regular listening for beacons method, at a period controlled by the delivery traffic indication map (DTIM) interval, because the latency and jitter requirements of voice are such that a WVoIP client would either not be in power-save mode during a call, resulting in reduced talk times, or would use a short DTIM interval, resulting in reduced standby times. The use of U-APSD allows the use of long DTIM intervals to maximize standby time without sacrificing call quality. The U-APSD feature can be applied individually across access categories, allowing U-APSD can be applied to the voice ACs in the AP, but the other ACs still use the standard power save feature.

Best Intentions

So why did turning this feature off resolve the one-way audio problem? It seems this is a technology that should help rather than hinder a wireless VoIP call. In this case it appears to do nothing but cause problems.

I can only speculate here because my understanding of this particular mechanism is limited, but I would suspect that even though U-APSD is a standard as part of IEEE 802.11e, the implementations may be somewhat disparate across vendors. Cisco in this case makes the phone and the wireless network is Ruckus. I suspect if I were using Cisco wireless gear, this wouldn’t be an issue. That’s not to blame Ruckus for the problem of course, it just seems to be one of those minor differences in how vendors implement certain technologies.

This brings about an entirely different topic of discussion, but if this is the case, can anything be done to hold vendors accountable for the little tweaks and changes to technologies that are supposed to be standards designed to improve, not prevent interoperability?

VMware VCA – Hit or Miss?

Posted on August 29, 2013 by NetworkCanuck

9/16/13 Update – VMware is now offering these exams for *free* using the discount code VCA501 until September 30th.

On August 26th, VMware announced their new Associate level certifications. These consist of:

VMware Certified Associate – Data Center Virtualization
VMware Certified Associate – Cloud
VMware Certified Associate – Workforce Mobility
VMware Certified Associate – Network Virtualization*

To date, VMware’s primary certification has been the VMware Certified Professional – or VCP. A longstanding contention with the VCP has been the requirement to attend an approved and official VMware training course.

There are several options available to meet the course requirement:

The least expensive of these courses is $3845 USD. As Tom Hollingsworth (@Networkingnerd) has pointed out, this is almost the same cost as two CCIE lab attempts. For those working for a VMware partner or an organization with a robust training budget, this might not be a burden. For those (like myself) who bear the majority of the cost associated with certification and training, this is a requirement that makes pursuing the VCP near impossible.

These new VCA certifications on the other hand do not have any required class. In fact, the recommended training is available completely free through the VMware training portal in the form of e-learning videos that run about 3 hours in length. Combined with some hands-on experience with vSphere, these new certifications are readily attainable.

Heck, why not?

My studies are primarily focused on networking, as are the contents of this blog, however I do have some interest and experience with virtualization. It’s practically a requirement if you want to delve deep into networking because of the current trend towards virtualization and Stuff-As-A-Service™ (StaaS). If you want to stay relevant as a network administrator, designer, or engineer, you need to know and understand VMware and virtualization technologies in general.

I’d love to have my VCP certification, but I simply don’t have the funds to attend the requisite class. VMware appears to have been listening to those vocal about the cost of the class and the requirements for the VCP. Perhaps the VCA might be a step in the right direction.

VMware is also offering a 50% discount on the VCA exams as a launch promotion, and $60 is a reasonable price for an exam. I quickly decided to give one of the VCA certifications a test run and added the VCA – Data Center Virtualization to my VMware training enrollments and proceeded to watch the video.

The e-learning video was fairly well done, paced evenly and concise. That being said it was fairly short – only one 3 hour video. It covered features and fundamentals of vSphere, but didn’t go into a lot of detail technically. It seemed to have more of a marketing spin, and generally came across as very basic, touching only the surface of many of the key features of vSphere. I wondered if I might need some additional self-study to take the exam.

The “What’s Next” section of the training video explained all that would be needed after the video was some hands-on experience with VMware – which I already had both at my day job and at home in my lab.

The exam itself is available through Pearson and is a web-based exam. No traveling to the nearest exam center required.

The exam consists of 50 questions and timed at 75 minutes. It is scored on a scale of 200-500 with a passing score of 300. Unlike Cisco exams, you can go back to prior questions.

I completed the exam in about 35 minutes, having gone back to the beginning to review the entire exam from question 1, and was rewarded with a passing score of 420.

Disappointed

I can’t speak for the entirety of the VCA line of certifications, but the Data Center Virtualization track at least seemed to me a high-level, and very basic view of VMware and vSphere in particular. It has very little technical content to be honest, and the simple fact that I was able to pass it with only a 3 hour video, along with a minor amount of hands-on experience with VMware, says a lot about the simplicity of this certification.

