Have you tried rebooting?

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.

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

Are you trying to port forward “http” on Starhub?

// December 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Singapore, Technical Know-It-All

Starhub or Singtel? Hmmm....

Just incase you are wondering why you can’t setup your router to forward port 80 (http), this is because Starhub has blocked users from setting up their own web servers using MaxOnline Home Broadband! What a rip off!

Ethernet world is a jungle to a SAN guy…

// December 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

The last couple of days, I spent many long hours sitting in a tiny room with extremely loud carrier grade switches, blowing hot air in my face, learning to configure and set up MPLS, VPLS, VLL, PB, PBB, MRP and the list goes on.

It’s been many years since, that I have turned up onsite only to have technical jargon’s thrown at me that I have no clue (at all) what its all about. Having said that, I must say it has been quite an experience to finally have a feel what goes on behind your home internet connection.

Still getting to grips with how all these technologies fit in to the whole picture though. I managed to find a good whitepaper by Nortel that explains the evolution of Provider Bridges (PB) and Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) which really helped cleared up some questions I had.

It will be great if anyone reading can share with me some whitepapers on VPLS and VLL.