Category Archives: Networking

Buying a Converged/FCoE Switch?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Humair

I felt the urge to write this article after receiving several inquiries about buying used Cisco Nexus 5010 and Nexus 5020 switches because they are available on some third-party site at large discounts – at least compared to the new … Continue reading →

Posted in Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Juniper, Network Architecture, Networking, Protocols, Technology | Tagged Adapter-FEX, Brocade, Brocade 6720, Brocade 6730, Brocade converged switch, Brocade FCoE switch, Brocade VDX 6720, Brocade VDX 6730, Cisco, Cisco 5010, Cisco 5020, Cisco 5548UP, Cisco 5596UP, Cisco converged switch, Cisco FCoE switch, Cisco Nexus, Cisco Nexus 5010, Cisco Nexus 5020, Cisco Nexus 5548UP, Cisco Nexus 5596UP, Cisco Nexus switches, Converged switch, Data Center Bridging, DCB, Dell, Dell converged switch, Dell FCoE switch, Dell Force10, Dell S5000, Dell S5000 converged switch, Dell S5000 FCoE switch, Dell S5000 switch, FabricPath, FC, FCoE, FCoE-FC bridging, FCoE-FC bridging capabilities, Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, Juniper, Juniper converged switch, Juniper FCoE switch, Juniper QFX3500, Nexus 5010, Nexus 5020, Nexus 5548UP, Nexus 5596UP, QFX3500, S5000 converged switch, S5000 FCoE switch, TRILL, VDX 6720, VDX 6730, VM-FEX | 1 Comment

Stacking the Dell MXL Blade Switch

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Humair

The Data Center Bridging (DCB) enabled Dell MXL blade switch provides a 1/10/40GbE upstream solution for the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis. It comes with two fixed 40 GbE ports but is scalable up to six 40GbE ports via 40GbE FlexIO … Continue reading →

Posted in Dell, Labs, Network Architecture, Networking | Tagged blade switch, Dell, Dell FlexIO modules, Dell Force10 MXL, Dell Force10 MXL switch, Dell M1000e, Dell M1000e chassis, Dell M1000e FlexIO modules, Dell MXL, Dell MXL Blade Switch, Dell MXL stack, Dell PowerEdge M1000e, Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis, Dell PowerEdge M1000e FlexIO modules, FlexIO modules, Force10 MXL, Force10 MXL switch, Force10 Stack, FTOS, M1000e chassis, M1000e FlexIO modules, MXL, MXL stack, PowerEdge M1000e chassis, redundancy, stack MXL, stack MXL switches, stacking MXL, stacking redundancy | 7 Comments

Dell Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0 Demo [Video]

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Humair

In my last blog post, I discussed Dell’s Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0 (BMP 3.0) technology that just rolled out in the release of FTOS 9.1 for Dell S4810 and Dell Z9000. Well now you can see BMP in action. Just … Continue reading →

Posted in Dell, Dell Force10, Expect, Labs, Network Architecture, Networking, Programming Languages, Tcl | Tagged Automating the Network, Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0, Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0 Demo, Bare Metal Provisioning Demo, BMP, BMP 3.0, BMP 3.0 Demo, BMP 3.0 Demo Video, BMP demo, BMP Demo Video, BMP whitepaper, BMP whitepaper scripts, Dell Bare Metal Provisioning, Dell Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0, Dell BMP, Dell BMP 3.0, Expect, FTOS 9.1, script, scripts, Tcl | Leave a comment

Dell Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0 – Automate the Network

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Humair

Today Dell released FTOS 9.1 for its Z9000 and S4810 data center switches. A lot of cool features have been added to the ubiquitous switch operating system, perhaps most notably the support for OpenFlow. However, in this blog I will … Continue reading →

Posted in Dell, Dell Force10, Expect, Labs, Network Architecture, Networking, Tcl | Tagged automated configuration, bare metal provisioning, Bare Metal Provisioning 3.0, BMP, BMP 3.0, Dell, Dell Force10, Dell Open Automation Framework, Expect, Force10, FTOS, FTOS 9.1, network automation, Open Automation Framework, OpenFlow, Tcl | Leave a comment

Connecting Dell PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator with Dell Force10 S4810 and Cisco Nexus 5548UP

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Humair

The Dell PowerEdge M I//O Aggregator is a slick blade switch that plugs into the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis and requires barely any configuration/networking knowledge. Think of it as an advanced layer 2 switch that provides expandable uplink connectivity. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Cisco, Dell, Dell Force10, Force10 Networks, Labs, Network Architecture, Networking, Technology | Tagged 40 GbE, 5548 switch, 5548UP switch, Blade Chassis, blade switch, Chassis Management Controller, Cisco, Cisco Nexus, Cisco Nexus 5548, Cisco Nexus 5548UP, CMC, Dell, Dell Blade Server, Dell Blade Servers, Dell Force10, Dell Force10 S4810, Dell Force10 S4810 switch, Dell I/O Aggregator, Dell M1000e, Dell PowerEdge, Dell PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator, Dell PowerEdge M1000e, Dell S4810, Dell S4810 switch, Dell Server Blade Chassis, Force10, Force10 Networks, Force10 Networks S4810, Force10 Networks S4810 switch, Force10 S4810, Force10 S4810 switch, I/O Aggregator, I/O Aggregator blade switch, M1000e, Nexus 5548, Nexus 5548UP, Nexus 5548UP switch, PowerEdge, PowerEdge I/O Aggregator, PowerEdge I/O Aggregator blade switch, PowerEdge M1000e, S4810 switch, Server Blade Chassis, Twinax, Twinax breakout cable, Twinax breakout cables | 2 Comments

Understanding and Implementing Flow Control on Dell Force10 Switches

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Humair

Ethernet flow control allows for a receiving node to temporarily stop the transmission of data from the sending node. As defined by IEEE 802.3x this is accomplished via the PAUSE frame.

