CCIE Written at Cisco Live 2012

Posted: 5th February 2012 by admin in Uncategorized

Passed my CCIE written exam at Cisco Live 2012. Overall i had a great time at Cisco live.

 

Day 1 started with Keynote—- Zero to Zetta —- from Padmashree warrior  ( CTO ). It was a great start with  snapshot of where Cisco is heading in future. Then from there on it was a deep dive into the techincal sessions starting with LAN architecture and the last day finished with Securing Cloud Computing.

 

When i arrived on Day 1 i saw a sign for Cisco certification discount.. There was 75 % discount on any cisco certification exam you give onsite. I thought it is a good chance to test where i am with my preparation for my CCIE written. I was initially planning to sit the exam in March, but that 75% discount tempted me too much to atleast attempt the exam. To my delight i passed the exam and was quite please with my effort.

After a good week now its time to go back to work tommorrow.

Cisco Live 2012 – My Sessions

Posted: 28th January 2012 by admin in Uncategorized
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Monday i am going to London for Cisco Live 2012 at ICC Excel. It officially starts Tuesday and ihave booked the following sessions for Tuesday.

LAN Design and Deployment using the Cisco Smart Business Architecture
Length: 90 Mins
Technical Level: Intermediate
Abstract: This session discusses LAN design, and deployment best practices as outlined in the Cisco Smart Business Architecture (SBA). LAN deployments from single switch remote sites to large multi-building campuses will be discussed.

The Smart Business Architecture offers an end-to-end reference design for enterprise and midsize organizations that provide a path for accelerating the adoption of technology. The session will discuss the consistent enablement of capabilities such as high availability, quality of service, multicast, and security across a range of Cisco LAN platforms. The session will also include decision criteria that can help a customer choose between platforms.

The cornerstones of the approach and techniques discussed in this session are real-world use cases, prescriptive design guidance, and modular architectural components.

 

Title: Optimize applications across the Cisco borderless network, data centre and Cl…
Length: 30 mins
Technical Level: Introductory
Abstract: Cisco’s borderless networks and data centre solutions enable applications that empower businesses to deliver innovative and differentiated solutions to their customers. In today’s rapidly changing business world, organizations are focused on delivering quick time-to-value while ensuring an exceptional customer experience. In addition, customers are increasingly demanding access to solutions from any location, on any type of device, and using whatever browser and operating system they prefer. These evolving dynamics are creating a new challenge for both enterprises and service providers as their applications are now being delivered across an ecosystem that transcends typical organizational boundaries.
In order to meet the expectations of enterprises, service providers, and their customers, Cisco and Compuware have partnered to deliver end-to-end application performance management across the entire Cisco network and application delivery chain. This application management solution enables proactive problem identification, prioritization of performance issues based on business impact, rapid fault domain isolation, baseline and on-going reporting, and analytics across multiple technologies including Mobile, VoIP, Multimedia, WAAS, virtualization, and UCS.
Together, Cisco and Compuware enable one view of network and application performance from an end user perspective across the entire Cisco powered environment.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1. Understand how critical business and consumer trends are impacting your ability to deliver a great end user experience.
2. Learn performance management best practices for borderless network and application environments.
3. Identify opportunities to simplify and consolidate your performance management solutions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside Cisco IT: Top Ten Risks with Cloud that will keep you Awake at Night
Length: 1 Hour
Technical Level: Intermediate
Abstract: Against the backdrop of new economic realities, one of the larger forces that is affecting businesses worldwide is cloud computing. Security is the top concern for cloud adoption and expectations from the security staff are all time high to apply a defense-in-depth strategy to protect enterprises, thus giving them sleepless nights. In this presentation, Cisco infosec professionals will share the security challenges faced with cloud adoption at Cisco and other large enterprises. Authors have evaluated multiple cloud vendors for security and privacy risks. Authors also lead the OWASP Cloud -10 initiative that maintains the top ten list of security risks faced with Cloud computing and XaaS models.

Day 3 — Narbik’s bootcamp 2011 London

Posted: 14th November 2011 by admin in Uncategorized

Day -3

I made a mistake before the start of Day 3 and that was doing labs after i reached my hotel. I was tired after a long DAY-2 at the bootcamp but by the time i reached my hotel around 2.30 Am i was not feeling sleepy so i decided to do some juicy ( as Narbik says) labs and one of the labs just got stuck somewhere and by the time i fixed it and finished that lab it was around 4.30 Am already and i deciced i should take some sleep otherwise i will ruin it… I  managed to get around 4 1/2 hr sleep and reached the class around 30 minutes late but luckily the class had just started so dint miss out on much…

 

Topics for Day -3

 

1) BGP

2) MPLS

3) RIP

 

Started the day with BGP and he just RIPPED the BGP protocol apart and explained it inside out.. Not sure what IOS is NARBIK  on but man he remembers every command.. Just like you press ? on the router he types in ? on the blackboard and he can type all the options after that ?… Its incredible…

 

BGP took a long time and then we started with MPLS and as Narbik always says that it is RIDICULOUSLY EASY…. He reallly made it easy to understand.  So many things in MPLS and he just explained them so easily that noone can forget MPLS in their life…

Again it was a long day and we finished around 1.00 AM again….But he advised us that we should come at 9.30 AM on day 4 so that we can get some extra 20 minutes of sleep…..

