NetApp ONTAP 9 Simulator and Free eBook

Just a quick post.

I found Neil Anderson on Twitter @flackboxtv. Neil is a CCIE as well as NetApp, VMware, FlexPod, Microsoft and AWS certified. His blog, Flackbox, is about Cloud and Data Center technologies.  Neil has many great video tutorials on NetApp and, more broadly, on SAN and NAS Storage Basics.

Neil is also offering a free 177 page eBook "How to Build A NetApp ONTAP 9 Lab". The lab is built on VMware Player with VyOS routing between networks. The lab includes two NetApp ONTAP clusters, SnapMirror, SnapVault, Windows and Linux hosts. To minimize host memory usage, not every VM needs to be powered on at the same time.

Flackbox is definitely worth checking out.

www.flackbox.com

A Network Engineer Jumps into VMware with The Official VCP5 Certification Guide

My Assistant Network
Engineer Margo.

I have worked in the IT industry for 18 years. All this time I have been focused on the Network and Network Infrastructure. I have worked on everything network, from Token Ring to ATM, Frame Relay to MPLS, 10Mbps Ethernet to Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and even Fibre Channel over Token Ring.

I decided I was ready to officially jump into virtualization. I say officially because 1) I have been "touching" VMware for the last two years and 2) I'm ready to earn VCP5 certification.

To start my journey, I recently attended the vSphere 5.1 Install, Manage, and Configure class (the official class is required for VCP5 certification). The class was great for the lecture, lab, and discussion. I needed more. To prepare for the VCP5 Exam I also need a guide to further solidify my understanding.

I am making my way through The Official VCP5 Certification Guide (VMware Press Certification). This book is great! Each section provides thorough details and explanations.

Given my networking background, I enjoyed the section "Planning and Configuring vSphere Networking". I have to admit, I have felt a little out-of-the-loop when the Virtualization guys talk about virtual switches, virtual ports, virtual networks. I'm the networking guy!! I'm supposed to be working on anything with the word "network" in it. Here they are building virtual networks I know nothing about....Rude!

The book has also helped me understand storage (don't get me started on being left out with Fibre-Channel and iSCSI networking). Storage is an area that I felt was surprisingly complicated. I saw an enclosure with a bunch of hard drives connected to a mysterious box called a "Controller" and all was good. Storage admins started talking all "Zone this", "LUN that", "my HBA flogged the target via the WWN". I think the Jets and the Sharks have been replaced with the SANs and the LANs.

Thanks to Bill Ferguson's "The Official VCP5 Certification Guide" my studies in VMware vSphere are flourishing. The book is well written, provides thorough and precise explanations. I will schedule my VCP5 exam in the next few weeks and provide an update.

Thumbs Up, Great Book!!

Billy Carter

CCIE 5022

Meraki and the The Cisco Cloud Networking Group

I think this is the most interesting part of the acquisition;

"Cisco’s strategy is to take Meraki’s cloud platform and business model and scale this within Cisco as our new Cloud Networking Group, led by Sanjit, John, and Hans."

I wonder if any existing Cisco groups will be moved into the Cloud Networking Group.

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Meraki

Hilton Romanski | November 18, 2012 at 5:34 pm PST

Cisco is dedicated to innovation as the path to growth as well as the key to sustaining our market leadership position. Our build, buy, partner strategy has always been driven by customer need and on capturing market transitions.

Today, we are excited to announce an important acquisition that addresses the rapidly occurring shift to cloud networking as a key part of Cisco’s overall strategy. San Francisco-based Meraki, a leader in cloud networking, offers customers on-premise networking solutions that are centrally managed from the cloud.

When compared to other opportunities, Meraki built a unique cloud-based business from the ground up that addresses the broader networking shift towards cloud, not just within wireless. Meraki created a massively scalable architecture that offers easy to deploy, secure, and manage networks. They didn’t obsess about the number of features, but instead focused on those that could be simplified or removed entirely.  Customers liked what they saw, and today they are supporting 20,000 customers and hundreds of thousands of network devices on their cloud platform. This has resulted in a business that is growing exponentially with great margins.

Talent is one of the most important components of every Cisco acquisition. Meraki’s co-founders, Sanjit, John and Hans, are true visionaries and leaders. The founders began with the technology, and then experimented with different markets -- pivoting from a research project at MIT to a municipal Wi-Fi company to a leading cloud networking company focused on the midmarket. Along the way, they recruited experts and created a culture in San Francisco that attracted great talent. They have focused this team around a business model that combines a rapid development methodology tightly linked to a go to market engine.

During the course of our interactions, we quickly realized that Cisco and Meraki’s shared a vision of accelerating the adoption of cloud within networking as a means to simplify operations and enable new network applications. Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Cisco, also recognized the strength of the people at Meraki, and it’s great to see the technology ecosystem come full circle.

The Meraki acquisition is another example of Cisco’s focus on accelerating our adoption of software based business models. In fact, Cisco’s last seven acquisitions (Cloupia, vCider, ThinkSmart, Virtuata, Truviso, ClearAccess and NDS) have all been software companies. Cisco’s strategy is to take Meraki’s cloud platform and business model and scale this within Cisco as our new Cloud Networking Group, led by Sanjit, John, and Hans.

I am delighted to welcome the Meraki team to the Cisco family, and look forward to a prosperous and industry-transforming future together.

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