A short post. In the previous post, I outlined how the delivery of my new 2024 Z06 was ruined just due to a serious of unfortunate events, accidents, and mishaps, all outside of my control. On Monday, 5 August, I dropped the car off at D&V Autobody in Sterling, VA. They were done with it by the afternoon of Friday,…
2024 Corvette Z06: 1300+ Miles After Catastrophic Delivery
The following text spew is a collection of my thoughts on the 2024 Z06 after almost 3 weeks of owning it and just over 1300 miles on the odo. Warning: I’m verbose … I really like to write. For reference, my previous Corvettes include: 1996 Collector Edition coupe with the LT4 engine 1999 Z51 coupe: modified by Lingenfelter Performance Engineering…
Separating Workloads With EVPN And VXLAN
I began writing a few posts on my blog about the use of EVPN as a control plane for VXLAN almost five years ago. At the time I was just becoming familiar with that extension to BGP, and how it could control VTEP bring-ups and tear-downs based on L2 VNIs. What I hadn’t completely grasped at the time was the…
Network Customization: At The Switch Or Server?
Another Long Break It’s been a bit over a year since I’ve last written an entry. The primary reason for that is just that I got very busy with my day job. Part of that has included experimenting with the new Nvidia Bluefield-2 SmartNICs. I’m hoping my employer lets me write some generic-enough technical blog posts about what I’ve been…
Becoming an IT Architect: Chapter 4 – Curiosity and Learning
Chapter 4 – Curiosity and Learning Most of what I’ve discussed in the past three chapters has not centered around technical things. This chapter will pivot on that point a bit. I did say earlier that the vast majority of an architect’s responsibilities will center around long term designs, and socializing those designs with other folks. In other words: staring…
Becoming An IT Architect: Chapter 3 – Transactional vs Social
Chapter 3 – Transactional vs Social Interactions This topic is a bit challenging, but not for any bad reason whatsoever. I assume the majority of the folks reading this are techie introverts on the Myers Briggs intro-extroversion scale. I, myself, score so far into the introversion side of the scale, I’m basically off the charts. With that, sometimes, comes a…
Becoming An IT Architect: Chapter 2 – Strategic vs Tactical Mindsets
Chapter 2 – Strategic vs Tactical Mindsets Before I get too far into this chapter, I want to make sure the audience understands a couple of things: I’m speaking from the perspective of a Network Engineer who made the move to Network Architect I’m not, in any way, shape, or form trying to shame, put down, or insult the engineering…
Becoming An IT Architect: Chapter 1 – New Tools
Introduction With this series of posts, bite-sized in length, I intend to help folks who want to make the transition from IT Engineer to IT Architect. I’m using the generic “IT” to represent server, security, networking, etc. I can speak specifically from the perspective of a network engineer moving into network architecture, but the very high level concepts should apply…
FRR Patched And Working
This entry will be another fairly quick one. In the previous entry regarding the server, routing, etc, I described how I had to work around the fact that FRR didn’t honor FreeBSD’s assigning and deletion of IP addresses from interfaces. Specifically: I had the line redistribute connected in the server’s BGP configuration. That means any of the server’s interfaces with…
The “Rackening” Is Complete
This is just a short update: In the previous post I described the overhaul of my little basement data center, but left it open as far as getting everything racked up cleanly. Between then and now, the 12RU rack arrived from Amazon, as did the rack rail kit for my 4RU server chassis. After assembling the rack in my basement,…