Cisco UCS Emulator

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 172012
 

For anyone that doesn’t know, Cisco have a very handy UCS emulator which you can download from their website here:-

http://developer.cisco.com/web/unifiedcomputing/ucsemulatordownload

You can run this on the following platforms:-

• VMware Player
• VMware Fusion ( for Macs)
• VMware ESXi
• VMware Workstation
• VMware Server

ESXi and Player are free products, and the requirements are fairly small:-

• 1 GB free RAM
• 6 GB disk space
• 1.8-GHz single CPU

Note that if you want to run this on ESXi, you will need to use the free VMware vCenter Converter – its pretty straight forward but a good guide to this can be found here:-

http://www.vspecialist.co.uk/deploying-cisco-ucs-platform-emulator-2-0-on-vsphere/

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 9:49 PM

VMware Press Sweepstake

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 172012
 

Just a quick one… ‘Like’ VMware press on facebook and you get entered into a sweepstake to win some prices:-

One (1) Grand Prize Winner will receive:

> Nine (9) Second Prize Winners will each receive:

Enter here:-

http://www.facebook.com/VMwarepress/app_174489652597378

Good luck!

 Posted by at 9:31 PM

Cisco PEC

 Cisco  3 Responses »
May 222012
 

Wow, well I expect a lot of people know about this but I certainly didn’t, and I know a few other guys at work didn’t know till today. The Cisco PEC is the Partner Education Connection. If you’re lucky enough to work for a Cisco partner, and you have associated your CIO login with your company, you can access a world of training material.

I’ve literally just logged in so I’m going to have a dig around and see if there is useful information in here. Certainly looks like there is – its not all just sales and marketing gumpf.

Will update later this week hopefully…

CCDA Passed

 CCDA, Cisco  No Responses »
May 222012
 

Like it says above really, I’ve managed to pass the CCDA at the second attempt today. Not a massive fan of this exam I have to say, many questions where lots of things could be the right answer, but you have to know the Cisco recommended way. I studied using the CBT Nuggets, and normally I’m a big fan of them. However, this time, and it was probably more to do with the topics that had to be covered, I wasn’t that impressed. Pretty sprawling and even with the updates for the series, still the only cover the old retired exam (640-843, whereas the exam is now 640-864). So in hindsight probably not the best start to the studies!

I also used the Cisco Press Self Study guide, CCDA Official Cert Guide 4th Edition (Anthony Bruno & Steve Jordan). This was a lot better, but the exam covers a massive area, including wireless, data centre, WANs, IPv6, routing protocols, media types, etc. There is a lot to go over and know, and it is all very much based on Cisco best practice.

I have to do a lot of design work in my job, and initially I got a few good ideas from studying for this exam. Maybe it would be more useful if you only used Cisco products in your designs, and designed exclusively for large organisations willing to spend large sums on equipment. But, personally I’m glad its out of the way and I can start studying something a bit more technical rather than so broad and theory based.

Next up is the Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Design Specialist Qualifier Exam, as I need to get my UCS Design Specialist exam done ASAP. I’ll also try and write up a few more interesting posts too rather than just exam reviews! For starters I will be emulating the UCS environment once I get on to that exam properly in VMware. Should be interesting!

VCP5 Passed

 VCP5, VMware  3 Responses »
Feb 212012
 

I’ve been a VCP3 (VMware Certified Professional) for awhile, and was reminded by VMware that if I wish to become a VCP5, I could do so by sitting a 2 day “What’s New” in vSphere 5 course and taking the exam before the 29th of Feb. If you leave it any later, you must sit a 5 day course all about the wonders of vSphere 5. This costs a fair amount of money.

There are some phenomenal resources out there to aid you in your studying, and I can highly recommend the following sites which helped me out no end:-

Continue reading »

CCIP/CCIE Studying

 Personal  No Responses »
Jan 122012
 

As I mentioned previously, I’ve recently started a new job, and its given me a spur to get back into studying. There are some weird and wonderful technologies covered at my new work place, and getting to grips with them is going to be my immediate priority in the coming months.

I hope to be able to write about them as I study them, so watch this space. Continue reading »

JNCIS-SEC Passed!

 Juniper, Personal, SRX  No Responses »
Dec 182011
 

Last week I passed my JNCIS-SEC. I’ve already done my JNCIA-FWV and JNCIS-FWV (though I’ve let them expire now…) so I’m familiar with a lot of the concepts from the ScreenOS world.

This was quite different though… Lots of questions on UTM and IPS which I’m not too hot on. And of course, the SRX does things in quite a different way to ScreenOS. Having had a few weeks experience working with the SRX, but quite a lot of time working with Junos and Netscreens in the past, I decided to follow the excellent fast track study material on the Juniper site and try and get this one under my belt.

Word of warning though – don’t even think about just doing the video! There is a lot, lot more in the study guide, including UTM – which there was quite a lot of in my exam.

Having passed I’m keen to do more Juniper certs – I’m looking for cheap SRXs to build a lab at home, but not many seem to have found their way onto eBay yet… If you have some to sell, drop me a comment! Continue reading »

SRX Destination NAT through Zones

 Juniper, SRX  No Responses »
Dec 182011
 

I was at a customer site last week, and was asked to do something that I didn’t think was possible, having come from a ScreenOS background. I was wrong!

They are a large organisation and have multiple data centres, each adhering to the rule of having separate firewall clusters for the perimeter and the core of the network. The firewalls in the core of this data centre are a clustered pair of SRX 3600s, with different zones for different services – different server groups being separated out from communicating with each other except via the firewalls.

All traffic destined for the outside world went into a DMZ shared with the outer firewalls, called the secure DMZ. There is no direct route out to the internet for the majority of the servers, for security purposes. However, some servers need to access some things on the internet, as is always the way.

Continue reading »

A Fresh Start

 Personal  No Responses »
Nov 262011
 

Having been experimenting a bit with my blog over on blogger, I’ve decided to move lock stock and barrel over to WordPress. Hopefully it will give me a bit more control, and incentive to post more!

I’ve also moved jobs, and moved countries, so this is a fresh start for me and this blog. Previously I was working for a medium sized ISP, and now I’m working for a consultancy company, who cover all kinds of different technologies and vendors I had previously never had any exposure to. Continue reading »

Juniper SA IVS Setup

 HA, IVE, Juniper, SA  2 Responses »
Oct 052011
 

There are a number of ways you can deploy your SA units, and in this example I’m going to go over using IVSs. These are Instant Virtual Systems, which are typically used by service providers to split a single or clustered SA unit into separate, independent logical units. Note that this is a licence activated feature, so you must purchase the ability to run IVSs from Juniper.

In this example I’m going to go over a deployment of an IVS on an Active/Passive cluster, of SA4500 devices.
Firstly, a quick diagram of how the setup will look:-
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