Category Archives: Data Centre

Making the most of ACI when routing between tenants via a Firewall

Posted on 2020/10/06 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

I’ll show you how you can enhance your ACI migration by using some ACI features that are practically impossible to implement on L3 Firewalls Continue reading →

Posted in ACI, ACI Tutorial, Cisco, configuration tutorial, Data Center, Data Centre | Comments Off on Making the most of ACI when routing between tenants via a Firewall

ACI Version mismatch Alert. Don’t use v5 on APIC and v14 on Leaves

Posted on 2020/09/05 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

If you are stuck with some first-generation switches in your ACI fabric, you might be tempted to upgrade your APIC to version 5.x – maybe even attempt to upgrade your leaf switches to the companion v15.x. Let me tell you why you don’t want to do that. Continue reading →

Posted in ACI, Cisco, Data Center, Data Centre | Comments Off on ACI Version mismatch Alert. Don’t use v5 on APIC and v14 on Leaves

Configuring Link Speed on UCS 6545 10/25G ports

Posted on 2020/01/16 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

The secret is to double-click on the port to bring up the Properties window. From here you find the Show Interface option. Continue reading →

Posted in Cisco, Data Center, Data Centre, Hyperflex, UCS | Tagged , | Comments Off on Configuring Link Speed on UCS 6545 10/25G ports

Seven things to know to make Hyperflex go – Cisco HyperFlex Best Practices

Posted on 2019/05/26 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

Creating a Datastore in Hyperflex Connect is easy, Creating a Datastore in vCenter is messy, When creating HXDP Snapshots in vCenter you need to be careful. There are some things that you need to do differently, and some you should do differently. Here are Seven things to know to make Hyperflex go. Continue reading →

Posted in Best Preactices, Cisco, Data Center, Data Centre, ESXi, Hyperflex, VMware | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

RedNectar’s HX Pre-Install Checklist

Posted on 2018/03/18 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

…has been updated and is found here: https://rednectar.net/2018/10/06/rednectars-hyperflex-pre-install-checklist-updated/

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ISIS, COOP, BGP and MP-BGP in Cisco ACI

Posted on 2018/03/01 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

Let me start with a picture.  Imagine a simple 2leaf/2spine topology with HostA attached to to Leaf1 and with HostB attached to to Leaf2. Enter IS-IS. The leaves and spines will exchange IS-IS routing updates with each other so that Leaf1 sees that it has two equally good paths to reach Leaf2, and Leaf2 sees that it has two equally good paths to reach Leaf1. Now think about the hosts. This is where COOP comes in. BGP is not needed until an external router is connected. Continue reading →

Posted in ACI, ACI configuration, APIC, Cisco, Data Center, Data Centre, EPG, L3 Out, L3out | Tagged , , | Comments Off on ISIS, COOP, BGP and MP-BGP in Cisco ACI

Non overlapping VTEP IP addresses in Cisco ACI

Posted on 2017/06/13 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

Cisco recommends that “The TEP IP address pool should not overlap with existing IP address pools that may be in use by the servers (in particular, by virtualized servers).”
Let me tell you a reason much closer to reality why you might want to avoid overlapping your Cisco ACI TEP addresses with your locally configured addressing scheme. Continue reading →

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Cisco ACI Naming Standards

Posted on 2017/05/19 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

Have you ever wondered what a L3 Out object is, when there no facility to create an object called L3 Out? I managed to solve this and many other ambiguities by developing and adopting a consistent naming standard. Continue reading →

Posted in Access Policies, ACI, ACI configuration, Cisco, Data Center, Data Centre, Nexus, Nexus 9000, SDN, Software Defined Networking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

A funny thing happened in the ACI lab today…

Posted on 2017/03/02 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

I had a Tenant with a statically configured bare metal hosts attached to interface 1/16 on both leaf 101 and leaf 102, but came up with a “invalid-path;invalid-vlan” error on the faults page for the EPG that was being configured … Continue reading →

Posted in Access Policies, ACI, ACI configuration, APIC, Data Center, Data Centre | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on A funny thing happened in the ACI lab today…

Configuring In-Band Management for the APIC on Cisco ACI (Part #3-via a L3Out)

Posted on 2016/12/29 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

Note: This is the third and last in a series of articles – the following is a variation of the first and second in the series. Much of the story is identical – but with a few added extras to configure the L3 out rather … Continue reading →

Posted in ACI, ACI API, ACI CLI, ACI configuration, ACI inband management tutorials, ACI Tutorial, APIC, Cisco, Data Center, Data Centre, EPG, In-Band management, inband management, L2 Out, L2out, L3 Out, L3out, Postman, tutorial | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments