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Musings on computer stuff, and things... and other stuff.

Cisco

August 22, 2018 Cisco

Software Defined, Cisco, and DevNet

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

It has been said that soft­ware is eat­ing the world. In the world of net­work­ing, how­ev­er, the food has been slow to digest. Net­work engi­neers can be a stodgy bunch, and change is not only slow to come but fast to be blud­geoned angri­ly. If this year’s Cis­co Live con­fer­ence is any indi­ca­tion, how­ev­er, soft­ware, it seems, has start­ed blud­geon­ing back.

Hard­ware has remained king for decades, with the soft­ware oper­at­ing sys­tems tak­ing sec­ond posi­tion in the dance of fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty. Pur­chasers of net­work gear would base their deci­sions almost exclu­sive­ly on hard­ware capa­bil­i­ties while accept­ing what­ev­er soft­ware came on the box as just the way things were. Buy speeds and feeds, and you hoped that the soft­ware was up to snuff.

Net­work engi­neers considered–many still consider–that the soft­ware was dif­fi­cult to mas­ter as a badge of hon­or; if you want­ed to call your­self a net­work engi­neer it was not enough to under­stand pro­to­cols and archi­tec­tures, you had to mas­ter painful oper­at­ing sys­tems, arcane syn­tax, and often con­tra­dic­to­ry con­fig­u­ra­tions as well. Indus­tries were born to train and cer­ti­fy engi­neers on net­work oper­at­ing sys­tems, and those engi­neers would then go on with bias­es toward the gear with which they had famil­iar­i­ty. And the cycle of life rolled onward.

With the advent of the hack­neyed soft­ware defined move­ment a few years ago, this all began to slow­ly change. The focus start­ed shift­ing towards the soft­ware as the dri­ver of fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty, with the hard­ware increas­ing­ly seen as ful­fill­ing a sup­port­ing role in push­ing data around our insu­lar con­nect­ed worlds. The hard­ware was begin­ning to be seen as good enough so as to not require a par­tic­u­lar badge or pedi­gree. The pur­vey­ors of pedi­greed hard­ware were look­ing at an uncer­tain future.

The soft­ware defined move­ment came from a place of opti­mism, of a legit­i­mate desire to make things bet­ter and to put the world of net­work­ing back on the right tracks that were seen as long ago aban­doned. The way had been lost, and soft­ware defined was going to lead the indus­try out of the dark. Large and estab­lished com­pa­nies, how­ev­er, did not get that way by acci­dent and, though ini­tial­ly slow to react, piv­ot­ed and began to embrace and extend, some would say co-opt, the fledg­ling move­ment. Soon, every­one was lead­ing with soft­ware.

Nowhere was this piv­ot so jar­ring as with Cis­co, a stal­wart, dom­i­nant, mar­ket-lead­ing behe­moth of the net­work­ing equip­ment world. And as with oth­er indus­try shifts before (VoIP, com­put­ing hard­ware), Cis­co quick­ly (or, as quick­ly as they could giv­en their size) adapt­ed them­selves to the new world order. They began rolling out appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces, a kind of inside-base­ball way of mak­ing hard­ware do what you want while bypass­ing the tra­di­tion­al, com­pa­ny-writ­ten, soft­ware oper­at­ing sys­tem. They start­ed open­ing up more and more of their hard­ware, and they began con­tribut­ing to var­i­ous open-source soft­ware projects osten­si­bly designed to mar­gin­al­ize their very same hard­ware.

It is in this cli­mate that Cis­co estab­lished their devel­op­er net­work, DevNet, as a place for code-exchange among soft­ware devel­op­ers. They pub­lished more and more APIs, more doc­u­men­ta­tion, and began to dip a prover­bial toe in the waters of more for­mal­ized train­ing, incul­cat­ing engi­neers into the soft­ware defined men­tal­i­ty as seen through Cis­co’s eyes. They start­ed a spe­cial­ized DevNet con­fer­ence called DevNet Cre­ate, and they began bring­ing DevNet wher­ev­er they went. And it grew, and it grew, and it kept grow­ing.