I don’t see these certifications gaining much traction, nor do I see them becoming viable options for those who cannot afford the VCP training. They may become a quick and inexpensive way to pad your resume with some certification logos to at least show potential employers that you have a basic understanding of VMware, but I wouldn’t suggest that someone with a VCA would even be proficient at installing ESXi on bare-metal hardware, let alone actually implementing some of the more detailed options that vSphere offers.

Ultimately at first glance, these certs do nothing to resolve the issue of the overpriced training required by VMware, nor do they truly represent a technical certification in the virtualization arena. They aren’t even prerequisites for the VCP, so they truly stand alone as Associate level certifications. Contrast this to most of the certifications with Cisco, Microsoft, HP and Juniper, where Associate level certifications are step one towards higher offerings.

I don’t truly understand what purpose they serve.

VMware Certification – Still Broken

While the new line of VCA certifications will allow candidates to demonstrate some fundamental understanding of virtualization and VMware products, VMware has not addressed the core issue with their primary certification program, the VCP. The cost for the requisite training course remains prohibitive for potential candidates who are not fortunate enough to have an employer who is willing to pay for the training.

VMware needs to address this or continue to lose out on a large potential crop of VMware proponents and evangelists.

Troubleshooting MTU size over IPSEC VPN

Posted on June 10, 2013 by NetworkCanuck

I recently deployed a couple of wireless access points to two sites that connect to our main office over IPSEC VPN. After a recent firmware update to the wireless controller both access points got stuck in a provisioning loop and appeared to have difficulty communicating with the controller. Both AP’s repeatedly disconnected due to a “heartbeats lost” error.

Connectivity between the main office and the remote sites appeared fine. Both access points were reachable via ping and ssh. I set up a packet debug on both sites’ firewalls and saw traffic going back and forth between the access points and the controller, and both access points appeared on the controller status window, alternating between “Provisioning” and “Disconnected”.

Needless to say I was slightly baffled.

I opened a ticket with the wireless vendor and (very quickly) received an answer. The MTU for CAPWAP traffic between the access points and the controller is hard set by the controller to 1500*. With these sites connected via IPSEC, that was going to cause some fragmentation due to the overhead that IPSEC was going to add onto the traffic going between sites.

I needed to lower the MTU size on the controller, but to what value? IPSEC doesn’t seem to have a ‘fixed’ header size due to the different encryption options that can be used. So how do I find out exactly how much our particular IPSEC configuration is adding?

ping -f

The -f flag from a Windows command prompt prevents an ICMP packet from being fragmented. This, combined with the -l flag allows you to set the size of the ICMP packet being sent.

So, assuming a standard ethernet MTU of 1500, and accounting for an 8-byte ICMP header, and 20-byte IP header, I should be able to send an ICMP packet sized to 1472 bytes, but 1473 should be too large:

C:\Users\netcanuck>ping 172.16.32.1 -f -l 1472

Pinging 172.16.32.1 with 1472 bytes of data:
Reply from 172.16.32.1: bytes=1472 time=3ms TTL=251
Reply from 172.16.32.1: bytes=1472 time=4ms TTL=251
Reply from 172.16.32.1: bytes=1472 time=4ms TTL=251
Reply from 172.16.32.1: bytes=1472 time=3ms TTL=251

C:\Users\netcanuck>ping 172.16.32.1 -f -l 1473

Pinging 172.16.32.1 with 1473 bytes of data:
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Excellent! So now to test across our IPSEC tunnel:

C:\Users\netcanuck>ping 172.16.68.1 -f -l 1472

Pinging 172.16.68.1 with 1472 bytes of data:
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Now this makes sense. The MTU size does not account for the IPSEC overhead.

After some testing with different packet sizes I hit on the magic number: 1384 bytes. At 1385 the packets were again rejected as being too large. So some quick math:

ICMP payload: 1384 bytes

ICMP header: 8 bytes

IP header: 20 bytes

Subtotal: 1412 bytes

This leaves 88 bytes as the IPSEC header. I should be able to set the MTU size on the controller to 1412 and the access points should resume functioning normally.

I did in fact set the MTU to 1400 – I like nice, round numbers – and sure enough both access points resumed proper communication with the controller.

What I Learned Today

Sometimes the simple tools are easy to overlook. Using a standard Windows command prompt and ping using the -f flag is a quick and easy way to diagnose MTU and fragmentation issues across a VPN tunnel.

* It appears from the support documentation for this particular wireless vendor that the MTU size should be 1450 by default which should take into account at least some overhead and explains why these access points were working fine until now. The firmware update seems to have changed this to 1500.

The Problem With “Free”.

Posted on May 14, 2013 by NetworkCanuck

It’s rare to have a day go by during which I don’t hear or read about some product that a vendor is now ‘giving away’ or moving to a ‘freemium’ model. In some of the more contentious verticals in the IT industry this seems to be a key tactic for winning new customers and providing value-add for existing ones.