DAY 2 Narbik’s Bootcamp

Posted: 14th November 2011 by admin in Uncategorized

Day 2 was really great. We had some Frame Relay topics to cover as yesterday everyone was tired after a long day. Day started with Frame Relay . Then we spoke to Eman. After the lunch we started with OSPF.

Man that opened my eyes as my hands on was a bit rusty as i havent done hands on for nearly a year. I only did some hands on here and there so remembring the commands was becoming a mission but those labs were excellent …..

After we finished OSPF it was around 10.00 PM and then he started EIGRP …. Yeah that late in night he started the last topic of the night…I was getting very tired as i dint get enough sleep the night before… We finished around 1.00 PM and then went downstairs in the lobby when we had to order Pizzas as everything else was closed…..

So that was DAY -2 …….

DAY 2 Narbik’s Bootcamp— So far

Posted: 8th November 2011 by admin in Uncategorized
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Its my birthday today and i am at DAY 2 of Narbik’s Bootcamp… Got 10 minutes break after finishing Frame Relay…That was great …Now we are talking to EMAN CONDE from CCIEFLYER.COM and its good to hear from the guy who has lot of respect within the CCIE community…

Narbik’s Bootcamp Day 1

Posted: 8th November 2011 by admin in Uncategorized
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Right !!! finally its Bootcamp day but guess what i missed half a day of the bootcamp. Had to take the wife to the doctor and she has a SLIP DISC…..Anyways keeping that aside i reached the bootcamp around Mid-day and everyone else was busy doing their CCIERS assessment lab… Thank GOD i was not doing that as i would have failed miserably …. Reason being .. havent done any hands on for last 8 months…..Narbik told me to do the troubleshooting labs… Man the labs got my blood flowing !!!! Finished the day around 1.00 in the morning with some dinner !!!! Looking forward for the Day 2 now …..Day 2 is all about Frame Relay, OSPF and GOD knows what might come in Narbik’s mind…….So watch this space…

Cisco ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall

Posted: 28th October 2011 by admin in Uncategorized

On 18th October Cisco Annouced a new product Cisco 1000V ASA Cloud Firewall. With the Launch of ASA Cloud Firewall Cisco bring in all the features of physical ASA appliance to Virtual environment.

So however your application is deployed you will get greater consistency across the physical, virtual and cloud domain. In your Multi-Tenant environment you can deploy your ASA 1000v to secure your tenants as it will give you all old school security services liek VPN, DHCP and so on. So when you want to isolate your Virtual Machine traffic from other VM’s CISCO ASA1000V is your answer now.

Cisco expect it to start shipping in the first half of 2012.

 

More on the product can be found on the Cisco Data Center blog or Cisco’s website.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps6032/ps6094/ps12233/data_sheet_c78-687960.html

Evolutionary Fabric. Revolutionary Scale.
(Live Webcast October 25, 2011 at 9:00 am Pacific Time / 12:00 pm Eastern Time)

Today, the data center is at the heart of IT and business innovation. Join us on October 25th, 2011 for the online event: “Evolutionary Fabric. Revolutionary Scale”. Learn how Cisco’s fabric-based approach delivers architectural flexibility across physical, virtual and cloud environments for any application.

Our top technology executives, Cisco customers and industry experts will also explain how Cisco is enhancing its virtual security framework, increasing visibility and control of virtual workloads, and reducing deployment time.

Join to learn how Cisco’s Unified Fabric architecture can help your organization gain operational efficiency, agility, business innovation and differentiation.

Agenda

Topics to be covered include:
Panel 1: Technology Overview
Business imperatives and the explosion of data, types of devices and user expectations bring new demands to each Data Center deployment. Cisco shares how to meet the diverse requirements of massively scalable data centers, Big Data/Hadoop environments, Cloud-based architectures or bare-metal deployments – with one evolutionary network: Unified Fabric. Cisco also will lay out how network innovations include enhancements to network security capability for virtual applications.
Panel 2: Customer Presentations
Why are some of the largest and most successful customers using Cisco scalable data center applications? How do they measure success, and how has Cisco helped them achieve these milestones?
Panel 3: Analyst Roundtable
Analysts will lend their perspective and comment on our vision and customer best practices.
Approximate duration: 90 minutes

