Chris Noon, Author at

VCDX-NV – #289

September 24, 2020 Chris Noon 0

On Monday 14th of September 2020, I remotely sat the VCDX defence and the following Tuesday, I received the fantastic news that I passed. I am officially VCDX number 289! For those of you that are new to vMusketeers and my VCDX blogs, here are a link to the previous 3 blogs and a vBrownBag video: The design document. The design defence. The scenario defence. VCDX motivation (vBrownBag). The experience. I spent a lot of time talking to and working with existing VCDX’s and VCDX applicants. Because of this, the defence day was more or less as expected. It followed the format I’ve discussed previously: design defence and then design scenario. The only difference to my defence and other first […]

NSX-T Automation using Terraform: The how (VMC)!

August 10, 2020 Chris Noon 3

I started the series with a post about why I wanted to use Terraform. Now we have the why out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff… the how! I use Terraform for 2 things. The first is to spin up SDDC’s on VMC and configure the VMC NSX-T piece. The second is spinning up NSX-T environments in the lab, which will hopefully make it into production one day. In this post, I’ll focus on the VMC element. The VMC Environment. I’ll start by assuming you know what VMC on AWS is and have a high-level understanding of its concepts and what it delivers. I’ll skip the step for deploying a VMC SDDC using Terraform, but if you […]

NSX-T Automation using Terraform: The why!

August 3, 2020 Chris Noon 1

Hi all, I hope you are all doing well during these trying times. For months, possibly even years, I’ve been convincing myself I’d dive into automation. What better time than one where I am forced into isolation with my laptop. In truth, I was jolted into action by a business requirement for automating the build of a number of environments. These environments had to be standardised and utilise many of the same configuration elements. I’ve spent the better part of a month learning about Cloud (AWS and VMC on AWS) along with Network Automation, which brings us onto our first section… Why Terraform? I first began by googling ‘Network Automation Tools’ and reading a ton of articles. Whittling down my […]

Avi Network: Base Configuration via API

June 19, 2020 Chris Noon 3

API Reference. I wrote a post a few weeks back on how to get an Avi proof of concept up and running. Hopefully, it helped and continues to help others wanting to start playing with Avi. I like to spin my lab up and down, pushing config when needed. This post will be focused around the Avi APIs and how to stand up the basic configuration previously discussed. I used the Avi API guide for reference:https://avinetworks.com/docs/latest/ Alternatively, you can navigate to:https://[Avi Controller IP]/api At this stage, I will assume at least 1 or 3 Controller(s) has been deployed, a logical cloud has been created along with the relevant networks for Avi consumption. Disclaimer. I will be providing the bare minimum […]

Avi Networks: Base Configuration

May 24, 2020 Chris Noon 1

Load Balancing. I covered Avi Networks at a high level in my first post. I now want to dive into the base configuration of Avi and at its core, it is a Load Balancer. Saying that there are a few flavours of Load Balancing. Layer 4 Load Balancing. – Focusing on the IP address and TCP port.Layer 7 Load Balancing. – Focusing on layer 7 attributes such as HTTP headers.Global Server Load Balancing. – Adopting the layer 4 and layer 7 concepts to balance applications across geographical regions. While running through the base configuration I will be focusing on layer 4. While layer 7 and GSLB is something I eventually want to play with it will be further down the […]

Avi Networks: The Advanced NSX Load Balancer.

May 9, 2020 Chris Noon 2

What is Avi? Avi Networks provides software-defined Load Balancing at its core. Complementing the core service is a plethora of mouthwatering services and features. Surely the reason Avi was acquired by VMware on July 11th 2019. Rebranded as the NSX Advanced Load Balancer. Some of the features include application analytics, predictive autoscaling, micro-segmentation and WAF (Web Application Firewall) all this and on both cloud and on-prem. The Load Balancer for any platform! After reading this, if you like the look of Avi and want a demo or PoC, reach out to the team at https://avinetworks.com/. The components. Avi builds its components in a similar way to other VMware products. A management, control and data plane. The logical separation of components […]

F5 p2v Migration

April 20, 2020 Chris Noon 0

Physical to Virtual migrations are old hat. Everyone’s done them and are now focusing on cool technologies such as Containers and Kubernetes. That said, there’s still tones of physical Networking equipment out there that can and arguably should be virtualised. I worked on an F5 project and thought the physical devices could and should be moved to virtual devices. Why Migrate? There are a number of benefits to virtualizing Network equipment: – Reduction in support costs as there is no need for RMA. – No software or hardware dependencies regarding EOL (end of life) or EOD (End of Development). – VMs are protected by virtualisation HA standards. The project in question had 4 physical F5’s which were becoming EOL/EOD and […]

VCDX-NV – Defence Scenario

March 20, 2020 Chris Noon 2

Due to the virus outbreak, my VCDX defence has been postponed until the next window, which is June. The VCDX board decided, understandably, to keep their panellists and applicants as safe as possible. That said, I thought I’d continue the blogging trend and discuss another area of preparation. Still excited as 3 months will fly by! I’ve discussed the document and design defence. Now let’s look at the defence scenario. What is the Defence Scenario? The defence scenario is 1 of 2 defences I will have to complete to successfully become a VCDX. The first task is the design defence, which I’ve spoken about here. The second is the defence scenario. This is a 45-minute window where my 3 panellists […]