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Is Your Network Cloud Ready?
Is your network cloud ready? We at NetCraftsmen, a Cisco Gold Partner, are hearing this question more often. Let’s discuss how to tell if your network is cloud ready, and how to get there if you’re not. Even if your organization already has a public cloud presence, I hope you’ll find some ideas in t…
High performance backup storage: Cisco UCS C3160
I don’t know about you, but the thought of using a “server” as a “backup storage” resource may sound a bit odd at first. After this post, you may change your tune. Let’s dig into this a bit. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Cisco UCS Unified Computing line of servers and their associated Fabric Intercon…
4+1 Practices for Effective Lifelong IT Learning (Part 1)
The debate of what we should be learning seems to be a more frequent topic today. For instance, there’s been a long-standing question for each new networker: after learning a little about routing and switching, does a relative newbie dive deep into route/switch? Move on to learn voice? Or security?…
FlexPod for the Future
I’ve been a huge fan of Cisco and NetApp’s FlexPod since 2011, when I had the pleasure of working with it for the first time. We had just gotten two brand new UCS Chassis full of B-Series blades, and I was impressed with how quickly I had them up and running. I wired up the UCS Chassis to a Nexus…
Building an IoT Company in Europe
Building an IoT company is a great opportunity to work on things you have never done before. Here is a list of my conclusions with brief anecdotes about the difficulties of building az IoT company. Choose the size of your funding need wisely When we started, our pre-seed angel investor suggested t…
IoT, from Cloud to Fog Computing
Introduction Nowadays, there are billions of devices connected to the Internet, and this has led to some advances in the Electronics and Telecommunication technology developments in recent years which resulted in various kinds of very powerful devices with communication and networking capabilities t…
A Summary of Cisco VXLAN Control Planes: Multicast, Unicast, MP-BGP EVPN
With the adoption of overlay networks as the standard deployment for multi-tenant network, Layer2 over Layer3 protocols have been the favorite among network engineers. One of the Layer2 over Layer3 (or Layer2 over UDP) protocols adopted by the industry is VXLAN. Now, as with any other overlay networ…
Why Network Design in the Modern Era Has Kept Me from Retirement
In youth-oriented Silicon Valley, it’s risky to mention this, but I’ve been around for a long time. In fact, in theory I could retire! I already moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest where the cost of living is low, and I could spend my days hiking in the mountains. But actually…
Plan to Be Secure; Secure to Your Plan
The routine goes something like this. First a breach of security occurs somewhere in the enterprise, it could be something as small as a single computer getting infected or it could be a massive data loss. It seems like that’s a wide range of events, but often the reaction in an enterprise is the sa…