Accord­ing to Cis­co DevNet now has over 500,000 reg­is­tered devel­op­ers, over 38,000 con­tribut­ing com­pa­nies, 72,500 learn­ing labs, and over 60,000 reg­u­lar active users. There are reserv­able sand­box­es for test­ing and devel­op­ment, almost all Cis­co hard­ware as well as Kuber­netes clus­ters, and mul­ti­ple code repos­i­to­ries with code curat­ed exchanges open to any devel­op­ers to use. This entire ecosys­tem is sep­a­rate from Cis­co’s exist­ing D‑Cloud demo envi­ron­ment, and does­n’t depend on any par­tic­u­lar rela­tion­ship with Cis­co or third-par­ty resellers. Those num­bers are impres­sive by any­one’s stan­dards, espe­cial­ly for some­thing which has only exist­ed for a few short years. It tru­ly is an exam­ple of build it and they will come.

This year at the annu­al Cis­co Live con­fer­ence, held in love­ly sum­mer­time Orlan­do, the DevNet por­tion of the show was the most impres­sive piece of the con­fer­ence. And not just the raw num­bers, which were impres­sive on their own, but in the acreage the DevNet zone con­sumed on the World of Solu­tions show floor as well as the excite­ment and buzz sur­round­ing the thing. The most dif­fi­cult class­es and ses­sions to get into were all with­in the DevNet sphere, and it would­n’t sur­prise me if next year’s con­fer­ence saw the DevNet ecosys­tem called out with a sep­a­rate fee struc­ture from the rest of the con­fer­ence.

Cis­co’s evo­lu­tion is just one example–perhaps the biggest–of the changes occur­ring in the net­work­ing indus­try. New busi­ness­es com­ing out of the Val­ley and oth­er places with new notions of what net­work­ing can and should be is one thing, watch­ing the indus­try giants piv­ot in that same direc­tion brings a lev­el of val­i­da­tion that we would be remiss to over­look or dis­count. Change is not just com­ing, it’s already here, and if you’re look­ing at your career think­ing it’s only a fad, you are run­ning out of time to stay ahead of, or even keep up with, the mon­u­men­tal changes still to come.

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May 6, 2018 Cisco

Non-Generic Tips for Cisco Live

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

Edi­tor’s Note: This was writ­ten by my love­ly wife, Jen­nifer Bryson, after a frus­trat­ing few days of read­ing the same hack­neyed advice for con­ven­tion goers.

I have been read­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent tips peo­ple are post­ing for Cis­co Live, and while some of them are great, a lot of them are incred­i­bly gener­ic. Bring com­fort­able shoes? Any­one who has ever been to any sort of con­ven­tion should know that. Bring sun­screen? Um, I would hope most peo­ple know they should bring sun­screen to Flori­da. Bring a portable charg­er? I don’t know a sin­gle self-respect­ing geek who goes any­where with­out one. I decid­ed to add some of my own tips. Keep in mind, I am not one of the geeks, or at least, I am not a com­put­er geek, so when it comes to tips and advice on ses­sions you should read some of the oth­ers. This is my 9th year attend­ing with my hus­band, and so far we have sur­vived each year, so here are my new­bie sur­vival tips:

