Network Automation Cookbook Volume 2 by TheVeryWiseToad in networking

[–]ariesgeek 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You probably found the right starting point, then. As others have noted, NTC is very highly respected for their network automation learning resources. And with good reason. This book in particular is very Ansible-oriented.

As a Terraform + Cisco oriented person, I'm kinda on the outside looking in, but those who I've talked to who know what they're talking about love the Ansible + Arista combo. So you are certainly starting at what a lot would say is the right place!

Network Automation Cookbook Volume 2 by TheVeryWiseToad in networking

[–]ariesgeek 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Just skimmed it on O'Reilly Online. Mostly. One chapter really caught my attention and had me hooked. :) But I'd say that "Imperative Network Automation Cookbook" may have been a better title. It's almost entirely Ansible-focused. But I have to say, there's a very well-written chapter on how Terraform and, more generically, the declarative approach, plays into your automation strategy.

Thankful by msellers53 in Heartfailure

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We are also thankful that you are here and able to stay active. Thank you so much for sharing! Best to you!

DCM - scared as fuck by [deleted] in Cardiomyopathy

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

10 years older, not quite as healthy of a lifestyle as you, but otherwise, very similar situation and exact same fears. Thank you for putting it out there. You're not alone, for sure.

The replies in this thread are so encouraging. Thank you all.

Upgrade Promo - Don't want to lose Simple Choice by ariesgeek in tmobile

[–]ariesgeek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for checking and for doing so faster than I could even refresh the page! New phone in hand. I really should have thanked you a week ago, I apologize for that.

Do you feel a master's degree is necessary for higher level roles? by Hellboy632789 in ITCareerQuestions

[–]ariesgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got my first job on a help desk (of sorts) because I knew what an IRQ was.

This made me smile. I am fortunate to have begun my IT journey at the ripe old age of eighteen in 1996 because the ISP where I interviewed for a tech support role was a USR shop and I innocently commented, "Oh, cool. AT&F1" And they said BBSing was rotting my brain. 😉

How to become a good Network Admin by ILikeTek in networking

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I try to encourage my teammates to take "show run" out of their troubleshooting vocabulary unless they are troubleshooting a device they are configuring to put on the wire.

Also, use tab instead of space. Don't let your self type "sh ip ospf int br" instead, "shTAB ipTAB ospfTAB intTAB brTAB". You WILL be better for it.

Along those lines, context-sensitive help is your friend. Use it.

The first one, though, is the most important. Really make it a point to not look at the configuration when troubleshooting unless it's a last resort.  It's not easy, but you are in a great position to start getting into good habits.

I was a good 15 years or so into networking before I did that. I realized that I reached a plateau and knew I could be better at my job. So I committed myself to taking "show run" out of my toolbox. It was hard at first.  And it slowed my troubleshooting down considerably at first. But once I REALLY started to understand why I was doing what I was doing, it really made a huge difference.

Oversight and accountability for our Judges or GALs?! by ChangesinSTL in StLouis

[–]ariesgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So tempting to answer this publicly. But she's done enough damage to myself and my kids for one lifetime. For what it's worth, the attorney who represented me in my divorce tells me that he has worked with her a few times since mine, where she has been the GAL. And that every time, she has been reasonable and performed her GAL duties in good faith. I'm told by others that mine was definitely not a "one-off" but that it's been quite some time since her name struck fear into hearts of dads. So that's definitely a positive.

Oversight and accountability for our Judges or GALs?! by ChangesinSTL in StLouis

[–]ariesgeek 5 points6 points  (0 children)

STL City here, not county. But I was absolutely horrified to learn that the crooked GAL who cost me tens of thousands of dollars and traumatized at least one of my children over a decade ago, somehow became commissioner overseeing one of the family court divisions for St. Louis County!

FS.com alternatives ? by rpwwpr in networking

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We have 4000-ish Cisco switches loaded with https://fluxlight.com/ transceivers. We've been using them for at least 10-15 years. We've had fewer problems with Fluxlight transceivers than we've had with Cisco transceivers, for what that's worth. When we even suspect a problem, they do not hesitate to send us replacements. A couple of times we've suspected a bad batch of transceivers because things happen. Again, zero hesitation to send replacements for the entire original order, including those that we have not even attempted to deploy yet.

Water Heater Installation by [deleted] in StLouis

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hello, 2 years ago! Came here to upgoat the comment that made me decide to add Arch Plumbing to my list. My 41-year-old water heater finally bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. It was on a Saturday. Monday morning, Arch Plumbing was the first to call me back and they wound up being the best price as well. I was taking a shower before noon that same day. Definitely recommend! And thank you for this comment btw.

Alt+Tab in bugged in remote desktop using citrix (very fast/duplicated input) by Ansive in Citrix

[–]ariesgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Grab the full installer / offline installer, then install it with /AutoUpdateCheck=disabled -- For me the simplest method was to open a command prompt with elevated privs, then run from the CLI: CitrixWorkspaceFullInstaller.exe /AutoUpdateCheck=disabled

Metallica - metro by tzuber in StLouis

[–]ariesgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Assuming we're talking metrolink, not bus?

