Have you tried rebooting?

Brocade Principal Switch

// March 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

There has been quite a few confusion as to what Brocade Principal Switches do. So here it is, the principal switches have only 2 functions in the Brocade SAN Switches.

1. Provide time sync for all other switches in the fabric
2. Ensure that all Domain ID’s in the fabric are unique

Does it matter that the principal switch is a director class switch? Yes and no. It is obviously best that it is, but if it isn’t, no harm will be done to the environment. If the principal switch is down, re-election happens and a new principal is selected. Principals are selected based on

1. Lowest WWN
2. First switch on the fabric

To find out which switch is the principal, run the “fabricshow” command and look for the “>”. That will be your principal while the rest are “subordinates”.

Free Professional Services in the IT Industry

// March 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Technical Know-It-All

For those who are unfamiliar with the term professional services in IT, in layman terms, it is services that vendors provide to help you install or implement upon product purchase. It could also be services that you pay to get a systems integrator or OEM vendor to come fix or perform. (Eg; performance tuning, data migration and etc.)

I have had the privilege to work in various countries in the APAC region and it is very interesting to experience how Professional Services or PS is perceived in different countries.

Let start with a little background. In order for a consultant / engineer to be truly skilled to perform an implementation or consultation, he or she needs to be trained and have achieved a certain level of experience. So how does he/she get there? They get sent to courses, thrown in the field with more experienced colleagues and learn. After which, it doesn’t end there. They will then keep refreshing themselves with new updates, which simply means on-going net new trainings. So what I am really trying to get at is this, PS consultants are highly trained technical staff and it “COSTS” a lot to get them to where they are.

So, on to my next point. It is interesting that some countries in Asia never appreciates this and almost always take PS as a given right to them. Some of the more frequent comments are …

I bought a TV that costs $2000 and I got free installation service from the vendor. Why can’t I get some free service when I buy $200,000 worth of enterprise equipment from you?

I am a big customer, if you don’t provide me free service, I can always take my business to another vendor.

In my honest opinion, it is unfair to compare a guy who installs your TV to a consultant that deals with your Enterprise IT Systems. Agreed? What is interesting though is that countries like Australia and Japan are usually more open to the discussion of Paid Professional Services. I have had the opportunity to work in Australia for a few years, so I can rightfully say this. The customers that usually pay for services in Australia are usually not those that do not have highly skilled staff at their disposal (infact, most of them have more skilled staff than most customers in Asia that requests services for free).

Some customers feel that the vendors should perform free service because of the high margins that have slapped onto the products that they sell. I am not going to deny it, but it is the same everywhere else. Take for example, when you buy a car. The cost you paid for the car is highly inflated anyway and when you try to get it fixed (aside from cases where it breaks during the warranty period), you still pay the mechanics to get it fixed right?

Some may complain that the cost of PS is not justifiable, which I sometimes do agree. So let me give you a hint. The prices are always set high because it is always a given that the customer will come back to negotiate this. “Yes, this is a given right as the customer”. So please negotiate. You can squeeze in a couple of freebies here and there, but remember, nothing is free.

The Buzz About FCoE and CEE

// February 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

The new buzzword these days in the Storage / Networking space is FCoE (fiber channel over ethernet) and CEE (converged enhanced ethernet). For those who are unfamiliar with the whole concept, in layman terms, it is a convergence of the traditional TCP/IP networks and traditional SAN networks into a single giant network.

While it is ideal from a C-Level perspective to streamline processes, reduce costs, go green and try doing more with less, at the technical level, it is never as easy as the vendors make it seem. Many industry experts have claimed that this new protocol will eventually replace the ever resilient FC Protocol and Ethernet. The jist of it is that, everything that has to do with “networking” will run on this newly improved protocol.

While this “could” be true, here are some points to ponder upon before taking the leap of faith to run your entire production systems on CEE and FCoE.

