Had some fun over the last few days. Performed hardware / software upgrades on Cisco 6506-E. Configuration investigation into peering with Azure Cloud Services. Deployment work for a managed MSSP service with Alienvault as the SIEM solution. I also got caught up with my favorite Podcast The Packet Pushers.

This week , I performed an upgrade on a pair of remote 6500 from 12.x to 15.1(2) as well as exchange 4 x 10 G port to a 16 x 10G port linecard. The upgrades were successful. I did learn one caveat take away which is that these chassis will maintain power consumption for the last slot in the chassis even if there is no linecard in the slot. I was able to make use of some tcl scripts to help in the pre and post maintenance testing. The script are a simple ping test in a loop over a list. I would like to learn more about this but do not want to deviate from the current study plan material.

While working with one of my new customers, I got the opportunity to get some exposure to the Azure Cloud platform private peering session. My firm sells a NNI service for a direct connection to the Azure cloud. Seems likes a really great service to connect cloud virtualization with the Datacenter. There is some unique ways to build a co-location environment to the virtual deployment in the Azure cloud.

Deployment of my firms new MSSP service was interesting. The service is running a sensor internally where it captures the information and produces the reporting. I was let down that the service has some limits in terms on customization but the service itself has effective reporting. Over the next week I expect to tune the reporting parameters.

Last item was the Packet pushed Heavy Networking podcast covered “Creating a Single Source of Truth for Network Automation”. This podcast covered the theory behind creating an automation pipeline. My interest was geared toward more of how I could make use of Netbox more effectively in this pursuit. Fortunate there is an episode from May 2019 covering Netbox more in detail.

Referenced Links

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/videos/azure-expressroute-how-to-set-up-azure-private-peering-for-your-expressroute-circuit/

https://packetpushers.net/podcast/heavy-networking-498-creating-a-single-source-of-truth-for-network-automation/