Perhaps you’ve seen the shirts. Maybe you’ve joined in or listened to an episode of Cisco Champion Radio. Or maybe you can not resist learning new things and having access to experts in your area of technical expertise.

Join us–submit your CIsco Champion for Data Center nomination today!

No matter the reason, if you are curious about the Cisco Champion program, now is the time to nominate. yourself or a colleague for consideration for 2015!

The Basics:

• October 1: Open call for nominations
• October 31: Deadline to submit nominations
• November 25: Cisco Champion Class of 2015 announced

Act now! It’s a great opportunity to participate in everything from blogger briefings to podcasts, and to get to know your industry and your peers better. We need your voice.

Tags: cisco champion, Cisco Champions, cloud, data center

Imagine that you see a Tweet today inviting you to apply for a part-time networking job, something you can do in addition to your normal job. You appear to be qualified for the job, and the work looks interesting as well. However, it requires enough of your time so that you would have to set aside your current professional development plans, including study for that next Cisco certification. The job lasts one year.

Would you take the job, setting aside your certification plans for a year? How much money would you need to make in that job before it would entice you to abandon your learning and certification plans for a year?

This post works through a couple of ideas (like the above) about how to quantify the value of a certification. Many people expect that more skills and certifications will give them more Read More »

Tags: #ciscochampion, CCIE, CCNA, CCNP, Cisco Certifications, cisco champion, routing, switching

There has been a lot of recent online discussion about automation of the datacenter network, how we all may (or may not) need to learn programming, the value of a CCIE, and similar topics. This blog tries to look beyond all that. Assume network configuration has been automated. How does that affect network design?

Automation can greatly change the network landscape, or it may change little. It depends on what you’re presently doing for design. Why? The reason is that the programmers probably assumed you’ve built your network in a certain way. As an example, Cisco DFA (Dynamic Fabric Automation) and ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) are based on a Spine-Leaf CLOS tree topology.

Yes, some OpenFlow vendors have claimed to support arbitrary topologies. Arbitrary topologies are just not a great idea. Supporting them makes the programmers work harder to anticipate all the arbitrary things you might do. I want the programmers to focus on key functionality. Building the network in a well-defined way is a price I’m quite willing to pay. Yes, some backwards or migration compatibility is also desirable.

The programmers probably assumed you bought the right equipment and put it together in some rational way. The automated tool will have to tell you how to cable it up, or it  might check your compliance with the recommended design. Plan on this when you look to automation for sites, a datacenter, or a WAN network.

The good news here is the the Cisco automated tools are likely to align with Cisco Validated Designs. The CVD’s provide a great starting point for any network design, and they have recently been displaying some great graphics. They’re a useful resource if you don’t want to re-invent the wheel — especially a square wheel. While I disagree with a few aspects of some of them, over the years most of them have been great guidelines.

The more problematic part of this is that right now, many of us are (still!) operating in the era of hand-crafted networks. What does the machine era and the assembly line bring with it? We will have to give up one-off designs and some degree of customization. The focus will shift to repeated design elements and components. Namely, the type of design the automated tool can work with.

Some network designers are already operating in such a fashion. Their networks may not be automated, but they follow repeatable standards. Like an early factory working with inter-changeable parts. Such sites have likely created a small number of design templates and then used them repeatedly. Examples: “small remote office”, “medium remote office”, “MPLS-only office”, or “MPLS with DMVPN backup office”.

However you carve things up, there should only be a few standard models, including “datacenter” and perhaps “HQ” or “campus”. If you know the number of users (or size range) in each such site, you can then pre-size WAN links, approximate number of APs, licenses, whatever. You can also pre-plan your addressing, with, say, a large block of  /25’s for very small offices, /23’s for medium, etc.

On the equipment side, a small office might have one router with both MPLS and DMVPN links, one core switch, and some small number of access switches. A larger office might have one router each for MPLS and one for DMPVN, two core switches, and more access switches. Add APs, WAAS, and other finishing touches as appropriate. Degree of criticality is another dimension you can add to the mix: critical sites would have more redundancy, or be more self-contained. Whatever you do, standardize the equipment models as much as possible, updating every year or two (to keep the spares inventory simple).