  1. Say hi. There are a ton of real­ly nice peo­ple, many of whom are CLUS pros, so find a group of peo­ple and get to know them.
  2. While say­ing hi and get­ting to know peo­ple, find out if the peo­ple you are say­ing hi to are on a Twit­ter list or chat group that you can be added to. This is how you will find out where all the fun, infor­mal gath­er­ings are tak­ing place and where your peo­ple are at any giv­en time. @NetworkingNerd has a great Twit­ter list.
  3. Pri­or­i­tize. There is no way you can get to every ses­sion, par­ty, social gath­er­ing, etc. that you want to go to unless you invent a tele­por­ta­tion device and per­fect time trav­el. Sign up or RSVP to every­thing, but choose your must-do events and be will­ing to skip some of the less impor­tant ones. This gives you time to sleep, eat, and nurse your inevitable hang­over.
  4. Hydrate. And I don’t mean with the ample sup­plies of sug­ary, caf­feinat­ed and/or alco­holic bev­er­ages around. Bring a water bot­tle and use it. There are big water cool­ers spread around, but the cups are itsy bit­sy, and all you will find in bot­tles and cans are not good for you (yes, I know you all live on caf­feine and sug­ar, but I am a nurse so I have to throw that in there.)
  5. That leads to food…there are not a whole lot of healthy options offered at the dif­fer­ent events. Look into the restau­rants around the con­ven­tion cen­ter and your hotel if you are inter­est­ed in eat­ing things like veg­eta­bles, and con­sid­er bring­ing easy to car­ry snacks like nuts or pro­tein bars around with you.
  6. Find some down time. This can be hard, because there are always 500 things going on, but you don’t want to col­lapse from exhaus­tion. Even just pulling up a chair or bean bag in the Social Media hub and putting on your head­phones and zon­ing out for a half hour can real­ly help you recharge for lat­er activ­i­ties. Ide­al­ly, try to get away for a bit all togeth­er. Spend an hour by your hotel pool or leave the con­ven­tion cen­ter for lunch.
  7. Yes, CLUS is super casu­al, and most peo­ple will be wear­ing the stan­dard uni­form of car­go shorts or jeans with a t‑shirt, but con­sid­er bring­ing at least one semi-nicer out­fit for some of the par­ties. This is, after all, tech­ni­cal­ly a pro­fes­sion­al con­fer­ence, so it is prob­a­bly best not to com­plete­ly embrace the col­lege cam­pus slack­er look at all times.
  8. Tim­ing. Every­thing from check­ing in, to get­ting from your hotel room to the con­ven­tion cen­ter, to get­ting from one end of the con­ven­tion cen­ter to the oth­er, to get­ting on one of the shut­tle busses to the CAE is going to take longer than you might antic­i­pate. The Orlan­do con­ven­tion cen­ter is gigan­tic, and there are a ton of atten­dees, so plan to leave ear­ly for things, don’t expect you are going to be able to pull off last minute depar­tures, and be pre­pared to wait.
  9. Add on some time for non-CLUS fun. If you have not already done so, try to find some­thing fun to do the day before or after the main show if your trav­el plans per­mit. Orlan­do is theme park cen­tral, and there are a lot of fun non-theme parky things to do too.
  10. Keep in touch with those peo­ple you said hi to after CLUS. This will be my 9th year attend­ing CLUS with my hus­band, and we have made some life-long friends from all across the coun­try over the years. Fol­low the peo­ple you get to know on Twit­ter or Face­book. Plan­ning events for the next CLUS tends to start ear­ly, so it is a great way to get a head start on next year’s events.

Have fun! Hope to meet you there!

 

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February 10, 2016 Cisco

Cisco Announces VIRL on Cloud

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

Cis­co just announced today that their VIRL prod­uct, for­mer­ly only avail­able in a per­son­al edi­tion, and an enter­prise edi­tion, will be avail­able in a cloud host­ed ver­sion soon. This new ver­sion will remove a major bar­ri­er to adop­tion, which is the need for horse­pow­er. Now you’ll be able to spin up work­loads sep­a­rate from your own hard­ware, but still access them as if they were local. Any­one with a valid VIRL license will be able to access this ser­vice.

Details of the new release will be announced for­mal­ly on the VIRL web­site and social media plat­forms on 2/16. There will also be a webi­nar on 2/23 to share more about the col­lab­o­ra­tor for this effort, and to walk folks through the set­up.

I real­ly wish I could say more, but suf­fice it to say that this new ver­sion has the poten­tial to be a game chang­er in the world of net­work sim­u­la­tions, train­ing, proof of con­cept devel­op­ment, and in myr­i­ad oth­er use cas­es. Stay tuned.