For more info visit

http://tools.cisco.com/gems/cust/customerSite.do?METHOD=E&LANGUAGE_ID=E&SEMINAR_CODE=S15193&PRIORITY_CODE=210727_36

Network Engineer/Architects Required

Posted: 18th October 2011 by admin in Uncategorized
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Description : Network Engineers, x 3, Derby

Detailed description: Description

* Participates as a member of an Information Technology (IT) technical team or teams.
* May lead a small team of support engineers and also handle some projects that might need to be built and deployed.
* Independently implements end user or enterprise infrastructure / application or services of moderate complexity as prepared by more senior technologist in support of more complex solutions.
* Applies technical knowledge to operate and administer infrastructure or software platforms and user groups of moderate to high complexity.
* Independently resolves some highly complex technical issues within a given technical area.
* Partners with members of a given team or other IT teams as appropriate.
* May act as an Incident Life Cycle coordinator or service delivery lead to provide resolution for complex issues.
* Identifies potential escalations and proactively alerts management, leads escalation through L4.
* Proactively searches for issues and provides solutions to prevent problems from occurring in area of responsibility including patch management.
* Independently reviews, implements and verifies highly complex and high risk changes and solutions.
* Mentors other team members.
* Ensures configuration management database entries are complete and accurate.
* Provides time / resource estimates for assigned tasks.

Qualifications

* Degree or Diploma in Management Information Systems / Computer Science or equivalent experience and a minimum of 5 to 10 years related experience as a Network engineer with CCNA certification.
* CCNP/CCIE would be desirable.
* Min 5 years experience in the following:
o Cisco Switches, HP Switches
o Operations, ITIL
* Must be prepared to be on standby to provide operation support when necessary.

This is a full time for a period of 3 months

***************************************

Description : Network Architect, x 4
Required Skills : Networking Architects
Delivery Organization: Tech Consulting & Software Services

Detailed description:-

* Responsible for creating, verifying and implementing the detailed technical design solution to the problem as identified by the Project/Technical Manager. Responsible for providing a detailed technical design for enterprise solutions
* Regularly leads in the technical assessment and delivery of specific technical solutions to the customer. Provides a team structure conducive to high performance, and manages the team lifecycle stages.
* Coordinates implementation of new installations, designs, and migrations for network solutions.
* Engages in technical problem solving across multiple technologies; often needs to develop new methods to apply to the situation.
* Owns and manages knowledge sharing within a community (e.g. team or project). Ensures team members support knowledge sharing and re-use requirements of project. Contributes significant knowledge to job family community.

Qualifications

Education and Experience Required:

8+ years of professional experience and a Bachelor of Arts/Science or equivalent degree in computer science or related area of study; without a degree, three additional years of relevant professional experience (11+ years in total).

Knowledge and Skills Required:

* Has sufficient depth and breadth of technical knowledge to design and scope multiple deliverables across a number of network technologies.
* Has led team in the delivery of multiple deliverables across multiple technologies.
* Ability to re-use existing experience to develop new solutions to take to market.
* Holds a vendor or industry certification in at least one discipline area.
* Able to communicate with internal and external senior management confidently and demonstrate the professionalism of the job family.
* Ability to work in a multi technology environment with the ability to diagnose complex technical problems to their root cause. In addition to troubleshooting skills and consulting skills, has ability to summaries prognosis and impact at practice lead level. Ability to adapt a consulting style appropriate to the situation and can identify up-sell opportunities.
* Has demonstrated ability to lead others in the gathering of requirements, designs, plans and estimates.
* Demonstrates broad knowledge in other technical areas in order to properly manage complex integration efforts.
* Able to independently complete solution implementation or application design deliverables.

This is a full time role for a period of 3 months

 

*********************  If you are interested please email me using the comment facility on the box…….

Just realized one thing about M-series Modules for Nexus 7K and that is that you Cannot create a SVI if you dont have a M-series Module….. So that means i need to have atleast 2 of these M-Series Modules….. Reason — if you lose one of these M-Series Module then you lose your SVI…..

Now coming to Oversubsciption — Your requirement is for 10GE Connectivity on a Nexus 7K so that leaves you with two options

1) Buy N7K-M108X2-12L —- Cisco Nexus 7000 Series 8-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module with XL Option

OR

2) N7K-M132XP-12 — Cisco Nexus 7000 Series 32-Port 10Gb Ethernet Module with 80Gbps Fabric

Can you see the problem !!!!!!!! Both of them provide line-rate 80Gb throughput which means that there is 4:1 oversubsription……Why should i pay list price $70000 when it is oversubsibed and to make it worse i will have to buy another M-Series card if i have SVI…..

It is okay for those who dont really care too much about oversubscription ratios but for me it does matter a lot which means i am not left with much option but to use 8 port to avoid oversubscription