CCIE: Data Center thread

Zartanasaurus

Well the ACE session was a bust. The login credentials for the ACE didn't work, so I had to put in a ticket. Took about 30 mins to get resolved. I log in to get started and realize all of the configuration is done for me already. So I just logged out and said forget it. I got my tokens refunded so I'll just try again some other time. Really getting to the point when I can't recommend their DC rack rentals to people. This is the 3rd legit issue I've run into now. Of course, it's not like you can run to IPX and get loads of rack time from them either, they are just as overbooked.

INE said they were going to add more capacity at the end of September, but I haven't seen any announcement that they lived up to that promise and I haven't noticed an easier time getting rack time. You can pretty much forget UCS rentals. Out of their "4" racks, they only have 1 FI pair serving all 4. There's also only two sets of MDS switches; one is for UCS and one is for the SAN rentals. So there's "4" racks, but in reality they only have 1 UCS rack and 1 FEX/SAN rack that is available at a time.

srg

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

INE said they were going to add more capacity at the end of September, but I haven't seen any announcement that they lived up to that promise and I haven't noticed an easier time getting rack time.

https://twitter.com/ccie2210/status/386215925755543553/photo/1

Zartanasaurus

Brian D responded over at IEOC about their future plans. Looks like they are adding a lot more capacity and a fair queuing system. The question is, when is it going to be useable?

Originally we planned on just duplicating the existing topology. After looking into the growth of the DC product line, we decided to upgrade the racks to go with SUP2E's in the 7ks, more racks with 5548s (currently only rack 1 has 5548s), more UCS chassis and add the ability to expand the add-ons. To make this happen we also had to rearrange our primary data center by moving R&S racks over to our new space which was a massive undertaking. Right now we are situated to get from 4 racks (3 rentable) to 8 racks (all rentable) and then onto 16 racks plus the full scale mock lab racks. By going to 16 racks we can ensure that there are racks available even when we are running bootcamps.Here is a picture from last week when we started to roll the racks into the data center.https://twitter.com/ccie2210/status/386215925755543553/photo/1Lastly we are going to roll out a fair queuing system for the DC rack scheduling as opposed the FIFO system we have now for the DC rentals.If you have any specific questions feel free to email me directly.

fredrikjj

Re: INE's racks.

It's crazy how disruptive a free-ish fully featured cisco dynamips thing would be to a business like that.

Zartanasaurus

fredrikjj wrote: »

Re: INE's racks.

It's crazy how disruptive a free-ish fully featured cisco dynamips thing would be to a business like that.

I used INE's racks for R&S like once or twice. Once I got my GNS3 + 3560 lab setup there was no need. Cheaper, faster and usable on my schedule, not theirs. After that, I only bought tokens for graded mock exams. If VIRL turns out to be good and affordable, no one will need DC rentals either. It's certainly a risk for them, but for now I'm sure it's a pretty good loss leader for their bootcamp and workbook sales.

Zartanasaurus

After two sessions with the ACE I can say this with 100% certainty: I'm glad Cisco retired those things. Not a fan at all.

QHalo

The reality of us getting a UCS chassis is growing. I'm already starting to dig through the UCS DocCD stuff. I may join you as time goes on but I'm sure you'll be much further ahead. The UCSPE has been a godsend though. I can basically lab our exact configuration to prepare me for when the chassis arrives.

Zartanasaurus

powmia wrote: »

Also, I would NOT skip Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals. I read the original Data Center Fundamentals. It was an excellent book, covering topics that no other Cisco Press title even went near. Virtualization Fundamentals is by the same author, so pretty much just a modern version. I actually have it open now... I consider this my first fun read in a while.

Good call here. I'm about 1/3 done this book and it has been a good read. This book is worth it for its coverage of the ACE alone, which does a lot better job of explaining how it works than any of the Cisco Docs I've seen.

Also of note: INE has added a "waiting list" feature for their rack rentals. Curious to see how this turns out.