1. TCP/IP has never been known to be the most secure protocol (before I get flamed by the networking experts, it can potentially be secured with the right amount of tweaking). Compared to FC, while some may disagree, it is more secure in some ways (for starters, given that not every laptop will have an FC port to begin with, but having said that, more often than not SAN administrators take this for granted). By merging the 2 protocols together, suddenly we have a scenario where security might now be a concern to the traditional SAN guys.

2. Usually in large environments there is usually a Storage Team and Network Team. With the convergence, a discussion of job roles would probably emerge, and potentially job cuts (fingers crossed).

3. Standards. Currently, many of the protocols/standard are still very much in the review stage with IETF, T11 and the lot. Ethernet is stable today after many years of revision while CEE will take some time before reaching that level of maturity.

4. Physical infrastructures such as cabling are probably not ready today for a complete deployment. Many are still running cabling works that are barely rated for 1Gbit, let alone the 10-40Gbit as promised by CEE/FCoE. Also, existing Ethernet switches and FC switches are not meant to run this new protocol. Slowly and surely, vendors are releasing firmware updates to enable them to support the protocol in the legacy units, but having said that, the additional overheads of the protocol was never meant to run on existing hardware, so we might never know if it will be able to handle it. Newly released FCoE/CEE ready devices are slowly coming to market and today cost quite a fair bit.

Obviously, my little list above is not all conclusive, but my 2 cents of what I would probably be concerned about when thinking of rolling it out.

So in summary, I am not saying that CEE/FCoE is doomed for failure but maybe, just maybe, it is still too early for it to be totally viable in a full fledge production environment. I do believe that CEE/FCoE will take off and be a prominent protocol some day. Having said that I don’t think it will oust or replace traditional FC and Ethernet anytime soon as some major vendors are suggesting. It takes more than lowering cost and bandwidth to achieve total protocol dominance.

Just ask iSCSI and Infiniband.

Blackberry Bold 9700 vs HTC Magic

// January 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

I recently swapped my HTC Magic for the Blackberry Bold 9700. Here’s my take on both phones.

Form Factor
This is truly a matter of preference. In terms of size, the Magic beats the 9700 hands down. Slim and sleek, but the piano black finish makes scratches very visible and a fingerprint magnet. The 9700 on the other hand, has the traditional QWERTY and a leather back. Fingerprints are only visible on the screen. There are pros and cons to both the phones, and I like various aspects of both the phones.
Result : TIE

Scroll
The Magic spots the traditional Blackberry Pearl scroll ball while the 9700 runs with a touchpad equivalent. I must say that as much as I like the scroll ball, I was truly surprised by the touchpad. It is very very sensitive and much better than I expected it to be. The scroll ball implementation on the Magic is “appalling” at best. It is sluggish and there is no way you can tweak it. Compared with previous Blackberry scroll balls of the past, it is way behind.
Result : 9700

OS
The Blackberry OS has not changed ages. The only thing that has changed is the icons and resolution of the screen. It also comes with cumbersome menus (I don’t mind them, but blackberry newbies will find them a hassle). Having said that, the Blackberry OS is stable as a rock given its maturity. On the other hand, Magic runs the Google smartphone OS, “Android”. I was extremely excited with Android, that I swapped my iPhone for the Android. I must say, I am very disappointed. I had high expectations for Android given the strong community support but it is sluggish, buggy and just can’t stand up to iPhone’s robust and fluid OS. I want to believe it that Android is better but unfortunately, for me, I need a phone that works, not something I need to troubleshoot all the time.
Result : 9700

Battery Life
Another major issue I have had with the Magic was its ridiculously bad battery life. I will have it fully charged at 9am and under medium usage of email, calls and occasional SMS’s, you will find it at 10% by 4pm. This is unacceptable as a business phone. When compared with the 9700 under similar usage, I got 2.5 days of use out of it. That’s how frustrating it was with the Magic. Without a doubt, the 9700 is a clear winner.
Result : 9700

