It’s crunch time! Many of you may have already left for a few extra days before the event, others aren’t leaving until this weekend. Either way, there are a few things you want to be sure you have on hand and ready for Cisco Live in San Diego!
Continue readingCisco Live 2019 – On Site – Last Minute Checklist
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Cisco SD-WAN ISR 4k Getting Started – Part 2 – Bootstrap Process
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The Bootstrap Process
In the Part 1 of this series we covered the first step to converting and ISR from IOS-XE onto the Cisco SD-WAN platform. We will continue from there with my story of frustrations and the discovered caveats and need to knows. Starting first with bootstrapping the ISR.
Continue readingPermanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-sd-wan-isr-4k-getting-started-part-2-bootstrap-process/
Cisco SD-WAN ISR 4k Getting Started – Part 1 – Upgrading Code
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Upgrading from IOS-XE to SD-WAN Code
Recently I was building out a lab to iron out a migration onto the Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) solution. As part of that process existing ISR 4k routers were going to be used at the edge devices. This process, while fairly straight forward, came with a few “gotchas” and “snags” that I had to work through. In this post I will cover the upgrade of the ISR onto SD-WAN code. In the next post I will cover the bootstrap process as well as a couple of caveats related to vManage and the ISR4k routers.
Continue readingPermanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-sd-wan-isr-4k-getting-started-part-1-upgrading-code/
Cisco Live US 2019 – Explorer Guide
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I’ve been lucky enough to attend Cisco Live twice with both instances being on the full conference pass. This year, due to out of pocket expenses and the overall higher cost of San Diego I am attending on the lower cost Explorer Pass. In years past I purely interacted with Cisco Live remotely. This guide is intended to combine the best of both to assist in making the most of the Explorer pass. With that in mind, lets get some housekeeping out of the way.
Continue readingPermanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-live-us-2019-explorer-guide/
Remote Troubleshooting Crossed Fiber Using Port Channels
Reading Time: 5 minutesLast year I was involved in assisting a datacenter core and access-layer refresh. In this case the IDF’s were reusing existing fiber patches and the run to the datacenter stayed in place. however, within the datacenter core equipment was placed across the room required new cross connects to be ran to the new core cabinet. When the cutovers began to take place the IDF’s were spread out over a large campus. Meaning troubleshooting by walking back and forth to check cabling was extremely time consuming and inefficient. Since all the IDF’s were connected via port channels I was able to figure out which runs were crossed and go fix them all at once using only the ether channel show output. I’ll walk you through the process now.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/remote-troubleshooting-crossed-fiber-using-port-channels/
Cisco Champions – An amazing place to be
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe time for applications to the Cisco Champion 2019 program are fast approaching. As I learned this it caused me to reflect on the privilege I have had for the last two years of being part of it. I’d rather tell you about my experience and why you might want to join in on the fun. In those two years, I have seen it from two different views. My first year was 100% remote as I was unable to make it to Cisco Live. Last year I got to experience all of the greatness of some of the in-person events.
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ATA 190 Recovery Firmware Page – ATA 190 Will Not Register
Reading Time: 3 minutesAs it turns out, albeit I don’t do voice as my career focus, I decided to help out a team member and took ownership of an issue that came up. It was a phone that wasn’t working, one that was attached to an ATA 190. After I tracked down the device I typed it’s IP address into my web browser and found it in a Recovery Firmware state. What us traditional Cisco route/switch guys would consider “ROMMON” as a loose equivalent. In this case it is important to note, since the device wasn’t function on proper firmware and was in recovery mode, the IP address of the ATA is actually in the Data VLAN at this point, NOT the Voice VLAN.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/ata-190-recovery-firmware-page-ata-190-will-not-register/
CLUS 2017 – A remote view
Reading Time: 4 minutesThis year I was unable to make it to Cisco Live U.S. for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the stars don’t align and you can’t make logistics work, or maybe financials just fall short. That doesn’t mean you can’t “go” to CLUS even if it may be remotely and in spirit. Trust me, if the spirits right it’s an exhausting week even when you aren’t there.
I dedicated a lot of effort this year into “attending” even though I was remote just shy of a couple thousand miles away. Here’s how I did it!
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MPLS Headend FVRF Migration Strategy
Reading Time: 14 minutesSay you have a network that currently has an MPLS WAN from your HQ to all of your Branches. You want to migrate these MPLS connections into a DMVPN design and in doing that, you would like to move the MPLS links into a Front Door VRF. There comes a challenge with this move in regards to the routing tables and when to move the headend.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/mpls-headend-fvrf-migration-strategy/
Python + XLRD SecureCRT Import
Reading Time: 8 minutesFirst of all a disclaimer. I am NOT a programer. I promise this could probably be cleaned up considerably by someone that actually does programming. Also, It may require some tweaking to work on your system. This is tested on Mac 10.12.3 and SecureCRT 8.1*
I’ve always loved using SecureCRT. I often find myself needing to add anywhere from a small to a large number of sessions to my list. Especially in my current role. I had remembered in my past at an old roll where I used Windows as my primary OS (work issued) that I had discovered a forum that had a python and VBS script to import sessions out of a CSV. Now that I am running on Apple I sought out that old forum and grabbed the python script. Drats!!! The python script doesn’t work on my new version of SecureCRT for Mac (8.1). Then I started thinking. Most of the time clients give me a nice spreadsheet of IP addresses. This got me thinking, why not write my own that uses Excel. So here it is!
Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/python-xlrd-securecrt-import/