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February 6, 2015 Cisco

Cisco Live US 2015 Customer Appreciation Event Band

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes

Petco-Park-Photo1000x1000 (3)

I just want­ed to post a quick announce­ment around the band for Cis­co Live this year. This is usu­al­ly a hot­ly con­test­ed issue in the com­mu­ni­ty, with Cis­co often let­ting atten­dees vote, and most of us look for­ward to the deci­sion each year. Well, most of us look for­ward to know­ing the deci­sion. Some­times the bands are great, some­times they’re only okay, and some­times they’re just a bit of a miss.

That said, the Cus­tomer Appre­ci­a­tion Event itself–where the band in ques­tion plays–is always a hot tick­et, and one of the high­lights of the con­ven­tion. This year we’ll be return­ing to San Diego and Pet­co Park, which was a great time a few years back when we were there. It’s a great location–close to the Gaslamp district–and with a lot of close­ly sit­u­at­ed hotels.

The impor­tance of the close hotels becomes a key fac­tor, as the after-hours events almost always include a healthy dose of free liba­tions. It’s sur­pris­ing how many oth­er­wise reserved engi­neers lose their col­lec­tive minds in the pres­ence of an open bar. Maybe this year we can avoid a repeat of the infa­mous hotel room sty­ro­foam balls fias­co. If you were there you know, oth­er­wise ply some of us with drinks and you might get the scoop.

Any­how, with­out fur­ther adieu, I’m excit­ed to say that this year’s band is none oth­er than Aero­smith! Not a trib­ute band, or look-a-likes, but the full blown real deal. I have to believe that this is going to push more than a few peo­ple who were waf­fling on attend­ing just over the edge enough to pull the prover­bial trig­ger on a tick­et. Last year we had Imag­ine Drag­ons and Lenny Kravitz, so my daugh­ter was jeal­ous. This year it’s my step­son who is put out. In fact, he made me promise that when he’s old­er I’ll take him to Cis­co Live.

Any­how, that’s all I have for now and as always I’ll see you all there, roam­ing the hall­ways and gen­er­al­ly being social. For the many of you I know and look for­ward to see­ing every year, I raise a glass in advance. For the rest of you I don’t know yet, let’s rem­e­dy that with a glass or a con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing the event.

 

Aerosmith

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July 5, 2013 Cisco

Cisco Live — A Spouse’s Viewpoint

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

Teren and I just returned from Cis­co Live in Orlan­do.  As always, we had an amaz­ing time see­ing some of the friends we have made over the past few years and meet­ing some new friends too.  I noticed that this year there seemed to be more spouses/significant oth­ers attend­ing, which is awe­some, and that many of them seemed to feel as out of place as I felt my first year attend­ing Cis­co Live.  I remem­ber how awk­ward I felt not know­ing any­one, and more impor­tant­ly, not under­stand­ing a damn thing any­one was talk­ing about.

 

Each year it seems like more and more women attend, but that first year I felt like Alice must have felt after step­ping through the look­ing glass, sur­round­ed as I was by male geeks speak­ing their weird geek lan­guage that seems to con­sist of a bunch of acronyms and things with names that sound like they belong in a Dr. Seuss book (FEC­Ns, BEC­Ns and penul­ti­mate hop pop­ping come to mind). Now that I have attend­ed 3 out of the past 4 years (Cis­co real­ly should come up with some spe­cial Net Vet perks for spous­es too) I feel that I should share some the things I have learned to help me nav­i­gate through the Land of Geeks in order to help any new­bie spous­es plan­ning to attend next year. These real­ly are not in any par­tic­u­lar order, but here are my top tips for hav­ing fun at Cis­co Live.