Zartanasaurus

So after doing some more reading, I will say this...Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals is to CCIE:DC as Routing TCP/IP is to CCIE:RS. It's a must read book and should probably be the first book you read if you're going down the DC path or just want to know about UCS/NX-OS technologies in general. And it's the ONLY book I've found that covers UCS and ACE config. So... get this book.

srg

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

So after doing some more reading, I will say this...Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals is to CCIE:DC as Routing TCP/IP is to CCIE:RS.It's a must read book and should probably be the first book you read if you're going down the DC path or just want to know about UCS/NX-OS technologies in general. And it's the ONLY book I've found that covers UCS and ACE config. So... get this book.

Cool! That's the new one that came out this summer right?

Zartanasaurus

Yeah, it's the new one.

nel

Z, hows the study going? are you getting much luck with the rack rental access? any plans for the written yet?

Keep up the good work mate.

Zartanasaurus

INE's increased rack rentals started today. Everything isn't booked through January anymore! Got 3 hours of SAN labbing in this afternoon. It's really nice to not have to scramble to get everything done in 60-90 mins. I have 10 hours worth of rack time booked for next week split over 3 sessions. I ran out of rack rental tokens pretty quick.

Still grinding with flashcards, although I haven't been keeping up with my reading as much as I should. I took a detour to update my knowledge on Hyper-V and System Center 2012 R2. Now with the rack rentals being possible, I'm more motivated to move back into this, although I'm not nearly as gung ho as I was with R&S. Only 3 chapters left in the Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals good. I'll reiterate that this is a fantastic book that covers everything on the blueprint in some way.

Zartanasaurus

3 more hours today on UCS.

Protip: If you plan on doing a lot of UCS tasks at one time, do the chassis discovery and unified port changes 1st instead of waiting until you get to that task.

5K/2K rentals are booked through January now.
It would *only* cost about $7,000 to put together a 5K/2K lab using the EoL 5020 + 2148 for those of you with money to burn.

Zartanasaurus

I think I've mentioned before that I hate the ACE. Nothing has changed there. And the INE videos on the subject are less than satisfactory due to technical issues they had during the recording. It was just me and the ACE for 3 hours today and I'd call it a draw. I'm a better man for it though. Next time will be a win for me. Also had some time left over to go over OTV configs again. It's been over a month but I still could do 90% of it from memory. VIRL can't come soon enough.

Zartanasaurus

Not sure how I missed this since I've been to this guy's blog several times. Basically just some quick notes he took down from a CCIE:DC techtorial given about a year ago.

CCIE Datacenter techtorial notes | Rick Mur

Some good info in here, especially this part:

Storage and ANS (ACE appliance) are not that big topics, just a few points, not that complex.
The focus is on NX-OS networking, UCS deployment and Nexus 1000V!

The exam consists of only 1 section of 8 hours. Do expect troubleshooting! Things will be broken when you come into the lab. The lab is designed to guide you through a ‘standard’ Datacenter installation. So you will be building up an entire Datacenter.

The setup is based on 2 sites! There is only hardware for 1 physical site, therefore various virtualization technologies are used to define 2 sites that you need to interconnect using things like OTV.
On the Nexus 7k’s VDCs are used to create upto 6 switches (2 core switches and 2 sets of 2 distribution switches). The following picture shows you to a sample VDC topology:

They also are expecting you to do multi-hop FCoE in the lab.

Roy4USA

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

I think I've mentioned before that I hate the ACE. Nothing has changed there. And the INE videos on the subject are less than satisfactory due to technical issues they had during the recording. It was just me and the ACE for 3 hours today and I'd call it a draw. I'm a better man for it though. Next time will be a win for me. Also had some time left over to go over OTV configs again. It's been over a month but I still could do 90% of it from memory. VIRL can't come soon enough.

We are glad to see you posting here again Zartanasaurus.

I agree with you about the Cisco Ace's. I had to deploy a pair of Cisco 4710's and they were insanely complex compared to all of the other load balancers that I have worked on. The 4710's were like a stripped down ASA, that will not let any packet into or out of the ACE unless you explicitly allow it. And then Cisco threw QoS Configurations on the ACE for load balancing via Policy Maps and Service Policies. Customers have voted with their wallets on the Cisco ACE's.

On the positive side, the Cisco Ace's helped me to pick up QoS a lot quicker than I would have been able to without them.

PsychoFin

The ace was my first exposure to load balancing, and I love our 3 ace clusters compared to our F5s. I probably would have been of another opinion had I started with another brand of lbs.

