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This blog will include tips and tricks to solving common issues in your environment along with information on new products that you might not have heard of, but should know. As for the name of the newsletter, Loose Spindle, those of you who know me, know that I can go off on tangents, and seem to live outside the proverbial box. Also I have a background that includes being an engineer working with storage, thus the name. Please forward this to anyone you think would be interested by using the link below, and also please contact me Morgan.Hamilton@inxi.com, I want to be your "easy button" when you have questions..







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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Cisco Nexus 1000v


Anyone who knows me well and has worked with me in the past knows that I am a self-proclaimed networking  anti-guru.  Like a lot of technologies I have encountered in my career, I purposely avoided Cisco Networking out of fear of what I would have to learn to get to really know the in's and out's.  I normally rationalize this fear in a multitude of ways.  The most common is to say that there is someone else to support me with this or that, and that it really doesn't have anything to do with my role.  Nine out of ten times this is not the case and it bites me in the britches.  Case in point is the integration of the Cisco Nexus 1000v into the VMware VSphere stack.  I liked the way VMware always did their networking, it was as easy as setting up a Linksys Router, then they had to spoil it for me.  Luckily my multi-talented co-worker, Daniel Paluszek, was able to take the ball and run with it.  We worked with our customers to implement the solution before it became mainstream. Please read the success story about implementing the solution at Leon County, Florida MIS.  Case Study

 

The biggest benefit we see in this technology is the ability for the networking teams to have control and visibility in the virtual datacenter again.  With the simple networking setup referenced above, all network traffic was combined and it was nearly impossible to see what individual virtual machines were doing over the wires.  With the Nexus 1000v we now have individual virtual network ports that can be managed and monitored as if physical.  A secondary benefit is that we are seeing more collaboration between the networking teams and the server teams.  That is not to say that the two groups don't always get along, although in one of my former jobs there was a DMZ between the two groups to prevent physical altercations.
                                                                                            
Quote and Tip from Daniel:


"Cisco Nexus 1000v brings the value-add to any VMware virtualized environment while providing optimal performance. Using the Nexus, network teams can use technologies such as EtherChannel or LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) to provide guaranteed performance to virtual machines. Using DynTek's methodology, our team can assist any environment from design concepts to full implementation and cutover of all guest virtual machines. Our technique allows us to cut over guest virtual machines to the Nexus 1000v environment with missing less than one ping."
 
"Setting up system uplink traffic is sometimes tricky. When establishing the uplink port profile, verify that only Control and Packet traffic are allowed through this port profile. If other port profiles allow Control and Packet traffic, this can potentially cause port flapping issues since these heartbeat networks have multiple routes." 
 

 

To talk with us about getting started and what technologies are out there. Email me at Morgan.Hamilton@DynTek.com or call me to discuss 850.219.7905.  Also for technical questions about the Cisco Nexus 1000v please email Daniel.Paluszek@dyntek.com.

 

 

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