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,…
Server Merge, ZFS Fun, and BGP Routing For Jails
[toc] Introduction About five years ago, I built two new servers in my basement, as outlined here and here. One server was my general login/mail/web/DNS/etc server, and the other my home NAS. This entry will document and detail my merging of the two servers into one, and the associated challenges that brought with it. I also took this opportunity to…
Home Networking: 10GigEth Upgrade
[toc] Introduction As documented in the last couple of Mac Pro entries, I’ve migrated some of my home networking to 10GigE. This blog entry will outline how that was done, the hardware used, and some of the work involved. The Old Setup My home office is on the second story of my house, while my basement has my servers, the…