 

  1. Upon arriv­ing find anoth­er spouse to befriend.  This will be your non-geek bud­dy for the dura­tion of the show.  When you are hang­ing out in the social media lounge or at a bar you will have some­one to talk to, and some­one who will under­stand your eye rolls after the 85th lame NSA-is-spy­ing-on-us joke of the evening.
  2. If you don’t already have a thick skin, devel­op one quick­ly.  Most of the atten­dees are guys, and like all guys they tend to devolve into 12-year old boys when they get togeth­er in large groups.  Obvi­ous­ly, you should call some­one out if they step over the line, but if you are the type who is like­ly to get offend­ed at every obnox­ious com­ment about penis size or bed­room skills you will be absolute­ly mis­er­able.  You should feel free to flip them crap right back, by the way.  The guys are also usu­al­ly pret­ty easy to dis­tract, so if they start get­ting too out of hand just change the sub­ject.  Men­tion the­o­ret­i­cal physics and they can’t resist talk­ing about it.
  3. There is a ton of alco­hol, so pace your­self. In fact, I think I drank more dur­ing Cis­co Live than in the entire year pre­ced­ing it. From the beer and wine offered on the floor of World of Solu­tions, to the open bars at all the par­ties, to the night­ly hang­outs in whichev­er bar has been deemed the favorite drink­ing spot, there is a seri­ous amount of drink­ing that hap­pens. Bring aspirin and drink lots of water, and don’t try to keep up with the geeks- those boys can drink!
  4. Get a guest pass.  The guest pass lets you into some ses­sions and the keynote address­es, if you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing stuff, but more impor­tant­ly, the guest pass lets you into the World of Solu­tions, where you can col­lect as many tchotchskes as your lit­tle heart could desire, and into the Cus­tomer Appre­ci­a­tion Event, which is usu­al­ly an awe­some par­ty.
  5. Plan some fun stuff ahead of time.  I like to find some fun things to do while Teren is in ses­sions, either with friends or on my own.  Rent­ing a cabana by the pool, going sight­see­ing, get­ting spa treat­ments, or going shop­ping is a lot more fun than sit­ting around wait­ing for ses­sions to let out, so do some research to find out what is avail­able before you leave for the show.  You can almost always find anoth­er spouse to join you if you want com­pa­ny.  If you don’t know any oth­er spous­es yet, just have your hus­band ask around to see if any his Twit­ter bud­dies are bring­ing their spous­es and if they would be inter­est­ed in join­ing you.

 

These are all things that I have found help­ful, but my num­ber one tip is to be out­go­ing and have fun.  I have met some amaz­ing peo­ple at Cis­co Live over the years, both geeks and their spous­es, and I look for­ward to see­ing them all each year.  I hope that any spous­es who are unsure about whether they should attend, or won­der­ing if they will have fun if they do, find some of these tips help­ful and decide to come next year.

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May 3, 2013 Cisco

Cisco Live — Convincing your Boss to Send You

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes


“Knowl­edge has to be improved, chal­lenged, and increased con­stant­ly, or it van­ish­es.”
Peter Druck­er

One of the ques­tions that gets asked a lot when peo­ple find out that I go to the Cis­co Live con­ven­tion every year is, “How in the world did you con­vince your boss to send you?!” To be fair, that ques­tion gets asked more often in cer­tain years than oth­ers, like when the con­ven­tion is in Orlan­do, as it is this year. If the con­ven­tion was in Juneau, Alas­ka in Jan­u­ary I don’t think I’d get as many ques­tions.

That said, the ques­tion is rel­e­vant because I know plen­ty of peo­ple who would love to attend and quite sim­ply can’t get their boss to approve the expense. These are not com­pa­nies where a revolv­ing few mem­bers of the net­work team get to go each year and maybe your num­ber will be up next year. These are com­pa­nies where the pre­dom­i­nant cul­ture is “we don’t waste mon­ey on trade shows.” It’s a deeply flawed sen­ti­ment, but one that is, unfor­tu­nate­ly, some­what com­mon out­side of the Val­ue-added Reseller (VAR) and man­u­fac­tur­er space.

Why? I think it has to do with way trade shows have his­tor­i­cal­ly been mar­ket­ed to the masses–as giant 24/7 par­ties with free-flow­ing liquor, late night debauch­ery, high-pro­file musi­cal per­for­mances and the like. Even Cis­co is guilty of this, empha­siz­ing the “fun” aspect of the con­ven­tion and down­play­ing (at least in mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als) the seri­ous­ness of the con­ven­tion as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence.

