my CKA/CKAD study plan

my CKA/CKAD study plan

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This is the story of studying Kubernetes basics from the perspective of network engineer. I had basic Linux background, some free time, and willingness to discover this brave new world of containers, pods and microservices. I think one of the best ways to do this kind of studying is to follow the blueprint of recognized industry certification. This gives you a concrete study plan and bring structure to your knowledge from the very beginning. There are such certifications in Kubernetes…

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Juniper EVPN BGP options – eBGP-only design

Juniper EVPN BGP options – eBGP-only design

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In another part of his never-ending EVPN/BGP saga Ivan Pepelnjak argued with Juniper fanboys once again about sanity of iBGP-over-eBGP and eBGP-over-eBGP designs and all that fun stuff. I’ve already written my opinion about that topic in my previous post and numerous comments to Ivan’s posts (TL;DR: iBGP-over-eBGP design has its advantages, just implement it wisely – don’t place RR on spine switches). But there is one thing that worries me. In almost every one of his posts Ivan talks…

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Vagrant + vQFX + Ansible = EVPN-VXLAN Fabric

Vagrant + vQFX + Ansible = EVPN-VXLAN Fabric

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Did you know that Juniper vQFX images are available in Vagrant Cloud? There is vQFX RE image and vQFX PFE one. You can use only RE image to build simple topologies, or pair every RE with PFE to use more complex protocols. There is also a bunch of examples in Juniper’s github repository. What is Vagrant? Let me quote official website: “Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. Vagrant gives you a disposable environment and…

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List of EVPN and DC-related IETF drafts (as of 1H 2018)

List of EVPN and DC-related IETF drafts (as of 1H 2018)

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Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) solution is becoming pervasive for Network Virtualization Overlay (NVO) services in data center (DC) networks and as the next generation VPN services in service provider (SP) networks. As a result of this popularity a lot of work is going on in IETF in this area. In this post I collect links to some of the interesting IETF drafts in this area. All this information is relevant for 1H 2018 timeframe. Keep in mind to pay…

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BGP design options for EVPN in Data Center Fabrics

BGP design options for EVPN in Data Center Fabrics

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Ivan Pepelnjak described his views regarding BGP design options for EVPN-based Data Center Fabrics in this article. In comments to following blog post we briefly discussed sanity of eBGP underlay + iBGP overlay design option and come to conclusion that we disagree on this subject. In this blog post I try to summarize my thoughts about this design options. Let’s start with the basics – what’s the idea behind underlay/overlay design? It’s quite simple – this is logical separation of…

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List of EVPN and DC-related RFCs

List of EVPN and DC-related RFCs

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In this post I try to collect links to all interesting RFCs and drafts related to DC, EVPN and network overlays. Some of this documents are complete industry standards, some are drafts aiming to become such standarts, and others are just informational documents, often already outdated and forgotten, but despite this still interesting and useful. So don’t forget to pay attention to time frame each particular document was created and updated.   RFC 7209 – Requirements for Ethernet VPN (EVPN) This…

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This Week: Data Center Deployment with EVPN/VXLAN

This Week: Data Center Deployment with EVPN/VXLAN

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Brand new book – This Week: Data Center Deployment with EVPN/VXLAN. Author did a great job explaining and showing various examples of real world implementations of EVPN-VXLAN and DCI. Definitely must read for anybody aiming for JNCIE-DC lab. I wish I’ve read this before my lab attempt – this book really helps to update and systematize all EVPN-VXLAN related knowledge. But that’s for sure not the first book to read if you doesn’t know anything about EVPN-VXLAN. I recommend firstly…

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Got my number!

Got my number!

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After a week of waiting (why this is taking so long? this wasn’t a particularly pleasant week), I finally got my number. Brand new JNCIE-DC #31 !!! The main note about the lab – time management is the most important thing on the exam. Don’t rush to the keyboard, read and understand all the tasks and it’s interdependencies. Have a plan regarding order of tasks – not all tasks can be completed in order in which they written. Don’t be…

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Tomorrow is the big day!

Tomorrow is the big day!

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How fast time flies! Tomorrow ( August 10) is my JNCIE-DC lab day. I spent last couple of days repeating my notes and labbing small optional topics like CoPP, ZTP, etc; and also familiar ones like CoS and MPLS L3VPN. Today is the rest day. Fly to Amsterdam, drink a couple of beers and go to bed. Fortunately I’ve been there before, so no worries about how to find Juniper office and be late for the exam. Plan for tomorrow: go…

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EVPN lab – EVPN-VXLAN to EVPN-MPLS stitching

EVPN lab – EVPN-VXLAN to EVPN-MPLS stitching

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Last big topic that I need to practice – Data Center Interconnect (DCI). Fortunately I pretty confident in my skills in the MPLS L3VPN area, so I think I shouldn’t spend much time for this topic. The most complex DCI option remains – EVPN stitching. In this topic I will show you my example of EVPN-VXLAN to EVPN-MPLS stitching (there is also option of EVPN-VXLAN to EVPN-VXLAN stitching, but configuration should be similar to my example). EVPN stitching concept is…

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