It takes some time to think through and document such internal standards. But probably not as much as you think! And then you win when you go to deploy, because everything becomes repeatable.

Read More »

Tags: ACI, automation, Cisco, cisco champion, cisco live, data center, DFA, OpenFlow, programming, SDN

This blog post was written by Priscila David in collaboration with Anuja Singh and Rima Alameddine

Exactly one year ago, during the launch of the Cisco Empowered Women’s Network at Cisco Live Orlando, we asked the audience: “What would you do if you were not afraid?” On that day, we couldn’t have imagined the incredible journey we would take in answering that question and, ultimately, in building the Cisco Empowered Women’s Network (CiscoEWN).

CiscoEWN was created out of a collaboration between myself, Priscila David (Director, Systems Engineering, US Commercial East); Rima Alameddine (Sales Director, Enterprise NY); and Anuja Singh (Manager, Systems Engineering, Public Sector).  All three of us work in the field sales organization at Cisco and have daily interactions with customers and partners. We realized that Read More »

Tags: #CLUS, #girlsinICT, carlos dominguez, CEWN, cisco champion, Cisco Champions, cisco live, Cisco Live! 2014, ciscoempoweredwomen, ciscoewm, connected women, diversity, inclusion, Inclusion and Diversity, mentor, padmasree warrior, Rebecca Jacoby, Ron Ricci, stem, women in engineering, women in ICT, Women in IT, women in tech, Women in Technology

• How ACI lets you manage a network cohesively instead of box-by-box ?
• What a network looks like in ACI mode vs. stand-alone mode ?
• How ACI works with network protocols like spanning-tree and TRILL ?
• Upgrading the Nexus 9000 Series to ACI
• When does ACI make sense for your business ?

For this new episode of the podcast with Cisco Champion, we are fortunate to have a great technical (and casual) dialog between two active members of the data center and cloud social media sphere.

Colin Lynch (@UCSguru) based in London is a subject matter expert for Cisco UCS, Integrated Systems, Converged Infrastructure and writes also on SDN . Colin has an independant blog at UCSguru.com He was nominated ComputaCenter Consultant of the Year in 2013 .

Colin talked with Joe Onisick (@jonisick) who works for Insieme Networks, now part of Cisco. Joe writes an independant blog at DefineTheCloud.com. He talked about ACI in multiple videos and podcasts.

After attending Cisco Live Europe in Milan, Colin was at VMware PEX to have an in-depth analysis of NSX , and wanted to “challenge ” Joe on several points, which makes this conversation even more lively !

I found this dialog extremely rich, as both participants were willing to address difficult and controversial aspects of the Data Center architecture today and tomorrow,  for instance around layer 2 and layer 3,  network programmability and management, or the future of networking certification ! You will also better understand, why Cisco is heavily investing in ACI solutions, when at the same type keeps developing other paths .
A very exciting 40 mn conversation between two great subject matter experts, really passionate by this topic, spiced  with additional questions from other Cisco Champions and…humor.

Listen now to our guests and enjoy the show hosted by @commsninja.

I also encourage you to read this very didactic explanation from Tom Edsall, Cisco Fellow and CTO of Insieme Networks, in this new blog from Shashi Kiran
ACI Design Principles : The Role of SDN Overlays in Application Centric Deployement . Shashi  will publish the second part tomorrow .

As a reminder, Cisco Champion is a community of  technical professionals who are passionate about sharing their knowledge and expertise. They are ready to offer their time to help others to learn about Cisco and connect with Cisco in unique way
For Data Center and Cloud , we have now more than 40 members, who have been nominated by peers for one year . We invite them to give their opinion on market trends, Cisco solutions and products . We encourage also them to participate to our Cisco Live events , webcasts, podcasts , Google + HOA , blogs and tweet to share their experience and wisdom.

Tags: @jonisick, @UCSguru, ACI, cisco champion, Network programmability, Nexus 9000, Overlays, podcast, SDN, Tom Edsall, VXLAN