Zartanasaurus

IPexpert DC workbook on sale for $599 through 12/2.
Promo code DCwb250

64:61:6e

That's a great deal. Most probably already saw this as well but just in case, INE is also having time specific sales on various products as well. Looks like the prices will be revealed at the time of the sale.

INE Black Friday Super Savings!

64:61:6e

How's the DC studies going? I see that INE just opened up 5 more DC racks.

Happy Holidays! Five More Data Center Racks - Now Rentable

Just checked and looks to be pretty open at the moment. I'm sure they will fill up quick though.

vtechie123

Hi Guys ,

Cisco PEC labs are amazing .. you can practice almost all stuffs of blueprint .. there are more than 35 labs ...
its absolutely free for any type of cisco partners .. even registered partners ...
only for some specific labs we have to rent the labs like .. fabric path we have to rent the ipexpert lab .. in ine there
is no more fabricpath and layer 3 stuffs.

Also if you want to do VDC and Storage VDC .. you have to get ipexpert lab...but the bad thing is slots are booked till 2014 August..

According to Robert Burns ( Cisco ( Admin of CCIE DC group on facebook ) .. The VIRL includes vNXOS ( AKA Titanium ) . the latest version 7 will support fabric path and vdc .. current nexus titanium only supports layer 3 and OTV only ....to be announce on mid of may ...

silver145

Hi Vtechie, i work for a gold partner, and the last time i logged into that area, most of the labs were fairly out of date, have they updated alot?

vtechie123

silver145 wrote: »

Hi Vtechie, i work for a gold partner, and the last time i logged into that area, most of the labs were fairly out of date, have they updated alot?

if you compare the hardware with INE lab ( for nexus INE Nexus still they are using 5020 .. in pec you will get 5548 , .. it is not bad .... also CCIE DC blue print . still using most of the
outdated equipment especially sup and line cards ... ). also for the technology labs of ipexpert they are using MDS9216i .. But for
PEC you will get the same switch ( 9222i ) which we are using in the exam.
However something is better than nothing ... for pec you will find enough slots .and you can test almost all features of CCIE DC ..
expect VDC and storage VDC

joker134

Hi Zartanasaurus ,

How is your study going? I am following your book recommendation and just starting to read NX-OS (about 15%, still long way to go I know)

Have you passed the written test?

Zartanasaurus

I'm back. I attempted the Written Q4 of 2013 and failed by a small margin. I took time off from studying and thought about what I wanted to do next. Rack rentals were still hard to come by so I decided to cool off on DC for a while. I took a new job with a Cisco Partner and have access to lots of training now. I may start this up again sometime this year, but I'm going to take a pit stop with CCNP:Security first.

Iristheangel

Hey Zartan,

If you're working for a Cisco partner now, give the PEC labs a try. That should supplement you while you're looking for rack time. Another thing I notice is that if you try to get lab time the day of instead of planning ahead of time, there are usually open spots at INE. I had the same issue you were having until I noticed that spots opened up for SAN, UCS, etc daily.

Good luck!

Edit: Here's the link for PEC: http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le36/learning_partner_e-learning_connection_tool_launch.html

There are approx 37 PEC labs for DC including things you can't do inside INE's racks like Fabricpath, vDCs, etc. From my understanding, the labs are built off of real hardware out there somewhere so you can go outside the lab assignments to some degree and just practice

Roy4USA

Welcome Back Zartan,

On Cisco PEC ( Partner Education Connection), there are always Cisco UCS Labs available. But I have not had any luck finding the Cisco PEC Nexus Labs open when I needed them.

So just create a few LAB VDC's on your N7K's for labbing them. Plus a lot of Partners have dedicated labs too.

down77

If you are a partner and need access to DC labs contact your Data Center PSS or CSE. In each region a Cisco DC resource REGULARLY schedules Nexus/UCS Gold Labs for partner access. You should have access to the following:

-LabGear Remote (dcv-labs)
-dCloud
-Gold Labs


I hear dCloud access is coming to external customers in the following months.

joelsfood

Zartan, are you still working on this? I hope you ahven't given up.

I've had good luck with PEC lab scheduling lately. Two weeks ago on Tuesday, i was able to schedule 2-3 labs every day for the following week.