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Meraki is the future of Cisco.   ...Whether they realize it yet or not. OK, I know, that's a controversial statement.  And yes, I know that I will get a lot of pushback on that statement, some of which may be valid in certain use cases.  Highly-customized networks and classified environments come to mind. Cisco is an "Enterprise" vendor, they always have been.  Start big (and expensive) and scale down to the average business use-case.   I've heard it hundreds of times, "don't buy a new Cisco product for at least 2 years."  That's when we find out if it will live or die, the bugs will be mostly worked out, and the cost will come down.  I don't think the pattern of solving the problems for the fortune 500 first will change any time soon.  But they have one business unit that is different.  It started small (before Cisco acquired them) and has grown more organically. Yes, the purchase by Cisco in 2012 gave Meraki some legitimac...

Upgrading an HA Pair of Firepower 2110s in FTD mode ~~~~~~~~~ UPDATE!!  ~~~~~~~~  As of FMC and FTD 7.0 this process is much more straightforward.  Readiness Check is now enabled for an HA pair of firewalls.  After pushing the update to the appliances, you can go into the upgrade screen and select both and do the "Check Readiness" button on both and wait for the results prior to doing the install.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you are like me you don't upgrade an FTD appliance often enough to remember the procedure. Today I installed the 6.3.0.1 update to an HA pair of FTD 6.3.0 2110s. This document assumes you have already updated the Firepower Management Center (FMC). Download Updates to the FMC From the FMC click on "System" then the "Updates" tab. If the update desired is not listed, click the "Download Updates" button. Push the update to the HA pair of devices Click the button on the far right marked "Push or Stag...

Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) has been the buzz of the development and operations world for the last several years.  "DevOps" is the magic word that signals that this IT team is serious and cutting edge.  There is no denying the power of the CI/CD model and the pipeline for development that allows features to be integrated more quickly and bugs to be squashed within a day or two.  Rarely does a day go by when I can't launch the "App Store" on my iPhone and not have at least a handful of updates to my favorite apps.  A continuous stream of new features and new bugs are the new norm. Well, let me tell you about the new and more personal development pipeline.  This model won't get your software to market any quicker.  It won't allow your company to squash any UI bugs. But it will help you to be a more well-rounded, happy, and relevant person.  It's something I like to call "CL/CD"  Continuous Learning, Continuous Deve...

Worth the Read:   Ansible 2.5 Network CLI   This post is by a colleague of mine.  He's spent much of the last 6 months provisioning networks with the automation tools.  He's done a bit of both Python and Ansible.  He teaches me new things every time we are together.  This helped me get over the hump with the changes in Ansible 2.5 and the new Network CLI.

Mac / Docker / VMWare PowerCLI: Install Docker for Mac:  https://store.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-mac   Install Docker to your Applications folder Launch Docker Test with "$ docker version" or "$ docker ps" from your terminal app Create a local folder for your own powercli scripts Mine is:  "/Users/nathan/scripts/PS/VMW/" Edit or create a ".bashrc" file in your home directory with the following two aliases. alias powercli-start='docker run --name PowerCLI --detach -it --rm --volume '/Users/nathan/scripts/PS/VMW/':/usr/scripts vmware/powerclicore:latest' alias powercli='docker attach PowerCLI' Relaunch your terminal (aliases won't take effect until .bashrc  is referenced) Run the following command to start the PowerCLI docker $ powercli-start Run the following to attach to the PowerCLI docker image $...

I work for a mid-sized business that continues to grow and utilizes a lot of bandwidth.  While we had a 6513 in our core that continued to operate just fine, it was beginning to show it's age.  We had maxed out the 10Gig capacity and really had need of chassis redundancy in our core.  We already had Nexus 5000's in our Data Center as well as Nexus 1000v in our virtual environments, however using Nexus as your core routers is a completely new challenge.  I had spent several weeks reading up on vPC limitations and the advantages Nexus 7000 has with certain FHRPs but actually doing it, after more than a decade of installing only Catalyst switches into the core of networks, was a new challenge.  This is my first, and perhaps last post but I think that an actual working design and configs may bring some value to those of you out there who, like me, have a little network know-how but little or no experience with Nexus. The image above is the actual design of ou...