Text Input
This is a matter of preference. Comparing QWERTY and touch keyboards is probably not a fair comparison. So lets compare the Magic and iPhone. I have fairly fat fingers, and touch screens like the Magic & iPhone can be a pain. However, having said that, the iPhone has a larger screen thus the keys are much larger. Which makes it easier to hit the right keys. As for the Magic, my fingers were hitting every single key that I didn’t want it too. I must say that the iPhone has a more usable touch keyboard (for me at least). As for the 9700 QWERTY, it doesn’t feel as good as the Motorola Q9, but I would say that the keyboard is acceptable and comparable with other QWERTY keyboards in the market.
Result : TIE

Applications
This is where the Magic tends to beat many other smartphones. The developer community is strong so there are many apps in the market. As for Blackberry, slowly we are seeing more and more apps but generally apps for Blackberry don’t come free. As much as I think that the Magic has many apps, the weak hardware platform is a major setback.
Result : TIE

PC Sync
Both the phones have no issues syncing with Windows, so I will not comment much on that. How about Mac OSX? There is no sync software at all for the Magic for OSX. Blackberry on the other hand, released a very basic Blackberry Desktop Manager for the Mac after many years of requests from loyal users. However, the features are no where near the Windows variant, but its better than nothing I suppose. I would say the 9700 beats the Magic marginally here.
Result : 9700

Bottom Line
Both phones has it strengths, but if you are a power user like myself (who values stability and battery life over design) then I must say hands down that the Blackberry 9700 still stands out. The Android phones have yet to match the likes of the iPhone and Blackberry.

Graphical Network Simulator 3, GNS3 Review

// January 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

A few weeks back, I was tasked to skill up on IP at work. It seems like ages since I completed my Cisco Training Academy, so I decided the easiest way to get back into it is through Cisco simulators out there. In all honesty, I would much prefer having the physical boxes to play with but I have sold them all when I moved to Singapore 2 years back.

The popular simulators out there would be Boson and RouterSim, which (I honestly think) is fairly buggy at best. The problem with simulators like Boson & RS are manly due to the fact that it is usually re-engineered code made to look and feel like Cisco’s IOS. Not all commands are available (though visible on the “?”, doesn’t mean it’s usable), abbreviated commands (sh run, cop run st, etc.) doesn’t always work, output might or might not be what is expected and the list goes on. It’s not as bad as it sounds, because people do get away passing CCNA’s and CCNP’s from it. (Maybe it’s just me).

Anyway, I came across GNS3 as an open source alternative to the other “paid” sims out there. From experience, open source goodies are generally difficult to setup at best. But I was truly surprised with the setup for GNS on Windows. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the Mac OSX though. Still struggling to get it to work on my Mac.

GNS is basically a GUI version of Dynamips if you are truly interested in what’s happening in the backend. (I’m not, so no elaborating here )

Like all things FREE, there is always a catch! The catch with GNS is that it requires a Cisco IOS binary file in order to work and it only supports router codes (no switches). If you really really need a switch, you can potentially configure a 36xx and put in an Ethernet card slot to make it into a switch. I remember seeing a tutorial on this on the GNS Documentation site. Officially, you have to be a Cisco Partner or Customer to be able to download these images, but surely I’m sure you can find some floating around on the web.

So how does it work?

What it actually does is emulate a Cisco Router with the original IOS on your workstation. It’s pretty much VmWare for Cisco Routers if you like. Once you sort out the IOS installation and tell it where Dynamips (which is installed as part of the GNS3 package) is located, you are ready to go. Building the virtual network if as simple as drawing a Visio diagram. You can also add in additional WIC’s or line cards, and RAM (just like VmWare can for Servers). And the best part… no limitation on CLI and output. What you see if what you get on the real thing! Same IOS code like the real deal, only difference its that you don’t have the equipment physically. If y0u can get hold of Cisco 36xx series router binaries, you can potentially setup a virtual lab to do your CCIE (a little far fetch, but not totally impossible). Based on the options available, the latest version is capable of taking Cisco PIX & ASA binaries, and JunOS. I have yet to try it because I do not have access to any of those code. Maybe you guys can let me know when you try it out.

So if you are an aspiring CCNA or CCNP or even CCIE on a budget, give this a go.

www.gns3.net