So, I do still exist. I am still here, and look at this! I even update once in a while.
My focus has shifted a little bit over the past few months. I’m working a lot with NSX, and have been teaching the NSX: Install, Configure, Manage for a few months now. Like, a lot. Q3 has been absolutely nuts for me, especially with the announcement of NSX 6.1 at VMworld.
So, what does all that mean for me, and this blog, exactly?
Well, for the blog, it means a little bit less vSphere stuff, and a little bit more networking.
Which leads us to “What does this mean for me?”. Well, I’ve got a stack of Cisco gear here in the office now. That must mean Cisco certification prep. Someday, I’ll have a break and be able to actually do that 🙂
So, what Cisco stuff is in the pipeline? CCNA – Routing and Switching is first. that’s the basic stuff. CCNA Data Center is soon to follow. I’ve been tossing around CCDA because design is just a thing I do. Do I pursue those to the NP/ND level? I don’t know. My guess is no, but I never leave anything off the table.
I’ve also got the VCP-NV on my list, and the forthcoming VCIX-NV when it launches. I’ve taken a swing at the VCP-NV – I did that while I was out at VMworld, but I just missed the passing mark. I was caught completely off-guard by some of the stuff in the exam. It was my own fault, however, as I spent a grand total of zero time preparing and studying for the exam. I even talked to the cert devs about the Exam Blueprint, that I didn’t actually read until the evening _after_ I wrote the exam.
That’ll be easy to rectify, however. I know what I need to study to bump my score up over the pass mark. Now I just need what everyone needs – time.
I also have some new lab gear incoming. I caught a steal from the Dell Outlet the other day. I have a scratch & dent T5610 with dual 6-core Xeon E5s on its way, and an additional 64 GB of RAM just showed up on my front porch today. I’ll talk through the build I’m planning as I’m working through it. I figure with 24 threads and 96 total GB of RAM, I should be able to run many, many nested ESXi hosts, especially with the VMware Tools fling and the MacLearn dvfilter fling for nested ESXi. My old ASUS RS500A ran pretty well with 2 6-node clusters and a 4-node management cluster, each nested ESXi host with 8 GB of RAM each. And the RS500A only had 64 GB of RAM.
So I’m going to consolidate the ASUS and the old ML370 into a single, more modern (and likely more power efficient) box. The tradeoff is that I’m giving up the iKVM and iLO capabilities of my existing hosts. It’ll be ok. I guess I’ll just have to look at IP KVMs now.
In other news, I’ve moved my edge to higher-end gear. Nope, nothing so fancy or cost-prohibitive as Cisco, but definitely powerful. I picked up a Ubiquiti Networks EdgeRouter Lite the other day, and it’s pretty slick. I’ve got a complementary UniFi AC on the way, and that should be waiting for me when I get home. The EdgeRouter is pretty slick. EdgeOS is based on Vyatta Core 6.3 (just before the Brocade acquisition), so I’m familiar, in passing, with the OS. This thing is fast!
So this will all end up in a home network / lab series as I do more cool stuff with it.
As it stands, I gotta get back to class – we’re just about done deploying Controllers…
VirtualKrueger 