That is unfor­tu­nate, because the Cis­co con­ven­tion is much more than just a fun time (although it is that as well). In fact, if you work pri­mar­i­ly, or even sig­nif­i­cant­ly, with Cis­co tech­nolo­gies in your day-to-day life, this is the most bang for your train­ing-buck you’ll find any­where.

Why?

There are a lot of rea­sons to go, but I’ll list just a few below:

  • Thou­sands of train­ing ses­sions over the course of the week, all taught by experts, Cis­co employ­ees, Cis­co Press authors, etc. Where else are you going to meet all of the authors of Cis­co Press mate­ri­als, or the design­ers of some of the pro­to­cols you use on a dai­ly basis?
  • Access to Cis­co engi­neers via Cis­co’s Meet-the-Expert pro­gram. You can sched­ule a meet­ing with high-lev­el Cis­co engi­neers in a spe­cif­ic area of exper­tise and “white-board” out prob­lems you’re hav­ing. Last year, for instance, I worked with an engi­neer to val­i­date a large-scale rout­ing restruc­ture I had planned for my cor­po­rate net­work. The plan­ning and review ses­sion was absolute­ly invalu­able; and as a result the project went off with­out a hitch.
  • What I’ll call the “floor show” and what Cis­co calls the World of Solu­tions. This is where hun­dreds of ven­dors set up booths and show off the lat­est and great­est tech­nol­o­gy with­in the Cis­co ecosys­tem.
  • Peer-group net­work­ing. The con­nec­tions and friends I’ve made over the years at Cis­co Live have proven invalu­able time and time again. I have a large cohort I can turn to with prob­lems, and I usu­al­ly find the infor­ma­tion I need from them well before I need to turn to any oth­er method. Thou­sands of peo­ple who do what you do, all in one place, at one time. The val­ue of that sim­ply can­not be over­stat­ed.

At the end of the day, you’re going to find your­self work­ing for one of two kinds of employ­ers, and I’ve worked for both:

  • The kind who val­ues your input as an expert in your field; who val­ues what you bring to the table and see Cis­co Live as a fur­ther invest­ment; not only in you, but in their own busi­ness. These employ­ers val­ue train­ing, they val­ue life-long learn­ing, and they gen­er­al­ly want their peo­ple to suc­ceed even if it’s at a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny.
  • The kind who see you as a cog, as a cost cen­ter, as some­thing to be man­aged. These employ­ers tend to under­val­ue con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion, and assume that every­thing you learned in col­lege is all you’ll ever need. They give lip-ser­vice to learn­ing, but at the end of the day you’ll go years with lim­it­ed train­ing, and no approval to attend events like Cis­co Live.

As the IT Man­ag­er of a mul­ti-nation­al com­pa­ny, with a whole IT team report­ing to me, I can tell you that I do every­thing I can to be the type of boss who helps my team to suc­ceed. I attend this con­fer­ence year­ly, and I advo­cate that my team mem­bers all attend rel­e­vant trade-shows and edu­ca­tion­al sem­i­nars annu­al­ly. I also try to get quar­ter­ly train­ing approved as well.

At the end of the day, there are oth­er things you can and should do to learn; things like read­ing white papers, attend­ing web sem­i­nars, try­ing to build a real or vir­tu­al lab for more hands-on expe­ri­ence. I would sug­gest to you now, how­ev­er, that if you aren’t being allowed to attend train­ings and trade shows like Cis­co Live, you’re prob­a­bly in the wrong posi­tion at the wrong com­pa­ny.

I per­son­al­ly nego­ti­ate atten­dance at Cis­co Live as a con­di­tion of employ­ment because of what I do and how valu­able my knowl­edge and career are to me. The day I’m work­ing for a com­pa­ny that does­n’t val­ue those same things is the day I move else­where.

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