I’m not in marketing or sales, so I can only assume here that the premise behind these gratuitous offerings is to have new, potential customers try the product, fall in love with it, and want to then add more of that company’s products to their infrastructure. There is also a tiny voice in my head that suggests perhaps these organizations might also want their ‘free’ product to become so critical to your operation, that should they decide to charge a fee or licensing for said product at some point in the future, that you’d be forced to pay because it has become something you simply couldn’t live without.

Ultimately the short or long-term goal of offering these products doesn’t really matter. What matters is there is a very big problem with these free products:

They’re free.

They don’t generate revenue, at least directly, for the vendor providing them. This means they are, in all aspects, simply a cost center…a money sink. An expense that perhaps proves the old saying that “you have to spend money to make money”. But the real issue here for you or I as a potential user, or implementer of these products, is that it is very difficult to get any support.

Hello, Bonjour

This particular ~~rant~~ blog post is centered around one such product that everybody seems to be racing to give away. If you, like me, work in an environment that is moving to support the BYOD craze and have anything other than one large, flat network, then Apple’s Bonjour is probably driving you nuts and causing you to sprout gray hair, if you have any left.

Because this particular protocol and all of it’s relatives (mDNS, Zeroconf) can’t communicate across layer 3 boundaries (they have a TTL of 1) when someone on your BYOD wifi wants to talk to the Apple TV on your corporate wifi, you need something to broker that connection. Enter the Bonjour Gateway (BG).

Aerohive was first to announce and make available their BG product in early 2012. It is built into their HiveOS on any Aerohive access point, or as a virtual machine that will run on VMware. It’s free up to 2 instances of the virtual appliance. I don’t know what the cost might be for anyone wishing to use more than 2, but I would imagine this is an opportunity to sell actual Aerohive hardware to a potential customer.

Cisco has included it as part of their Wireless Lan Controller (WLC) software beginning with version 7.4. This isn’t free, per se, but is obviously a valuable addition for any existing customer.

Ruckus announced in January 2013 their SmartWay™ technology as “beyond bonjour bridging”, and would be available Q2. Again, this is only free in the sense that existing customers would not have to pay for the software upgrade to their existing controllers.

A quick Google search at some other vendor offerings show that pretty much everyone in the wireless space is offering support for Bonjour in some way.

I may be wrong about this but it seems to me that providing a solution for this issue in enterprise networks is/was a priority for each of these vendors. Why then has my experience with getting one of these platforms working been such a disaster?

Aerohive

If you don’t already follow Andrew von Nagy on Twitter (@revolutionwifi), you should. He is a true wifi evangelist and an excellent resource for keeping up-to-date on all things 802.11. His twitter feed was very active with the announcement of the release of Aerohive’s BG.

Working in a K-12 education environment we had already identified this as a need. Staff and students wanted to take advantage of AirPrint and AirPlay and we had to find a solution. I quickly signed up for my free Aerohive BG and HiveManager account. Installation was easy as it comes in the form of an OVA. It’s pretty much ‘drop it into VMware’ and you are ready to go.

I had some problems with devices being able to see the AirPrint and AirPlay services across subnets. After some tinkering I decided to email Aerohive at the provided “free_bonjour_support@aerohive.com” address with my issue. That email must have ended up in the bit bucket because I received no reply. I sent out a tweet about a week later asking @Aerohive how long one could expect to wait for support for the BG. That too was met with silence. Two weeks later I was rather frustrated and sent out another tweet, this one a little more vitriolic:

“Going nowhere fast with Aerohive’s free bonjour gateway. Anyone have alternative suggestions? (That work)”

Now it should be noted that I’m in Canada and this tweet was sent out on November 22nd, 2012 – US Thanksgiving.

Andrew von Nagy responded via twitter and helped me out with some troubleshooting. I have to throw out a big thanks to him for taking the time on a holiday to offer some support.

On that same day, I received a reply to my original email (unsure if Andrew had anything to do with this) and began working with the online support to get the BG working.

A short 10 weeks later, I had resolved the issue (on my own) and closed the support request with Aerohive. From the original email on November 5th to resolution on January 10th….granted there are a few holidays in there…but that’s a long time to get an issue with an initial configuration resolved.

Ruckus

Just around the same time (January 2013) I managed to get that first BG working, we received word from our current wireless vendor, Ruckus, that they too were working on a BG solution. This was direct from David Callisch, VP of Marketing for Ruckus Wireless. He even offered to let us beta test the new firmware. This is great news! Being able to implement this solution on infrastructure we already own and manage should be quick and easy, right?

It’s mid May, and we still haven’t received the beta firmware.

Also, Ruckus recently pulled their latest 9.6 firmware off their support site, so I have a feeling 9.7 and SmartWay™ are going to miss their targeted Q2 release.

“Ruckus Wireless has decided to remove the 9.6.0.0.264 release for ZoneDirector while we investigate an issue that was discovered after the release.”