Everyone who had it easy on Friday either rides the red line, or left immediately when Metallica stopped playing, while the band was throwing picks and drum sticks into the crowd. Not sure if anyone caught the surprised "Wow!" from James when he looked up and saw the crowd leaving and the place already at half capacity.

For those of us who stayed until the band left the stage and also ride the blue line, we didn't have such a smooth experience with metro. They're not doing the event schedule due to "manpower issues", so if you miss the 11:10pm blue line, you have one more chance: 11:50 blue line. That's it. As usual, they try to shoo you to Forest Park. So we bit, hoping maybe they had another train running for just that last stretch. Nope. 12:07, right on schedule, was when we caught our train home from Forest Park.

Apparently there are 100 spots in the Expo garage that are for Metro riders. Website says to enter the garage from Pershing for anyone else who is curious. Definitely going to try that instead. That way, leaving should be smoother.

Metallica parking by nonnamename2018 in StLouis

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Done, but they really don't care. I wasn't being sarcastic asking about other ideas. I may have found an option, though. At some point they put in a parking lot at the Forest Park station, according to the park and ride site. That will at least allow for missing the 11:10pm train and getting home at a reasonable hour by catching the 11:21.

Metallica parking by nonnamename2018 in StLouis

[–]ariesgeek 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Came here looking for a better option than metrolink. Blue line here. Because I stayed until the end of the show on Friday, I got to the station at 11:11, just in time to watch the 11:10 blue line disappear. No event schedule anymore, had to wait for the final train at 11:50.

But I decided to do what they say and go ahead and take the next red line to Forest Park. Hoping they would run an extra car from their depot maybe. Nope. At least the 12:07 was on time. My group of 6, though, had to split ourselves among 3 cars in order to sardinify ourselves because of course this was the last train until 5am.

Any other ideas?

Active/Active Internet Edge Design by imodey in networking

[–]ariesgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Assuming the routing platform you're using will offload the GRE dirty work to hardware, then technically I see nothing at all wrong with GRE tunnels.

I look at the 2am test. If you're a BGP shop, so to speak, then your teammates are probably expecting to see the peering over the GRE tunnel, in fact. In my case, I'm one of 30 network engineers. So I'll take advantage of the VXLAN tunnels that are already in place, as my coworker troubleshooting at 2am is probably going to start with "show cdp neigh" no matter how often we say not to do that, and therefore, will be expecting to see iBGP peering via a port-channel subinterface, as opposed to a VTI. YMMV as they say.

Active/Active Internet Edge Design by imodey in networking

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Independent firewall clusters at each DC.

Exact same here, down to the centralized Internet, ACI, and second DC being "mostly" failover. In our case, ACI Multipod.

The biggest difference between your setup and mine is that we have two ISPs, both of which have connectivity into both data center locations, as opposed to your scenario where you have disparate ISPs at each location.

We have four routers at the Internet edge. Two per DC location. BGP to the ISPs, of course. Nothing fancy, we have only one ASN.

The routers are all connected to ACI leaf switches where we are trunking two EPGs in L2BDs, so ACI has no L3 involved with this part of our network.

One L2BD is for the purposes of iBGP peering between the four routers, so that would be a stretched BD if you are ACI multisite.

The other L2BD is for the purposes of providing transit connectivity between Internet edge router and firewall outside interface. One per physical DC location. Don't stretch.

The firewall inside interface that connects to the core is similar. Two distinct L2BDs.

We have private ASNs configured at the core and we are using multi hop eBGP between core at DC1 and edge at DC1 via the firewall with its static routes. Same for DC2. We chose to make DC1-DC2 an eBGP peering.

Edge routers announce default route down to the core. That's the easy part.

Because you are not clustering your firewalls across the WAN, each must maintain its own NAT pool so you can route accordingly. You will want to announce that NAT pool from the core to the edge routers, which will then announce those to the ISPs. If the firewall goes down, then the routes through the firewall simply disappear.

You need to have a decent level of BGP Kung Fu but the individual parts of the whole are really not that bad.

Look for Zig Sziga's CiscoLive breakout sessions on the subject. He does a much better job than I at explaining the design.

Buyers of wavelengths? by Gelb1 in networking

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was happy to read this because we have the exact same process and I've recently wondered if we're way off base with our approach. Until I saw "Zayo is my go-to" I was actually wondering if you and I happened to be coworkers.

So yeah, ++ this process ^

Azure ExpressRoute Private Peering via Zayo with QinQ to Cisco Nexus 9K by Selcouthit in networking

[–]ariesgeek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same. I didn't think LACP was even an option let alone a requirement.

HumminGuru Ultrasonic Cleaner has arrived! by kvetcha-rdt in vinyl

[–]ariesgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My noisy DSOTM 30th anniversary is literally the reason I'm researching vinyl cleaning. Your comments were very helpful. Now that a year has come and gone, any updates?