Posted in Dell Force10, Force10 Networks, Labs, Networking, Servers, Technology | Tagged 01-80-C2-00-00-01, 01:80:C2:00:00:01, 802.1Qbb, 802.3x, 802.3x flow control, Class of Service, converged network, converged networks, CoS, DCB, Dell, Dell Force10, Dell Force10 S50N, Dell S50N, Ethernet Pause Frame, Flow Control, Force10, Force10 Networks, Force10 S50N, IEEE 802.1Qbb, IEEE 802.3x flow control, network congestion, pause, PAUSE frame, PAUSE frame capture, PAUSE frame propogation, pause traffic, PFC, priority-based flow control, propogate PAUSE frame, QoS, Quality of Service, wireshark, Wireshark PAUSE frame, Wireshark PAUSE frame capture | 3 Comments

Distributed Core Network Architecture

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Humair

There is no doubt you have probably heard by now the importance of supporting ‘east-west’ traffic flow in large data center networks. So why is this and what does it mean? And when Gartner claims that 80 percent of data … Continue reading →

Posted in Dell Force10, Force10 Networks, Hadoop, Network Architecture, Networking, Servers, Technology, Virtualization and Cloud Computing | Tagged 'east-west' traffic flow, 10 GbE, 10 gig, 3-Tier, 3-Tier Network Architecture, 40 GbE, 40 gig, Data Center, Dell, Dell Force10, Dell Force10 S4810, Dell Force10 Z9000, Dell S4810, Dell Z9000, distributed cloud computing, distributed cloud computing platform, distributed cloud computing platforms, distributed core architecture, Distributed Core Network Architecture, east-west, east-west traffic, Facebook, Force10, Force10 Networks, Force10 Networks S4810, Force10 Networks Z9000, Force10 S4810, Force10 Z9000, Hadoop, server-to-server, server-to-server traffic, server-to-server traffic flow, Spanning Tree Protocol, spine and leaf, spine and leaf architecture, spine and leaf network, STP, Traditional 3-Tier Network Architecture, Z9000 | 3 Comments

XenServer, Hyper-V, and ESXi – Architecture, API, and Coding

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Humair

Below is a link to the slide deck for a presentation I gave to some friends/colleagues for a Berkeley Virtualization and Cloud Computing certification course I took in early 2012. For my final project I did a XenServer, Hyper-V, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Citrix, Java, Microsoft, Networking, Personal Presentations, PowerShell, Programming Languages, Python, Tech Events, Technology, Virtualization and Cloud Computing, VMware | Tagged ESXi, humair, Humair Ahmed, Java, networking, PowerShell, Python, Tkinter, VI API, virtualization, vmware, vSphere, Xen, XenServer, XML-RPC | Leave a comment

Dell Force10 – Layer 2 Multipathing via Virtual Link Trunking (VLT)

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Humair

In this blog I use one Dell Force10 S50N [FTOS 8.4.2.7] and three Dell Force10 S4810 switches [FTOS 8.3.12.1] to demonstrate Dell Force10’s layer 2 mulipathing technology called Virtual Link Trunking (VLT). With VLT, you can create a LAG for … Continue reading →

Posted in Dell Force10, Force10 Networks, Labs, Networking, Technology | Tagged 10 gig, 10GbE, 40 gig, 40GbE, bare metal provisioning, BMP, Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Dell Force10, Dell Force10 S4810, Dell Force10 S50N, Force10 Networks, Force10 S4810, Force10 S50N, FTOS, Juniper, LACP, Link Aggregation Control Protocol, MCT, MEC, mulipathing, Multi-Chassis Trunking, Multichassis EtherChannel, non-blocking, reload-type, S4810, S50N, Shortest Path Bridging, Spanning Tree Protocol, SPB, stack port, stack-group, STP, Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links, TRILL, Virtual Chassis, Virtual Link Trunk, Virtual Link Trunking, Virtual Port Channel, VLT, VLT interconnect, VLTi, vPC | 11 Comments

Multi-Area OSPF in a Mixed Cisco and Dell Force10 Environment

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Humair

In this lab I use one Cisco 2621XM [IOS 12.4(2)T], one Cisco 2621 [IOS 12.3(18)], one Cisco 3660 [IOS 12.1(1)T], one Cisco 3640 [IOS 12.1(2)T], one Cisco 3550-24PWR-SMI [IOS 12.2(44)SE6], one Dell Force10 S60 [FTOS 8.3.3.7], and one Dell Force10 … Continue reading →

Posted in Cisco, Dell Force10, Force10 Networks, Labs, Networking, Protocols, Technology | Tagged 2621, 2621XM, 3550-24PWR-SMI, 3640, 3660, ABR, Area Border Router, Area Border Routers, Cisco, Cisco 2621, Cisco 2621XM, Cisco 3550-24PWR-SMI, Cisco 3640, Cisco 3660, Dell, Dell Force10, Dell Force10 S50N, Dell Force10 S60, Force10, Force10 Networks, Force10 S50N, Force10 S60, multiarea ospf, Open Shortest Path First, OSPF, ospf neighbor, OSPF Neighbors, S50N, S60, Type 3 LSAs | Leave a comment