Aerohive Revisited

In April I received an email from Aerohive that outlined some major bug fixes and enhancements to their free BG. While I had been able to get it working with AirPlay somewhat in my previous attempt we had never been able to get AirPrint to work properly. I hoped that this news would mean we could get both pieces to function properly.

Having deleted the VM for the original installation of Aerohive’s BG, attempted to reinstall it, only to be told that my serial # had already been activated and that I could not reactivate it. Ok, easy fix, right? I fired off an email to “free_bonjour_support@aerohive.com” and explained my situation and asked if I could have a new key or the original key re-enabled.

That email went out April 19th, and I have yet to get any sort of reply.

Free Should Not Mean “free from support”

If these value-added features, or in some cases, fully ‘free’ products are meant to drive potential customers to become paying customers and/or if these products are meant to keep existing customers as loyal, long-term customers with an existing vendor, then I would expect support be as agile and attentive as it would be for any other product or offering from these same vendors.

I shouldn’t be left waiting for an email that never comes, and I certainly shouldn’t have to resort to social media shaming to get action from a vendor. Sadly it seems to be the most effective method of getting things moving, but it should be a last resort not the primary method of seeking resolution.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much from a free product or feature, and I may be misinterpreting the purpose of these add-ons as marketing/sales tools. I might be naive in believing that any truly ‘free’ product is going to become a key part of my infrastructure and solve a major technical hurdle for my users. I can only hope there is actually some sort of benevolent, beneficial reason for vendors to offer these solutions, and hope that they are able to provide some better support in the future.

Otherwise, there are truly free and open products like Avahi that are able to quickly and easily deploy mDNS service discovery options across subnets. If you know a little Linux…

Note: During the writing of this post I had been contacted by our local Aerohive rep who caught wind of a Tweet I sent out yesterday about my BG issue. He’s managed to get me a new serial # for our BG so I can happily reinstall it and give it another go. Social media wins again!

Back On Track

Posted on April 8, 2013 by NetworkCanuck

There nothing quite like seeing the word “Pass” come up on the screen after you finish answering that last question. There are a few moments of tension, waiting for the computer to spit out your results; Did I study hard enough? Did I truly learn the material for this exam? Did I just blow a couple hundred bucks on a failed attempt?

Then the score report validates everything you’ve done over the last few months with a nice four-letter-word:

Pass

It’s hard to maintain dignity and consideration for the other exam writers in the room, and knowing everything is on camera and in view of the stern watchful eyes of the exam proctor, you know you have to hold in that real celebration until you’ve gotten outside the building, or at least into the elevator. A few fist pumps maybe, and probably a fairly Cheshire-Cat-Esque grin on your face.

642-813 – Implementing Cisco IP Switched Networks (SWITCH) – done!

Procrastination

I know I’m not alone out there. There are plenty of us studying towards certifications or other academic achievements who know they should be putting in more time reading or doing labs. In my progress towards the CCNP I could have probably passed all three exams by now had I focused a little more and spent more time learning and less time doing other things. Sometimes life gets in the way, right? It’s not an excuse, I recognize that it’s a choice for me, and it’s also something I’ll have to really think about and decide how I want to approach the next exam. Like many out there I have a job, a wife, a kid, and many other things in life that limit the amount of time that can be dedicated to studying or labbing. If I truly plan on achieving my long term goal of “CCIE by 40” some sacrifices will have to be made.

I left Cisco Live last year truly motivated to continue my studies. Spending a week surrounded by other networkers who have multiple certifications and great careers will do that to you. Looking back it’s hard to tell exactly how motivated I was since that was June and here it is in April with the first of three CCNP exams finally passed. It has been a good 9 months in other areas that’s for sure, and perhaps I can’t measure the success of the past 9 months by looking only at my certification progress.

As an example, I’ve also taken great strides in my health and fitness. I’ve lost 50 pounds since July of 2012. Nothing special here really, just diet and exercise. I didn’t cut out carbs, or take any weird mail-order supplement that was the “fad diet du jour”, I simply started counting calories, got a personal trainer to kick my ass 5-6 hours a week and work out on my own 1-2 hours a week on top of that. I feel awesome. Clothes shopping isn’t a total hassle, and I’m finally going to be able to wear that Speedo this summer.

It’s all about the big picture, right?

What’s Next

642-902 – Implementing Cisco IP Routing (ROUTE) – is next on the agenda. I’m truly hoping to take the momentum from this pass and carry it forward into an awesome study plan for this one. I don’t do a lot of layer 3 work in my day job so there is going to be some real fundamental learning happening here, and I’m looking forward to it.

CCNP R&S Progress-O-Meter:

~~SWITCH~~ – 4/6/2013

ROUTE – In progress…(again)

~~TSHOOT~~ – 1/24/2015